DISCLAIMER: I do not own Halo or Bungee, never will, and cannot even hope to come close to the near-godly story-writing abilities of the amazing team of people that make up Bungee.
REVIEW RESPONSES:
Karl-591: K'tal really did not appreciate that derogatory comment about his facial structure. But he's willing to let it slide... for now.
Yereton: Yeah, I didn't really think about that at the time, plus the fact that A, I do not know much about military awards and which ones are given for what, B, I don't even know if there is an award for rescuing prisoners of war, and C, if there is no award for that, there isn't really anything K'tal has done for the UNSC that merits any award and/or recognition in the ceremony as far as I know. But, if you know of an appropriate medal or award for K'tal, let me know and I will see if I can squeeze it in.
Reubenrun: Why thank you. I will get around to that.
Manga154: Indeed.
A/N: IT'S OVER NIIIIINNNE THOOOOUUUSSAAAANND! That's how many hits this story has gotten, and it's nowhere near done! I love you guys, so please keep reading and reviewing and all that jazz, and please forgive me for how ridiculously tardy I am with updating.
CHAPTER 6: OUT ON THE TOWN
CAIRO STATION, SEPTEMBER 15, 2552, 1505 HOURS
SIX'S P.O.V.
Six and K'tal walked back through the barracks area to Hangar A-01, where they would take a flight down to Earth. Stopping by the door to K'tal's quarters, Six said, "Before we go down, is there anything a little less threatening you could wear?"
"No, why?" K'tal asked, slightly confused.
"Because people are probably more likely to over-react if the alien they see is wearing scarred, black armour, than if said alien is not wearing it, and not carrying a conspicuous amount of weapons." she replied, glancing down at the sword handle on his thigh.
K'tal nodded slightly, then walked into his room, pulled his gauntlets and helmet off and laid the armor pieces on his bed along with one of his sword grips. Noting Six's look at him, he stated, "I don't have anything to wear besides this armour." He paused, then added dryly, "And I doubt it would really make any sort of difference."
Six nodded. Armor or not, K'tal is going to attract a lot of attention, she thought. Thank God I changed out of my armor after the ceremony; a fully-armoured Spartan and an Elite walking around together would definitely not be taken well by a lot of people.
They continued to the shuttle bay, where Six walked in the direction of a Pelican with a man in a pilot's uniform leaning against the frame of the open hatch. He saluted as they came close.
"Flight Officer MacTavish reporting, Ma'am." he said in a strong Scottish accent. "Ah assume ye wan' tae git down tae the planet?"
"Yes, we do, if you please, Flight officer." Six answered. Nodding distractedly, the pilot craned his neck slightly to look up at K'tal.
"Well, ain't ye a great, strappin' fella." the man commented.
"Flight Officer!" Six said sharply, getting his attention back.
"Sorry, Ma'am," he apologized, snapping off another salute. "Ah did no' main tae be rude, Ma'am." He walked into the troop compartment, then turned back to them. "All aboard." he finished cheerily, gesturing for them to get in.
As the Pelican's engine roared to life, K'tal turned in his seat to look at Six, and asked, "Are you certain that this is a good idea?"
"People will eventually have to get used to seeing you around." Six answered.
K'tal nodded once, and turned back to continue staring at the opposite bulkhead.
...
K'TAL'S P.O.V.
When the Pelican touched down, Six stood up and gestured for K'tal to follow. "Have a nice day, an' thank ye for flyin' with Air Pelican. Now shoo, so Ah can get me baird back tae Cairo Station." the pilot's strangely-accented voice crackled over the speakers as the deployment hatch opened up. K'tal's mandibles curved into a small smile at the human's odd personality.
As they walked out of the military airfield, K'tal, constantly looking around reflexively, partially from his military training and partially out of interest at the layout of the city, and painfully conscious of the looks of thinly-disguised fear from the nearby civilians, who were giving him as wide a berth as possible, asked, "Where are we going?"
"A museum." Six answered. "I thought it would be good for you to learn about some of human culture, and a museum is the quickest and easiest way to do so." She, also, seemed uncomfortably aware of the atmosphere of barely-restrained panic. Doing his best to ignore the tense atmosphere, K'tal nodded in agreement. He had read up some on human culture, mannerisms, and ways of speaking in order to better understand them on the rare occasions he talked to anyone other than Six, but he knew next to nothing about their history.
Thankfully, they reached a large building that K'tal realized was probably the museum. The building was large and boxy, covering a good two hundred feet on either side of the entrance, with a wide set of shallow steps leading up to the entrance and and in alcoves were stone statues of humans in various forms of clothing and in various poses: one that wore a headdress that seemed to be made of feathers. Another sat astride a four-legged animal of some sort and brandished what seemed to be some sort of sword. Another wore armor of strange design, with unnaturally sharp angles at the joints and a helmet with a faceplate that looked like an forward-pointing cone that had been perforated with holes. Yet another wore armor of a completely different design, with large shoulder-and-upper-arm guards, a large helmet with extensions that looked vaguely like the crescents that were all that could be seen of Qikost and Suban during some points in Sanghelios' lunar cycle, and a face mask with a rather unnatural-looking and snarling visage carved into it that reminded K'tal of a Jiralhanae he had crossed paths with at one point. Above the building entrance, a line of human script proudly proclaimed 'CAIRO MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY', along with a couple other lines of writing that he assumed said the same thing in other languages.
Walking inside, K'tal waited as Six walked over to some sort of booth against the wall of the lobby and began talking to a human male standing inside. Their voices subtly began to rise in volume, and K'tal saw the human male jab a hand rather violently in the direction of him, and realized that they were probably arguing over whether or not to allow him to be in the building. However, Six soon stopped the blustering human in mid speech simply by coldly staring him down, something that was probably helped by the uniform she was wearing and by the fact that she had an obvious and intimidating height advantage on the other human. K'tal smirked.
After a few more minutes of talking, Six passed a small chip to the other human, who turned away and slotted it into a machine of some sort, and then removed it and passed it back to her, along with two pieces of material with human writing on them that the machine had spat out.
"Alright," Six said, walking back over to K'tal and running a hand through her short hair in what he assumed was exasperation. "I have our tickets. Let's start the tour, shall we?" She looked tense as she ushered him along and into the museum proper.
"Are you alright?" K'tal queried, regretting the question moments after asking it.
"I'm fine." she said sharply, before seeming to relax a little, adding, "Sorry, it's just the people." she grimaced, "I don't... interact easily with civilians. I don't have anything in common with them. And they're a constant reminder of what my life could have been like."
K'tal was a bit confused. "Meaning...?" he asked, trying to get her to open up a little.
"You know how I said on Reach that I don't have a life except for war?" Six asked. When he nodded, she said, "When the ONI higher-ups saw how successful the Spartans were against the Covenant, they wanted to make more of them. So they made the Spartan Threes, like me." she paused for a moment, then finished with, "I was six years old when they took me for the program." K'tal was dumbstruck for a moment at the last part.
"You make it sound like you didn't have a choice in the matter." K'tal commented. "What about your family? Wouldn't they have wanted you to stay with them?"
Six shook her head. "My family was killed when the Covenant attacked Jericho VII. That's part of the reason I agreed to join up; I wanted revenge. And you're right; I didn't really have a choice. They said it was my decision, but I could tell they most likely wouldn't have taken no for an answer."
K'tal showed no outward emotion but a clenching and unclenching of his hands. However, inside he was seething with rage. How DARE they force that choice on a child! he thought, fighting to control his anger. Of all the dishonourable, cowardly-
Six laying a hand on his arm interrupted his train of thought. "K'tal," she said, quietly and evenly, "Calm down, please."
"Sorry," he apologized, doing his best to reign in his anger. They walked into the first hall of exhibits.
...
CAIRO, SEPTEMBER 15, 2552, 1845 HOURS
SIX'S P.O.V.
The museum had taken a long time to go through, and it was now early evening. Six and K'tal were walking through the streets and taking in the sights. Or rather, K'tal took in the sights. Six just quietly thought, remembering the day's events.
It had been funny for Six to watch K'tal going through the museum, looking at all the exhibits. His fascination with her race's history seemed almost childlike in its enthusiasm. It was rather endearing, and yet completely at odds with what she had seen of his personality and how he acted, especially in combat.
One area that had drawn special interest from K'tal had been the wing dedicated to Japanese history and culture, which by an interesting coincidence was strikingly similar to the culture the Elites had on their home planet. The ancient Japanese peoples' Bushido honour code, in particular, had so many similarities with the Elites' own they were almost identical. They had stayed in that wing of the museum for some time while K'tal learned everything he could about the little country, though he had asked if she was alright with him doing so. In truth, Six had no problems with that at all; Japan had always interested her, something that was a given, due to her partial Japanese ancestry.
Her train of thought was abruptly halted by a comment from K'tal. "You truly have a beautiful world," he said, "From what I have seen of it." He looked down at her. "And your history is certainly... diverse. None of the races in the Covenant, aside from mine, have any similarity, culturally, to you. And the similarities between Sangheili and Human culture are mostly superficial." That was another thing. He had seemed like little more than a soldier at first, like her, but he kept showing a different side, one that seemed younger, eager to learn, and more able to appreciate the simpler things in life.
"Um... Thank you," Six answered tentatively, unsure of whether or not to take what he had just said as a compliment. There was an awkward silence between them, before K'tal noticed something interesting to ask about.
"What is wrong with them?" he asked, pointing out a pair of drunks who had staggered out the door of a bar, one of whom collapsed bonelessly onto the sidewalk, and other slumping against the wall of the tavern, hiccuping. Her lip curled slightly in disgust at the sight of a marine, which the drunkard not sprawled out on the sidewalk seemed to be, judging from the off-duty fatigues he was wearing, in such a state. The drunk Marine seemed vaguely familiar, though she could not place his face.
"That," she said in a voice loaded with scorn for the drunk marine, "Is someone who has deliberately poisoned themselves with a lot of alcohol, just so they can get intoxicated past the point of being able to function properly."
"Your people willingly do this to themselves?" K'tal was incredulous.
"Unfortunately, yes." she answered with a sigh. "Most of the people who drink do so to forget bad times for a few hours, or to feel good about themselves. But I have never seen any point in messing up your own body that badly." She waved a hand in the direction of the drunkards, one of whom, who happened to be the one wearing the fatigues, had managed to stand up and stagger around, and who was now vomiting into a convenient empty metal barrel in the alley-space between the bar and the nearest building to its side. "I have had exactly one alcoholic drink in my life, which I hated."
Before she could say anything further, the drunk wearing the fatigues staggered over from where he had been hunched over the barrel to stand next to her. "Hey, babe," he slurred, and Six turned her head away to avoid smelling the reek of alcohol and vomit on his breath, "Wanna go out?" He tried to sling an arm around her shoulders, failing partially because of his drunkenness affecting his motor skills, and partially because he barely came up past her shoulder level. Six cooly pushed the offending limb away, and resisted the urge to punch the drunk. He's intoxicated, she told herself, he's not properly in control of his actions.
Six heard a low rumbling sound coming from behind her, but the drunk Marine evidently didn't, and kept rambling. "Ya know, *hic*, I wash there on tha' Covvie ship, I shaw ya, an' I couldn' shtop thinkin' 'bought ya shinsh." Six realized who the Marine was. He was part of the squad that escorted K'tal and I off the Covenant ship. He's the one that wolf-whistled at me! That iyarashiisukebekusottare!
Six's rather angry train of thought was cut off when the rumbling increased in volume and lowered in pitch, and she saw out of the corner of her eye a dark shape rush past her, grabbing the Marine and pulling him along. She looked properly and saw K'tal standing several feet away, holding the drunk about two feet off the ground by his throat and against a wall, and emitting a growl that sounded like the snarling of a crocodile.
"Wha'sh wrong shplit-lip?" the drunk taunted. "I hit a nerve?" he chuckled. "She your girlfriend? Well I got newsh f'r you: she ain't, ain't never gonna be."
The drunk's smug tone tone turned to a watery gurgle as K'tal growled more loudly, pulled him away from the wall, and slammed him back into it forcefully and tightening his grip. Seeing the man's eyes begin to roll up into the back of his head and his struggles getting weaker, Six intervened.
"K'tal!" she barked,her tone icy cold. "Drop. Him. Now." K'tal looked at her, and she could see that his normally small nostrils were flared wide and his pupils had contracted to almost-impossibly-thin slits. He looked like an animal at that moment, and Six almost took a step back reflexively.
Growling an almost unintelligible affirmative, K'tal dropped the man to the sidewalk, where he curled in on himself and coughed spasmodically. Six glared at him. "Come. Now." she ordered, and he followed as she lead the way back to the airfield.
"What was that." she said; it was more a statement than a question.
"He was disrespecting you," K'tal answered. "I thought-"
"You thought what, exactly?" Six snapped. "I could have handled it, K'tal! I can take care of myself, and I don't know why you seem to think otherwise." Then, suddenly, things crystallized for her. She realized why he had been acting the way he had; why he had felt the need to nearly kill a man who had been disrespectful to her, and why he had seemed so protective of her in general. No. It can't be...
"Oh my God," she said, shocked, stopping abruptly. She turned to look at K'tal, and asked, in a small voice, "K'tal, do you have... feelings for me?"
K'tal looked at her, then away, then at her again. Finally, he answered. "Yes."
A/N: Please don't kill me! *cowers* Okay, once again, I am sorry for making you all wait so long for this chapter. I have had a load of school stuff to do, plus writer's block, plus I have a buttload of plot bunnies bouncing around in my head, nagging me with ideas for other stories. So, to keep myself from going insane, I am starting a new story, which I promised myself I wouldn't do while I had an active story to write, but I am apparently incapable of keeping promises to myself. By no means am I abandoning Lone Wolf, but my attention is going to be divided between this story and the other, and I still need to hammer out the details of what I want to do with this story.
In other news, I would like to announce that I am open to ideas for Six's real name. PM me with any ideas you have, but the names should preferably somehow reflect Six, and/or be Japanese in origin. I have a possible name, but more candidates are always welcome.
So, until next time, see ya!
~Hawk
PS-The insult Six uses is written in Japanese romanji for those who want to know, and if you want to translate it, be warned, it's fairly strong.