Watchpoint Gibraltar, Iberian Peninsula, Europe
The next couple days passed in an unremarkable blur, learning and reconciling this world's technological had been a more absorbing process than he'd first imagined. Occasionally he'd use the on-base A.I for assistance but was reluctant to go further than that, such as integrating her to his TACPAD and data systems. She was useful not doubt, but whether she was a smart A.I or a complex dumb A.I left him wary of trusting her, especially if she delved into an unknown technology there could be a myriad of unexpected consequences. So, he pushed through the struggles though he'd often make less progress than he did the day before. Outside of his personal work he rarely saw anyone else, apparently most were out on a mission leaving only the skeleton crew behind. He ate alone in the cafeteria more often than not, even in the UNSC it wasn't an uncommon experience as most ODSTs ostracized any outsiders, though in this instance with the glares of the other members, he was clearly the outsider. The exception to this being the base chef, one of the first rules of his service was to always befriend the cook, you'd get the best servings and occasionally something extra when new shipment came in. It had played out no differently, with Adrian quickly being friendly with Marques the chef. The man could ramble, and Adrian would be lying if he said he actually cared, but having your ear talked off was far better than the glares and rumbles of contempt from the other members of the base. Though on occasion the young mechanic Brigette would decide to eat with him, the conversations were largely small talk though he wouldn't say he minded the company, she was pleasant enough to talk with. During their last meeting he'd asked her about anyone with some technological experience, she mentioned a couple people that might be able to help, but wasn't sure if they were out on the latest mission or not. He'd never gotten around to talking with the ape, he did however send in some information regarding slipspace ruptures and technology that he knew of. Specifics however were out of his domain, though he thought it would be possible that his pod would've recorded data fluctuations and anomalies when he passed through the slipspace rupture, once that hurdle was passed hopefully the process of getting him home would increase. To access that data however, he'd still need to finish getting an actual connection between this works tech and his own.
Now he was once again working tirelessly at his personal project, another few hours of work only to lead to another error message, he threw his TACPAD across the room with a furious yell. He'd spent days and it had seemed no closer to actually making any progress, he never expected it to be easy, but he'd expected some form of progress. Taking a deep breath, he took a look around the room he'd been occupying in for the last few days. The desk had quickly become cluttered with various bits of tech and junk, his bed had quickly been abandoned as he soon found that despite initially enjoying the bed, it wasn't something he found comfortable to sleep in. Maybe it was just paranoia or his time as a soldier, but he'd found it easier to sleep laying against the walls in his room than on the bed itself, and so the blankets were ripped from the bed and lying in an ungainly heap in the corner. The most organized thing in his room would probably be his weapons, carefully laid out and disassembled on a mat next to his desk, they laid bare and untouched by the ravaging chaos of his slow descent into madness. Pounding at the door shook himself from his stupor, the chair groaning in relief as Adrian's armored body left the seat. He slid open the door, not expecting anyone to paid him any mind, only to be surprised at the person in front of him, a young Asian youth with brown hair, casual clothing, and pink…streaks under her eyes, they remined him of whiskers on a cat. The look in her eyes gave off the impression that was bothered by something, and seeing that she was her at his door, he could guess that the problem laid with him.
Before he could open his mouth, she spoke, disdain lacing her words, "What the hell do you think you're doing? There's been nothing but crashing and yelling coming from this room for the past day! Other people live here to y'know."
He sighed, "Alright pip-squeak, I'll keep it down."
"Pip-squeak? What are you talking about old man, I'm 19, I'm not a child!"
"And I'm 29, not even close to old. God, I hope I wasn't like this when I was your age."
She rolled her eyes with an annoyed groan, then she turned her eyes to give him a skeptical look, "I haven't even seen you here before, are you the new guy everyone's been talking about?"
"Yeah, I suppose I am. What do you do here? Interning for your summer job or something?"
"I told you I'm 19! I'm a soldier for Overwatch. You may have heard of me, I'm !" She did a pose. Only nineteen and already a solider, though it'd be a bit hypocritical of him to say that he was any better, fucking Christ he'd joined when he was sixteen. Still, he felt his was more out of necessity than anything else, this world had its fair share of problems sure, but nothing needing children like her, nineteen was practically still a child in his eyes.
"Is it true that you're from another universe?" That caught his attention, he'd thought that only a select few were aware of that information, "So it's true huh. Don't worry I don't gossip…much, but your secrets safe with me!"
"How do you know that?"
She shrugged, "I was bored, decided to look through Overwatch's database."
"So, you've got enough experience their technology to get through some basic security?" Pieces were starting to fall into place as a plan started forming.
"Well duh, I'm not hacking genius or whatever, but I know more than most people here."
"Alright listen, you help me with a technological problem I've been having, and in return I'll owe you a favor."
"Like what?" The disinterested expression she'd held for most of the conversation perked up at that.
"Whatever you want…that's within reason. And no I can't give you anything from my universe, I don't have any trinkets with me." Save one, but that's not something she needed to know about.
"Hmmm, alright. I'll hold onto it then, use it when I feel like. Now what do you need help with, finding Google? Or did you accidently download a virus?" She quipped as she made her way into his room.
"I'm not senile, I actually need with some actual technology. Since my origin isn't much a secret around you, I'm actually a tech specialist where I come from."
She turned, a curious look upon her face, turned back to the pile of wires on the table connected to his helmet.
"So why do you need my help then?" She asked as he bent down to pick up his TACPAD he'd thrown earlier.
"Because while I'm trained in my own world, I know next to nothing about the technology here. Its making compatibility between my equipment difficult."
"Anndd you need someone with knowledge in this world for a basis. Otherwise you're just running circles chasing your own tail."
Adrian snapped his fingers, "Exactly, so can you help me?"
Shrugging once more but this time with a smile she said, "Sure, wouldn't be right of a member of Overwatch to leave an elderly man without help."
He snorted, giving her a brief rundown of his technology, they went to work as he explained his work so far and she gave her thoughts as to where he went work. There was progress, small, absolutely crawling in terms of a final product, but it was there, and considering where he'd been just hours before, he'd considered it fucking fantastic.
"So in your universe or whatever, have people mutated to have like cool psychics powers, or weird bodies like you see in see in all the sci-fi shows?"
Adrian turned and gave her a weird look, "Uhh no, not really. People are still just people."
She gave an indigent sigh and typed something into a datapad, "That's so lame! Isn't there anything super cool in the future? Like laser guns or teleporting?"
"Well we have practically near-universal FTL travel, I always thought that was cool when I was your age."
"God you must've been sooo lame. C'mon you must have something super cool! If its top secret I promise I won't tell anyone!"
It's not like that 'promise' would suddenly make him spill every ONI secret he's learned up until now, but she wouldn't quit whining until he told her, it reminded him of how his sister Chloe would do the same…keep bugging him until he caved. He gave a brief smile, "Alright fine kid, I may have heard a couple things that I wasn't supposed to, a perk of occasionally working for those ONI spooks I suppose. The scientist bigwigs have been using this for a while I think, but its always been hit or miss on if it actually works, they've found a way to completely copy someone's neural interface, essentially download a person's entire mind, thoughts, memories, personality, all of it."
"Whoa, I knew there had to be cool stuff in the future. So, what's it for?"
Adrian gave a half-hearted shrug as he wrote some observations down, "Above my paygrade, not for me know."
A comfortable silence fell between them as they went back to working on their problem at hand, before he knew it, hours had passed.
"Ah shit, its way fucking later than I thought it'd be."
"Old, and vulgar too!"
"Shut it pip-squeak. I appreciate the help though, if I run into anymore hurdles, I'll ask for your help again."
"Whatever, just hope that people won't get the wrong idea of an old man coming to visit a much younger girl." She teased, "Oh and I'm still holding you towards that favor."
"Yeah yeah, fucking kids." Dismissively waving his hand, he shut the door with a sigh. He was starting to feel cooped up, it was rare for him to go so long with so little action. Laying back against the wall, he slid to the floor with a muffled thud. Closing his eyes he passed into the welcoming abyss of sleep.
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Explosions rocked him from his sleep, he fumbled around for his weapon and sat up with a start. Looking around he saw the frontline in chaos, the Covenant had come attacked much sooner than anticipated. They were to protect the mineral refineries until the raw materials could be transported elsewhere, it was a critical blow enough that the Covenant had found a key refinery but they'd hoped to lessen the impact but transporting as much of the goods as possible. A much younger Adrian Kasporov looked over the fortifications they'd built only to see a row of Wraiths lining the edge of the forest, firing a constant bombardment into the facility. His battalion had been sent here a week ago to try to prevent Covenant takeover of the plant, but that'd gone as well as they expected. They'd took two-hundred casualties on the initial landing; it took a fifth of the battalion to be for Major Adams to realize that they were vastly underprepared for the mission they'd been give. Luckily his unit had managed to avoid the landing, they were also largely experienced soldiers, he was the freshest but even then he'd already been serving for near two and half years.
"Alright marines listen up! Those split-chinned freaks have decided that they want this refinery, but they haven't asked very nicely. Lets show these bastards that their Gods don't mean shit when faced against us, I want each and everyone of you to so utterly slaughter those ugly fuckers that they won't even have a soul for their Gods to accept!" Second Lieutenant Greene yelled, despite being an academy officer, the man had proven to lead on the front-line and Adrian had always respected him for it, as did the others in his squad.
"Oorah!"
"Damn right Marines. Perkins, Emilio, get those SPNKRs focused on those Wraiths."
The ground rumbled as the Wraiths moved closer, he could feel his teeth chattering with every incoming salvo of plasma artillery. Peaking above his cover he fired a series of controlled bursts from his MA3 assault rifle, he downed a couple grunts before he was forced to take cover once more as needler rounds flew by him. The sounds of heavy cannon fire could be heard in the distance as the few scorpions they'd been given picked off the enemy armor from the sidelines. Popping up he fired as some jackals, managing to down one of them and stunning the other before a marksman finished it off. Longswords strafed by but had a difficult time hitting any targets, the Covenant had set up a series of Tyrant anti-air in the forests and that kept the pilots from making any real work. A scream rang out next to him, he turned to see his squadmate Andrei go down with a needler round through his shoulder. Someone tried to drag him away but instead was riddled with a series of needler rounds, supercoiling and blasting their innards out. Warm blood splashed Adrian's face as he stared at the horror in front of him, wiping his face he laid down a heavy suppression. A deafening blast from behind shook him to the bone, turning he saw the true beauty of a double-barreled heavy-class M53 Black Widow, they cost a hell of a lot to produce but god damn they were a welcomed sight.
It made short work of the covvie armor, the strangler infantry were quickly picked off by the rest of the marines, leaving an empty field of corpses. A light cheer went up around those on the front line, it seemed they'd survived the onslaught. The Covenant would be back, but it usually took them a solid couple hours to regroup their forces and make another push, by the time that happens most of the battalion should already be evacuated. Whatever brief joy they had was quickly crushed as the trees at the edge of the clearing began to come toppling down. A second wave of covvie armor came bursting through the tree line, this time escorted by Ghosts and supported by a trio of Phantasms, they were massive heavily fortified land vehicles, almost three times the size of a Wraith, they had enough fire power to decimate this facility until not even dust was left. Weapons fired opened up, the tanks focused on the armor and the marines trying to pop the drivers out of the ghosts before they could do too much damage. Adrian kept a steady line of fire on the nearest ghost, a lucky round managed to hit the grunt in the skull, it's corpse rag-dolled out of the seat as the ghost drilled into the ground, exploding in a bright flash of plasma and fire. The Wraiths kept pushing with the Phantasms not far behind, what was already a losing battle had quickly turned into a doomed one. Ducking behind his cover, he swapped his mag but stopped when he heard a familiar screech growing closer. Looking behind him, he saw a massive round of plasma from a Wraith barring down on his position, he scrambled to get up but wasn't fast enough. Exploding beside him it sent Adrian rocketing back from the frontline, he tumbled across the ground in a daze, the haziness soon transforming into a pain he'd never felt before, it was as if his skin was melting from his body. Look down he saw his armor was melting onto his chest, searing into his skin, the plasma round had splashed onto his body. His body wreathed in agony, his limbs contorting into unnatural ways as he desperately attempted to rip the armor from his body. Every second he could feel it burning down his side and deeper into his body, like thorns piercing his flesh, his screams soon faded into dry rasps. His throat hoarse and gasping from his cries, a figure appeared above him though he couldn't focus on it.
Relief came when he felt his chest piece torn from his body, though it only stopped the pain from growing, his skin was still scorching, it practically felt like it was bubbling from the immense heat. Focus came back to his vision, he saw that he was being dragged away from the frontline, all around him soldiers were making a controlled retreat. The Black Widow was still firing away until a series of plasma rounds nailed it, it burst into flames and the screams of the tankers stuck inside echoed in his mind. He was lifted onto a Falcon with other wounded, a medic applied some ointment to his wounds, the pain flared like the medic was dragging red-hot steel across his body. All Adrian could do was lull his head to the size and watch in a daze as the first of the Covenant armor burst through the front line, plasma fire lighting up whatever poor soul was stuck guarding the retreat.
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Adrian's eyes cracked open, his neck felt sore and his backs tiff, he hadn't dreamed of his time in the marines for years. As if reacting to the memory, the wound on his chest felt hot and uncomfortable. Failure, that's all that operation was, a massive failure; the planet Lacrimis II had been lost a month later, but especially the evacuation and resource collection at the facility was an utter defeat. Of the entire one-thousand man battalion that went in to defend it, only 243 had survived, including himself, Major Adams had been demoted because of that abysmal failure, such a disgrace apparently that he'd been sent back to Earth pending a military court. Pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, he stood up and inhaled, blowing out a puff of smoke as the intercom in his room rang.
"Mr. Kasporov, Winston wishes to see you in his office, a new mission had come up."
Fucking finally, he thought to himself as he took a long drag from his cigarette, walking out the door he headed towards the ape's office. When he walked into the office, he saw a few others already in the room, Dr. Ziegler, and McCree, he hadn't spoken to McCree since their initial encounter, but he'd also never made an effort to talk to anyone. Ziegler gave him a small smile when he entered, she was wearing a strange battledress, there were also…wings upon her back. He shook his head at the strangeness of it all but stole a glance at the form-fitting outfit, flicking his cigarette to the side, he laid back against one of the tables in the room.
"Ah everyone's here, good. We've recently received some intel that Talon has recently set up shop in South America." A large holographic globe appeared in front of them, it turned halfway around and focused on a large landmass labeled South America, a large red dot was marked in the Northwest, "Specifically in the Northern tip of Peru. According to our information, Talon forcefully took over a sizable village and its nearby mining operation. If we can liberate the village and mine from Talon's grasp, not only will it show our dedication to helping the people but will act as a crippling blow towards Talon's wealth. Kasporov and McCree, you two will clear the village of hostiles, once that's done, you'll move to free the mine as well. Angela, I'm sending you to aid the civilians, apparently the miners are being worked to death and will need whatever help they can get." Winston spoke a bit more about the surrounding area, but Adrian tuned it out, a jungle on Earth wouldn't be any different than any of the other dozens of jungles he's been deployed too. A shake on his shoulder snapped him from his thoughts, looking around the room it was empty except for Dr. Ziegler net to him.
It seemed he'd be zoning out so hard he missed the dismissal, "Coming? Seems like someone wasn't paying attention." She teased with a grin.
"Won't deny that Doc, he was just so boring it reminded me of grade school." They shared a laugh at that before leaving the room.
"True enough, Winston does have a tendency to focus on unnecessary details, but I suppose to much information is better than too little."
"Oh, I disagree, clearly you never had to listen to your biology teacher talk about their personal orgasms during sex ed in school."
She burst out laughing at that, "Really?"
"Oh yeah, Mister Boyes, perfectly average man by all accounts. We go into class that day as he starts talking about mutual pleasuring and healthy sex, then for fuck knows why, he starts giving personal details as an example, 'Its different for everybody, but for me I'm fifty and still shooting out like a horse.'" Adrian mimicked his teacher's voice at the end, he cracked a smile at the end and laughed at his own ridiculous action.
Angela laughed with him, "Winston is a dear friend of mine, and as a doctor I'll always have his best interests in mind, but I'm not sure what I'd do if he started talking about his sex life with me. Especially if he brings the same level of detail that he brings to our briefings."
Adrian blanched at the image with Dr. Ziegler have a grand time at his expression as they walked onto the Orca. Taking a seat, he unstrapped his battle rifle from his back and gave it a quick once over, simply making sure that everything was working as it should. Clacking boot spurs told him that the cowboy McCree was heading over, it wasn't a surprise with those loud any jangles tat McCree hadn't accompanied them on his last mission.
"Listen, Winston says to work with you so I will, just follow my lead on the ground and we'll be just fine."
"I've seen more combat in a year than you've seen in your life cowboy, just be sure that magnum isn't too heavy for you."
McCree grinned at that, "I think we'll be alright."
Adrian sighed as McCree walked away, 'What the hell is up with these people'.
