A/N: I have had a hectic week, so I just finished episode three of Spartan Ops. It occurs to me that since I don't want to fill the story with platitude (some non-actiony bits are required, however, because I want actual characters, not mindless killing machines), if I get all the way to the end of Season One in my story, I may have to stop updating and start on another story.
Once I catch up to the actual story, I will mark this as complete but still update as new levels come out. Enjoy the War Games, and please tell me if you think the fighting is unrealistic.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Microsoft, Bungie, or 343 Industries. This is for my enjoyment and, hopefully, the enjoyment of others. I do not receive a profit.
If at First You Don't Succeed,
SPARTAN Brady wore a predatory grin as she gripped the hilt of her combat knife. Sure, she had selected a DMR, but that was just for those times she couldn't reach an enemy.
Brady had appeared in a cave on an island with nothing but her sea-foam green armour with pastel yellow highlights. Luckily, combat knives were integrated into all armour, so Brady had that to match her Venator suit. Brady sighed, wishing that there had been a chance to choose the armour abilities she had learned about aboard the UNSC Righteous Savior en route to the Infinity. They had all looked neat, but the one that had really caught Juliette Brady's eye was a stealth enhancement based off of the invisibility generators some of the Elites wore.
But rather than worry about things she couldn't have, SPARTAN Brady slunk out of the cave, keeping low to the ground. She supposed that drabber colours would have been more effective for hunting silently through the bogs, deserts, jungles, and arctic wastelands of Requiem, but the pastels had looked so neat when juxtaposed that Brady just couldn't bring herself to part with them. Of course, she had also been banking on the idea that she would have Active Camo to use.
Keeping an eye on her motion tracker, Brady crept past a Warthog idling in the grass. She didn't need it, not if she was in a contained location like this. In fact, the last time she had used a Warthog was the Battle of Earth near New Mombasa, when deployments of enemy troops had been scattered everywhere from New Mombasa to Voi. As an non-SPARTAN, she wasn't sure how she had survived going into firefights to kill Covenant, and even the Flood.
That had been traumatic. The mere memory of the feeling of tentacles crawling into her mouth, on her face, cutting, slicing, and slashing made Brady shiver. Adrenalin had kicked in, and she had popped both infection pods that had attacked, but not before they left their mark. Brady was just glad she hadn't gone the way of her lieutenant.
As CO, he had demanded to go in first. He'd come out with tentacles and a broken neck, infection pod resting just below where his Adam's apple had been. She had been the first to react, drawing the knife in her boot and cutting the infection pod right out of Lieutenant Earlsom's neck. He had collapsed then, his greenish skin twitching.
Brady shook herself out of the reprieve and snuck into a deep depression in the ground. It had struts made out of a foreign metal to support the ditch. Like the namesake of her Venator armour, she lay in wait, the perfect hunter. From her initial survey, SPARTAN Brady knew the ditch was a prime spot to hide from sniper fire, and if SPARTAN Quin was any good, an enemy would try to use this as a respite. She didn't have to wait long. She heard a muffled shot and saw a figure clad in brown rush into her ditch. Brady didn't take time to look at the armour, because her radar had already pinged the movement with a red dot. At the last possible second, she stepped out of cover and clotheslined the runner. It, or he, as she saw, went down. Hard. Brady rushed forward, her knife a pair of vicious jaws. It plunged easily through the shield and the armour. She saw a small spurt of blood and a ping informed her that she had received ten points. As Brady began to disappear into her hidey-hole, she felt her shields drain and saw a set of pink armour jumping as it shot three round bursts at her. Brady alost grinned. Bad move. The bright colour was more than enough for Quin to see, and a single bullet collapsed the shields and shattered the skull of Brady's attacker.
Sadly, the dead pink body was like a marker for the enemy, and a spray of bullets pelted Brady's already weakened shield, breaking it. Her last thought before the ravine faded was Shit.
The glass tube around Brady played a video of her demise, recorded on her opponent's helmet camera. Rather than watch the video, Brady jumped back into the virtual reality, noting only that her old hiding spot had been compromised.
She materialised behind a rocky bluff. When she turned her head, SPARTAN Brady saw SPARTAN Quin lying prone on top of one of the rocks, his ice-blue armour a dead giveaway of his position. Literally. Focused as he was on the scope of his sniper rifle, he did not see the man in dark green Vanguard armour sneaking up on him, and deaf as he was, he could not hear the man in dark green Vanguard armour sneaking up on him.
Brady let out a strangled cry as she whipped the DMR off of her shoulder, knowing it would be too late. She shot, felt the rifle buck, but it was too late. Quin's armour blew apart, the shotgun pellets shattering the metal alloy plates and ripping him to shreds. In desperation, she pulled her knife out of the sheath on her right ankle and threw it at the man.
Shotguns were loud and not her style, but they had a better range than a combat knife normally had. Furthermore, the man was close enough to shotgun her before she could break him with her DMR. Really, throwing her knife was her best bet.
The blade sunk into the man's thigh, slowing him down. As he limped toward Brady, she backpeddaled, firing her DMR at the man. Slowly, his shields broke, but he had pressed her against a wall. And she hadn't bothered to load the DMR fully, so she was out.
She was backed into a corner, outgunned, and out of hope when she heard a loud shrieking noise from up above. Plasma rained down even as the man pumped a shotgun blast into her face.
This time, Brady watched the helmet cam video. She saw her own cowering self and imagined her own frightened expression through the visor. Even as the picture limped over to her, the camera recorded that shrieking noise. Plasma began to eat away at the man's shields as he pulled the trigger. Then he looked up to see what Juliette's green eyes had missed. A Banshee, mostly intact, was doing a strafing run. As the camera fell to the ground angled upwards, she heard a loud, "Whoo!" come from the aircraft. The voice was unmistakably SPARTAN Pearlman's.
Brady shrugged inside her War Games pod. Guess Pearlman found air support. Then Brady jumped back into the fray.
This time she appeared on the other side of the canyon. Brady was in the middle of the metal platform, facing the ravine. She quickly dashed out of the open and behind a wall built into the back side of the structure, only to find it already occupied. Without the time to choose a weapon, she chucked a fragmentation grenade into the little area and got out of there. The other person wasn't so lucky. A body in bright yellow Protector armour flew out of the hidey-hole, which Brady promptly entered.
Drawing her knife, she peeked around the corner, getting ready to lie in wait. A minute passed, and then another. Brady watched as the scores in the lower-right-hand-corner of her HUD changed. She was tempted to run into the open, but that was dangerous without Active Camo. She never knew when an enemy would blow by.
Brady was beginning to give up hope that the structure would see more action than a Banshee exploding overhead when Pearlman was struck by a rocket. Suddenly, two figures in black climbed the stairs to her left, the one with the Infiltrator helmet forcing the one wearing Gungnir armour. Neither seemed to be firing, but Brady knew they were so close that she would never get a clean shot with her DMR. Deciding to extricate herself from the defensive position, she ran up to the fighters, pinging SPARTAN Reynolds so that he would know she was coming. He did not hesitate to drop into a roll, allowing Brady to sweep her gun onto the other fighter. She shot to get his attention and then ran, leaping at the man, who clearly had not expected half a tonne of SPARTAN to crash onto him. Her knife went through his helmet like butter, leaving a jagged eye hole over the right eye.
"Thanks," Reynolds said as he picked a rocket launcher off of the opponent's corpse. "My Spartan Laser ran out of charge, so I had to stay close enough that he couldn't use explosives, but far enough away to dodge swinging fists."
"No problem. Let's stick together for a while."
"Sounds good to me." The pair slowly descended the stairs, cautious of movement. A flash of pink caught both sets of eyes. It soon solidified into a SPARTAN wearing Soldier armour. One rocket to her feet was all it took to bring her down.
Hiking along the path toward the rocky hills led only to disaster. A shot from a sniper rifle echoed nearby, and the two SPARTANs glanced swiftly to their left. A figure in red E.O.D. armour lay twitching on the ground. Instinct took over, Brady rushed to Kahn's side, and pressed her gloved hand to the bloodied patch, trying to staunch the bleeding. It took Reynolds's firm hand on her shoulder to remind her she was exposing herself to a sniper. It had all seemed so calm, and that was the problem. Kahn was bait, and they were the naive victims of a trap.
As she dodged left and right, Brady was glad that their sniper didn't appear to be quite as focused as Quin. This sniper had clipped her shoulder, but she was still running. Reynolds launched both rockets in the twin tubes in the general direction of the sniper. There were two explosions, but Reynolds did not get any points.
When she heard the Banshee again, Brady saw the yellow dot on her radar that represented Pearlman. She glanced up and saw the Banshee going from low over the ground to high in the air. It looked about to stall, in fact. Instead, the yellow dot turned red, and a purple figure fell out of the Banshee, flailing its arms as it tried to right itself. Focused as they were on Pearlman, hoping she wouldn't die, SPARTANs Reynolds and Brady didn't notice the Banshee right itself and launch a deadly fuel rod cannon at them. The green bolt exploded at the same time as Pearlman slammed into the ground. Without enough stopping force to prevent it, whoever had skyjacked the Banshee had received a triple kill.
Those thirty extra points were enough to push the opponents over the line, six hundred points to four ninety. As the glass pods rose and the restraints came undone, the ten SPARTANs in the restraints regained consciousness. Striding to the screen in the center of the room, Juliette noticed that the man in brown armour was wearing Hazop armour, a detail she had failed to notice initially. The man in Vanguard armour said, "Congrats, Danny. Skyjacking that Banshee and then getting two more kills so that we could win, that was style." The man in brown nodded almost listlessly as he gave his thanks.
Edward sounded quite panicked as he asked, "Danny who?"
His inability to hear as he stumbled over the simple sentence was missed by the pink girl who said, "Danny Whitshire. Why do you care about the last name of my boyfriend?" Marcus quickly signed this information to Edward.
The motion was not lost on the man in brown, who made a quick motion with his own hands. Juliette, Arianna, and Raj could not read it, but it was clear that Marcus wanted to kill Danny Whitshire. Edward, on the other hand, recoiled backwards as if stung.
Marcus tore off his helmet and beaned Danny, who, not expecting it, fell over. Marcus strode over and tore off Danny's helmet, his blue eyes hard as he inspected the enemy's face. His fist came down once, breaking the nose.
Eight SPARTANs stood shocked for a moment before Sarah Palmer strode in and grasped Danny and Marcus, one in each hand, and dragged them out of the room. Calling over her shoulder in a clearly angry voice, she said, "Opalescent, Nebula. Head to the briefing room and get ready for insertion. I want you both ready to fight as soon as Reynolds, Whitshire, and I have a chance to talk. Play nice, or its a week of cleaning the latrines."
Juliette stooped to grab Marcus's helmet at the same time as the man in Vanguard armour went for Danny's. He started a conversation. "What the hell was that?"
After Raj took off his helmet and repeated the question for Edward, he answered, being careful to enunciate every word this time. "That was Danny Whitshire, a bully who teased me for being deaf. I had hoped he was no longer a part of my life."
The girl in pink said, "The Danny I know would never tease someone."
When Edward ignored her action, Raj cut in, E.O.D helemet already tucked under his arm. "Edward Quin is deaf, so please take off your helmets so that he can lip-read, since Marcus, Edward, and apparently Danny are the only ones who know sign language."
Edward clarified. "As far as I know, Danny only knows one word. Freak. That's how he got to me in elementary school. I was the shy deaf kid, and he was the loud bully. Mean, but smart."
The man in green tore off his Vanguard helmet, revealing light red hair and numerous freckles. "Danny never told us that! Nice knife, by the way. I'm Logan McCormac, Whitney Donelly is the girl," She looks slightly miffed by her title. " the guy in yellow is our sniper, Jesus Rodriguez, and Blake Pintelli in the black is addicted to rocket launchers."
Raj responded smoothly. "I'm Raj Kahn, our resident demolitions expert. The fine lady in purple is Arianna Pearlman, Edward Quin in the blue is our deaf sniper, Juliette Brady is Miss 'Nice knife', and you've already met Marcus 'I-wanna-punch-someone-in-the-face' Reynolds."
Whitney hesitatingly asked, "Marcus . . . Reynolds?" In response to Raj's statement.
Arianna answered, "Yes, why?"
"Because I know someone who wants to meet him. I'll tell her to meet us in the briefing room." Whitney strode out of the room, and everyone trailed behind her as she led the way to the briefing room.
A/N: It had to be done. Nebula is going to loose to trained SPARTANs, Edward has to face his demons (I crack myself up sometimes), and I wanted Marcus to punch someone in the face.