North Eastern Plains, Kenya, Africa
"Now you're going to hear a crack followed by a bit of pain."
"Yeah yeah just- Oh fucking christ!" Adrian swore, "I don't even think that was dislocated in the first place."
"Well as the nearest doctor I disagree." Angela smirked as she helped Adrian gingerly stand up, after the fight when the adrenaline had long passed, he'd found his whole body was sore. Getting knocked back to the stone age by a brute punch was something he never hoped to experience again. Though if anything he'd consider himself lucky that he only caught a glancing blow, had the brute hit him straight on well it would be unlikely that he'd be anything more than a pile of mush. You often hear the phrase, 'it looks worse than it feels', which often times is straight bullshit, such as a time like this. Adrian looked down as his bare chest to see an awful purplish-black bruise covering half his chest, turning his stare to the helmet in his hands the reflection showed that his face was only slightly better. He didn't take any direct hits to his rugged mug but well the Chieftain tossed him like a toy, it'd be more a surprise if there was somewhere that wasn't bruised.
"Now I shouldn't have to remind you but take it easy, I did what I could, but my staff isn't a magical cure all. Your body is still going to need some time to naturally heal, so to make sure I don't physically restrain you to the ground, keep away from anything that could aggravate the healing."
"No problems from me Doc, I'll be on my best behavior." He chuckled before groaning in immediate regret. Turning from Angela he surveyed the area, none of them had been in a position to much of anything after the battle so everything was still as it was, the only difference was Morrison's thorough investigating of everything Covenant. If anything he couldn't fault the man for his thorough investigating though he'd be damned if the weapons ended up in any hands other than his. Speaking for the last hour since the battle, he'd been debating bringing the covvie weapons onto missions, on one hand they could prove immensely useful as demonstrated by the energy sword though his usage of it was fairly clumsy all things considered. That said it could give him an edge should he run into Reaper or any other of Talon's main force, though his worry is that brining such foreign weaponry could warrant unnecessary attention. Those are thoughts for later though for now he had to turn his mind to how to get rid of these bodies…and the massive ship.
"Something on your mind Adrian?" Angela asked.
"Just thinking of what's next, can't have these bodies laying around for some poor bastard to stumble across. Still haven't found the elite's stash, but this is far worse and we can't stuff all these corpses on the Orca otherwise we won't have any room. It'll be gruesome but we'll have to break these bodies down somehow either by burning them or…", Adrian turned his gaze towards the phantom.
"You're going to blow up the ship aren't you?" She remarked, she continued at Adrian's perplexed expression, "It's my job to understand people and I'd like to think I've started to understand you. Whenever something about destruction and force comes up you get this glint in your eyes." A sly smile graced her lips.
"Well I guess I'm not the most complicated guy; the Covenant use a type of fusion reactor to power most of their ships and phantoms are no different. Stable in use but can easily be set off-balance or pushed over capacity, if that happens well it ain't pretty. So if we stuff on these sacks of shit onto the ship, then destabilize the fusion reactor it should vaporize everything within a certain radius."
"You're sure there won't be any danger to the people living a couple kilometers off?" She asked with hesitance.
"Certain, it's dangerous but very localized, trust me I've seen enough of these bastards blow up to know." Anything more he would say was cut off as a sharp whine pierced the sky, looking up above them a sleek, angled jet curved into view. It was a clean white with gold accenting it's sharp angles, obviously Overwatch he figured it was a vehicle for rapid deployment of only one or two, far faster than the Orca at the expense of crew capacity. Its wings turned upwards allowing for a vertical landing, dust billowed in the jet propulsion as Adrian donned the top half of his armor, not eager for a repeat of the problem he'd just spent his morning fixing. Following behind Angela, Adrian walked towards the craft looking behind him in surprise to see that Morrison was holding his distance.
The cockpit hatch slid open as soon as the plane landed, the more Adrian looked at the vehicle the more it started to look like a bastardized fighter than anything else. Curious as he hadn't seen such a craft at the outpost, especially since he didn't take Overwatch for one to get into aerial conflicts but he shrugged it off as a relic of the past, the "old Overwatch" he'd heard people call it. Winston hoped out of the plane landing with a thud, worry etched onto his features as he scanned the area, not long after Winston he spied McCree climbing out of the plane with less grace than he'd expect of the cowboy.
"Has the problem been resolved? I brought McCree along incase things got dicey…but it seems that everything's been…handled." Winston spoke, his question drawing out as his eyes landed on the infamous form of Soldier 76, better known to him as Jack Morrison, his old friend.
Before Winston could speak Morrison interrupted him, "Listen I already got an earful from Angela, we can talk more back at the base but lookin' around I see more pressing issues. Just what in the hell is happening?"
Winston stared at the man, still staring in disbelief before he cautiously regained his composure, "Ah uh yes…I'm sure Kasporov and Ziegler have given you a rough idea? Well it's far-fetched but true…it seems there's much to be done back at base for I fear you won't believe me unless I show you the proof."
"Try me." He grunted with his coarse voice.
"These aliens are not from our Earth."
"Well I figured that, I'm not an idiot."
"No Jack, I mean they don't exist in this universe. They're not from here…and neither is Kasporov."
With his face hidden behind the mask and visor it was impossible to tell exactly what was running through the man's head, but with a story as seemingly outlandish as this it's not hard to paint a mental picture of Morrison's disbelief, though to the surprise of all disbelief was the farthest thing from his mind.
"One more added to the list of things to kill then." He spoke rather nonchalantly.
"You're not…you believe it like that? No questions? No denial?"
"Sure I've got questions, but denial? Hell I've already killed some of them, hard to think it's absurd once you're past killing. The kid's a strange twist but you've got no reason to lie. Like you said, it seems we've got a lot to talk about back at base."
Winston stood mouth agape, after seeing Morrison for the first time in…God knows how long he'd expected a resistance to coming back…but Jack seems to have already decided on his own.
As Adrian stood off to the side, looking on at the strange reunion he heard the jingle of McCree's boots step up beside him.
"Hell of a thing ain't it? Tho I s'ppose you don't have much connection." McCree spoke.
"I don't, fact is I still don't know who the hell this guy is." Adrian said.
"Well he's former Overwatch for one, but I assume you'd could at least put that together. The bigger thing is, he used to be our commander back when Overwatch was still a global organization."
"No shit? Well he's certainly got the people skills for that role." He snarked.
"Heh you ain't wrong. There were others before him, but mostly acting as a handler of sorts, when he was promoted to commander, Overwatch had undergone some massive growth and so he took on a more direct role in running us. Course then everything went to shit but that's a different story, all you really need to know is he's one hell of a leader."
"High praise coming from you, though my opinion for you may have faltered after seeing you leave that jet."
McCree shot him a mirthful glare, "At least I got enough braincells not to drop in a damn pod from space."
Adrian chuckled, "At least I got enough beauty for the both of us, cause you sure as hell bring nothing to the table." They let out a laugh together before Winston came over to question Adrian on the events that transpired. Though he figured he'd already heard everything from the Doc, Adrian answered the ape anyway, telling him of Vicker's squad spotting the ship crashing from the sky. The initial encounter in the ruins not far from here, then the meeting with Morrison before finally ending up here for the final skirmish, Adrian even outlined his plan for disposing of the bodies.
"This ship…is there any way you can access it's data? Maybe we can get more info on ruptures-" Winston rambled.
"I'm a tech specialist not a miracle worker, it took years to even begin to decrypt the Covenant language, there's nothing a lone ODST is going to get from that ship other than some basic operations. Want me to fire some covvie guns? I can do that; need me to turn the ship on? I an also do that, though not for an actual understanding of what the those split-chins are writing or saying."
Winston's face dropped; disappointment evident. "I suppose I should've expected that, figured it was worth asking though."
"Regardless, we need to dispose of these corpses, between my ribs and Morrison's wounds neither of us can haul the bodies." Adrian opened his arms to the mess of corpses laying about.
"Ah leave it to us! Though I hope you'll allow me to watch over as you work no the ship, I must admit my curiosity is getting the best of me!"
Winston flashed a grin, his rugged teeth poking out causing Adrian to take an involuntary step back, the image of the Brute Chieftain flaunting its feral canines flashing in his mind.
"Yeah whatever." Adrian said as Winston out towards the corpses in the ruins with McCree in tow, the latter complaining about being brought out for heavy lifting when he could've been sleeping. While those two handled the corpse clean up, Adrian began collecting their weapons, especially of interest to him was the Jackal's beam rifle, though it'd be on limited ammo though he wondered if there was a way to recharge rifle to make it a more permanent staple of his arsenal. He remembered hearing that ONI had been able to recharge covvie weapons but that it was ridiculously impractical to use them as a common weapon. The futility wasn't lost on him, it'd be a waste of resources to go out collecting plasma weapons when we were almost always on the run in the first place. Though seeing as how he wasn't faced with his immediate extinction, having some vastly more powerful weapons could only help him, he hefted the rifle in his arms, his hands awkwardly gripping the handle before he found a comfortable position. Peering down the foreign sights a wave of odd familiarity washed over him as the peculiar scope filled his vision, a couple Covenant glyphs laid on the border.
Sighing as he moved the rifle from his sights, he looked around at the Earth he found himself on, with each day he spent here the dissonance of a foreign Earth becoming so familiar only grew stronger. Ignoring the thoughts, he went about collecting the discarded weapons, his mind falling into an easing catharsis at the simple task. As he neared the end of his simple task he saw McCree and Winston coming back carrying the small band of aliens, tossing the bodies onto the Phantom, Winston gave a hopeful grin towards Adrian. He sighed and motioned for the lumbering ape to follow him onto the Covenant ship as he dropped the weapons in a small pile. Stepping into the spacious interior he spied the body of one grunt near the cockpit, its head crushed with a splatter of blue blood behind it; Adrian snorted at the image of a Brute crushing the little bastard's head. Walking into the strange cockpit, Adrian looked around before finding a dark screen in the far right of the center console, swiping his hand across it before inputting a series of memorized inputs he heard the hum of the ship turning on.
"Fascinating," Winston whispered behind him, "Do you know what the glyphs you used mean? Or how this works?"
"No idea about the glyphs, we just learned what icons can be used for specific functions, not their actual meanings. As I told Ziegler earlier, it runs on some kinda fusion reactor though the specifics are beyond me." Winston nodded before examining the rest of the console, his eyes glued to every aspect of the exotic ship. Adrian looked around the main console, before pressing a curved glyph at the top followed by two sharply angular glyphs on the bottom. The faint hum that resonated throughout the ship steadily grew in volume as Adrian put his left hand over a reflective panel to his side, slowly bringing one finger up the panel. When the sound of the reactor turned to an almost deafening roaring, he motioned for Winston to start leaving, "We got two minutes or so minutes until the reactor blows itself, maybe less considering the rough shape of the ship!" He shouted; Winston nodded as he headed out leaving Adrian alone in the cockpit. Moving his right hand to a circular icon with a jagged line in the center, he held his finger on it until it's color changed to a deep crimson. Satisfied that the ship wouldn't engage any countermeasures, he backed up a bit before turning to leave, giving a kick to the grunt's corpse as he passed it seeing that the troop bay of the phantom was now stacked full of Covenant corpses. Stepping outside he saw that the others had already began to move out of the depression in the ground, following suit he stood on the edge as the sound of the phantom's engine was quiet for a split-second before erupting in a burst of dark purple. Like an endless void was born from the hull of the ship, when the smoke died down there was barely anything left, the most noticeable difference was a half-sphere hole where the phantom once laid. The surface of the ground was lightly covered in a thin layer of glass, a sight all too familiar to Adrian.
"It's a miracle that you all happened to be here, had these Covenant been left unchecked, there's not telling how much damage they would've caused. I'm glad you're apart of Overwatch's future." Winston praised.
Adrian turned to the ape, "Apart of Overwatch's future? I don't belong here, less so being in your grand plans for the future of this ragtag group." He snarked, he knew Winston was trying to be positive but frankly after this latest encounter he was getting sick of the waiting for news about his actual universe, was there even any progress being made? "Why is any of this happening? Why the fuck am I here in this world, why not any other? Then these covvie bastards seem to follow me wherever I go, what if that's the universes way of telling me to get back to where I belong."
Winston looked at him in shock, not expecting the outburst, well more so not expecting it here of all places. He was no psychologist but based on the reports he read from Angela, Adrian was far from adapting to this world, cognitive dissonance is what she said he was experiencing from holding two conflicting thoughts in his mind. Winston was putting effort into Adrian's trip back, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't selfishly grateful that Adrian had been such a boon to Overwatch.
Winston spoke up, "Well uhh…I don't really have any answers to that other than chance I suppose. You see it's a complicated process and it'll take time-"
"Time is the one thing I don't have; every second my brothers and sisters are dying by the hundreds yet here I am with my thumb up my ass running around the world playing hero. How long is this going to take?" Adrian growled, before Winston could answer he felt a hand on his shoulder slowly dragging him away, it was the Doc.
"Please Adrian, its going to take time but taking your anger out on Winston isn't going to help anything. I know it must feel frustrating but there's not much else that can be done, besides is your time spent here so awful?"
"Angela my Earth is dying, and that fucking ape is here congratulating me on doing my god damn job?"
Her face hardened, "He's doing his best Adrian, don't alienate those you've finally started to get close too."
He turned to face her before sighing, "I'm just-", his struggled to find the words before closing his mouth, simply shaking his head, and shrugging her hand off his shoulder. Walking to the brim of the trough he sat on the edge, staring at the tiny bits of wreckage left from the phantom, taking in the sun's reflection off the glasses ground. It began to feel as if this world was tearing him apart, he didn't belong here, shouldn't be here… what a mess this turned out be. All he could do now was wait and hope that the ape figured everything out sooner rather than later.
A/N: Well I'm not exactly satisfied with how this chapter turned out, I'd hoped to have more happening but I rewrote the entire thing a handful of times never feeling satisfied with any of them and this rather uneventful chapter is what stuck. It mostly just serves to wrap up the last half dozen chapters before moving on. Other than that hope you enjoy!