Hello friends, I do have to apologize. This Chapter was finished a few days ago, but I've been having severe Internet connection problems, that will hopefully soon be fixed. But the good news is, that in order to make up for lost time, this Chapter is probably my longest one so far (or at least in the top 2 ^^'). Also this is where shit finally hits the fan, so I hope you'll enjoy reading. Again thank you for your patience with me :)
John immediately regained control of his breathing. Looking to his left he saw the holographic projection of a very concerned looking Cortana ascending from his helmet.
"What happened?" she asked "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that." John murmured, not paying mind to the exceptionally well-functioning microphones of his suit, thus the fact that Cortana understood everything he just exhaled.
"What's that supposed to mean?" the translucent woman asked the SPARTAN with a worried expression on her face. "You know you can talk to me about anything."
The Master Chief appreciated the way his friend responded. It almost let him forget the condition Cortana was in. Almost… But that thought in itself brought reality back to him with a vengeance.
"Just a bad dream Cortana. Nothing to worry about." He said in his usual calm and deep voice, hoping to ease his friend's mind. Then he remembered what Cortana had said about finding new challenges and observations to ease her mind. Maybe telling her the contents of his dream could do the same trick. Maybe she could even help him comprehend the dream in return.
Thinking this was the best course of action, John told the A.I. everything about his dream, from the slaughter of the marines on the 'Pillar of Autumn' up to his own death at the hands of the Arbiter, the only Sangheili John would've ever considered calling 'a friend'.
"I see." Cortana said after John concluded his narration. She appeared to be deep in thought for a moment before continuing: "I'll think about your dream. As of now I don't know what to make of it, but I promise that I will tell you what it means, the moment I find out." She gave a small smile.
That alone was enough to ease John's own tension, which he only now realized to have been under. Seeing as it was still dark outside, the SPARTAN lay back down and tried to relax. A difficult task for someone is his position, especially after such a vivid nightmare.
He didn't even realize when the sun had risen. Apparently his brain had skipped any further dream-phases for the night as some kind of sub-conscious protection. John appreciated the way his brain worked, especially since that fact left him in an unusually refreshed state. When he got up he only felt a slight strain from the previous days, but all in all he felt amazing. His strength at its maximum and his stamina completely refilled over that good night of sleep.
The first order of business was a shower. He hadn't had one of those in so many years… It was long overdue. Having the hot water run down his scarred and steeled body felt great, like it was washing all the pain, blood and guilt away that had clung to him like tar.
After finally getting clean the SPARTAN left the shower and reequipped his armor, since he literally had nothing else to wear and he had gotten so accustomed to wearing it, that he couldn't even imagine wearing 'normal clothes'. The act of getting the armor onto his body proved quite more difficult than removing it. Not only were the plates extraordinarily heavy, but some of them were supposed to be in spots that John simply couldn't reach well enough, like his back.
Everything else went just about fine. Just that damn back plate was impossible to get right for him on his own. Luckily there was a knock on the door at that moment.
"Hey it's me, Naruto! May I come in?" the house owner asked very politely.
"Sure!" John answered and as the blond Ninja entered he continued: "Would you mind helping me with this?" he held the plate close to the spot where it was supposed to go "I can't get in place on my own."
Naruto gladly offered his help, but nearly dropped the plate, having completely underestimated its weight. "Holy crap! And you're USED to wearing this?" the Shinobi's eyes were wide with disbelief.
Nonetheless, with some directions from Cortana they managed to get the last piece of the Mark VI armor in place, having John look like… Well the same way everyone in Konoha and most members of the UNSC got to know him so far: A huge walking tank in green armor. For anyone seeing it for the first time, truly a sight to behold.
But before John could say his thanks to Naruto he swung around and pointed his Pistol at the balcony. His motion tracker had not let him down. Out there was a Shinobi wearing a strange animal-like mask and a Katana on his back.
"Don't!" Naruto shouted and rushed in front of the Master Chief. "This is one of our villages ANBU. Our special operations forces."
John lowered his gun, but stayed tense. His past experiences with Secret Services and their Spec Ops had taught him to never trust any of them. Naruto opened the window and the masked person began to speak.
"Greetings, Mr. Uzumaki. I'm here to tell you and your guest to immediately report to the Hokage's office." And with that he disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
"Well guess we better get going." Naruto groaned. "I was going to offer you breakfast, but it looks like that'll have to wait." John simply nodded and they went on their way to the Hokage's office as fast as they could. Naruto leaping over the roof tops, John running down the streets.
Even though John could've probably gone over the roof tops as well he had decided against it, fearing to break through a roof upon landing. Either way he was running at a pace which even Naruto had trouble keeping up with and so they arrived nearly at the same time, Naruto being just a little bit faster thanks to his 'shortcut'.
There had already been quite a bit going on in the streets, but at the Hokage's office building it seemed that everybody was in a rush. John had a very bad feeling about this. It reminded him too much of Covenant attacks, just before they actually happened. The two of them swiftly climbed the stairs to Tsunade's office, where they were greeted by a number of familiar faces and some – at least to John - not so familiar ones as well.
Naruto's anxiety only grew when he saw all of his friends, some Genin and even a bunch of Anbu operatives all gathered around the Hokage's desk. The only one missing was Sasuke, for obvious reasons.
"Finally." The old Lady sighed "Now that you're here, we can finally begin the defense force meeting."
"Defense force?" Naruto asked surprised "Why? Ae we being attacked?" Almost everyone in the room seemed just as surprised as he was. Only John and the Anbu didn't lose their composure. They had probably either known already or had simply guessed what was happening.
"Yes, defense force." The fifth Hokage answered "We lost communications with a scout outpost only a few kilometers from Konoha. Whatever it is, that's coming for us, it's coming from the village you evacuated. I shall now assign the teams and their objectives."
John had suspected as much. Since the Covenant apparently were also here and were commanding war-robots of some sort, it had only been a matter of time until they had to strike.
"The first team will consist of Captain Yamato, Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akimichi, Ino Yamanaka and Neji Hyuga." The mentioned Shinobi took a scroll that was handed to their Captain and took off towards their destination. "The second team will consist of Kakashi Hatake, Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, Sai and Hinata Hyuga."
A tall, masked man with grey hair stepped forward and took the scroll that was handed to him. The Master Chief saw Naruto give him a short salute, before the team left the office.
"Team number three will consist of Might Gai, Rock Lee, Ten Ten, Shino Aburame and the Master Chief." Almost everyone looked at her in confusion, until the SPARTAN stepped forward and saluted.
The man, who John presumed was Might Gai took the scroll, that was offered to him and the five of them took off, Gai leading the way. They swiftly made their way through the main street of the Hidden Leaf village.
John saw several people, even families amongst them run in the opposite direction to seek shelter from the incoming attack. Looking up the Chief noticed that clouds were starting to hide the sun and it very well looked like it was about to start raining.
Once they reached the main gate of the village, sure enough the downpour began.
They stood atop the closed gate for what felt like an eternity, but looking at his visor, John knew that it had only been two minutes. You could practically grab the tension in the air. Gai turned towards the Chief with a stern look on his face.
"Look I know we don't know each other and you probably have at least as much battlefield experience as me." The black haired Jounin said "Even though we just met I have great respect for you, just based on the things I heard about you. You seem to have a better understanding of what we're up against. So please tell me: How worried should I be about my team and the village?"
John took a deep breath, readying himself to answer in all honesty. "Where I come from, these aliens…" He stopped there and pushed Gai out of the way. Just in time as it appeared. The very Moment that Gai stepped backwards, a missile flew right through the spot that he had been on just a second ago and hit a building a little further down the road. It detonated, turning a good bit of the wall into rubble.
They all immediately looked towards the forest that surrounded Konoha and what they saw shocked them all, even the Master Chief. From between the trees an army of robots, directed by several Elites and joined by grunt Squads, Jackals and even Hunter duos emerged, looking all too ready to flatten the entire town.
One of the Elites, that seemed to be in a leading position scanned the walls of the village. When his gaze met John's they both froze. The Sangheili's eyes lit up in rage.
"DEMON!" He shouted "You shall be extinguished, along with the rest of these worthless humans!"
Just as the alien finished John could see several fireballs from all sides be fired towards the enemies and the girl named Ten Ten opened up one of her scrolls, making hundreds of bladed weapons appear and rain down on the attackers.
The rain of blades was met with a barrage of machine-gun fire, so that the few ones that hit the Elite, simply bounced off his energy shields.
"ATTACK!" the Sangheili shouted and a storm of missiles, bullets and grenades was unleashed upon the walls of the Hidden Leaf village.
It should not come as a surprise that the immense firepower was far superior to what the walls could withstand and soon there were several breaches with enemies flooding into the streets of Konoha.
"Everyone split up and stop their advances into the village!" Gai shouted. The others nodded and jumped down into the village to take on their adversaries. John grabbed his Assault rifle and followed them, landing on the back of a huge robot, one that looked exactly like the one he had to use the Spartan Laser on, in order to destroy it.
The Robot immediately started trying to shake off the Chief, but John had already grabbed his combat knife and rammed it into the metal chassis, to prevent being thrown off.
"SHOW YOURSELF! TERMINATE YOUR ORDERS, HUMAN!" the metallic voice of the robotic titan rang in John's head. The SPARTAN knew that shooting this thing was a waste of ammunition, so he looked for a fragile looking spot, which he could exploit.
And sure enough he found something. On the back of the Titan, slightly above John's pelvis, there was a red glowing light in a dent. The Master Chief took his chances and punched the light as hard as he possibly could.
To his surprise, he felt almost no resistance at all and felt his fist cleanly go through the metal chassis, tearing apart electric circuits and whatever else was in his way. The Titan collapsed, falling forwards and seemingly put out of order for good.
John retracted his arm, which was buried in the colossal robot up to his shoulder, and jumped off the metallic structure.
Turning around the SPARTAN grabbed the Elite's arm, that was about to cut him in two with an energy sword and landed a punch straight in the alien's face. The Elite staggered backwards, but shrugged off the punch and corrected his stance.
John cursed himself for not bringing his shotgun with him, but luckily he had a Plan B. With a hiss he plasma blade in his hand activated and he readied himself for what was no doubt going to be an extremely difficult and dangerous fight.
Naruto couldn't believe his eyes. He remembered exactly how difficult just two of these robots had been to beat and now there was an entire army of them, tearing apart buildings of the village he loved so much. Evading a staff-slash of one of the robots he placed a Rasengan in its back and blew it up.
Looking to his right he could see Sakura struggle with one of the big metal fiends. Little projectiles were flying everywhere, but luckily none of them hit any of the defending Shinobi. Sakura evaded a larger projectile and dashed forward. Her fist started glowing and before he knew it, Naruto already saw the big robot crumble to the ground with a huge hole in its chest.
Once again the blond shinobi was reminded why it was better not to mess with his friend.
Suddenly he could hear the cry of a child a bit further down the street, where some of the 'aliens' as John had called them, were trying to enter a small restaurant. With a turning motion over his stomach Naruto released Kurama's seal and could instantly feel the enormous power of the Biju spirit flow through him.
Running towards the enemies he began molding chakra in his right palm, creating a huge Rasengan. One of the aliens suddenly turned around and fired a glowing projectile at Naruto and the blond Ninja was too close to evade this time, so he tried to block it with a Kunai. However as he soon realized, the glowing projectile wasn't just Chakra or anything comparable to it.
It burned straight through the Kunai and hit Naruto in his upper left arm, causing a burning wave of pain to run rampant in his body. The Rasengan hit and obliterated the aliens, who had all been too slow to realize what had been about to happen. Naruto listened carefully. There it was again, it was definitely the sobbing of a child, coming from within the building. He gave Kakashi a quick sign where he was going and then ran into the building.
It was dark inside, but Kurama's chakra was glowing brightly enough to see. Looking at his arm Naruto only now realized that the glowing projectile had penetrated the layer of chakra surrounding his body and burnt right into his flesh. That explained why it hurt so much and the blond Ninja's worries increased immensely, seeing what these enemies were capable of.
He ran down a corridor and opened the door and sure enough there was a young girl, maybe four years old, sobbing in the corner of the room. Her expression brightened a bit when she saw the hero of the village arrive. Naruto took her small hand and lifted her up on his arms. He knew, he had to take this girl to safety, before anything else could be done.
The two of them, or rather Naruto carrying the girl they left the building and headed down the main street of Konoha towards the Hokage's tower. Before they could reach it though, Naruto sensed danger from the left, but it was too late.
He was kicked in the head, by a non-human foot with enough force to send him tumbling to the right. Naruto tried to keep the little girl out of harm's way, the best he could. He stood upright, put the girl down on the ground and looked her straight in the eyes.
"I want you to run and hide, so that no one can find you, okay?" Naruto told the child "Once I've gotten rid of these guys, I'll meet up with you again and then we're getting you to safety, but for now you have to hide, do you understand?"
The girl looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she nodded. Naruto turned around to face his opponent. As it turned out the one that kicked him in the face was one of the taller aliens, the ones that John had called 'Elites'. The Elite performed a small motion with its hand and a blade of pure energy formed from the hilt in the alien's hand.
"The demon won't stop us this time." The Elite spoke "And neither will you other filthy humans."
With that the Elite charged at Naruto, thrusting forward the blade, which Naruto dodged and tried landing a kick to the monster's side. What he hadn't taken into account was that these creatures were also from John's universe and they too were extremely quick in their reflexes. In other words: the kick was blocked without a second thought.
"Aaaaahhh! Help!" a voice came from behind Naruto. Turning around, the orange-clad Shinobi saw something that let his eyes widen in terror.
Another one of the Elites had found the girl he was trying to protect and was closing in on her with one of these glowing blades in its hand.
"Nooooo! Leave her alone!" Naruto screamed, but he already had to dodge another swipe of his own opponent's blade.
"I'm your opponent!" the Elite roared and for a moment Naruto could have sworn, that the alien had grinned, even with such a strange mouth. He didn't know what else to do so he planted one hand on the Elites stomach and shot a Biju-dama into it, which sent the Elite flying backwards into a brick wall, leaving it either knocked out or dead. Either way it didn't move anymore.
Naruto immediately ran towards the Elite that by now was towering over the girl and he knew that he wouldn't make it in time. All he could do was watch in horror as the blade came down and…
…well something happened that neither Naruto, nor the alien had expected. Out of an alleyway came a blue blur of speed and hit the Elite. When it did, Naruto recognized a tall armored warrior in blue and gold armor punching the Elite in the face so hard, its shields instantly imploded and it flew straight into the wall across the street, spilling violet blood everywhere.
The newcomer picked up the now panicking girl and brought her over to Naruto, who was still in shock by this person's appearance. His armor looked a little bit like John's, but the armor pieces had different shapes and colors and this warrior was a bit shorter that the 'green demon'.
The stranger put the girl down, only to have her hide behind Naruto as soon as her feet touched the ground.
"Are you alright?" the stranger asked in a raspy voice.
The Master Chief was impressed. He knew what these Shinobi could do, but still they were putting up a way better fight than he'd have thought. Shino's bugs disabled the wiring of some of the larger robots, slowing their advance. All the while Ten Ten proved that even simple weapons like hers, could be the end to an Elite warrior. Lee and Gai went even further and obliterated waves of enemies using nothing more than their hands and feet.
But as impressive as that was in its own right, John knew they were only managing so well because their enemies weren't well organized. Should they have to face off with a team of Zealots, things could get really dangerous.
And he might have just jinxed it there. A group of Elite warriors was running towards them, carrying heavy weapons such as fuel rods and mounted cannons. Only that the cannons were not mounted right now. Instead they were pointing directly at John's group.
"Get down!" he shouted out towards his teammates, but the Elites were too quick on the draw for that and a flurry of plasma blasts was unleashed upon them.
With huge effort John pulled out his bubble shield projector, jumped in front of his team and activated the shield all in less than one second. Ten Ten and Lee looked at him in awe, while Gai gave him a thumb up and a brightly sparkling grin.
The Elites noticed that they were wasting their ammunition and thus switched their weapons for their Energy swords. Now they were running directly towards them and John only had a few seconds to say something to the others.
"Whatever you do, do NOT let the blades touch you!" he shouted, just as the Elites entered the shield. The team instantly scattered and each of them took on exactly one alien. Except for John who had to deal with 3 of them at once.
A plasma grenade in one hand, the energy sword in the other, John dashed towards the closest one of his opponents and placed the grenade on its stomach. The alien was caught completely off guard, which enabled John to follow up the maneuver with a roundhouse kick to the Elite's head to send it flying backwards. When it hit the wall behind it, the grenade detonated, leaving almost nothing but a gory pool of blood.
He turned around to block the incoming sword with his own and only barely managed to do so. According to his radar the other remaining foe was coming up behind him, so John ducked and rolled out of harm's way in the last second. However the blade still managed to scrape his energy shields, almost completely depleting them all at once.
This was looking bad. He had two well trained swordsmen as opponents and didn't have his most effective weapons with him. The probability of him surviving this fight, if he didn't get any reinforcements soon was close to zero.
"Don't give up hope!" Cortana said in John's mind "Miracles can happen at any moment. And knowing your luck you will come out on top one way or the other!" There was a lot of determination in her voice and that rekindled John's will to fight. He couldn't lose now. He still had a job to do. He had to bring Cortana back to the UNSC and have them heal her. It was strange, but for some reason the word 'heal' seemed more appropriate to the SPARTAN than 'repair'.
With his new found power he dashed forward, blocking the first blade that came from the left. He quickly turned on the spot and performed a sweeping motion. He could hear, see and smell the energy sword cutting through the Elite's stomach. He had done it. Another one down. His teammates were still struggling with their opponents, so that was another job that was still waiting for him.
A quick look on his motion tracker sufficed to see that the last Elite was running up behind John. The Chief turned around and caught the arm that was leading the blade down on him in his left hand and prepared to strike on his own. But then something happened, that he hadn't accounted for. The Elite also managed to catch his arm and squeezed it tightly.
That on its own wouldn't have been too bad, but one of the alien's armored fingers found its way into the cut in John's armor. The one that he still had from his battle with the black haired Shinobi Sasuke Uchiha. The finger scraped heavily against his skin and tore a bloody wound into John's forearm.
In shock over the sudden pain, John couldn't react in time as the Elite planted a powerful push-kick into his stomach, having John drop his sword and tumbling backwards against a piece of rock that had once probably been part of a building.
His opponent stepped closer, sword raised to finish the deal and John couldn't do anything to prevent it. He even fired a whole magazine of his Magnum in the alien's direction, but the few shot's that hit the target merely scraped the Elite's energy shields.
"So this is how it all ends, huh?" John thought to himself, very disappointed in his performance after Cortana's 'pep-talk'. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable end to come.
But it never came. Instead he could hear a loud thump and a short squeal, then there was silence. Well except for all the fighting that was happening in the streets, but you get the picture.
John slowly opened his eyes, ready for any possible sight that might greet him. Or so he thought. What he saw was a gory mess of an alien, which had been impaled on a glowing 3 meter- long bolt of some sorts. Then he heard a familiar voice speak from a rooftop behind him.
"You look like you could need some help." the raven haired Shinobi with the weird pattern in his eyes said. Sasuke Uchiha was standing up there, looking all too ready for a good fight.
And with that I'll leave you for now. I hope you liked it :)
Some of the events in this chapter have been inspired by reviews and messages that you guys sent me, so thanks a bunch fo that^^
Until next time, whenever that might be ^^'
As always thank you so much for reading and please consider leaving a review ;)