A/N: Okay, so, many thanks to Raptor-19 for letting me use four of his 'Zulu company'. In fact, don't sit here and read my story. Back out to Halo, go down, and read Zulu Company: The Last Stand. Do it now. I don't care. Read all fifty-one chapters. Except, in this, chapter fifty -one never happened. NEVEREVEREVEREVEREVEREVER!!!! EEVAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

Ahem. Excuse me.

For the armor... well, if you'd read Zulu Company like I'd told you to, you wouldn't have to ask, now, would you? Go read it, right. Freaking. Nao. Oh. While we're talking stories, go check out "Love of a Spartan", too. It's pretty good.

Now, read.

"Keep walking," Sarah ordered.

"Azekail, Azekail, Azekail… Oh. I remember now."

"Shut up!" She screamed into the radio.

"Sarah Azekail. You… you were a grandchild of Amelia Azekail. You are the descendant of a Little Sister."

"Don't say her goddamned name!" Sarah screamed before she smashed the radio into the wall.

Everyone raised their weapons, concerned about their comrade's mental health.

She took several deep breaths, then said, slowly, "Follow me. I'll lead you to her."

Zach moved towards her slowly, and put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to face him. "Sarah… are you okay?"

Her maroon eyes softened. "Yeah. I'm fine. I… I just don't like people saying… her name. I mean, seriously, who wants to say that their grandmother was an insane woman who would stand over corpses and call just about everyone 'Mr. Bubbles'?…her… mental conditioning never wore off." She sighed.

"Come on." She took the lead, assault rifle relaxed. Zach stayed directly behind her, relaxed and tense at the same time.

They were only attacked once, and Sarah merely smashed in the Splicer's head with the butt of her assault rifle. Calmly, of course.

And then she continued.

As she walked, she talked. She explained more of Rapture. "We weren't told much. Rapture was built by Andrew Ryan, a really long time ago. They practically rebuilt it in 1997. It's connected by underwater tunnels, bathyspheres, and a whole load of other stuff." She paused, touching a machine. It had 'Gatherer's Garden' on it. "So many memories that aren't mine…" She grabbed a vial and a needle.

She, first, stuck the needle inside the vial, which had some liquid in it, then she injected herself. She let out a soft sigh, then turned to Zach. "Inject yourself," she ordered. "You'll need the Plasmids down here."

He cooperated, filling up the needle and then pushing it into his arm… and then the liquid slowly oozed into his bloodstream. Immediately, he felt lightheaded, and his vision started going hazy. He staggered, off balance.

"Easy, Zach," Sarah murmured, holding onto his shoulders, "it'll pass… your body isn't used to the plasmid. Your genes are being rearranged."

He twisted away from her, overwhelming agony passing through his body in spasms. He let out a low groan, staring at the others.

"Hold him down," Sarah calmly ordered Catherine and Ai. "Jackson, Vasquez, Price, make yourself useful and watch around. The Splicers can come from anywhere. Soap, Gaz, Kamarov, scout ahead." They all complied with her orders… after all, she had more experience. "Not too far, though." The three nodded.

Zach tried to twist away, now screaming in agony. And then he blacked out.

"Is he okay?" Catherine asked quietly, very concerned for her brother's safety.

"Yes," Sarah replied, kneeling by Zach and lightly caressing his face. "He's pretty strong… any other man probably would have pitched himself off the edge."

Catherine blushed. "Oh, he's strong all right… once we were drunk, and I took off my clothes, and… well, nothing happened. And when I say drunk, I mean so drunk, we couldn't tell left from right or… well, even up from right."

Ai stared at her for a moment. "Uh, that's kinda gross."

Cath shrugged. "I'm tired. I get a little… weird when I'm tired."

Zach groaned quietly, attracting their attention to him. He sat up slowly, and looked himself over. He quickly noticed his hands. "Oh, Christ… what the hell?"

Cath and Ai both looked; his hand was almost normal, except for blue electricity running between his fingers and blue light pulsing in his veins.

"ElectroBolt," Sarah said, grinning slightly. "Feels good now, doesn't it? That's the power of ADAM. Glorious, glorious power. It's a natural instinct to use it now, isn't it? Your genes were rearranged to accept the plasmid… just be careful in using it."

She handed him several vials of blue liquid. "This is EVE. You need EVE to harness ADAM. You'll know when you need more."

She glanced at the others. "We ready to move?"

Soap nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Clear ahead."

Sarah walked past them, still casual. When she spotted a Splicer corpse, she knelt down and rifled through its pockets, taking out three EVE hypos, handing two to Zach and keeping the other for herself. And then she kept walking.

"She should be holed up in Point Prometheus," Sarah muttered to herself.

There was a faint crackling. "Private Sarah, come in. This is SPARTAN-III, Victoria. They're not monitoring this, so don't bother with formalities. I don't really care for them anymore."

Sarah pulled out her pocket radio, taking a deep breath. "Hey, Victoria. We'll stay in one spot. I'll set down a Marker for you." Sarah pulled out the small disk, setting it on the ground and pressing a button. "There. Confirm you see the marker on your HUD."

"Yeah, I see it. Give us a minute or two to figure out this damned place."

"Who do you have with you?" Sarah asked casually as she sat down.

"Zeke, Jason, Magnus."

Sarah sighed. "Try not to let your rivalry get in the way, Victoria."

"Psh. Please. Me and Zekey are over that… aren't we, Zeke?"

"Ow, ow, ow, fuck… Christ, what was that for? Yeah, we're over it, for the most part."

Then the four Spartans were standing over them.

Victoria had a plasma rifle on her right leg, and a shotgun across her back. She was holding a battle rifle.

Ezekiel had a shotgun and a sniper rifle.

Magnus had an assault rifle, rocket launcher, and two Magnums.

Jason had a gravity hammer, an energy sword on his leg, and a shotgun.

"These," Victoria said, holding out her shotgun, "were specially modified to take any kind of shotgun shell." She grinned.

Sarah nodded. "Now, we have to hurry. We have to meet Maria."

"The bitch?"

Sarah smiled, laughing quietly. "Yeah."

They started walking again, a Spartan on each side.

"Our new armor is awesome," Victoria said, grinning behind her helmet. "Grenades are pulled magnetically into our suits, and when we want to use one, it primes it and spits it into our hands."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "And the same things from your old permutations are still there?" Victoria nodded. "Nice."

Ezekiel growled lowly. "I smell blood… there's too much. What the hell happened?"

"You just walked straight into hell," Sarah said. "Deal with it." She cocked her head to the side slightly. "You guys are different. What happened?"

"The War happened," Zeke said. "Nine months off duty happened. Deal with it. Do you know what nine months off duty means? It means no training. It means that I actually have time to relax. It means that I—that we all—have time to change."

"Not enough, for you," Victoria said. "You're still too damn arrogant."

Zeke scowled. "Hey, shut up."

Sarah glanced at Magnus and Jason. "Why haven't they talked?"

"They've only been on leave eight months," Victoria said. "They got their vocal cords smashed in a raid against the remnants of the Covenant. They were about to get fixed when they were called out for this mission."

"Splicer," Sarah called casually. One of the blades on Zeke's armor glowed and he shoved it through the Splicer's throat. It fell to the ground, and Sarah casually rifled through its pockets, picking out a few more hypos and a first aid kit. She pulled out the needle, full of a special type of ADAM. It fixed wounds, nothing else.

Zach coughed quietly. "How do you know them?"

Sarah shrugged nonchalantly. "We fought together a couple times."

"And she saved my ass," Victoria said, grinning slightly. "His, too," she said, cocking her head towards Ezekiel, who scowled.

"The damn Brute snuck up on me, and I would have gotten it if—"

"Yeah, yeah," Sarah said, "you could've gotten it. After it smashed your skull in, but, yeah, you could've gotten it."

Everyone cracked a smile, except Ezekiel, who just scowled and retreated into sulky silence.

"How's Demon?" Sarah asked casually, smirking.

Zeke groaned. "Take a guess. It's a wonder I haven't had the damn AI deleted."

"Still there, I'm guessing," Sarah muttered.

"And now he has a holographic form, so he can annoy me incessantly in person."

Victoria laughed. "Both our AI were upped to 'smart' AI, like Cortana. Gael got a form, too, and they can change at will."

Sarah stopped abruptly. "Wait. This is too easy… usually, there's a whole shitload of Splicers crawling everywhere."

And then the lights turned off.

"You just had to say something," Zeke said sarcastically, scowling. "You just had to."

"Any handy tricks?" Sarah asked nervously. "They'll be swarming."

"Yeah," Zeke said. "How about this." A plasma grenade appeared in his hand, and he threw it. A quick flash and four Splicers down.

The four Spartans turned on the flashlights on their helmets, and the marines turned on the flashlights on their assault rifles—and, in Zach's case, shotgun.

"NEWS," Sarah muttered.

The Spartans all nodded, taking their places at four points: north, east, west, south. Victoria, Ezekiel, Magnus, and Jason, respectively.

Something dropped down, and a marine screamed.

Jackson grabbed the hook off his face, and felt a lot of his skin come off. He let out another scream.

Another hook pierced his eye and he fell silent. Zach raised his shotgun and shot a Splicer off the ceiling. "You didn't tell us they were on the damned ceilings," he hissed.

"I didn't think there were any Spider Splicers!" Sarah cried frantically.

Zeke blasted a Splicer right in the face. "These damn things have names?"

"Yeah, for the different types," Sarah said as she shot another one. "Leadheads are the ones on the ground with wrenches, pipes, other melee stuff. Sometimes pistols and machine guns. Spiders crawl on the ceilings, have hooks. Houdinis… they're the most dangerous. They can appear and disappear on whim."

"Any here?"

Then, Gael appeared.

Her avatar was a blue woman, wearing a light red dress with dark, indigo hair. "Nothing strange on radar. Just a bunch of red dots running around."

"Enough," Zeke snapped. "Vic, let's show them what we can do. Demon, guide my armor."

A laugh. Then the two were gone. Screams echoed for a few seconds.

Ezekiel and Victoria reappeared, grinning slightly. "Let's go." The lights slowly flickered back on, revealing dozens of corpses. Sarah nearly hurled.

"Yeah," she said, carefully keeping her eyes from the marine corpse. "Let's go."

A/N: Okay. Jackson down. Three more to go... maybe six. Maybe I only want three marines to live. You'll never know... muhahahaha.