Disclaimer; I own nothing
Halo is owned by 343 Studios and Microsoft
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is owned by Nintendo and Monolift software.
() Author side note
"Cortana talking"
'Thinking'
(authors note: changed the last paragraph) Edit 8/14/23
Chapter 2: Destroyed and desolate civilizations. And a tree?
"Chief. Chief! CHIEF!" Cortana yells to get him up. "CHIEF! WAKE UP! Your gonna want to see this!" He stirs with some pained groans and begins to wake up to gather his bearings. "Oh good, You're finally awake. Did you enjoy your nap out of cryostasis?" She says cheekily,
"If by nap you mean getting knocked out from falling into orbit and getting hit with debris moving faster than a covenant ghost ramming me at full speed." Chief groggily retorts as he pushes some debris off him and gets up to take in his surroundings. "How long was I out?"
"Not too long, just a little over half an hour. Speaking of you feeling like that, You took some serious damage when we made impact. In fact, this might be the worst crash landing you have suffered so far," Cortana says with a more professional tone in her voice as she pops up in the upper right corner of his HUD, along with his vitals on the top left. "It's concerning but nothing that should stop you from operating at eighty-five percent. You broke two ribs, top left, and right middle, and fractured the femur on your left leg. Cracked your humerus on your right arm, and you have some internal bleeding thanks to the broken middle rib. Plus to put some icing on this fiery cake you are starting to run a fever. Thankfully there were no major injuries to your legs, so hey, we have your luck to thank for that. Switching to our main topic, like I said when I woke you up, to take a look around."
Looking up he sees a sky covered in dark clouds with the occasional thunderclap and lightning strike. Turning to his left, he sees a tornado raging in the distance, and from using his binocular feature on his HUD he can spot a giant eel-like creature flying further off. Turning to his right and onward, he sees a desolate building and at a distance more of them. With architecture that he isn't familiar with, it might have been like something from a city on a well-known colony planet. Making a full 90-degree turn he sees the burning shipwrecked Forward Unto Dawn, or at least what's left of it. Giving Chief the question. "Did we land on a glassed colony planet, and if so where are we?"
"No, we didn't and I've been trying to get a scan of our impact data, but I haven't been able to get anything. So either something is jamming my scanners. Or we're too deep under the surface for me to get a proper signal." She says with a bit of frustration. Chief nods in affirmation as he begins walking around in the wreckage to take in his surroundings. "Did any ships tail us when we jumped through that portal?"
"No. None did." She responds bewildered.
"Why didn't any of them follow us?" Chief asks while still looking around.
"Maybe it could have been when I opened the slip-space portal for us to jump through; it was precarious when I opened it, by the way. When one of the engines got damaged, they saw our ship falling apart as we went through the portal and assumed we had died in it. That's my theory, at least."
"Do you at least know where you tried sending us before we crashed?"
"At first, I tried sending us back to one of the colony worlds that we're glassed, best case scenario, we find or repair a ship that can fly us back to the UNSC. Worst case; we wait for them to find us with an SOS signal I'd send out. However, when one of the engines blew up on us, I just jammed in some random coordinates and opened another one. With the remaining power left, I kept the portal open and the engines going while they were exploding. I was so focused on getting us through the portal alive that I wasn't paying attention to what I punched in."Cortana says while appearing on his HUD shoulders sagged and with a tired deadpan. "So no Chief, I don't know where that portal sent us."
As she was talking, Chief took some time to look around to see if he could find anything that wasn't damaged during the crash, and what he found was an assault rifle with 136 bullets. A covenant carbine with 36 bullets, a shotgun with 15 shells, a fully charged energy sword, and a partially charged one with 76% of its power. A plasma pistol at 89%, 30 bullets for a magnum, two fragmentation grenades, and three plasma grenades. As for medical supplies, he could only find a single damaged bio foam injector with 75% of its foam left. Anything else he found was too damaged to have any use or could explode on him while he was using it. Looking at his limited weapons concerned him, and Cortana's explanation only made Chief even more so about his current situation. He was moderately verging on to being heavily injured, couldn't find any provisions, didn't know where they were, with no hope of contacting reinforcements, the UNSC as a whole, or even a distress signal because they were too deep underneath the surface or not high enough to send out anything. Not to mention he had no way of restocking ammo and medical supplies. If he was forced into combat, he was going to run out of ammo really fast if he wasn't careful with what he used his weapons for. For first aid, he could do without but he didn't know what he'd run into and one wrong move could end his life. With a heavy sigh, he treks his way down the streets of the destroyed cityscape.
Shortly after beginning his new adventure Chief hears footsteps but not a single pair but hears several. His motion tracker then picks up several life signs with the hostile color highlighted on them, and to really make them a hostile force coming to his location, he hears distorted roars coming from that direction. In the hopes of avoiding combat so early, Chief activates his camo, runs to the side of a building to bypass his enemies spotting or bumping into him, and holds still on the wall to avoid attracting attention. After he puts his back to the wall and turns around to see what is coming for him, he spots several humanoid and animalistic creatures colored in a dark grey and red matter that looks like their skin. They had small and large tentacles sticking out all over their deformed bodies. These things also had many different body types, from smaller ones looking more human. To medium-sized ones with different-sized body parts. To larger ones running on all fours. All of those strange creatures were running toward his crash site. However, what really caught his attention was the bright blue color light in their mouths and the large crystals of the same color that stuck out all over their bodies.
"What are those things?" Cortana says with worry and curiosity while continuing her observations of the creatures. "They look like something the flood would make. Excluding the bright blue crystals, of course, also the grey and red skin. What's even stranger is that I'm picking up corrupted data from them. Like they were also some sort of artificial intelligence at some point."
As the remaining creatures run past him, Chief takes this opening to run to a rundown building to hide in. Running up three flights of stairs, Chief runs over to an open window, deactivates his active camo, gets on one knee, switches his rifle for his carbine, and looks down its scope to better understand what those creatures were doing at his crash site. From what he could gather, the flood-like beasts tore through the remains of the wrecked ship. What they were looking for he didn't know but from his experiences with the parasite, most likely people to infect or kill.
"Chief! They can shoot lasers from the crystals!"
"Where!"
"Fifth one to your right! The crystal charges up with a dark orange color before emitting the same color laser."Aiming toward the position Cortana gave him, he saw said creature blasting some debris from its crystal where its left hand should be. However, he did notice that its aim wasn't precise unlike the flood, and how they used their own weapons and covenant weapons expertly because the recoil of its own blast caused the monster to stagger back a few feet as it fired.
"Welp, I guess it was a good thing we didn't stick around for too long and we know that those things are a definitive hostile," Cortana says sheepishly. Chief is left unamused at her attempt to shine a light on their predicament, so he grunts in response as he relaxes his posture, gets up, and backs away from the window. "Well whatever the case, we need a better view to get a better scope of our surroundings. Maybe after we do that we'll have a direction of where our objective is to get out of here."
"How many floors are left until we reach the top?"
"Just four more, but I'm afraid the two floors and the rest of the staircase leading up to them won't be able to hold your weight. Seeing how you weigh over a thousand pounds alone. Frankly, I'm surprised none of the floors we came up haven't given out under your weight yet."
Chief takes a moment to absorb what Cortana says as he looks around and sees that all around him are holes in the floor and above him is even worse than the floors below him. With this information, he carefully walks over to another window, pokes his head out, and looks up at the building he's in to look up at the walls. "Cortana," Chief says with a plan in mind.
"Hm?"
"Are the walls strong enough to hold my weight for a bit?"
"Depends. What are you planning to do?"
"I'm going to climb out onto this wall, dig my hands and feet into it and use my jetpack to launch myself up to the roof."
"Hmmm, scanning the integrity, it should hold out just long enough for you to launch yourself but the moment you do, the wall will collapse. This also will likely attract the attention of those creatures below us."
He nods but before he proceeds with the plan he looks around for something to hold his carbine to wrap around him. After some time he was able to find two curtains that weren't too damaged, tied them together, and around the carbine, then tied it around himself with the weapon on his chest. Walking back to the window, Chief climbs out, puts his feet on the sill of it, and as far as his fist can reach punches a hole and another one closer for him to grip into the wall. Next, he does the same for his foot, kicking a hole to hold his weight however doing so made loud clanging sounds. Moving quickly, he climbs to the holes he made, realizing he wouldn't be able to make the jump with how he set himself up, punched and kicked two more spots to his right to get a better grip and footing. Rearing himself down he activates his thrusters, launches himself off the wall, and flies up to the roof. As he does so, the wall he jumped off gives out and falls to the ground.
Landing on the roof, he stands up and looks around to see even more of the destroyed and desolate city. Shattered windows, holes in walls, and even more of those things roaming inside some buildings he spots using his HUD to highlight them. Untying the carbine from his chest, he looks through the scope to look at the ground to see destroyed vehicles, both military, and civilian, collapsed bridges, and caved-in tunnels. Old blast marks from artillery fire, weapons that look ancient but familiar, and old missiles that misfired lying on the ground. Looking further out through the scope was a vast sea of darkness with the occasional skyscraper rooftop sticking out.
"Um... Chief. You might want to look behind you." Cortana says in a state of awe. Confused, he turns around to find out why she reacted the way she did and widens his eyes at what he sees. In front of him were two things, something massive lay in front of him. It was clear that it wasn't there before, but it looked like a creature because he could see some scales that were as big if not bigger than scarabs. However, what really caught his attention was that the thing looked like it was cut in half. Large blast marks littered its body, some cut through its hide, while others blasted huge holes through the entire body. Behind the dead creature stood a tower that looked like a tree's base and climbed above the clouds.
"Well, at least we know where we're going now. Maybe we'll find out what happened here when we climb that."
"That seems to be our only option anyway. Looking around I'm not seeing anything else that would get us up there and we should move quickly. Pretty sure those things heard what I had to do to get up here."
"Well, how do you plan on getting us there quickly?"
"Simple," Chief says as he backs up to the edge, gets into a sprinting position, bolts off at full speed, lunges off the other side, activates his jetpack, and uses it to land on another nearby rooftop.
"We use the rooftops to do it and it lets us avoid having to fight those "things" on the ground." Repeating the process to land on another rooftop.
"But what about when you run out of rooftops to jump off of?" Cortana asks with her head tilting.
"Then we stick to the shadows and use the active camouflage, avoid combat as long as possible, run from those things if I need to. Can't waste my ammunition on those things if it can be avoided"
"Good plan. I'll set up a general direction to the tree that's bigger than a covenant cruiser since that's the best I can do right now in terms of navigation. While we're at it I'll also scan the surrounding area while you're moving to see if I can find any working terminals."
Flashback: Shortly after the crash of the Forward unto Dawn
Unknown location:
"That was too close."
"Indeed, it was your majesty. We're lucky nothing went wrong in your meeting with the queen. However, as it stands, that meeting probably only bought us a few more months before we'd need to have another one. Even if we had the Pretorium involved, I'm afraid that the two of you won't be able to come to an agreement."
"I'm well aware Aegaeon, this meeting was hell on my mental state. It also doesn't help that these past few weeks, several nobles have been harassing me to wage war against them."
The individual known as Aegaeon nods solemnly in agreement as the two exit an elevator that leads into a throne room that was littered with paperwork.
"Emperor Nial, I think it would be wise that you got some rest if you feel so fatigued. Your sister would be heartbroken to see you like this."
"As much as I appreciate the gesture Aegaeon, I must decline. She knows this as well as I do that there is too much to do. We've been getting reports of another one of our cargo ships carrying core crystals going missing. An ongoing investigation she's been assisting with, and I can only assume that it's the core crystal hunters or those terrorists who name themselves after a dead titan. Recruiting efforts in Gormott, which I sent Brigid to go there to make sure things go smoothly. Not to mention the chairmen of the trade guild have been trying to contact me about more trade deals, and much more that I'm not willing to go over." The other person named Nial responds with exhaustion in his body language and tone as he slumps onto his throne. Taking a moment to compose himself, he adjusts his sitting position to a more professional one and grabs some paperwork from the large pile next to him to go over what he needs to do next.
"You know Emperor Nial, why not have some of our officials help you with some of that off your plate?"
"Because I don't trust some of them. You know that I've been getting several complaints from them about my choices to halt the annexation of Gormott these past couple of years. At this rate, I fear many of them are plotting to de-thrown me, and them seeing these reports would give them dirt to use against me. The only reason why they still have a seat in this room is that they have too much influence over the people. Getting rid of them would only worsen our country's situation and cause civil unrest. That our enemies would gladly use to their advantage."
Aegaeon simply sighs and nods in agreement as he stands at attention to wait patiently next to the emperor for any new orders that might come up.
About 15 minutes of silence between Ageaon and Nial passes when the two hear the elevator doors ahead of them slide open. The duo turns their attention toward the noise to see a soldier sprinting toward them.
"YOUR MAJESTY, I HAVE URGENT NEWS!" the soldier yells stopping before the duo and catching his breath to better explain his message.
"While you were 'huff' at your meeting with the 'huff' queen, I and several other soldiers spotted unidentifiable objects falling into the cloud sea. At first, we simply thought it was a meteor shower and that it would fizzle out, but as time went on what we thought was a meteor shower to be several pieces of falling debris. Not just small bits but massive chunks of metal, large enough to destroy a third of the capital if it landed on our titan."
"Oh?" Nial responds with intrigue and apprehension from what he just heard, "Do you know where the "meteor shower" landed?"
"We don't have an exact pinpoint of where most of it landed, but from what we could see and scouts we sent out were able to gather. Some of it fell into the abyss surrounding the world tree, while most of it landed near the forbidden zone." A/N (Near the area where the main cast met Ophion for the first time. I don't know if that area even has a name. Just that it's an area people never return from, told by NPCs. I think)
"The forbidden zone!" Aegaeon repeats with curiosity and concern, looking toward Nial for an answer with anticipation of what the emperor's orders would be.
"Were there any casualties when the meteor shower impacted the cloud sea?" Nial asks in concern.
"From our side, a few were shaken up by the waves, nothing aside from a few bruises. However, I can't say the same for other people who might have been in or closer to the area when it impacted."
Taking in what the soldier had reported to him, Nial stands back up and starts speed walking toward the elevator with Aegaeon and the soldier following in pursuit. The three enter the elevator and as it descends Nial gives out his orders.
"For now, send a small salvaging operation to the area along with a scouting party to set up a perimeter of the area so we don't lose any ships. Also, have a larger salvaging group on standby and, when the order is given, send them to that area as well. Second, I want four search and rescue parties sent out along with the salvaging and scouting group. See if anyone is injured or M.I.A and ask what they were able to see. Next, I need you Aegaeon, to go to the communication console to set up another meeting on my personal vessel with the queen so we don't start fighting about who gets what. As for myself, I'll be taking Aegeaon's advice. I need some rest because I have to meet with the chairmen face to face to discuss the salvage's worth so we aren't scammed. I can only hope that the queen has the same plans in mind."
The elevator reaches the first floor and they all head out for their tasks.
"Yes Sir!" The soldier responds as he does a quick salute and runs off toward the docking bays.
"Yes, your majesty," Aegaeon says as he bows and speed walks toward his personal ship. As for Nial, he was also going there to prepare for another long day.
"Oh dear Architect, please make this day go by swiftly."
End of flashback.
Back with Master Chief and Cortana, plus a short time skip:
Chief had made good progress these past three days getting to his destination so far, thanks impart by jumping from rooftop to rooftop. When there were times he had to walk on the surface there weren't many of the flood-like creatures roaming the streets or they were sleeping, allowing him to slip through undetected. When he did get spotted, the things were quick, but they weren't as fast as him and they couldn't turn while they were running. So most of the time Chief could simply outrun the things, jump up to a wall to climb up or to a rooftop.
When the creatures would be in front of him, Chief would sidestep or slide around them and they would trip over themselves trying to turn around, run into a wall, or run off a cliff. However, Chief began feeling the effects of his injuries, and his fever.
Launching himself up to a nearby highway, Cheif takes a moment to slow down and catch his breath, looking around spots a sign with faded-out words. Walking up to it, he noticed that the words were of the English language, trying to piece together what the words said but couldn't make heads or tails about it.
"Cortana, can you decipher what these words are saying?"
"Hmmm, the arrows could be an indicator of this being an exit, and from what I can read is "orbit" and "ahead." Other than that, the words are too faded out for me to make out anything. The good news is, is that we're looking at English here so we're in familiar territory here."
Nodding in affirmation he continues his trek and looks around more of the destroyed environment.
"Have you been able to pick up anything?"
"Yes I have, but they were nothing more than hostile robots. So I decided against bringing them up, besides I couldn't get anything from them anyway. The files were corrupted on them and have been set to combat mode, I was able to shut them down though by overloading their systems. Therefore causing a distraction for us to avoid combat with those things. Other than that, I haven't been able to find anything. Although this does leave me with a question?"
Chief nods for her to continue with her observation.
"Where are the bodies? The moment we crash-landed here, all we've seen so far are the ruins of two civilizations. The other civilization ahead of us I have no idea what we'll find there, but here, there are clear signs that a war was fought here. Destroyed vehicles, buildings, empty bullet casings, scattered weapons, even craters of bomb drops and artillery bombardments, but I haven't seen a single corpse anywhere. It's clear they weren't fighting the Covenant, what with the lack of their corpses, weapons, armor, and vehicles, and that there's these many buildings are still standing."
"They could have been fighting a human enemy faction, or it could have been terrorists. As for that other place, it's clear that it wasn't there before. How it got there is a mystery and it's also not Covenant. However, from what damage I could glean from it, something shot at it with weapons that could be similar to their glassing beams. We'll have to get closer to confirm that."
Walking around some more debris, he notices that in front of him, he's reached the end of the highway because there was literally nothing but the body of the dead creature in front of him. However, in front of his path forward stood five of the flood-like creatures. To his left was a door that led east, Not wanting to waste time sneaking around them, he unties the carbine and swiftly takes them out before they even knew what was happening, causing two of them to fall off the edge and plummet into the abyss and the other three to fall on the floor. Tying the carbine back on his person, he walks past them to the edge of the highway.
"So this it eh? It looks a lot bigger up close. Speaking of which, what killed this thing? It wasn't the Covenant's doing if it was we'd see remnants of glassing beams all over it." Cortana says as she pops up on the top right of his HUD with curiosity "Also, Is there even a way up or into it that doesn't involve more climbing?" Said curiosity turning into exasperation.
Looking down, Chief saw the dark abyss below him. Looking to his right, he saw limbs sticking out of the creature and more of the desolate city, and to his left, Chief spotted his ticket onto the giant corpse.
"There. Southwest of our current position is a bridge we can use."
Said bridge was a collection of broken highway chunks and grey flesh melded together, presumably belonging to the dead creature. Using the binocular feature, Chief sees several more of the flood-like creatures walking and sleeping along the bridge.
"And of course, our only way in is blocked off by those things!"
"Shouldn't be a problem. I still have ten minutes left of the active camo. If we move quickly, I can find a spot to stay hidden while still moving. If not, then we wait for the recharge or strategically withdraw."
"Well, when did you decide to take lessons from Johnson? Cortana retorts as she pops up on his HUD with a smirk ready to bite back more but, immediately turns serious.
"Chief, those things you took out earlier are getting back up!"
Quickly turning around, he can see the creatures slowly get up to their knees, but one is smacked back down to the floor by Chief. Then a moment later have its head crushed under Chief's foot as he stomps it to finish the job. Not wasting a moment to look at his 'footwork' Chief sprints over to the second one and starts wailing on it furiously with hard-hitting jabs, hooks, and uppercuts. All aimed at what could be the weak points of the monster. After a fierce uppercut, the creature tries to roar out in pain but as it does Chief grabs its arm and throws it at its companion that had just got back up. The impact of it being thrown caused both to fall back down and on top of each other. Not giving them a moment to recover, Chief runs over with an armed frag grenade and sticks it inside the creature by punching his way into the stomach area and leaving it inside, unpinned. Getting away from the future explosion and attention that it would cause, Chief runs toward the door to continue his trek toward his new objective."Ah! good idea Chief, hopefully, this little distraction will be enough for us to get there without using the remaining power left," Cortana says joyfully.
As Chief nears the door, he activates his scanner to see on the other side of the door held about six of the monsters in a room to the right of a hallway. Ahead of him on the other side of the door are three more of them resting, an explosion goes off behind him as he reaches the door. Activating his camo, Chief kicks the door in and moves to the side, as his motion tracker picks up movement from the monsters inside and further out. Waiting for a few seconds as some of the creatures ran past him to investigate the noise. Chief slips by into the hallway to the other side. Quickly opening the second door, Chief finds out that the hallway he entered through led him to the bridge to get to the massive corpse. He then sneaks by the other monsters that also were heading toward the same area where his grenade went off.
Running across the bridge with his active camo, Chief had little trouble with the creatures getting in the way. Reaching the other side of the bridge, he slows down to take in his new environment. Deactivating his active camo so it can recharge.
"Ah, finally a scene change. To be honest I was getting tired of seeing the same destroyed, desolate city for over seventy-six hours. Now we get to see what lies ahead of us in this giant destroyed, desolate, and decayed corpse for the foreseeable future. Until we get to the giant tree."
Chief releases some air out of his nose in amusement at Cortana's humor as he treks through his new locale.
"Glad to know one of us is enjoying ourselves."
"Of course I am. Did you forget that while you were asleep for nearly five years I was still active and sending out distress signals?" Cortana responds indignantly.
"Aside from upgrading your suit, I didn't have much to do. Repairing the ship was impossible. Getting the power to work in the section where we were was a good distraction. Then after I managed to fix that I just made a bunch of memoirs if anyone found us after you died. But now I don't have to really worry about it since we crash-landed in a place with no backup, quite noticeable injuries, no weapons, ammo, food, or water, and with these things being just as durable as the flood."
"We've been in worse situations." Chief replies in bemusement. "And just like all those other times, we'll make it through."
Cortana smiles with Chief's reassurance, but behind that smile is dread. As the conversation ends, she takes a moment to contemplate about her situation, 'I know you can, but how many more times can I?'
Time passes throughout his trek through the carcass while switching his active camo on and off any time he gets near any of the creatures lurking about. While always checking his tracker for any movement he wasn't aware of in his peripheral. Chief and Cortana had seen some of what was once a thriving civilization with such a vast array of different architecture and culture. Only to end up suffering the same fate as the city behind them.
"I know you theorized that this sort of damage could have been done by glassing beams but since we're here and I'm getting a better look at it, I don't think it was."
"Agreed. Glassing beams would leave a lot less than this. Even a covenant cruiser's port-side weapons would leave a lot more damage than what's currently here."
"There's also the same issue from the desolate city I'm noticing that's kinda starting to creep me out."
"No bodies, Covenant or human. I noticed too. They could have been absorbed by the creatures here as well."
Cortana lets out a small sigh in resignation but nods her head in agreement. "Yeah, let's go with that. No point in mulling over it I suppose."
Coming up to a dead end, Chief looks up to see that there are platforms that lead up and cut off to what might be an entrance.
"Hey hold on. Before we move on, to your left there's something that's caught my interest. It looks like a bunch of... eggs? Pods? Weird rock shapes over there." Cortana says befuddled at what she's trying to see. Walking over to them while trying not to get the attention of the creatures nearby, Chief inspects the rock, putting his hand against it. He noticed that it felt very hollow like it was a shell of an egg. He could punch through it to see what was inside it, but that would catch the creatures near him attention. So instead he walks around it to look at the other ones, and seeing how he was far enough from the creatures and wasn't picking anything up from his motion tracker as well he deactivates his active camo. Most of them were destroyed or had the same hollow feeling to them. Walking around one more Chief paused for a moment to see that this one had something inside it. In front of him looked like a statue in the fetal position of something, what it was to him he had no idea. Causing Chief to frown at what he was looking at.
"Cortana. Do you know what this is?"
"No idea. I'm currently scrolling through a list of every statue made in history and nothing matches the design of this-" Cortana pauses for a moment to emphasize her confusion "thing."
The statue looked humanoid at a distance but getting an actual look at it, it looked anything but human. It had what looked like armor plating on its knees and shoulders, an odd helmet design, and the oddest part about it are the fins protruding on its hips and back like it was a cape.
"It looks more like a corpse than a statue," Chief says, getting up after finishing his examination.
"Not to mention this thing looks like it was going through a mutation when it was alive."
Cortana chimed in to add to his thought. "Whatever it was going mutate into we'll never know. Maybe a weird fish person, seeing how it looks like fins on their hips."
Finished with his inspection of the petrified corpse, Chief gets back up and notices a pathway that led upward, sort of like a spiral. It led up to his destination, but his path was littered with more of the monsters. Looking at his HUD, the active camo was recharging and wouldn't be useable for another ten minutes. Not wanting to waste time by waiting for his module to recharge and risk being found, Chief plots out his landing spots in his head.
"Cortana, are any of these spots I plan to jump from able to support my weight?" He inquires as he points to a rock pointed out, above that to a piece of walkway being held up by three girders, further up a cliff side to his right, higher up another rock, and finally the entranceway.
"Hm, Up that high?" Cortana asks as she is looking at his LZs and calculating his trajectories, weak spots on his LZs, and any other factors to consider.
"That's about a hundred feet in height Chief. As for where you plan to land, the first rock's gonna break if you stand on it for more than three seconds, even if you do land on its part closest to the wall that won't change anything. If you jump off before that then it'll definitely collapse. For the walkway, I'd recommend you try to land closer to the support beams, they might be able to hold on if you don't land on them too hard. As for the cliffside, it should be fine if you land further away from the cliff's edge. The second pointed rock should hold if you land closer to the wall, and as for your last LZ try not to land on it too hard and move quickly. Cause the moment that first rock hits the ground, we're gonna get those monsters' attention."
With his landing zones secure enough and Cortana's guidance on where to land, Chief flies up to his first LZ and lands closer to the wall, but just as Cortana had predicted it began to crack under his feet. So with no hesitation, he jumps off for extra height and flies onto the walkway. Unfortunately, the moment he lands the ground beneath him gives out, grunting as he falls, Chief's heart begins to race as adrenaline quickly pumps through his falling figure. As he falls time begins to slow to a point of near stand still and his thoughts race much faster than normal, experiences what spartans are known for and what his late friend Kelly called spartan time. Quickly looking for anything to grab onto, he spots the supporting girder he missed his landing on. Reaching out for it, he's only able to grab it with his bad arm, and as he grabs it time resumes a millisecond after. Hanging on for dear life and grunting in pain as he could both feel and hear the strain his arm is going through, as well as the girder he was holding onto giving loud creaking noises with him dangling.
"Chief! Are you okay?!" Cortana yelped in panic.
"Hrrg! I'm fine! How bad is it looking down below?"
Pulling himself up, Cortana responds with, "Well they know we're here and they look hungry."
Getting on top of the girder, Chief looks down, he could see that the creatures were on the move, with them roaring at him and some taking aim with their hands that crystals mounted to them. Looking back up to his next LZ, Chief uses his jetpack and flies up to the cliff's edge, where he meets some unexpected guests charging at him. Quickly unsheathing his shotgun, Chief fires two shells, his first shell causes its first target to get launched back into three other ones as they all fall to the ground. The other shell launched four of them back, crippling them in the process, however not as far back as it did with his first shell. With time he bought himself, Chief sheathes his shotgun, walked back, and sprints forward to jump off the cliff. Using his momentum from his jump, Chief flies up to the next rock, except he isn't able to get the height he needs to land on it. So he ends up slamming into it, Chief tries to grab onto the other side of it to hold on but the sheathed sniper on his chest isn't making it any easier. He starts to slide the rock because he wasn't able to find anything to put his grip on. So thinking quickly, Chief pulls out one of his energy swords and stabs it into the wall beside him, temporarily halting his fall. With something to hold on to, Chief pulls himself up, however as he does this, He is struck in the back of his left leg by one of the monster's lasers, taking about thirty percent of his shields.
Making sure he has a firm grip on the girder, he deactivates the energy sword and trying not to dangle too much on his lifeline, quickly sheathes it back to his leg. Chief then reaches up to try and pull himself up when Cortana stops him.
"Chief! Don't pull yourself up right here. The support is barely holding right here, try climbing to the other side of the walkway then pull yourself up. I'm putting up a blueprint on your HUD of where it can hold you and where it can't."
With a strained grunt in confirmation and with a way forward without falling, Chief climbs under the walkway toward the other side while trying to not put too much strain on the girders holding him. All the while the creatures down below continue to take potshots at him, they manage to hit him three more times leaving him with only twenty percent of his shields left by the time he reaches the other side.
Carefully pulling himself up once more, he stands on the walkway where the girder is and looks forward toward the crumbling path ahead of him.
"Cortana?"
"Just like when you were climbing with the blueprints I put up before it should be no different here. Just put your feet on where the support girders are and you should be fine."
Taking a moment to look where she highlighted, taking in a deep breath, Chief lowers his stance into a running position. A second later, he bolts off toward the other side, putting his feet where Cortana said he'd be fine. On the last one, he jumps off to his second-to-last LZ, luckily managing to land on top of it without too much trouble. However not wanting to waste his momentum, He turns around and with a long jump makes it to his destination. Landing on his last LZ, the ground beneath him also begins to strain under his weight. Not wanting a repeat what happened less than a minute ago, Chief books it into the hallway.
"Hey, We made it," Cortana says cheerfully as Chief slows down to a walk seeing as they were now safe for the moment. Simply giving an affirmative grunt, he walks through the small and short hallway in silence.
"So. Another scene change," Cortana says in curiosity "From a desolate city to a desolate corpse, to a small hallway with a large circled room at the end. Think we can take a moment to look around? It looks like we're safe for the time being."
Chief stops at the entrance to the room with his rifle raised as he looks around. To his left were strange markings on the wall, where he was standing he couldn't make out what they were from where he was standing. Maybe a map or some blueprints for something big. To his left was a dark grey spherical crystal that look like someone or something punched it at the center and caused the object to sport several cracks all over it. Below him, the path lowers to several pods circling the wall completely sealed.
Finally, further in front of him was a hallway that led to the exit, and on the exit was a large tree root that led outside.
Giving Cortana another reason to want to stop and see what was around them, so to appease his curious AI companion he reluctantly listens to her request with some apprehension.
"Scan first."
Doing as he says, Cortana scans their surroundings and Chief looks at his motion tracker to see if there are any hostiles.
"Nope, I'm not picking anything up, so we should be good. Speaking of being good, look to your right I wanna see what that is."
Walking up to said markings, Chief looks at it with a quizzical eye and Cortana analyzes it to see what information it holds. From what they could gleam it looked to be an evolution tree. At the bottom of the tree were two humanoid beings similar to the one they had both looked at earlier, one male and the other one female respectively. Cortana hums in curiosity as she analyzes the pathing the two genders could have changed into given enough time to evolve.
"Looks like we found out what those eggs could have spawned into given enough time, and that there is a female species. Each creature they could have possibly evolved to has a description next to it but the language is unknown. I'm scrolling through all known languages in recorded history and none of them match what we're looking at. I'm even trying to combine different letters from different languages together but I still can't make out anything."
"Then forget about trying to decipher it. What can you make out of those creatures' pictures on the tree?" Chief says wanting Cortana to work quickly so they can avoid getting ambushed.
"Fine fine, let's see. well towards the female portion, the first branching path leads to a weird humanoid that's taller in stature but it's also lankier. Most of its mass is centered toward its upper body and it's got strange tendrils all over the back of its head. The second one looks like a species of turtle, Can't really make anything else out about it, unfortunately. The final path leads to a whale-like creature with wing-like fins and also sports several tendrils along its back and stomach. As for the male gender, the first path diverts to a weird giraffe creature that once again sports tendrils on its head and upper neck. The second one looks like a serpent of some sort with its body having several wings on it for flight. As for the last one I have no clue what it looks like."
Looking quizzically at the evolution tree himself as Cortana described what they were seeing it left him with several questions but only needed to ask one.
"Why would a human-like species regress into animals?"
"It's not just that Chief, some of those paths lead to creatures that look like they can't even defend themselves. What a strange alien species. Anyway, on to the next thing that has sparked my interest, go into that lower area I want to see what's inside those pods and why that large gem seems to hold so much importance."
Turning around as she asked, Chief walks to the edge and slides down into the lowest part of the room, and stopped in the middle to get a full look at what was in front of and around him.
"Think you can-" Cortana tries to ask but is cut off.
"I'm not opening them."
"Well fine then caveman, Your no fun."Cortana retorts indignantly and makes Chief raise an eyebrow at her behavior. Quickly shrugging it off Chief takes about three steps forward, but then stops as a loud crashing sound makes Chief raise his rifle where the sound made itself known. In front of the exit is the biggest creature he's seen so far, it was three times his size, the creature has three arms, two used for walking and balance, and the third limb on its right shoulder was pointing at Chief which has its palm glowing a bright orange. Its face sports several symmetrical diamond-shaped crystals along its face as if it was its eyes, and one large crystal on its forehead sticking out as if something stabbed its head with it and not being able to get it off. Its skin was the same grey color he's seen on every other creature similar to it on this planet. Finally was its mouth, Chief couldn't see a tongue or even teeth, just a dark void that looked like it went on forever.
Immediately, Chief makes a beeline for the exit, only to have the massive monster blocking him off as it roars and slams its third arm to slam on the ground to crush him. However, Chief rolls back and fires upon the monster's attacking limb while backing away to gain distance.
"I thought you said this place was clear?!"
"It was! I scanned the room several times and I didn't pick anything up."
Roaring in pain from the 7.62 bullets piercing its skin, it charges at him to crush Chief under its massive frame. Only for Chief to dive out of the way, falling into the lower area of the room. Getting back up quickly, Chief takes aim and empties the rest of the magazine into the creature's large frame. Enraged by its target damaging it more, The creature lifts it's one of its arms, and within its palm, a bright blue light shines within it, and several particles of the same light appear from thin air and rush toward it.
"Cortana! What's it doing?"
"I'm picking up a growing energy reading coming from its hand. It's charging up an attack, and with how high and fast it's growing it'll be strong enough to evaporate your shields and eviscerate us."
Immediately after her warning, the creature stops charging up and lowers its head to the floor. Only half a second later a large dark orange laser comes out of its head and using the recoil of the blast lifts it up nearly missing the Chief but destroys one of the nearby pods. The laser causes the pod to explode, sending Chief to fly forward and face vault as he screeches to a halt on the floor. A few seconds pass and Chief tries to get up but is slow due to the shock of the explosion.
"CHIEF LOOK OUT!" Cortana shouts out to warn him, however, he is too slow to respond because as he looks up the creature is already in front of him. To slow to dodge, Chief gets to one knee, and with his foot planted and arms in front of him to block he braces himself. The blow not only flings him into the air but also takes out his remaining shields and makes him lose his weapon. Landing with a loud clang Chief ends up on the back of the higher elevated part of the room. Scrambling back up to his feet, he unsheaths his M6D magnum and shoots at its face while strafing the monster and keeping his distance.
"Weaknesses?!"
Cortana appears in the top right of his HUD along with a picture of the creature's frame in the center-right.
"I have two possible targets, its hand that gathers energy or its mouth that releases it."
"What's the most effective?" Chief says this as he dives out of the way of another charge attack.
"Throwing a grenade in its mouth and forcing it closed right before it fires should do the trick. However, you'll need to do it with your shields back up if we don't want to die from the blast."
With a plan now in motion Chief dodges another bullhead rush from the creature as he darts over, grabs his rifle, and puts it on his back. Quickly rushing back, He leaps into the air with the aid of his jetpack, lands on the creature's back, and tries to hold on. The monster in response to Chief mounting it, flails around in the hopes of throwing him off. Even using its third arm to try and slap its back to crush him. Despite its best efforts in throwing Chief off, he holds on and the creature takes a moment to catch its breath after flailing around so much. Master Chief not one to miss such an opening uses it to quickly climb onto its head, arms one of his last plasma grenades, and shoves it into its mouth. As a gag reflex, the monster tries throwing up the explosive and flailing even harder than before. Jumping off, and taking a few steps back Chief, unsheathes his shotgun and aims it at the creature's head. Not a moment later the plasma grenade blows up causing the monster to roar in pain and fall to the floor.
Keeping his weapon trained on the monster, Chief eyes closely for even the slightest movement. A few seconds pass and nothing happens. Believing the coast to be clear, he begins to relax, only for his HUD to pick up several hostile signatures to his right.
"CHEIF, YOU NEED TO RUN! I'm picking up a large number of unknown hostiles coming this way!" As she says that, Chief hears several roars and sprinting footsteps coming toward his position.
"How did they get up here?! None of those creatures displayed any kind of agility or strength that would be needed to get up here."
"They're not coming from where we came, they're coming from that thing's hole in the wall it made earlier. Turns out that hole was a tunnel and when we fed it a plasma grenade, it decided it wanted its friends to join us as it died."
Sheathing his empty rifle and running past the body of the downed creature, Chief makes a beeline toward the hallway ahead.
Sprinting through the hallway towards the opening, he spots a giant root going further out. Getting outside, he stops to take a second to look where he should run to, only to see that the tree's root he's standing on runs up to the base. With his destination set, he promptly makes his way toward the tree. Not wanting to look back, Chief asks about his situation.
"Cortana! How far back are they?!"
"They just made their way through the room and are in the hallway!"
Halfway to the base, Chief notices that the base goes inside and that there were metal flooring. Further beyond that looked to be an elevator.
"There's our way out," Chief says as he reaches the metal floor.
"And next to it is a control panel! Chief, hook me up to it!"
Reaching the panel, Chief puts his hand above the controls and Cortana appears and does her work.
"How long will this take!? Those things are moving fast, and I don't have the same luxury of buying you time as we did back on the Dawn."
"Keep your helmet on. I'm working as fast as I can here, this stuff is more advanced than it looks,"Cortana retorts as she pulls ups screen after screen going through passwords and other security channels.
Looking back, Chief unsheathes his carbine to take a few potshots to buy himself some more time hoping that they would trip over each other. Luckily he managed to trip up a few of them causing the creatures to stall for a few seconds. Looking at his ammo he only had twelve shells for his shotgun left, twelve plasma bullets for his carbine, and was out of ammo for his assault rifle. For his side arms, he wanted to save them unless he was out of ammo for the rest of his weapons. As for his grenades, he only had one plasma grenade left.
"Cortana!"
"I'm Done! Chief yank me!"
Not a second later, the elevator doors open and Chief grabs Cortana out of the panel. Running into the elevator to see another control panel, putting his hand above it so Cortana could activate the elevator, only for nothing to happen.
"Chief it's just a button, Push it!"
Doing what she said, Chief turns around to see the doors closing behind him and the creatures entering the room. Grabbing his shotgun in case they break through the door, the platform he's standing on rises quickly.
As he goes up, he hears the creatures trying to get to him by punching, scratching the door, and roaring. He even heard them fire off their lasers to try and get through. As the sounds of their struggle became more distant Chief lowers his weapon, and Cortana tries to lighten the mood.
"Another close call eh? Those things move a lot faster than they look too. What's this? Like the third time this week?"She jokes as Chief sits down and puts his back against the panel to catch his breath.
"What happened back there?"
Cortana's jokey attitude drops.
"What do you mean what happened?"
"You said that you scanned multiple times for anything that would be in the room."
She stiffens upon hearing Chief's question.
'Damn it! I thought I still had that function, I must have accidentally severed off that ability when Chief was climbing.'
Realizing her mistake she scrambles in her head to come up with an answer, Cortana manages to come up with one that would satisfy her partner all while keeping a calm and composed face over less than a second.
"Well Chief, it turns out when those things are 'sleeping' they don't emit a pulse as if it's dead so I didn't pick up anything until it was already crashing through the wall of boulders."
Silently praying that Chief would accept her answer, he takes a moment to think over what she said.
"So it looks like this "tree" isn't a tree but is actually a man-made tower with an elevator. Who'd a thought." Cortana says, trying to change Chief's attention away from her answer before he can find any holes in her answer.
"Tree or tower, doesn't really matter right now. It got us away from those things, and hopefully, it'll be the last time we see them." Chief says as he looks up to see when the elevator would stop. Only to find out that it goes up further than he can see.
"How far up does this take us? And any new injuries?"
"Judging from the speed of this platform and what we could gleam outside probably half an hour. If it goes further than what we can see, which is likely, it could be longer. Our best course of action would be for you to take a nap to pass the time. To rest up a bit since you've been on the move almost heavily injured at this point with a growing fever, and our biggest issue is you not eating or drinking anything for more than seventy-two hours. Now that I think about it, you haven't eaten or drunk anything since we prepared the attack against Truth."
Appearing on the left side of his HUD are his vitals, with several parts of his armor highlighted in yellow and red. To the right were what nutrients he was low on.
"As for injuries, the fibula on your left leg suffering a minor fracture now because of the fight earlier. Specifically when it backhanded you into a wall. As for your health, you are almost badly dehydrated, to the point where your suit hasn't been able to recycle nutrients since you haven't eaten or drunk anything in almost five years.
Cortana says popping up in his HUD and with a smirk that looked a bit off on her. "UnlEss yoU caN thinK of nOthEr wAyto pass the time?"
A bit confused with how that last remark sounded, Chief sits back up.
"Cortana. What was that?"
"What was what?"
"The way you sounded with that remark."
"I sound fine." Cortana retorts as she crosses her arms and smirks at him again. Except this time it was one he was more than familiar with.
"Maybe it's your ears and eyes that need fixing or that fever that's been messing with you." Then uncrossing her arms to put them against her hips and softening her features. "You should get some rest while you can Chief, with what we've seen so far it doesn't look like it's gonna get any easier from here."
Chief wanted to protest but with his adrenaline gone, his injuries catching up to him, and not eating or drinking anything for three days, he couldn't. So with heavy reluctance, he nods and lays back against the panel, closing his eyes.
"Just let me know when the elevator stops or if anything enters your scanning range."
"Will do John."
As Chief falls asleep Cortana inwardly begins to grimace.
'I need to be more careful about what neural links I sever. I can't believe I accidentally did that. I thought I had more time.
Unknown location:
A lone figure hovers in a dark room littered with lines of code. Sparked with intrigue during the last few days, he smiles weakly.
Unknown location:
A lone figure hovers in a dark room littered with lines of code. Sparked with intrigue as he looks upon a screen in front of him showing the super soldier barely escaping the monsters below the cloud sea, he smiles weakly.
"Ah, I see. So you are the one that's come from the wreckage. I look forward to our meeting, my mysterious green-armored stranger."
Authors note:
This was hard to write, or type to be specific.
I mean good lord, the last fight scene is what kept this chapter from coming out sooner. Editing still took time too but at least it's finally out now.
I should have put this in the first chapter but I'll do it later and just leave it here for now.
Chief's jet pack is like how you would use it in the games. It doesn't have that much power to fly him up that high and is more of a gliding tool than anything. Which is why I had him climb up the wall instead of just flying past it.
Changing the topic, how well would you think Master Chief could handle himself in Alrest personally?
For pacing, I definitely plan to slow down once I have Master Chief and Cortana at the top of the world tree.
Possible title names:
Spartan meets boy and girl
The architect sends an escort
The architect's prophet
Missions changed but the objective remains the same
Different world, but the goal has not changed
That's not a blade
I got nothing else, let me know what you folks think. Or if you got a better title name, please share.
Please leave a review, It'll help me improve my writing skills, and thank you for reading. Especially fight choreography I really don't want my fight scenes to be, and then this happened.