Hello, everyone! Slightly shorter chapter this time, but it sets up something I'm sure you all want to see. And I know that there are some people who have been wanting Fairy Tail to figure out the story behind the Master Chief and the rest, and that will come soon. I want to thank everyone who voted. The new story name is: Magic, Meet MJOLNIR. Thanks once again to Assault Godzilla, who provided the names that you all voted on. And thank you Assault for pointing out that little error in my last chapter. I'll go fix that later. For now, everyone enjoy the chapter, and I'll see you at the bottom!
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or Halo. Though that would be awesome!
The very next morning found everyone back at the guild, minus the UNSC team. There were more rumors floating around about them than about Lucy and Natsu.
"Did you hear that they had flying machines? And it didn't even have a lacrima, not that anyone could see, anyways!"
"They killed the dark guild members?"
"They threatened the Council?!"
And so on. Team Natsu was busy talking with Gajeel, Levy, and Elfman, who had just joined the conversation.
"And when they were going inside, they got hit by magic a lot!" Lucy was retelling her story. "But they acted like it didn't touch them! The only thing that happened was they got surrounded by a weird golden glow. But it went away after a second. It didn't faze them. I wonder if they even felt it."
"It's manly to charge through enemy fire while ignoring the pain!" Elfman shouted in his usual manner.
"But that's just it: I don't think they got hurt. Even Erza would have felt something!"
"That would depend on what armor I used. But I understand your point."
Everyone was silent for a second, thinking over what the newcomers could do. Then Alzack and Bisca came over with Asuka.
"Hey guys. How'd it go?" Alzack greeted.
"You mean you haven't heard?" Gajeel asked.
"No, what?" Asuka started climbing onto the table.
"They completed the mission without our help." Erza deadpanned.
"What?!"
"Yeah. I think they used gun magic, like you two. But it was more advanced than anything you have, no offense."
"None taken. But how so?"
"We saw one of their sniper rifles. It was huge! And it was extremely powerful. What was its range?"
"Like 2400 meters, right?" Lucy wondered.
Alzack and Bisca both whistled. "That's a nice rifle."
"And it didn't even end there. There was something special about the bullets. It had a really long description, but I can't remember it."
"14.5 x 114mm Armor Piercing, Fin-Stabilized, Discarding Sabot rounds. I memorized it." Natsu put in.
The two gunslingers looked confused and curious at the same time. They hadn't even heard of those types of rounds, much less used them.
"And that's not even the tip of the surface! They've got so much more stuff that we haven't even seen. And last night, they said that we were lucky to have seen what we did!" Lucy looked kind of worried.
"Really?" Levy didn't look to swell herself. "I don't think I want to know what else they have."
"Well I do!" Gajeel said with enthusiasm. "I want to fight one of them!"
"Get in line, metalhead! I'm gonna fight them first!" Natsu scowled at Gajeel.
Gajeel responded by punching Natsu. "I'm gonna fight them first!"
Soon the two were rolling around on the floor fighting. Everyone ignored them.
"What else did you see?" Bisca inquired.
"Well, they had machines that flew, but I didn't see a lacrima anywhere." Erza said.
"But lacrimas are required, right?"
"Yes. It must have been hidden somewhere."
"Don't forget how they destroyed the guild hall!" Wendy put in. "Remember, there were those two other flying things?"
"Yeah. They dropped a bunch of little objects on the building. What were those?"
"Who knows? But remember, we heard someone say something when they did that."
"That's another thing," Lucy said. "They were able to talk with each other without even being close to each other. When we were in that flying thing, William spoke to us like he was right there, but he was in another room! And during the battle, I heard lots of stuff being said from his helmet!"
"You did? Like what?" Levy asked.
"Weird things. I couldn't understand most of it. But stuff like, 'Frag out!', and 'Cover!'. And near the end, Thomas said that they secured a package. I didn't know what that meant, but when I asked William, he said that they had caught the dark guild master."
"How long did it take for them to finish the mission, Lucy?"
"Well, after I ran back to let them know about Natsu and everyone else, they started fighting. I told them, and it took about 10 minutes for them to fight their way inside and come back out with the guild master."
"10 minutes! That's impossible!" Bisca was dumbfounded.
"I know! It would have taken us the rest of the night, but they did it in 10 minutes." Lucy sighed again, and put her head down on the table. "I really don't like this. I mean, it's nice to have people who can do it right, but since we don't know anything about them, it makes the whole thing really creepy."
"Lucy's right." Erza said. "We should get as much information about these people as we can. We will follow them, hopefully to where they live, and find out just who they are."
"That's a little sneaky, don't you think?" Levy put in.
"Hm, that's true." Erza had a thoughtful look on her face. Then she turned towards Levy with a slightly more evil look. "That's why we'll need small people to follow them, so that they won't know."
Levy was not expecting that. "I don't want to do it! Make Gajeel or Natsu do it! They're the ones who want to fight!"
"Which is exactly why I'm not letting them do it. Don't worry, though. You're not going to have to do it alone." Erza turned to Wendy and Carla. The two knew what she was thinking.
"Not me!" Wendy cried.
"Yes, you. You and Levy are small enough not to be noticed. When they come, you two will follow them, hopefully to wherever they live. Then you will get inside, look around, and come back and tell us what you saw."
"But-" Levy began.
"No buts." Erza had that evil look again. Levy and Wendy looked defeated, knowing that there was no way to get out of it. The three didn't notice it, but Gajeel and Natsu were busy holding in their laughter.
"Now that we have that established, we just have to wait for them to get here."
They didn't have to wait long. About 15 minutes later, the Master Chief, the Arbiter, Thomas, and William walked in. The other marines had decided that they wanted to make their temporary firebase into an actual barracks, and were currently helping Vigilance and his sentinels do that. The others had decided that they wanted to do a mission, since they had found a need for some jewels. Vigilance wanted some more materials to work with. The base used Titanium A as a building material. There wasn't enough in the reserve, so they needed more. However, they couldn't just go mine some titanium, and there was very little of it around, so it was expensive. But they decided to buy it, because there was no other way to get it. They could make it into proper Titanium A later.
They would go in groups of two, and hopefully get a lot of money to purchase what they needed. After scouting some shops, they had found one that sold titanium for 500,000 jewels per every 10 kilograms, so it was going to take a lot of jobs to get that amount of money. They needed about 250 kilos of titanium to make into Titanium A, so that was going to be a little over a million jewels. Without S-Class missions, that was going to take a while, and Thomas thought it impolite to go ask for the money that they had refused the night before.
They each went over to the job board. They felt eyes on the back of their heads, but didn't turn. They knew that the entire guild must be having questions right about now. They ignored that.
"Hey Will, here's one. 'Our house has been robbed of some very valuable items. Please get the items back for us, and turn the thieves responsible to the authorities.' Get 100,000 jewels out of it."
"Sounds good. Maybe we'll get to fight something that'll actually be a challenge. Never know."
Thomas laughed at that. "Only you." They reported their job to Mirajane, then left. The Arbiter and the Chief were having a little more trouble deciding on a job.
"Are these humans incapable of doing anything themselves?" The Arbiter wondered. The jobs were for really stupid things, in his opinion. 'Find my lost cat.' 'Help us move to another city.' Really? He could understand stuff like finding the thieves, but this was ridiculous.
The Chief shared his opinion. Then something apparently caught Cortana's eye.
"Hey you two, look at that one." A waypoint marked the one she was referencing. 'Protect a VIP at an important celebration. Reward of 500,000 jewels if uninjured. Celebration from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.'
"Someone is really afraid that they'll be attacked." The Chief noted.
"Yeah, otherwise there wouldn't be that big of a reward." Cortana said.
The three agreed that it would be a good job to take, and so told Mirajane. They were leaving the guild when a very drunk Makarov caught them outside the door.
"Make sure you stay low this time." Makarov said with a slur. "The Magic Council is already giving me trouble because of you. I can't believe you threatened them like that, and now they're hounding me about Jellal. I know he's good, but they won't believe me. What'll happen next?" He trailed off.
Makarov went back inside the guild. Or tried to, anyways. He actually ran into the closed door a couple times before getting his bearings and opening it. The Arbiter was amused at this show.
"Is that how all humans react to alcoholic drinks?"
"Some are even worse."
The Arbiter laughed at that, and the two set off for their job.
The Master Chief had to resist the urge to slap the man in front of him. They had gone to the address provided in the flyer, and found a rather plump, bald man in a black suit with a blue-and-red striped tie waiting for them. He had explained that he was an important business man, who was very wealthy. Cortana had painfully pointed out that he was also very full of himself. Inside his house, in the atrium, were two statues of himself, made of gold. And they hadn't even gone inside the front door.
Their mission was to protect his equally important- and equally arrogant, no doubt- daughter while she attended her friend's birthday party. The party was a ball, with many people attending. The man was afraid that someone would try to take his daughter for ransom, and he didn't want that happening. The reason the Chief wanted to slap him was because of his reasons.
"I don't want people taking my daughter. After all, I have a lot of money, and I wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Oh, I want my daughter to be safe too, I guess."
The Arbiter seemed equally annoyed. Then they met the daughter. She had on all manner of jewels and makeup, and the dress she was wearing couldn't have gone for anything less than 1,000,000 jewels in a regular store. Somehow, the pair knew that the girl in front of them didn't get it from a store, but from a personal designer. Or lots of them.
"This is Katrina, my daughter." The man introduced.
Katrina looked them over. Because this dimension had a lot of non-humans running around, she didn't seem scared of the non-human in front of her. Or non-humans, as it might be. After all, the Chief was wearing an unknown armor, and didn't have his face showing. She looked bored as she spoke to the Chief.
"Are you even human?"
"Yes."
She looked them over again, then turned to her father.
"They're too tall. Everyone will see them."
The man looked at them again, seeming to just now notice their abnormal height. The Master Chief was a good 7 feet tall, and the Arbiter was a foot taller than him. They were rather easy to notice.
"Is there anything you can do about that? Change your height maybe? Or hide somehow?"
"We can hide, sir. It won't be a problem." The Chief answered.
Katrina looked skeptical, but accepted their help.
"I'm going to go change into my party dress. Wait for me here."
The man and his daughter went inside, not even bothering to invite the Chief or Arbiter in. The door slammed in their faces.
"I can say without a doubt that they were the most unpleasant humans I've ever seen," the Arbiter said, annoyed.
"Don't worry, Arbiter," Cortana comforted him. "Most aren't like that in our dimension."
"That hardly give me comfort, construct. We are no longer in the dimension we know."
Cortana didn't have a response.
After a full hour of waiting, the door to the house had finally opened, and Katrina stepped out. She was in an even more expensive looking dress, and was looking at the two expectantly. A carriage pulled up in front of the house, and Katrina got in. She closed the door behind her.
"I'm sorry, but there isn't enough room for you two in here. You'll have to find some other method of transportation."
Though they both knew that there was no way that the carriage could have supported their weight, they would have appreciated being offered. But maybe it was for the best. The carriage started off, heading down the street.
"Shall we walk, or run?" the Arbiter asked.
The Chief looked after the carriage, which was speeding ahead. Being a Spartan had its advantages, and the Arbiter could keep up.
"We run."
They both took off, easily catching up with the carriage. The people who saw them keeping up with a carriage by running gave them some strange looks, but they ignored it. 10 minutes later, the carriage pulled up in front of another house, just as big as Katrina's own. Katrina stepped out, surprised to see the two already there. The group walked up to the house.
"Remember, you two are supposed to be hiding, so-" Katrina stopped, not seeing them. There was only some heat waves on either side of her, rising from the ground. She shrugged and went inside. The heat waves followed her, undetected.
There was nothing exciting until the very end of the party. At about 2:45, when the guests had just finished giving the girl, Jenny, her presents, something happened. A boy, not much older than Jenny, brought a nicely wrapped box. There were some others behind him, much older people, who didn't have a box or gift for the birthday girl. That got the Master Chief's attention immediately. The Arbiter was also suspicious. They moved closer.
The girl opened the box. She looked inside, and suddenly gasped. The men all drew weapons, pointing them at random targets. Some of them grabbed guests, holding their weapons against the guests throats or heads. One of them grabbed Katrina.
"Since all of you are rather wealthy people, we've decided to hold you all for ransom. It will get us quite a lot of money, I'm sure. And no one here can stop it!" The leader began laughing evilly.
The Chief pulled a Z-250 Directed Energy Engagement Weapon, more commonly known as the Light Rifle, from his dimensional storage. He and the Arbiter had agreed that it would be best to not leave evidence, so they had brought along Promethean weapons. The Arbiter decided on something with a faster rate of fire, pulling out a Z-130 Directed Energy Automatic Weapon, or Suppressor for short. The both went to the center of the room and de-cloaked.
"That's not going to happen." The Chief said, pointing his Light Rifle at the leader's head.
Everyone was shocked at the sudden appearance of the newcomers. They had come out of nowhere, and were pointing unknown weapons at the kidnappers.
"Who are you? Some hotshot who thinks they can stand in my way? Ah, no matter. Get him!"
The kidnappers released their captives, and rushed towards the Chief and the Arbiter. The two never let them get close.
The Chief pulled up his scope and sniped the first one in the head. He fell and disintegrated into little bits of orange code. The Arbiter didn't even bother aiming. He just held down the trigger and pointed it in the general direction of the kidnappers. Two fell, then one more. The Chief continued sniping, but noticed the leader trying to sneak off, his face white with fear.
"He's mine." The Arbiter nodded while he reloaded. The kidnappers had gotten the great idea to leave as fast as they could, but they weren't able to. The Arbiter mowed them down before they could even start running.
The Chief stalked towards the leader, who was desperately trying to get out the door. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten that his men had locked it to prevent anyone's escape. The Chief walked up behind the man.
"I advise you to surrender before I pull the trigger."
The man turned, still white, but defiant. "Never!"
The Master Chief just walked up to him and slammed the butt of the rifle into his head, effectively knocking him unconscious. He heard footsteps behind him and whirled, but it was only the Arbiter, who had finished dealing with the others. They put away their weapons, and noticed that all the spectators had crowded to the other side of the room, trying to get away from the two. Cortana laughed.
"Well, looks like you made quite an impression on the ladies, Chief."
He just hit his head, which shut her up.
"It's alright. We're not going to hurt you. We were hired to protect you, in fact." The Arbiter took the initiative. Katrina was in the very front of the group, and the Arbiter approached her.
"Her father was the one who hired us, in fact." He said, pointing at Katrina. Everyone looked at her, trying to see if the strange being was telling the truth. Finally, she nodded, but only slightly.
Everyone relaxed, and the Chief picked up the unconscious leader. He was going straight to the Magic Council. As soon as everyone got over the shock of what happened, they crowded the two with questions and thanks. They were especially wondering what had happened to the ones who had gotten disintegrated. They assumed, when they didn't get an answer, that those people were dead. When the two UNSC members were finally able to get Katrina to her carriage and take her home, it was 3:30. She didn't speak to them for the rest of the trip.
When they reached her house, her father came out.
"Ah, I see that my fortune is safe!"
Which almost had the Chief smacking him again. In fact, John came very close, but restrained himself. The man paid them, and they walked off without a word.
They returned to the guild and found Thomas and William finished with their mission.
"It was a piece of cake. Idiots didn't even know what hit 'em." Thomas laughed.
The four were going back to their soon-to-be barracks, and then the Chief and Arbiter would take their prisoners to the Magic Council. But they had a little trouble leaving. They were walking out the door when Natsu stopped them.
"I want to fight you guys!" Natsu said with enthusiasm, looking at the Chief and Arbiter.
Thomas and William looked at Natsu like he was crazy, and then burst out laughing. The Arbiter joined them.
"You want to fight us? You wouldn't survive 5 minutes!" He said.
"Yes I could! Nobody can beat me! Well, except for Erza. And Gramps."
After laughing for a few more seconds, the Arbiter finally got control of himself. Thomas and William were still having trouble.
"No, I don't think you could beat one of us." The Arbiter shook his head.
"What do you mean 'one of you'? I'll take you both on at the same time! And I'll win!" Natsu yelled.
"No, you wouldn't. Besides, I'm sure that even if I agreed, the Spartan would have a different view of it."
"Spartan?"
"Yes, the Master Chief, as you know him. He would see it differently."
This time the Chief spoke up.
"I will not fight you, either with the Arbiter or not, with you being the only opponent. For you to have to face us two alone would give us an unfair advantage."
"Yeah," Thomas interrupted, almost finished laughing. "To make it fair, you'd have to face them with at least three others. And even then I'm not sure you'd win!" He was purposefully understating their abilities, mostly because nobody would believe him otherwise.
"Well I'll fight, if you'll let me." Erza said, walking up behind Natsu.
"Me too. I enjoy a good challenge." Laxus called from his perch.
"Don't forget me!" Gajeel said.
"We shall discuss this later," the Arbiter said, exasperated.
"No, we'll discuss it now!" Natsu roared.
In the end, the only way to get home was to agree to a fight. The two of the UNSC's best versus the four of Fairy Tail's best. And everyone was suddenly interested. Cana had even started a betting pool on who would win. Everyone bet on Erza and the rest.
Finally able to leave, the four did so, and were heard talking on the way out.
"You have to feel sorry for them," Thomas told his brother. "They don't know what they just did."
And this is the end. Sorry, New Universe, but your idea will come at the beginning of next chapter. To my guest reader, I have set it up for you. I hope you enjoy it. I had some issues with this chapter. The Halo Series hasn't really specified what happens to the people who get vaporized. I'm guessing that they die, but I wanted to do something else. So, imagine that somewhere, the UNSC has a database full of the people whom have been hit by the Promethean weapons, and that they can be taken out at will. That seems ok, right? I don't know. You tell me. Well, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I'll see you next update.
-Portertrain9