2535 - Insurrectionist Planet "Redoubt-326"

Location - ?

Presly was wandering through the streets of a sprawling metropolis filled with cylindrical dumbbell shaped skyscrapers which reached impossibly high into the gloomy heavens. But the shops' glittering lights and holoprojections warded off the dull bleakness of the night sky.

A hawker raised a grimy finger and pointed at him in a futile attempt to peddle his wares of strange fruit.

Presly, in his even yet firm steps walk towards his apartment only spared the desperate shopkeeper one glance and was about to dismiss the peddler when he noticed the strange stone bowl tucked in a metallic cubby near the trash compactor.

But he quickly neutralized his obvious excitement and put on a disinterested face. Presly knew this was the city's underbelly where cutthroats, drillers and scammers resided. All of whom would not fail to take advantage of the naive or weak. But he was neither weak nor naive so he slowly yet deliberately approached the shop.

"Welcome to Circus Delights, I have the freshest fruit on this side of the planet." The shopkeeper excitedly said.

Upon seeing Presly's disinterested expression, the hawker pointed towards a basket of fresh pineapples.

"You look like a man of high tastes well how about Pineapples grown in soil sourced from the Motherland?" Asked the fruit merchant.

Presly raised and eyebrow and gave the man a dubious look.

"We lost the Motherland two years ago." Presly snorted.

Presly already noticing the obvious pretended to look more closely at the basket of fruit and then chuckled.

The merchant followed Presly's line of sight and noticed the faint cyan lights which outlined the fruits. His eyes widened and his body almost performed a seizure at having been caught.

"I have been tricked! My supplier must have been selling me dupes this whole time!" The hawker exclaimed unconvincingly with wild eyes.

Presly chuckled some more before placing a hand on the slightly trembling man's shoulder.

"Selling hardlight food is illegal under amendment 89-4B of the constitution." Presly stated in a professional yet oily slick voice.

The hawker visibly deflated and then a fatalistic weariness replaced his earlier demeanor.

"Look, my last shipment was destroyed due to enemy activity near the frontlines. My daughter is sick and I'm saving up money for the cure." The hawker stated dejectedly.

The merchant, upon taking in Presly's lack of response then raised his left gauntlet towards him with his wrist device stopping just short of Presly's own wrist before both lit up in a dazzling display of holo-images.

"Please, I'll give you everything I have saved up so far if you don't take me in. My daughter needs me and I can't work while I'm in jail" The hawker pleaded in a desperate voice."

The hawker dropped his head in defeat when Presly took his hand away but his head soon rose back up to look at Presly with confusion as Presly pats the man on the arm.

"Relax pal, I'm not a cop and I have done my fair share of illegal activities to support the ones I love." Presly calmy told the visibly shaken shopkeeper.

He then pointed at the stone bowl stuck in the cubby near the trash compactor while making sure the shopkeeper was following his hand.

"I came for that bowl, my family had one just like it before it was destroyed." Presly explained in a voice with a hint of longing.

The hawker gave Presly an incredulous look before haphazardly stumbling over to the bowl and picked it up. He ogled at it for a second seemingly to take in the undamaged but otherwise unremarkable vessel.

"You want this piece of junk? You should have just said so because you can have it for free. I was going to throw it out anyways and besides it has brought me nothing but bad luck." The hawker exclaimed impassively while waving the stone vessel around.

Presly smiled and held out his hand to which the shopkeeper placed his bowl onto but not before Presly silently confirmed a transfer of funds. He bid the merchant a brief yet warm goodbye and continued his journey home.

The hawker watched the mysterious stranger walk off down the brightly lit street while trying to process the roller coaster of emotions he just experienced.

"Transfer Complete, 100,000 credits have been added to your checking account, Prin," The AI in his suit chimed in her usual cheerful voice interrupting his stream of thoughts.

It took a moment for Prin to process the words but when he recovered, he frantically raised his wrist to face to squint at the holo-images. He then sighed as he swiped through numerous advertisements for new holo-movies, holo-games and even debaucherously leaning services on his second hand bargain armor leased from the local dealer but Prin was finally able to log in to his bank account.

He gazed at the images and the digits indicating the staggering number of credits the stranger had just given him. It looked even more unreal the longer he stared at it.

"W-what? That's more than enough to cover Ateni's medication!" Prin whispered hoarsely to himself.

Prin suddenly looked up from his gauntlet, scanning the street for his mysterious benefactor hoping to give him words of thanks but the man had long since left. He then raised his head up to the sky while a slow hopeful smiled spread across his face.

Meanwhile Presly stepped into his apartment and after settling the stone bowl upon his favorite table. He assumed a thoughtful pose.

"Could it be?" Presly wondered out loud to himself.

Presly shrugged and placed his hand over the bo-

Prefab Office - 7th FL

"OW" Exclaimed Presly as his hand supporting his chin slipped and his head slammed into the cold hard fiber desk of his work cubicle.

Presly looked around him and upon seeing the grey walls of his workplace he sighed. Ever since he was a child, he always have had these weird dreams. Some were of him walking around in a high-tech city that felt totally alien yet comfortably familiar. They were filled with weird skyscrapers that defied the laws of physics.

In his dreams, if he were to gaze up at the skyline, impossible sights that defy imagination would greet his eyes. He would see lazily moving tendrils that sparkle with light which he somehow knew contained structures that housed people.

But the most surprising detail is in the people he encountered. They are indeed human, but the level of technology was far above even what the UNSC had and perhaps even the Covenant.

The average person he saw in his dreams wore a greyish black armor with a design that seemed strangely similar to contemporary UNSC designs but the aesthetic placement of lights remind him more of Covenant armor.

A loud beep brought Presly out of his musings as he turned his head to face his holo-terminal. And upon seeing the message, his mouth lifted into a smile. It was a secure message from his sister Galli who worked in the HR department.

What's up Big Bro, just wanted to remind you that Aunty Bella is holding a meeting tonight at the old UNSC warehouse. It starts at 9pm Reach time.

Rumor has it that she has uncovered something big, something the UNSC doesn't want ANYONE to know. I've heard some rumors that it can even win US the war! Wink Wink.

Think about that! The UNSC has always treated the outer colonies like dirt and remember when we were denied refuge into the inner colonies because of our affiliation with the Ascendancy? I still remember them calling us names like "dirty insurrectionists" and laughing at our beliefs.

Screw those bureaucrats and oligarchs AND the UEG who couldn't face the truth!

I have thought long and hard about what you told me the last time I cried about our parents. I know now that we owe it to ourselves to be strong, to prosper and protect the loved ones we have left with both of our arms. And we owe it to ourselves to deliver vengeance for those unable to do so.

The Human Spirit is unbroken, it is indomitable, Humanitas Aeterna!

Your sister,

Galli

Presly smiled as his mood changed from bored musings to a blistering pride for Galli had come a long way from the state she was at before.

Galli took the death of their parents harder than he did.

He was in town when the Covenant came. A dirty split jaw also known as an Elite clad in whitish red armor cut down his mother and father with an energy sword right in front of Galli. But before the alien could finish his sister off, Bella who happened to have been in the cellar picking out wine for dinner busted into the room and tried to unload the entirety of her MA5's magazine into the murderer's head.

Unfortunately, Bella's rifle jammed before she could take out the Elite's personal energy shield. And according to Galli's recollections, in the next moments Bella moved faster than a UNSC Spartan in armor and seemed to haver superhuman reflexes.

In fragments of a second, she had crossed five meters of obstacle laden space littered with fallen furniture to then jump onto the Alien's back after which she sunk her combat knife into its skull killing it instantly.

Two minutes later, Presly had burst through the door and upon seeing his murdered parents and his sister Galli sitting on the floor with an expressionless look on her face seeming to stare off into eternity lost something in himself but in the darkness he also found light.

For Presly, it was almost as if it unlocked something in him, something that he didn't know was there, it was an intense sense of purpose.

And as if acting from experience, he steeled his will and picked up the jammed rifle. He effortlessly cleared it even though he has never used an MA5 before and led the Bella who was carrying Galli into the shed which housed their parent's old Bactrian class freighter.

Presly remembered the fear that he felt as he crept towards the single Elite and two grunts guarding the freighter. The foul odors left by the gremlins smelled like fermented sewage. The Elite was preoccupied while tampering with the ship's engines, so Presly took the chance to strike.

In a astounding display of marksmanship for someone who has only shot a rifle twice, Presly dispatched both grunts with a single bullet to the head.

And before the Elite could formulate a counterattack, Presly was already on the move. He knew what to do because he had done this before, but he cannot remember when.

While the Elite was ripping apart the bushes looking for him, Presly had already retreated to the safety of the shed's opposite side like a stealth operative.

Upon seeing them taking cover behind a boulder to his left, Presly motioned for Bella and Galli to quickly get inside the ship while he covered them.

He patiently watched them board and start the bootup sequence biding his time to strike. The Elite having heard the signature bang signifying the firing of a fusion reactor desperately rushed back into the shed.

This Elite which was especially big would've towered over even a spartan. He was also very fast but Presly was somehow faster, and as it was before instinct was not Presly's guide but rather memory.

Presly raced across the barn's exterior to deliver a drop kick to the Alien's knees. The Elite buckled but regained his composure quickly for Presly possessed only a fraction of the mass he had. The alien must have thought it was a rather foolish attempt to knock him over.

But that was all the time Presly needed for he had activated the plasma grenades on the Alien's waist and has since started to retreat to the safety of the shed's interior.

The Elite was initially confused by the maneuver and just awkwardly trained his plasma rifle onto Presly retreating figure. Just as he was about to fire, the alien caught on as his Hud lit up with warnings. The stricken Elite tried desperately to release the primed explosives. His frantic movements shook the very ground. But fortunately for the trio, the plasma grenades detonated before the Elite could save himself.

In the immediate aftermath, Presly and Bella did not discuss about what they have just done but instead chose to purposefully prep the old freighter to make an in atmosphere slip space jump as if it was a normal every day task.

The Freighter's AI's safety protocols were expertly overridden while Bella and Presly planned out the complex slip space calculations using mathematical and quantum physics theorems that a part of them doubt even existed but a larger part of them just knows that the calculations are correct.

The space in front of the freighter suddenly coaxed itself apart revealing the relative safety of slip space. As the vacuum of slip space began to pull everything into itself, the Freighter effortlessly slid into the safety of the void.

Derelict UNSC Warehouse

Presly walked through the rusted-out entrance to the prefab structure which was illuminated by centuries old lights which casted a ghastly glow on the event goers' faces.

As soon as he tried to take a further step, a flying lightning bolt wearing a dirty lab coat slammed into his side and almost knocked the air out of him.

"Big Bro! You made it just in time. Aunty Bella is about to speak any moment now." Galli rapidly exclaimed all in one breath.

Presly then laughed and ruffled his little sister's head of neatly bundled hair as he tried to peel her off him.

"Galli, how many times do I have to tell you to not surprise me like that.

And for the record I am never late." Presly joked in a brotherly tone.

Galli then started leading him to the front of the crowd as she was eager to catch up with her brother and to get the best spots.

"You would never hurt your little sister, would you? Besides I know that noggin of yours contains enough training to distinguish friend from foe.

Even if they are as fast as I am." Galli teased.

Presly stiffened up because his sister had never openly talked about the skills that he had acquired out of nowhere before. Even after Galli had recovered and stabilized her psyche after the attack, she never initiated any conversations or wanted to know more about their skills.

"Come on Pres, we've discovered some very int-er-esting things about our DNA and Aunty Bella wants me to help her present them." Galli added after noticing it took longer than usual for Presly to respond.

Before Presly could press her further for clarification, Galli had since spotted Bella near the opposite entrance and made a beeline for her.

Bella waved and smiled warmly at Presly before being tackled by Galli in a similar manner he was subjected to just moments before.

Time-skip

"As you all know, the Covenant is closing in on Humanity and they are steadfast in their goal of exterminating us." Bella somberly declared.

The crowd murmured and the adults with children clutched their younglings tighter.

"But now we know Why. My brothers and sisters, a number of us may have begun to question why we have suddenly acquired certain skillsets and knowledge just seemingly out of the blue." Bella exposed as she began the "main course" of her speech.

The murmuring grew even louder as the refugees began to wonder what Bella was trying to say. The noise level instantly quieted after which Bella raised her left hand to ask for silence.

"I am a licensed doctor and my oath to privacy prevents me from sharing your secrets. But I believe that this secret, no! Revelation would hurt more if left untold. My newfound skills have broadened my niece's understanding of mathematics, biology, physics and so much more. But it is through these skills that she chanced upon the discovery of certain patterns encoded within our DNA." Bella declared proudly.

The crowd's noise never soared to new heights as people began discussing what these patterns may be. Bella yet again held up a hand for silence. Galli then stepped forward into the limelight.

"I had a hypothesis that our DNA was tampered with by unknown parties in the distant past so I ran these patterns through our OMNI AI and ran a time algorithm to visualize the distant past and futures of our evolution."

Galli explained as she turned on a holoprojector showing an out of order evolutionary tree.

The crowd has since began shouting and some shook their heads in disbelief while others looked as if they have unlocked a long-suppressed memory. Galli raised her hand for silence.

"As you can see, we were already fully evolved in the past but humanity took two different paths. We will call them normal and enhanced respectively. At our present state, they are indistinguishable on most levels. The normal humans retained their superior intelligence and strength for roughly 1,000 years but somehow degenerated into ape like mammals to only revolve back into a less sophisticated form than before. They have the potential to exceed the progress of the past, but it will take them a considerable amount of time. The enhanced group continued evolving at an exponential rate reaching levels of strength and intelligence unseen in any forms of alien life we have yet encountered. But they too regressed into ape like mammals at the exact same time as the normal humans." Galli further explained her findings with pride.

The crowd stared incredulously at her but amongst the audience a select amount gazed at the presentation enraptured as if they were hanging onto every word.

"Ms. Bella Jeyez was the first to notice a shift in her DNA that coincided with the Covenant attack on our former home. That same shift was also recorded amongst members of our immediate family including myself and my brother. We ran our DNA through a simulation modeling how it would change under extreme distress. The results were astounding. Formerly dormant or junk DNA became active and triggered a cascading effect which first unlocked key skills encoded within these dormant strands while releasing what we call the "lock" on our bodies allowing us to be stronger than we were before. We then allowed our simulated bodies to produce offspring using a genetic randomizer code and within a single generation, the offspring would have already reached the physical and mental capabilities of the pre-regressed humans." Galli Triumphantly explained.

The crowd locked at each other in shock, a lot were in disbelief, but even more were people whose eyes sparked with curiosity and hope for the future.

"I believe our ancestors were fighting against something or someone who sought to eradicate them much like what the Covenant want to do to us. To preserve their legacy and to add a layer of unpredictability to their enemy, they encoded their legacy into about 33% of their population.

We have a duty to ourselves and those that came before, even if the UEG is corrupt and controlled by the mega rich, we must do what they cannot. We must save our kind from extinction at the hands of the Covenant." Galli solemnly declared.

The reaction in the crowd was noticeable because Galli had driven them into a frenzy. It started low at first but within seconds every occupant within the building was shouting and chanting "Humanitas Aeterna," the founding words of the Ascendancy movement. Formerly an insurrectionist and humanitarian cell labeled as following "Human Extremism," "pseudoscience," and "pseudoarcheology" by a corrupt UEG senator hoping to discredit a rival politician who had joined the movement. Since then the Ascendancy movement had evolved into a formidable militia which effectively waged guerilla upon the Covenant Empire by raiding convoys and disrupting supply lines.

Presly smiled and upon meeting Galli eyes, gave her a nod of approval and a smile of which Galli returned. Galli then raised her hand for silence.

"We recently came into possession of an item which lends credibility to the existence of a small refugee community of ancients who had survived the extermination campaign launched by their enemies. If we are to prevail against the Covenant, we must make contact with the descendants of our ancestors." Galli proclaimed.

After a brief pause, Galli reached into the podium to bring out what looked like an unremarkable stone bowl.

Presly did a double take and eyes widened as his heart rate increased.

"Son of a-" Presly uttered.