The thick jungles of Hawaii were a strangely welcome respite from the harsh concrete of the Azur Lane base. BLUE Team slowly crept forward through the thicket, weapons at the ready while listening to com traffic from the US Armed Forces operating around them. They were in a restricted zone, a forest reserve around the massive inactive mountain. It towered in the distance, tall, beautiful, covered by vegetation and life.
"Sounds like the Air Force is scrambling AWACS somewhere," Kelly remarked as she swept a ninety-degree arc around her sector with her shotgun, watching as the only life on the motion trackers beside them moved about. Small forest animals stalked around them. Squirrels, wolves and even boars moved about, keeping the Spartans on their toes. Some animals wouldn't dare approach a four-man team, a 'pack', especially of soldiers clad in heavy armor like them.
"Could be another incursion offshore of Guam," Fred offered, his voice cold and hard. His finger was positioned safely away from the trigger of his DMR, but he still made sure not to flag any of his team mates. He and Kelly brought up the flanks, with Kelly sat on the right, while Fred was on the left. Linda brought up the rear and John led from the front, as usual for their TL.
"Japanese, you think? I read somewhere that, after the Sakura Empire and Iron Blood split off from the Lane, SEATO and a chunk of NATO disintegrated," Kelly replied as they approached the base of the massive mountain. Chief pinged their intended target via a direct NAV Point:A single cave that did not look in the least bit natural. More like something had dug into it with a laser.
Black basalt swallowed the light of their flashlights, forcing them to switch out to the VISR mode of their helmets ad they moved forth. The place definitely looked dug into, like some sort of high-intensity laser beam had smoothed the surface around them into a circular tunnel to the micron. Kelly ran her hand over the basalt, then murmured, "Not a hint of friction... This isn't a natural tunnel, Chief..." then moved to rejoin the formation.
"Loose formation," John ordered, pushing forward with his weapon in his hand.
The group moved forth, their VISRs barely adapting any better to the dim lighting of the volcanic cave. It was almost impossible to see, but the SPARTANs pushed forth, each one meter away from the other at least, in case something left by the Sirens waited in ambush. The Chief hummed, pulling out a scanning device and pointing it forward. It pinged, then the counter began to wobble and click incessantly. Chief said, "Cherenkov Radiation, dead ahead..." as he slid the device onto his hip and hefted his AR.
The group continued creeping up until the sound of bubbling magma was audible. The walls bounced the sound of the gurgling active volcano eerily, causing the noise to repeat a dozen times over in a slow, imperfect loop, like it was a recording gone wrong. They kept on moving until the smoothed basalt turned to a silver-grey alloy lined with familiar, yet eerily unknown symbols.
Ahead, the faint color of orange lit their VISR displays now, as well as the walls around. The cave opened up into a large cavern up ahead, presumably the Volcano's oocentral chamber. As they marched, they were met by the edge of the cliff face and the Forerunner alloy structure that led deep into it. Floating in the corners of the caverns were pylons of some kind, seemingly pouring energy into the magma below as it bubbled with the pressure of the underground.
Past the chasm that dropped down into the death sentence that was temperatures far surpassing Titanium Alloy's resistance to heat, there was a floating chamber of some kind, made up of the silver Forerunner metal and tinged orange by its surroundings. Beside them was a pillar with a holographic activation button that shimmered yellow, as well as a light-bridge that led from this side of the chasm to the other.
Chief approached the button, then showed his team to form up. Forming a wedge behind the Chief, each pointing their weapons outward and with interlocking ninety-degree firing arcs, Blue Team covered the Master Chief as he worked to activate the bridge. Gently, he put his hand over the shimmering golden symbol. He paused for a moment, staggering back as visions played in his mind.
A thousand worlds, a thousand different outcomes and endings to the same War. The Siren were on Earth for a reason, one unknown to the many inhabitants of the planet, or to its defenders. All they knew was that the Siren were here and had stolen their supply lines, dividing the world into two camps. Chief blinked, then groaned and grabbed at his head, more images playing. Burning cities, the dead and dying... And the Siren.
A council of Siren elites gazed upon him, it seemed. They glimmered azure instead of the usual Siren gold and black, with their armored carapaces and Riggings bearing ancient symbols unrecognizable to the Master Chief. Lead among them, sat at the head of this Council's table, a seemingly stunned Siren leader stood. She took in the sight of John, then a creepy smile, some twisted form or mimicry of a human one, but changed, wrong enough for the uncanny valley effect to set in, sent a chill up the Spartan's spine.
The creature before him, a white-haired woman, leaned her chin onto her hand, which was supported by a plasma cannon. She spoke, her voice distorted, inhuman, unrecognizable, as a rapport of screams seemed to play in the background and as she arranged her dress, "It seems Observer's newest Variable finally shows his mettle..." and she let her white shoal and clothes float as she seemed to detach herself from her massive rigging, taking a step on the table and staring at John.
She took a knee in front of him. She had had to. She was twice his height, her skin pale and perfect, as if it was made of porcelain. Gently, the woman ran a hand across the left side of his armor, smiling still, "You are interesting... I can see why she wanted to test you. Why Observer and her little cronies do as they do..." And then, she let out a dark, reverberating giggle that caused the SPARTAN's fight-or-flight instinct to kick in.
Her hand reached around to the back of his helmet... And she grabbed him by the back of the head, sending shockwaves rippling through his entire body, her nails seemingly digging clean through the Titanium alloy and into the back of his neck. Her smile grew impossibly wider, her compatriots letting out their own bellowing, broken laughs. "Oh, this is too perfect. You have a long road ahead of you, SPARTAN. Many trials and tribulations, some of your own making... Please, continue to amuse us with your useless squriming against your evolution. Gather your armies, fight your battles and become worthy. We look forward to your victories and, especially, to your defeats... Now, leave, Johnathan. And remember..."
"We will be watching..." Her voice distorted further and her eyes glowed scarlet...
"... John...!" A whispered voice then seemed to cry out to him...
The lead Siren flicked her wrist, ripping her hand out of his helmet. He only caught a glimpse of the blue orb between her thumb and index...
And John staggered back, falling onto his knees and grabbing at the back of his head. Fred turned around, calling out, "John!" as he took a knee beside the man and placed a hand on his shoulder. Fred called out again, "Chief, you alright?" as he grabbed John and pulled him away from the button. The Chief grunted, then undid the seals of his helmet and removed it, gasping for air.
He felt the back of his neck as Fred let out a stunned gasp, then looked to his glove, to see a scarlet liquid. He breathed in and out, slowly settling his erratic pulse, then tried to blink away the migraine that had settled in. He looked up at the bridge activation button, only to see that the hardlight bridge itself powered on now, a wave of blue light mixing with the lava's light.
He breathed in, then out and slid his helmet onto his head, before standing up, "We have to move..."
"John," Kelly started, too, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine..." He replied, still seemingly stunned, "C'mon..." And he pushed forward. Kelly, Fred and Linda exchanged looks of concern, their body language telling of the worry they felt for their team lead, but they pushed forth anyways, Linda bringing up the rear, Fred watching left and Kelly watching right. They pushed into the Forerunner complex in the midst of the Lava, entering through the massive central archway.
The design seemed like a mix of Forerunner and another ancient alien nation lost to time, however. It almost looked like a blossoming flower from the inside, petals spreading out above and revealing the Volcano's caldera and the outside world. Around them, conduits pulsed with azure, arching energy bolts, contained within Forerunner alloy that was made transparent and consoles and holographic symbols floated about.
Embedded in the walls all around them, there were dozens of artifacts resembling coffins. Each bore the same holographic symbol floating in front of it, that of a familiar form to Requiem's own crest. Chief sighed, then lowered his rifle as he approached a central holographic console and the central device in the midst of it all, a smaller coffin or box, containing azure symbols resembling those on the frames of those Siren he had just encountered... or hallucinated.
"This is it..." John said, sure of himself. He approached the central console, next to the risen pedestal that contained the strange box, while Blue Team secured the perimeter around them.
Fred eyed the coffins, then murmured, "They look like..."
"Promethean stasis pods," Kelly voiced, racking the pump of her shotgun. She looked to Chief and said, "You sure you're okay, John?"
"I'm fine, Kelly..." He replied, "There's something about this thing..."
He hummed, then put a hand over the console and slid a symbol aside, locking it into place over another. It flickered, then vanished out of sight and the box ahead seemed to peel away, layer by layer, until a shimmering blue cube became visible. John hummed, turning toward the console, then tapped a few more symbols as if he was on auto-pilot. Around them, the blue Promethean symbols on the devices warmed to a dull red.
Kelly murmured, "Oh, this isn't gonna be good..."
The SPARTANs all prepared their weapons, Chief included, as he typed away on the console. The device in the center pulsed with energy once, then twice, then thrice. The conduits embedded within the pillar, resembling ancient circuitry, pulsed right into the cube itself, more and more energy pouring into it. He paused, hefted his assault rifle and shouldered it.
The group formed up around the pedestal and blue cube, with Chief stating, "This is the same cube that let the local Humans summon the Kansen..."
"Whose is it...?" Kelly wondered for a moment, looking first at the cube to notice a superficial crack on its top part, then up as the symbols on the devices around them, the sarcophagi, began to distort due to the heat, glowing a dull white ,before slowly intensifying. The machine between them began to whirr and scream as more and more energy found its way into the Mental Cube, with John wondering just who it was they were summoning.
The SPARTANs all watched the light pour out of the sarcophagi, cascading around them and forming into all-too-familiar shapes for the Chief. The man shouldered his MA5 properly, thumbing the safety to off as the first of the bulky, bow-legged Forerunner machines formed ahead of him. Though, something was off with it. A Promethean Knight stood before him, towering above him in height and armed with the standard hard-light weaponry that he had engaged against during his early stint on Requiem.
It glimmered, however, with a burning gold energy instead of the hateful orange or mellowed dark-blue of the two Forerunners he had met on that damn planet. Its eyes glared at him, its back carapace flicking up and down rapidly. The leading Knight had a scattershot in its hand and one of the standard hardlight blades in the other, though the blade itself was shaped like a scythe instead of a normal, straight blade with a slight extrusion at the bottom.
Beside it, two more similar Knights stepped forth, their feet thundering against the floor. One wielded a light-rifle, while the other wielded a binary rifle model. A dozen more Knights materialized around the SPARTANs from the sarcophagi above and below, their weapons trained on them as the alien pedestal in the middle shrieked, energy coursing clean through it.
John looked down the length of his weapon's barrel at the machines, watching as they seemed to be examining them. One eye on the enemy, the SPARTAN slowly turned to see what the device was doing. A blinding blue light washed over the SPARTANs, a beam of azure light shooting into the sky and seemingly stunning the Promethean soldiery. Chief grit his teeth and turned away. Even with full polarization, white spots had formed in his sight. He blinked them away, then watched as the first Promethean seemed to prepare to attack.
The situation grew tense. That damn beam of light must've been seen by everyone and their mother. The US Armed Forces could well be on their way here, right now. John made sure to monitor standard radio frequencies belonging to the local Navy and Marine presence, waiting to see what they'd send. Or if they'd send anything at all, even. The beam, meanwhile, seemed to die out, vanishing.
Chief looked back as a new motion tracker contact, an unknown, appeared between the four yellow dots representing them and the dozens of red dots representing the Prometheans. Standing atop the pedestal, clad in a purple and red traditional eastern dress, with brown hair, fox's ears and nine tails, with an umbrella and the rigging of a warship on her back, a single woman stood.
She toppled over to the right.
John barely caught her as the machines snarled at them. He felt the weight of the Kansen's rigging drop onto his arms, but he managed to gently lay her onto the floor. She was a beauty with red lips, lilac eyes and red eyeliner seemingly poking out from the corners of her eyes. She mouthed something toward the Chief, then blinked and rubbed her eyes as she tried to clear her vision.
"John, we have to go..." Kelly spoke, instinctively glaring at the Forerunner machines. The first of them to take a step forward seemed to actually glare at the SPARTANs, raising its weapon, a Light Rifle, toward Kelly. The Chief stood to his feet, pulling the woman up and putting her arm around his neck. He drew his Magnum and grunted in agreement as they watched the machines prepare yet again to attack.
The woman groaned, putting a hand on her head, then coughed and said something in Japanese. The MJOLNIR translated it, "I should have taken my medicine before going to bed..." just as she slowly opened her eyes and looked up. She put her hand in front of her face, then spoke again, "The Sun... is it midday already...? I need to go find Akagi and..." She coughed again.
"Great, she's hallucinating..." Linda noted, already scoping in two of the bastards before them. Chief sighed.
"We have to fight our way out. SPARTANs, defensive formation. Stay as close as you can without compromising your ability to defend against explosives..." The Chief ordered, thumbing his pistol's safety. The monsters began to get closer, their thundering steps shaking the very foundation of the Forerunner sarcophagus. Chief aimed at the closest, right for its eyes.
"Mmm... Enterprise, be quiet, please..." The woman whined in almost perfect English, now. She rubbed her head, "My head... It..." and she coughed twice, crying out "It hurts...! What happened to me...?! Enterprise, where is Akagi...?"
"Enterprise isn't here, ma'am," Chief said as he watched the creatures begin advancing toward them. The woman gasped, then coughed violently and the color in her face drained. Her eyes opened slowly, then grew wide as saucers as she stared at John. Mouth agape, she looked at her own reflection in the visor. In a moment, a dozen memories seem to flood into her mind. She looked at the floor, then around herself, at the other SPARTANs and at the machines guarding what must have been her tomb.
"... I remember..." She spoke, horrified. She bowed her head, feeling her head again, before looking up at the metal monsters that marched ever closer, aiming their weapons at them. She lifted her arm up from behind the Chief's head and aimed her gun batteries at them. One of the creatures roared at her, its masked face opening. That stunned her for a moment, but she didn't hesitate.
Sixteen-inch shells left the barrels of her rigging's cannons, high-explosive shells that vaporized the machines on impact. She looked to the Chief and said, "I do not know who you are, nor do I care at this very moment, but we need to leave!"
"We all agree with you, ma'am," The Chief nodded, "I'm the new Commander of Azur Lane."
She smiled, then nodded, "A pleasure, then. My name is Amagi..." And she coughed again, then ducked as a hard-light scattershot blast nearly singed her hair. She scowled at the beasts before them, then fired a full broadside from her ten guns, killing another squadron of monsters. More began to pour into the building. Chief, as stunned as he was to hear the name 'Amagi', nodded and ordered by hand signal for the SPARTANs to get the hell out with her.
"If you'll follow us, miss Amagi," The Chief requested, before drawing his Assault Rifle and putting half a magazine into one of the newly-appeared enemy machines and what seemed to be swarms of Sentinel drones, all bearing the same gold coloration of their lighting. She stared up at the sky as drones began to come down upon them, their beams lancing past her. Her battery of anti-air cannons on her rigging manifested and opened fire, filling the air with crackling pops of 40mm AAA guns.
She then started running, followed by the SPARTANs. Kelly's shotgun barked as a Promethean got too close to comfort, the armor-breaking tungsten slug she'd loaded into it tearing a nifty little hole into the core of the monster. Fred, meanwhile, was being more surgical with his DMR shots, but nothing quite beat Linda's sniping skills as she took out half a dozen enemies.
"Too close for comfort..." Linda murmured.
Kelly dodged a scythe-blade's swipe, then slammed her helmet into the chin of the monster and put two slugs into it, stating, "You're telling me, Lin..." before turning about and slam-firing her entire magazine into the roiling mass of Forerunner metal and hard-light. Amagi turned around, too, firing another full volley of HE shells into the crowd and a full four-second salvo of anti-air rounds into the drones above.
The drones, however, seemed to halt when they reached the bridge and began running across it... The Legion of Knights did not.
Running across it, Amagi asked, "I would dare say I have been asleep a while! Those armors of yours are incredible!"
"Nothing to scoff at, ma'am, but it ain't battleship armor!" Kelly quipped, then did a full 180 degree turn and threw two fragmentation grenades toward the crowded Knight force. Amagi smiled at the girl, then scoffed as a beam of hard-light struck her umbrella and singed through it. She turned around, stopped in the middle of the hardlight bridge, then replied in kind once more with a full salvo of sixteen-inch shells. Yet, even hit by the heavy ordnance of a Kansen's rigging, the bastards just kept coming.
Beams of energy met the hard-light bridge and the SPARTANs' shields as the Drones fired from afar, while scattershot rounds and other Forerunner ammunition hit around and on them. Amagi had been left to lead the escape, with her newfound allies taking the brunt of the enemy's onslaught. Every once in a while, they'd stop and fire back, but before long, they'd need to run again.
She sighed, then watched as a beast of alien steel flew toward the SPARTAN that she had woken up in the care of. She scowled at it, refocusing her secondaries and opening fire. A salvo of five-point-five inch shells pelted the machine, cratering its armor and staggering it enough for one of the man's compatriots to take it out. She hummed, following the dissipating contrail of the bullet, then nodded at the sniper. She nodded back.
The group made it across the bridge just as the enemy seemed to redouble their efforts, with Chief slamming his fist into the button that shut off the bridge. The hard-light walkway flickered, faded and failed, a full hundred of the Knights falling into the pit of lava below, letting out modulated screams of the damned as they sank to the bottom, not melting.
Through heaving and sweat that draped her from head to toe, both due to the heat of the magma and the effort she put in to running away from those things in full combat Rigging readiness. She wiped the sweat off her brow, then looked at the strange satin glove/sleeve on her hand. Turning toward the machines, she saw they were all simply staring at them from across the bridge.
"They stopped...?" Kelly inquired, stunned.
"Looks like it..." Fred remarked, stepping up beside the Chief, "Guess we got lucky again, huh?"
John nodded, then looked to Amagi as she seemed to stare at them. She smiled at them, then took a moment to look at the place she had been saved from and stated, "Quite an adventure for someone like me to wake up to..." And she coughed again, "Put a bit of strain on this old body... The Great Earthquake was worse, however..." and she gingerly arranged her strange gloves.
"Are you well, ma'am?" Chief inquired.
"Just a hint sick is all," She waved it off, then turned to face them, "Now, then... Some information is in order."
"I think the best-suited to give you that information would be the girls back at the base," Linda remarked, sliding her weapon onto her back, "With all due respect, ma'am."
Amagi nodded, "I concur... I've been asleep for far too long. I need to see my sisters and Enterprise," and she smiled. She felt the glumness with which the Spartans looked at one-another, seemingly communicating, before asking worriedly, "Has something happened to Akagi and Kaga? To Enterprise...? What about Yorktown? Is she well...?" and the SPARTANs found no easy way to answer, it seemed.
Amagi looked between them, worried, "Well?" She demanded, "What happened to my sisters? To Enterprise and Yorktown, to... To Bismarck, even?"
"They're fine, ma'am... Alive, at least..." John remarked bluntly, then said, "We'd be better able to explain it at base. It's a long story."
"Lead the way, then," She said, her worries overtaking anything else.
She needed to see them...
