Chapter 10: Lament for Noble Team
If Six had to say one good thing about Beacon, it would be that the school clearly didn't suffer from a lack of resources. Not that that was enough to clear her ever-growing headache.
The first thing that caught her off guard was the exterior of the campus. Beacon didn't resemble a school, or a camp or even a castle, it was more akin to a palace. Large, showy, and full of lots of open space. Admittedly being built atop a hill would make it easy to defend, but outside of that the defences were severely lacking. Still, that didn't mean that the Huntsman Academy wasn't impressive, it was vast, and clearly designed with a great degree of care. However, it was what lay within the walls that interested the Spartan the most.
Six had insisted they start at the work shop, which looked more like a factory than a hobby workshop. Several recognizable elements stood out to her, lathes, a tool forge, laser cutters and part printers. She also spotted the Gravity Hammer that she'd used back in the village resting on a weapon rack, having been chained in place to prevent any unauthorised tinkering, much to her relief. One final object of interest was a large, wall-mounted contraption.
"That's… Dust, isn't it?" Six asked, head slightly tilted as she looked at the machinery, colourful crystals were undergoing some kind of process. Judging by the blast shields and reinforced viewing glass, it was probably a rather delicate affair.
"It's being powderized for use in bullets." Velvet explained, looking over at the machine. "You've got to do it in a sealed environment to stop it from… well, exploding."
"You don't sound impressed." Six noted, looking at the rabbit girl who blushed.
"Oh, ah, you see, it's just the tech I saw when I lived in Atlas was a bit more advanced." She answered, looking down sadly as her ears flattened against her head. "Honestly, if I was a Human, I doubt I'd have left."
"Give me names, they'll never bother anyone again." Six said dully, wondering how she could get to Atlas.
"It's okay, they were idiots, I'm fine now." Velvet said, her smile returning and her ears perking up a little bit as she looked at the shorter girl, who didn't even blink as she responded.
"I wasn't joking."
Velvet was somewhat concerned, partly by response, but also by how serious she sounded.
"No seriously, I've done it before, their bodies will never be found."
Velvet apparently decided they needed to get out of the workshop and dragged her to the library. It was like nothing Six had ever seen before, mostly because it was intact. Normally by the time that she got to them, the Covenant's plasma had set everything on fire. It was honestly new for her to see so many books intact on shelfs.
While Velvet checked to see if a book she'd reserved had come in, Six idly flicked through one at random, which was oddly cathartic. She glanced down at the novel she'd ended up with, and was slightly baffled to see that it was written in English.
I guess we got lucky with the planet we got stuck on.
Yeah, but it still doesn't make any sense. I mean, no UNSC contact and they somehow have the same language and writing, that doesn't make any sense!
Nothing here does, at this point, I think we just have to roll with it.
Fine, but I'm doing it under protest.
The next place Velvet took Six to the canteen to get lunch, and again the Spartan was thrown for a loop, this time by the menu. On Onyx it had been 'Today you will eat this' and then you shut up and stomached it, sometimes it was nice, but sometimes it was awful. Today, Beacon had a variety of Curries on offer, and it wasn't bad either.
Once again I think 'toughening them up' isn't a priority.
You say that, but you've seen the menus that the navy gets on their ships. Maybe we just ended up in the wrong branch?
So long as it's actually nutritious, I don't see a point in complaining.
Agreed. The fact that it's good is just the cherry on top!
After that, Six was shown around the basic classrooms. It was the weekend so no one was in them, which again, was really weird. She'd been vaguely familiar that regular schools didn't educate their students on weekends, but to her, it mostly just seemed like wasted time. Most of the classrooms consisted of standard lecture halls, even the sparring room, which caught Six off guard because there was only one arena.
"That seems inefficient." Six noted, examining the hardwood floor and flexing her toes on the ground.
"How so?" Velvet asked, watching as Six hopped off the stage.
"You can only have one fight at once, also the stage is raised, that's just asking for an accident to happen." Six answered as she walked over to the door. "Is there anything else on the tour?"
"Yes actually." Velvet said, grinning as she led the Spartan down the hall. "I think you'll like what's left."
Interest peaked Six followed cautiously after her.
"Welcome to Beacon's Gym!" Velvet declared, pushing the doors open with two hands, beaming as Six stepped in.
It was a very large room, with rowing machines and treadmills running along a wall, with all sorts of weights along another one. The sweaty training mats brought back so much nostalgia as she stepped over the improperly packed away equipment. That bit was admittedly less nostalgic because any Spartan who'd pulled that shit would be running laps till they puked. Still, she wasn't interested in the standard equipment, it was what lay at the far end of the room that had her full attention.
There appeared to be martial arts dummies, standing tall and covered in posts. However, they also had joints, even opposable fingers and toes.
"The dummies fight back?" Six guessed, her head tilted as she gently pushed one, watching it swing back and forth.
"Yeah, and they hit like a truck." Velvet said, rubbing her elbow. "I had bruises for days."
"Sounds like fun. What's that?" Six had walked over to what appeared to be a tiled section of floor. Velvet looked somewhat conflicted as she walked up to some kind of control panel beside the tiles.
"Well, it's a stability trainer." The Rabbit girl explained, tapping away on the controls. Six watched as the floor tiles began to rise with some kind of anti-gravity technology, before splitting and breaking, shifting around.
"So how does this work? Have you got to stay on a specific tile?"
"No, you've got to not fall." Velvet explained, hopping onto said tiles. Almost immediately, the tiles began to tilt and split, forcing Velvet to leap from tile to tile to keep her footing, before she leapt back down to the ground with Six. "It's designed to resemble unstable terrain and force you to adapt on the fly."
"That's interesting." Six said lightly, already moving onto another bit of odd equipment. It resembled the stock and grip of a fairly normal rifle, only it was built into some kind of large pneumatic device. "Is this for learning how to counter recoil or something?"
"Yeah, why not give the trigger a pull." Velvet said as she walked over, looking at something on the side of the machine, her eyes went wide and she cried out. "Wait, don't-"
It was too late, Noble Six had already adopted a firing stance, the stock on her shoulder as she pulled the trigger and felt the mechanical kick shove into her. It was well and truly ridiculous, basically nothing Six had ever owned had this level of kick to it and she was practically blasted across the gym. Instantly her training kicked in and she was able to roll along the ground and stand back up, looking at the machine incredulously.
Holy crap, I can think of Autocannons with less recoil than that!
I'll say… damn, that's gonna leave a bruise.
It's no problem, we've had worse.
"Has anyone actually built guns with that amount of kick?" The Spartan asked incredulously, looking at the device and a very embarrassed looking Velvet.
"Possibly?" she answered with her pure red face and hastily fiddling with something on the side. "Sorry, the last person to use the Kicker must have thought it would be funny to crank it up to max power."
"Noted, I will check that in future." Six said, while internally she was kicking herself, she had no idea what that thing could have done or its settings and she'd just thrown herself into it.
God that was stupid.
Yeah, no shit; Carter would smack us around the head.
Emile would probably be laughing.
Kat would…
"Six, are you okay?" Velvet asked, looking concerned at the Spartan, who blinked at her.
"Yeah, of course, why wouldn't I be?" Six said, a strained smile on her face as she turned away. "A little bruise never hurt anyone."
"It's just… never mind." Velvet said, walking over to the Spartan and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Lets head back to your room, your Scroll should be charged by now."
It was later that day, when the sun had gone down and the moon had risen into the night sky. And as a result, Remnant's sole Spartan III had another headache to deal with. The moon was broken, shattered into pieces, and this was normal. It was just like that, the bits just stayed in place. Gravity didn't pull them together, and when they moved, they moved in formation with the other fragments and the main piece of moon, like a formation of starships and not a celestial body.
She couldn't comprehend what might be behind it all, and decided to ignore it, pulling the curtains closed and beginning to fix her bedding situation. She'd tested the mattress earlier and had concluded it was far too soft for her. She'd tried taking it off the bed but the slats looked like an equally big nightmare to sleep on. Still, the girl had a solution, she hauled the duvet off her bed and the pillow, and rolled up in the duvet. The linoleum floor was about as soft as the Spartan could take. She then placed the pillow down under her bed, crawled under and pulled the duvet over her.
This was admittedly, silly, and on some level Six knew this, but she also didn't care. For one thing, she had the room to herself, and for another it gave her an odd sense of nostalgia, having another bed so close to her head made her think of the bunkbeds back at Camp Currahee, and that was oddly comforting. It was like having an imaginary company of Spartans alongside her, although that too was a silly thing to think.
Since when do we care about comfort or nostalgia?
Comfort, we're lying on the floor of an old changing room!
Six shuffled around a bit before eventually standing up. The black void around her seemed to be never ending, but she could see a spotlight off in the distance that she headed towards. As she got nearer, she realised it was an all too familiar humanoid form.
She reached out and touched the hole in her armour, the smoke billowing from the gash indicated she should have been burnt, but she wasn't. She ran her fingers over the gold visor, the familiar shape of the modified ODST helmet bringing her a sense of comfort. She smiled up at the lavender armour, which… looked… at her.
What?
Her Mjolnir raised its arm, pointing into the distance, another spotlight had turned on. Six walked over and seemed to arrive far too quickly to the next suit.
It was a familiar grey suit, it tilted the scared visor of its face down towards her… and then the helmet rolled off, falling to the ground with a clatter that seemed to echo forever. Six reached down to pick it up, but she couldn't budge it, it was too heavy, her weak muscles refused to lift it. She struggled for far too long before she dropped it, breathing heavily as she looked up at the hole in the neck of the empty suit…
Her breath hitched in her throat as she saw that it was no longer empty. A fanged, cracked skull was looking down at the Spartan, before it started laughing, its jaw cracking as it rocked back and forth on a spine that wasn't there. Six ran towards the only other light, back to her own set of armour… only it wasn't there anymore. Instead, a burnt blue suit was standing there. Unlike her own armour and Emile's, this suit was hunched over, clutching it's stomach in pain, and Six could swear that she could hear a faint wheezing coming from within.
"Carter…?" Six muttered.
As soon as she spoke, the suit burst into flames, before sprinting towards her. The faint wheeze that she had heard earlier intensified into deep, raspy breathing as whatever was within Carter's armour reached out to grab the Spartan, who desperately scrambled away, only to slam into a light blue suit. It raised an arm of bone, sinew, and rotting muscle. A small shoulder pad was fused directly into the biceps bone. Six darted back from the sharp fingers as the Helmet exploded, shards of glowing purple crystal flying in every direction.
Six ran, knowing what she was going to encounter before she did. A giant of titanium stood before her, standing and raising its arms in a friendly wave. She sprinted towards Jorge's armour, but just as she reached it, it vanished in the blink of an eye, as if it had never even been there.
Six just ran, ran as fast as she could; she could feel leaves crunching under her feet before a pair of hands shot out of the ground, grabbing her by the ankles. She fell, smashing into the ground, forcing herself out of the mud. Except it wasn't mud, it was a grey and green mess. It forced itself up to stand above her, the tattered remains of a shemagh lay around its neck. The figure glared at her through its narrow visor, but reached a hand out, as if offering to pull her up. Six, in utter desperation, reached out and took the hand, only for it to melt into a hot, glassy mixture around her arm, followed swiftly by the rest of what had once been Jun. Six tried to escape the melted puddle of her friend as spot lights flickered rapidly, damaged suits flicking in and out of existence around her, encircling her, growing closer and closer as they-
Six bolted upright, slamming her head into the bed above her with enough force that she was all but sure she'd cracked the wooden slat she'd impacted. Rubbing her head, she crawled out in a frenzy, before forcing herself to her feet and staggering her way to one of her many sinks. She splashed handful after handful of cold water on her face, before looking up at the tear stained face in the mirror.
What the fuck was that?
Do you really want to know?
…
"Get a fucking grip Spartan!" Six growled through gritted teeth, her head pounding like a drum, as she clenched the edges of the sink until her knuckles turned white. "Not giving up… not now, not ever!"
A drop of blood fell from a fresh cut in her forehead, which was the catalyst that she needed to finally get herself back together. After treating her new, unintentionally-self inflicted injury, she decided to sleep next to her bed rather than under it. In spite of… whatever that had been, she was determined to return to sleep.
