Note: These are not edited, i know that they have spelling and grammar issues. They were done as a writing exercise and I thought you all might enjoy them.

01. Threat

The insurrectionists Had no idea that she was even there. Ever in the darkness of the shadows. Not a single one of them had even the slightest clue of what was lurking so close. They sat at their posts, completely at ease. None of them suspect the threat that slinks closer and closer to the base, around the back and slips in. She is death, the reaper, and she was on a mission.

02. Empire

She sat back, reading the file on the great Roman Empire. She enjoyed looking into the past, learning all that she could. It was odd to her how often things seemed to be repeated. Although humans taught their children the past, they still seemed to repeat the mistakes time and time again. She thought they were supposed to learn from the past, so that they didn't repeat it. She finished the document and clicked it closed. She oddly felt at the moment like humanity was running the same course. It had become such a great Empire, but here it was falling. Maybe humanity was doomed to repeat itself.

03. Falter

She struggled to continue on. Her legs felt heavy and her chest didn't want to expand to take in air. The burns on her arms and her leg made her want to cry out in pain with each and every step. Her right knee buckled and she stumbled for just a moment before grabbing the wall to hold herself steady. She wasn't sure if she could continue on. Her gaze turned to the wall and she saw the crimson blood splattered over the surface. She stood up, newfound strength keeping her on her feet. She had people to save, aliens to fight. She couldn't falter now.

04. Compliment

She heard all the time about how great she was, how strong, and how she'd saved people's lives. She was used to all the compliments, all the chatting. All of it seemed hollow to her. She'd saved them, yes, but how many had died before she reached them. In the end the compliments were drowned out by her failures, by those that had fallen.

05. Glass

She had never actually seen it happen. They always took her off the planet or she was on some planet that they weren't glassing. She'd heard soldiers, their descriptions of it. She'd watched civilians be slaughtered by the Covenant, but somehow glassing seemed a thousand times worse. Burning a planet until there was nothing left, nothing but death. She remembered the cruisers in the sky of her own home planet. She wondered how soon after she'd seen them that the glassing had started. She'd never even been back to the planet to see if they had glassed it. She pushed the thought away. If it had been, she'd rather remember it as it was when she'd lived there, pure and untouched by Covenant kind.

06. Honor

She stared down at the fallen elite. The energy sword was still grasped tightly in its hand. She felt a pang of sadness. These elites, they fought with dignity, strength, and honor. It somehow hurt her to know that such creatures could be her enemy. She hated them yet at the same time she respected them. Though, a healthy respect for your enemy was a good thing to have. It would make it less likely that she'd mess up, that she'd get killed. This elite had challenged her, one-on-one, and the others had stood back to allow it. None had interfered, all waited until she had slayed the commander before they attacked. She stood and saluted the fallen elite. He had died for his cause, as she was willing to do for hers. She would honor that.

07. Work

She stared at the screen before her, reading over the document one last time. She was not a fan of the paper work. Give her a gun, some grenades, and something to kill and she was happy as could be. Put her in front of a terminal and tell her she had to write up everything she did, in precise detail, and she was in hell. She checked over for data, spelling, and grammar mistakes. She was satisfied and send in the document. She supposed that she could put up with the mind numbing paper work as long as she got to kill Covenant.

08. Jealous

She watched the group of ODST playing a game of soccer out in the field. She was jealous of them. They had free time, were able to play games. She stood in the laboratory, technicians working on suiting her up in her Mark IV modified ODST armor. She looked over toward the rounded helmet of her armor. She felt another pang of jealousy. While she wore ODST armor, she could never call herself one. She was a Spartan, and that was all she could be.

09. Strings

Nothing was ever clear cut or free. That was the case with right now. Her body ached and she was really starting to get annoyed. She'd gotten some rest time on base, something she really needed as a few of her injuries had been slow to heal. There were strings attached to the down time, though. She'd been set to test a new laser powered weapon, called a Spartan laser. The weapon had shorted out and she'd gotten a good burn from it. She'd gotten down time, but now she had even more injuries that needed to heal.

10. Semantics

She wondered if she would have been a soldier. If the Covenant had not killed all that she had, would she still be a part of the forces. It ran in the family, yes, but she would have chosen it. She could have chosen not to make the jump, not to have taken part in the training. What then had caused her to do it? Was it her blood, or her hatred that had brought her to leap? She pushed the thought aside. I was all semantics. Chose, forced, it didn't matter. She was on this path, and she'd follow it until her last day of life.

11. Innocence

She couldn't really remember a time when she was innocent. Her last memory had been the death of her mother, and from that point on, she didn't feel that innocent was a word that described her. She'd forced the innocence out of herself. It had spilled out like the blood of the grunt, splattered onto the streets of her home planet with each and every strike of the rock. Her innocence was dead. All for the better in the end. There was no place for innocence in a soldier.

12. Dispose

She stared down at the image of the holostill. She looked at the four smiling face. They were only ghosts now. She'd gotten the word about the failed mission, about what had happened to her Company. In a flash all of her former team was gone. She frowned at the emotions she felt. Their deaths shouldn't affect her like this. She hadn't been teammates with them in so long. Why did she care? She couldn't allow herself to care, feel this sorrow or pain, the Covenant gave her enough of that. She turned off the still and moved over to the trash. She disposed of the device. As it fell into the receptacle she willed her memories to go with it, her bonds and attachment to those that she'd lost.

13. Blaze

Everything was burning around her. She hit the ground as a gas tank exploded, sending a ball of flames through the room. Keeping low she crawled her way to the doorway. She stood, quickly slamming her foot against the door and rushing outside. She didn't stop until she was on the other side of the street. The building was nothing but one great blaze, echoing what was happening all over the city. The pained cries of burning grunts could be heard in the upper levels and she smirked. If they were going to burn the city, she was going to be sure they burned with it.

14. Neglect

The medic and technician had both chewed her out after the last mission. She'd damaged her armor up pretty badly, and herself. She'd been lectured on how she shouldn't neglect her equipment and physical safety. She tuned it all out. There was no room for worrying about her own safety of the condition of her armor. She was trying to save lives, stop rebels, and defeat that covenant. If to do that she had to neglect a few things, then it was a sacrifice that she would have to make. The fresh cuts on her chest ached as she moved. A bit of pain was a small price to pay for the evac transports that had gotten away.

15. Quake

She stood before the methane breathing alien. It was crouched, trying to cover its head with its large hands. It quaked in fear before her and it gave an odd sense of satisfaction. She hadn't moved to attack it, or even had been close to it when it had fallen into fear. She wasn't even sure that the grunt knew she was there. From the way it wouldn't look up it was just waiting for the end to come, not wanting to see it coming. She raised her pistol and fired one round. The body fell to the ground, finally still.

16. Guess

There was no mathematics behind it. She hadn't stopped to figure out the physics, wind resistance, velocity. She'd always hated physics anyway, never really got the hang of it. She'd spotted the fliers and she was standing on the cliff. What math did she need? She positioned herself as she thought what was the idea position and waited. She made her best guess. She took off at a full run and jumped from the cliff, landing right on one of the banshees. It was a damn good guess.

17. Quarrel

She watched the aliens, confused by their actions. The grunts and jackals were quarreling with each other. The veteran jackal was trying to get the grunts to move ahead, right toward her trap, but the smaller aliens were refusing. She'd never seen it happen before. She'd never seen the Covenant fight among itself, though she found it oddly calming that they were. Somehow, the idea that so many species were all together made them seem so much greater, but just like different races of humans Not all in the Covenant seemed to see eye to eye. She sat back to wait. Eventually one of the species would move ahead, and then she would pounce.

18. Brood

She was starting to think that Humanity wasn't going to make it. They were losing ground day by day, planet by planet, and there seemed to be no end. The soldiers were tired, and she was growing tired. If they couldn't fend off the Covenant, then what could they do? Hide away in small clumps so that they couldn't be found? Most likely they'd fight until the last human was snuffed out by Covenant forces. She stopped her train of thought. There was no reason to brood over what might be. She only needed to care about the now, the mission. The higher ups could care about the future.

19. Effort

She put all her strength into her activity. It took all her effort to get the door to even move an inch. The cries for help on the other side spurred her on. She wasn't going to let them down. The cries of children echoed in her ear and she doubled her effort. The door creaked open and finally something inside of it broke. The heavy metal slid easily as she pushed against it. The cries were louder now. She turned and ran toward the civilians.

20. Now

The past seemed to be haunting her. She watched teams of soldiers having dinner and it reminded her of her days in training. Each and every time her pelican moved in the dead of night to her next mission she would remember all those that she had killed. Covenant and rebels alike. She tried to block it all out, keep her mind on the here and now. She needed to stay focused, get her missions done, maybe then she could look back to now and remember it fondly.

21. Solve

She put the last of the pieces in place. The screen turned green and a new puzzle showed up. She usually wouldn't bother with such simple games but she wanted to keep her mind sharp in her free time. She solved the next puzzle and was rewarded with a flashing green screen and a small penguin dancing. She raised an eyebrow at the image. She clicked off the screen and stared at the now black screen. That was weird.

22. Rest

She didn't often get time to relax. She lay on her cot, trying to get some rest. She tossed and turned, unable to get to sleep. Her back ached from the sword injury that still was healing. She moved onto her chest and it caused the scars on her chest to itch. She cursed the Covenant. She'd killed those that had hurt her, yet here they still plagued her. The reminders of her past fights kept her from a good night's sleep. She moved onto her side and finally found a position that was comfortable. Her eyes had just eased closed when the door to her room opened. So much for getting some rest.

23. Soon

Soon everything was going to change, and she didn't like it. She was a lone wolf, and that was what she was good at. She didn't want a team, or anyone to watch her back. She was fine on her own and there was no reason to change that. The officers above her saw things differently. They saw fit to change everything that she knew, to change how she worked. In the end she really didn't have a choice. She'd have to live with their choice.

24. Listen

She often listened to the people of the base. The chatter of the soldiers was sometimes more insightful then the information she got from ONI. They also talked about more interesting topics. Most spent their free time talking about training and she found herself comparing their stories to her own training. It was odd how different it felt to her. She could point out what was similar, and what was different. She oddly found that the ODST seemed to be the most similar. She listened to stories of soldiers back home, of friends and family waiting for them. This was usually what made her tune the other soldiers out. She had no one waiting for her, no one to go back to.

25. Haze

Whenever she tried to focus on something from the past, it always seemed so hard. She tried to see her mother's face, but it was clouded and hazy. She tried to remember her team from training, but she found it hard to picture them. She didn't remember her former home. The only thing that was still crystal clear was the shinning knights in green armor. They were in her dream, clear as the day she first saw them. They stood tall in the haze of the memories she was slowly loosing, untouched by time.