Hey guys, thanks for your patience. I've made this Chapter extra long to make up for lost time, but as I said before I'm really busy at the moment, so I'm glad I could actually finish this Chapter at all. I hope you enjoy it and as always please don't forget to review :D
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„Welcome back John." Tsunade greeted the SPARTAN. "Looks like I've got your first assignment already."
John along with Naruto and Hinata were standing in the Hokage's office in front of her desk for the second time today. He expected what was coming to be some sort of mission briefing and he wasn't disappointed.
"We received a distress call from a small nearby village, about 10 miles down south. The enemy attacking the village seems to be using unknown ranged weapons, kind of like you John. If they are your people I expect you to stop them from harming anyone." Tsunade now also looked at Naruto and Hinata "If they're not John's allies, handle them like any other enemy. Understood that?"
"Affirmative." John said instantly, his serious attitude clearly pleasing the woman across the desk.
"Sure thing, granny!" Naruto exclaimed, which the Hokage seemed to be trying to ignore. Hinata simply nodded.
"Good." Tsunade answered, clearly being glad to get rid of Naruto for now. "You're dismissed!"
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The three of them quickly returned to their respective quarters to gather some supplies for the mission and they were on their way only a few minutes later.
John had picked his trusty Assault Rifle and the DMR for this mission, along with a couple of both frag and plasma grenades. His heavy armor didn't allow him to jump from branch to branch through the forest like his companions though. That and both he and Cortana were agreeing that it looked ridiculous, or at least HE would if he tried out that way of traveling.
So instead of going up into the trees John settled for running on the ground supporting himself with the thruster pack every now and then.
"The distress call said something about unknown enemies and warriors made entirely out of metal." Hinata read the intel-scroll aloud. "John, could those enemies come from the same place as you?"
The 'unknown enemies' could in John's opinion very well be Covenant forces if they followed him through the rift, but warriors composed of metal? That almost sounded like the attackers were SPARTANs. If that was the case, then John would probably be able to convince them to work with him, or Cortana would if he failed.
"They could be from my world, but I won't know for sure until I see them." John answered the girl, who had still been awaiting an answer. "But if they are, I'm sure I can handle them." He added.
Soon they exited the forest, Naruto being the first to land on the meadow, closely followed by Hinata and John. In the distance they could see a huge cloud of smoke and John figured, that those were the remains of their objective.
"Crap! We might be too late… Let's hurry!" Naruto shouted, all of them setting off in the same instant, charging towards what probably had been a beautiful village at some point, but the closer they got, the more obvious the destruction became.
Not a single house was left unharmed or even inhabitable. It was a sight of horror. Very few burnt corpses were scattered around the village, but the majority of the inhabitants was gone. Completely vanished.
"Damn it." John mumbled. "We should have gotten here sooner."
"It might not be too late. Let's search for survivors, any trace of them." Naruto said. "I refuse to believe we lost the entire village, just because we didn't get here fast enough."
So the three of them split up and searched for clues. John went inside a house to investigate a bit about the kind of damage it suffered.
"Plasma blasts." Cortana analyzed a burnt hole in the wall. "Looks like we really are dealing with the Covenant here."
"But what about these?" John responded, pointing towards a series of small holes in the walls and the floor. "These holes were obviously caused by bullets. Could it really be that SPARTANs were involved here?"
"I know you don't want to believe it, but that would be the most obvious answer." Cortana said, not sounding too comfortable about it.
At that moment John heard a loud noise coming from outside, like something big crashed into the ground.
The Master Chief didn't waste a second and was outside in a flash, meeting Naruto and Hinata who were just as surprised about the crashed package as he was. But in opposition to them, John was glad to see this sort of unexpected supply. Directly in front of them was a Warthog with a Gauss-Canon mounted on its back. John was the first to take a step towards it.
"Er… is that…?" Naruto started
"It's going to help us quite a bit." John answered, a hint of optimism in his voice.
Then he saw it, a movement on his motion tracker. He instantly raised his hand to tell his companions to quietly follow him, while pulling out his DMR.
Luckily the two Ninjas understood his signal and complied, following the Chief to the remnant of what once had been a carpet inside one of the destroyed houses. But since more than half of the carpet had been burnt along with most of the village, the hidden trapdoor beneath it was visible.
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Naruto didn't know what to expect. John had somehow sensed someone being down there, and the green-armored demon had already proven himself as a formidable warrior, so it was unlikely for him to be wrong about this.
They all looked at each other for a moment, before Naruto decided to carefully open the trapdoor. To his surprise it wasn't even locked, so he easily pulled it open, muffled cries being audible from inside.
The blond Shinobi shot a quick glance at Hinata, who gave a quick nod and started descending into the cellar first.
"Hello? Is anyone down here?" Hinata asked in a soothing tone. "We've come from Konoha to help you. You don't need to be afraid anymore."
Naruto himself followed down and to his surprise the place was lit. He could see at least 50 people, who were slowly realizing that they had nothing to fear anymore. That all changed when John jumped down behind them.
Most of their eyes widened in terror, some of them only looking confused.
"Behind you!" A man shouted. "What the hell is that? Is that another one of these metal fiends?"
Now it was the Hidden Leaf Ninja's turn to be confused. Of course John wasn't an every-day sight, and apparently the villagers had never seen someone like him before, but then why were they so very afraid of him?
"Everybody calm down." Naruto said. "He is with us, he won't hurt you. In fact we're here to help."
Now Hinata spoke up: "Can you tell us what happened here?"
The man that had shouted at them started to relax a little and came a few steps towards them.
"It all happened so fast." The man said. "They came out of nowhere, these reptile-like creatures and their puppets. I had never seen or even heard of anything like that in my life. It was a massacre."
The man began trembling, but after a moment to steel himself he continued. "The creatures were tall. About as tall as your companion over there, but the true horror was in their weapons and puppets. They destroyed our houses without even touching them…"
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"I know this is hard for you and I apologize for asking, but can you tell us what these 'puppets' looked like?" John interrupted the villager.
The man looked at him with slight distrust, but decided on trusting the two Ninjas in front of him.
"They all had different shapes and sizes. There were three of them. One was looking like a strange kind of bird. It was a bit smaller than you" He pointed at Naruto, "and could fly. Another one was carrying some kind of battle staff and was almost as tall as that guy" He now pointed at the Master Chief himself, "and the last one was about twice the size of the one with the staff, and it shot exploding fireballs from its shoulder while turning our homes into sieves with its arms."
Now that didn't sound like there were any SPARTANs involved at all. John didn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. On one hand it meant he wouldn't have to fight a rogue SPARTAN, which would have been a pain in the ass. But it also meant that they were dealing with an entirely new threat, one that even he had never seen or heard of before.
At least now the goal was clear: To stop the Covenant and their new 'puppets' from endangering any more lives.
Hinata tried calming the other people down, telling them that nothing would hurt them anymore while Naruto called the Hokage to ask for further instructions, now that the situation was a bit clearer. Meanwhile John went back to the Warthog, to check on fuel, weapons and if it survived the crash in a somewhat usable state.
He was relieved to see, that it got away with only a few scratches. In addition to that the mounted Gauss cannon was fully loaded and on the passenger seat John found a small grenade launcher that was using sticky grenades, of which there were several ones to go along with it.
"See, I was right about your luck after all." Cortana said with a smug tone.
"Let's hope my luck doesn't run out too soon then." The Master Chief answered "Because whatever these 'puppets' are, they seem dangerous. All the more so, since they appear to work with the Covenant."
"I would bet my life on it." Cortana said, especially emphasizing the word 'life' for some reason.
"Cortana did you…" John started, but was interrupted by Naruto.
"Hey John! I have new orders from granny Tsunade! Could you come over here for a second?" the blond Ninja shouted.
John sighed and got back on his feet to listen to what Naruto had to say. According to Naruto's excited expression this had to be big news. But John was about to be severely disappointed.
"Tsunade is sending reinforcements. We're supposed to stay here and protect the people until they arrive. After that we will start evacuating the civilians." Naruto said, his excited expression and tone very quickly transforming into a disappointed and bored frown.
John couldn't help but notice Hinata slightly blushing and giggling at this. He was confused. The 'joke' Naruto just conveyed was beyond bad, yet this girl was laughing at it and suddenly getting all shy towards the blond man. He didn't bother to think about this any further, but noticed that Cortana seemed a bit angry at his confusion, as he felt a bit cold all of a sudden.
The SPARTAN turned away from the Ninjas and asked so quietly, that only Cortana could hear him: "Cortana, what's the problem? Did I say something wrong or why did you get mad so suddenly?"
"It's not what you said, but what you thought, that ticked me off a little." The A.I. answered. Now John was even more confused, but before he could say anything, Cortana added: "We'll have to have a serious talk about you and being human one day." And just like that the cold feeling disappeared from John's brain.
"Are you alright, John?" Hinata asked "Have you sensed enemies closing in?" Both she and Naruto looked concerned.
"No, it's nothing. Don't worry." John said calmly, even though that was the exact opposite of the situation. At least concerning himself. But he didn't want to make them worry about him, especially when there was an important mission to carry out.
"If you say so." Naruto said, but Hinata still had a concerned look on her face. She didn't say anything though.
"Alright we should probably tell these people that they'll be evacuated." Naruto suggested.
"Indeed." The Master Chief agreed.
Telling the villagers about the Hokage's orders, explaining why all of this was necessary and assuring them that John was not a threat to them took the team until the sun began to set. Then John suddenly saw them. Three unknown contacts popped up on his motion tracker, closing in really fast from the forest. He grabbed his DMR, just in case, but it turned out he wouldn't have to use it.
Just as expected it was the reinforcement team from the Hidden Leaf village, consisting of two people he had already met: Shikamaru Nara, the strategist who had led the team when John had first talked to the Ninjas and the blonde girl, whose name John didn't know yet. The third person was a very pale-skinned male Shinobi, with several scrolls tied on his back.
"Sorry it took us so long." Shikamaru greeted the Master Chief and the others "We would have been here sooner, but somebody had to fix her hair first." He shot a blaming glare towards the girl.
"Hey don't look at me like that Shikamaru. We still made it in time didn't we?" She retorted, suddenly looking slightly pissed.
"Whatever you say Ino. Man, why do women have to be so troublesome?" Shikamaru sighed. "Sai, could you please tell your girlfriend not to waste so much time before her next mission?"
"Sure thing." The pale man gave an apologetic smile.
"Alright, now that that's out of the way… let's rest for the night." The pineapple-haired Ninja suggested.
"What?" Naruto exclaimed "Why rest? Can't we just finish the mission now? It would only take an hour or so."
John couldn't believe that someone as dense as Naruto could actually be a respected member of society. Apparently all the other Shinobi shared his opinion, as they all either stared at him like he was retarded, chuckled at his exclamation or did both.
"Naruto… Those people aren't Shinobi. They can't keep up with us, so they will at least take 5 hours to get to Konoha. And besides the fact that the roads are dangerous at night, I'm pretty sure that all of them are tired after today's excitement." Shikamaru explained to the blond blockhead.
The reason why he was a respected Shinobi wasn't hard to understand for John. Shikamaru was, as far as John could tell, a very down-to-earth man, very intelligent and thus an excellent strategist. He reminded the Master Chief a lot of Captain Keyes.
"Alright everyone listen up!" Ino shouted, so that all the villagers could hear her. "We're gonna camp for the night and head for Konoha tomorrow morning! We'll stand guard for the night so get all the rest you can, you're gonna need it!"
While the villagers set everything up to rest for the night, the Konoha Ninjas now had to figure out who would keep watch during the night first.
"I'll do it." John suggested. "I don't get tired quickly. I will be able to keep watch the entire night."
"Not an option." Shikamaru answered. "I'm glad you trust your abilities that much, but we'll need everybody in top condition tomorrow. You can take the first shift, I'll take the second and Naruto the last."
"Alright." John said, even though he knew he probably wouldn't be able to catch any sleep this night anyways. He had a talk with Cortana waiting for him.
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So many possible cliffhangers that stayed unused O.o Well I hope you liked this Chapter, more will be coming up, even though it will probably take a while ^^' Now that I finally decided what kinds of bad guys I'm going to use, at least that's out of the way though. Thanks a lot for your positive feedback so far and stay awesome guys :D