Disclaimer: See last chapter, thank you.
The Encounter
Master Chief and Cortana had finally reached the edge of the forest, the final leg of their journey to the city where they hoped they would find parts to build a jump drive. This was the third day they were on this world and Master Chief wasn't that impressed, he had seen no signs of life at all. Of course, that might mostly have been because they just traveled across a barren desert.
The last of the rations he brought with him from the shuttle would last for about five more days. They consisted of easily ingestible vitamin pills containing all the nutrients he needed. Even though he was a genetically altered super soldier, he still needed nourishment.
"What do you think, around or through?" The Earth's best asked his fellow survivor.
"Time's of the essence, we need to get back to Earth ASAP so we should go through." Cortana reasoned.
"Alright, do the scanners work?" Chief asked, not wanting to be taken by surprise by anything.
"They'll probably work until we exit the forest and reach the outskirts of the city, but they'll be limited to about half their normal range before then." Cortana responded.
"That'll have to do." Chief said back. "Did you detect any life forms in this area when you scanned the planet?"
"Yes, I found a small group, but I couldn't get a fix on any positive locations due to its proximity to the city."
"That makes me feel a whole lot better." Chief joked and entered the forest, keeping a close eye on his HUD. He felt sure he could handle anything on this world, but knew it was better to be safe than dead, in case they had weapons that could penetrate his suit's shields.
The Great Forest was a bit muggy after recent rains, but Master Chief didn't notice this since his MJOLNIR suit had its own self-contained environment. Even though he made sure to watch his scanners constantly, no signatures were picked up.
"Hey Cortana, how much further is it until we're out of here, it's beginning to get boring looking at trees all the time." Master Chief complained after about ten minutes since the silence was starting to get to him. He was used to the battle cries of fellow Marines, dying Covenant, and Grunts screaming their heads off before he shot their brains out.
"We're almost halfway through now, in another ten minutes or so we should have a visual of the city." Cortana answered, knowing 'big, tough' guys like him needed action every five minutes or so at least.
Another couple of minutes passed and Chief was about to make another comment when he noticed an unidentified green blip suddenly appear on the scanner just to his right and a little farther forward.
"Cortana, are you seeing this?" Chief questioned and removed his pistol from its holster.
"Chief, you shouldn't jump the gun like that; they might take it as an act of hostility and attack." Cortana warned him.
"What if whatever it is would attack us anyhow?" Chief countered.
"Fine, but you'd better not shoot before you speak."
"I'll only fire in self-defense, alright?" Chief was not going to be caught in the middle of a firefight with his weapons stored.
With that, Master Chief slowly made his way to where the signature was located, ready to fire, only in defense, if the situation called for it. He came to the very spot he saw on his scanners but didn't see hide, hair, scale, or whatever of anything.
"Do you think it's an ambush?" Chief inquired, tensing in preparation for an all out assault. Then he noticed a group of bushes shaking as if the wind was blowing them, but the surrounding shrubbery didn't move so much as an inch.
Chief crept up on the bush, hoping that whatever was in it wouldn't see him. It was obviously nervous, either at his approach or something else. When he reached arms length from it, he dove his free hand into it and grabbed a hold of whatever hoped to hide from him and lifted it out of its hiding place.
What he pulled out actually surprised him and that was a feat within itself for he couldn't be surprised that easily. The thing reminded him of a fox from back home, except that it was wearing white gloves and shoes of the same color with a red stripe. However, what really caught his attention was the fact that the fox had two tails instead of one which was what he had caught it by.
It had curled into a tight ball of brown fur, leaving its tails as the only clearly distinguishable feature apart from its color, as soon as it was yanked from the bush and saw who had done the yanking.
"Uh, Cortana, do you have any idea what this thing is?"
"I don't know, but I think you just scared it into a near coma. Put it down before you traumatize it," Cortana ordered him, "and gently please."
"Okay." Master Chief complied and placed the odd creature on the ground as easily as he could. When Master Chief released its tails, they joined their owner in the tight ball of fur which remained unmoving except for the trembling.
Master Chief got ready to leave when Cortana interrupted his progress. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm going to the city, we still need to find parts for the jump drive, remember?"
"You can't just leave it there." Cortana scolded.
"What do you expect me to do, make sure it's alright?"
"That'd be a nice start."
"Fine." So Master Chief bent down to its side, replaced his pistol into its holster, and said in the friendliest voice he could muster, "Are you okay? I know you might not be able to understand me, but I'm Master Chief and I really didn't mean to scare you like that. If you can at least hear me, it would be nice if you acknowledged me." He was sure this was an exercise in futility; this creature most likely didn't even know what English was, nonetheless speak it.
"Y-y-you're n-n-not g-going to h-h-hurt m-me?" The young fox asked warily, opening one eye slowly and then the other, but not getting up for fear of provoking his would be assailant accidentally.
Master Chief was slightly taken aback, not for the reason that it responded to him, but that it responded in his language. "You speak English!" Chief nearly shouted which caused the fox to cringe a bit. "Uh, sorry about that, it's just that I didn't really expect you to answer in English." He quickly amended, hoping there weren't any more unexpected surprises in store for him.
"English? I speak Mobian." The two-tailed fox corrected Master Chief.
"Wait a second, if I speak English and you speak Mobian, how come we can understand each other perfectly?" Master Chief queried, now confused at this unexpected turn of events.
"Maybe they're the same language." The young vulpine suggested.
"How could they be? I'm not even from this planet." Master Chief just opened his big mouth. He didn't want anyone to know of where he actually came from; just get some intel on the populace's weapon advancements so he knew where he stood with his own weapons if they proved hostile. After that, he could at least try to find suitable parts to build a working jump drive.
"What?!?! You're an alien!?!?" The now shocked kit gasped.
"Well, here anyhow." Master Chief explained. He noticed the fox relax from his tense position and slowly get to his feet, still eyeing him warily, yet seemed to understand that this strange visitor meant no harm.
The brown fox only reached a height of 2'7'', even shorter than any Grunt Chief had faced before. Apart from his tails, bipedal walk, and clothes, there wasn't any over-the-top difference from any Earth fox Chief could see.
For a while, they just stood staring at each other, not knowing what to say or do at this point until a monotonous voice called from their left…
"HALT FREEDOM FIGHTERS! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST BY THE ORDER OF ROBOTNIK!" Two SWATBOTS crushed some small bushes on their way to the two organic life forms their scanners picked up.
Master Chief mentally slapped himself. How could he be so stupid as to let this situation distract him from keeping an eye out for other signatures? The two robots were blue and humanoid in appearance. Their heads seemed to merely be flat cones with a single red visor stretched across the cranial unit.
Master Chief couldn't reach for his pistol or assault rifle now lest he wanted to test out his shields against unknown weapons pointed right at him and the vulpine by his side.
"Chief, you have to make sure the kid's safe!" Cortana hissed over his communicator.
"How am I supposed to do that?" Master Chief asked a bit too loudly, causing the SWATBOTS to automatically open fire on them. Upon seeing a blast about to hit a stunned fox, he did the only thing that came to mind; jumped into the line of fire. There was no way he'd let a civilian get hurt in the middle of a gunfight because of his mistake.
To Chief's surprise, his shields held incredibly well, only taking minimal damage from the incoming fire. In a flash, he grabbed the assault rifle and blasted several rounds into the aggressive 'bots. Some of the shots reflected off their titanium plating, but a few hit them in their optic visors which effectively disabled and sent them sprawling face forward.
Cautiously approaching them, in case they had back-up systems, Master Chief inspected the nonfunctional robots. "Do you think they have any parts that we could use, Cortana?"
"Can't we handle this later, there's still the matter of the alien fox to deal with, remember? You haven't even gotten his name yet." Cortana reminded him.
"Oh yeah." Master Chief responded and looked over to where the fox had remained throughout the little excursion Chief just went through. "You alright, they didn't hurt you or anything, did they?" Chief asked in what he hoped was a concerned voice.
"I'm fine, but how did you survive those blasts?" The now astonished fox questioned in an awed voice now looking at him as if he fell out of a tree or something.
"My suit has shields built into it which took the attacks and neutralized them. By the way, I never got your name, kid." Chief answered.
"My name's Tails."
"Okay Tails, can you tell me what these things are that attacked us?" Master Chief asked, gesturing to the fallen SWATBOTS.
"They're SWATBOTS, robots used by Robotnik and Snively." Tails told Chief, not nearly as nervous as when he was first yanked out of the bush. "We'd better leave before more show up."
"That's a good idea, but first I want to see something." Master Chief said now turning the downed SWATBOTS. He noticed that there were small access panels in their backs and forced one of them open to see inside.
The view that met him was one of several dead lights, switches, wires, and a host of other mechanisms unfamiliar to Chief. "So Cortana, what do you make of this?" Master Chief asked her, not being much of an engineer.
"Who are you talking to?" Tails wondered, thinking this alien was having hallucinations of some kind.
"Cortana, an AI program situated into my suit's mainframe." Master Chief explained. "Anyhow, do you think you can hack into these systems, Cortana?"
"Do you really have to ask that? I hacked into the Covenant Battle Net without a hitch; I think I can handle this." The construct replied in a mock hurt voice.
"Alright, could any of these parts be used for a jump drive?"
"Just give me a second. Nope, there's nothing useful we could use from these things. I can't even find a frequency for any communications; you absolutely totaled the array when you blasted them. It's best if we continue on, if they called for reinforcements there might be more than we could handle at this time." Cortana advised.
"Alright then, hey Tails, is there anyplace around here we can go and not run into anymore of these things?" Master Chief asked his new acquaintance.
"Yeah, Knothole's not too far from here. It'd only take a few minutes to get there." Tails replied, eager to introduce his new friend to everyone.
"Then lead the way." Chief urged, wanting to meet the other inhabitants to see more examples of this world's weaponry. If it was anything like what those SWATBOTS had, he wouldn't have to worry about that little problem.
Along the way, Master Chief decided to find out more about this place before he met Tails's friends. "So, who else lives with you in this Knothole."
"Well, there's Sonic, Antoine, Rotor, Aunt Bunnie, and Aunt Sally as well as a whole bunch of others." Tails told Chief.
The remainder of the trip passed without another word. Chief was too busy assessing his current situation from the time of his landing and Tails was too preoccupied with how he was going to explain all this to Sally.
"We're almost there," Tails finally said, "it's just around this group of trees.
"Wait a second, Chief." Cortana ordered.
"What is it, Cortana?" Chief wondered, stopping in his tracks.
"Is there a problem?" Tails asked, curious as to why Chief suddenly halted.
"Cortana said we should stop, but I have no idea why." Chief replied.
"Hold up, I want to speak directly to Tails." Cortana explained and her holographic form, originating from Chief's helmet, hovered in the air between the two.
The brown vulpine could only stare in wonderment at the form of Cortana. He never knew an AI was able to create an actual body. Data streams were seen flowing over her form and she glowed with a bright purple flair with short cut hair. She stood looking from a confident, but friendly stance at Tails which calmed him a bit.
"Hi, I'm Cortana." She said with a wave in a friendly voice.
"Uhm…hello." Tails said back, a little uncertainly.
"Don't be nervous, I won't hurt you." Cortana chuckled slightly, reassuring the young kit.
"Well Cortana, what's so important that you had to stop us now." Chief asked trying not to sound too pushy.
"It's like this; how would you react if an alien appeared right in the middle of your town and you didn't know who or what it was?" Cortana queried.
"Well, I guess it might not be that good." Tails agreed.
"So what do you suggest we do, Cortana?" Master Chief questioned.
"Simple, Tails goes in, tells everyone about us, and then we avoid any confusion." Cortana reasoned. "How does that sound to you?" She directed her inquiry towards Tails.
"I suppose so; I'll bring Aunt Sally out to meet you first." Tails said and was off to Knothole, leaving the cyber-soldier and AI alone.
"So, what should we do until he gets back?" Master Chief did not want to stand through another five minutes of silence.
"How about we…play twenty questions," Cortana suggested, "unless of course, you want to stand there being bored."
"Do you want to go first?" Chief answered resignedly, leaning against a nearby tree.
-----Meanwhile-----
Tails had crossed the bridge to Knothole and no sooner had he entered the secret village when he heard the stern voice of one of his surrogate aunts.
"And just where have you been?" A brown squirrel's voice asked from behind him. It was Sally Acorn, heir to the throne of Mobotropolis.
"Oh…just out." The nervousness apparent in his voice. He never told anyone he would be leaving Knothole in the first place and hoped that the discovery of Master Chief would have quelled his aunt's vengeance.
"Out where? Outside of Knothole perhaps?" She questioned accusingly.
Tails sighed in resignation, the sooner he had this out of the way, the sooner he could tell his aunt about Master Chief. Turning around, he became interested in the ground and replied, "Yes I left the village."
"Do you know how worried I was? What if you ran into SWATBOTS? This better not happen again, understand?" Sally scolded.
"Yes ma'am." Tails promised and then looked up and said, "There's something I need to tell you."
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In case anyone's wondering, and I'm sure you are, I just gave Cortana the ability to appear in her holographic form. If you think that would be detrimental to this story, please tell me in your reviews and if more people don't like it than people who do, I can exclude it from future chapters.