Chapter 2

Contact

Washington raised his gun. Although his arms were trembling, he knew he couldn't afford to hesitate to shoot. The presence in the shadows stepped out and revealed itself as Maine, more commonly known as the Meta. Despite Washington's plans, he hesitated at the sight of his old partner turned enemy, and he paid dearly for it.

The Meta charged the wounded soldier with a speed he could not react to, knocking him onto his back multiple meters away, losing his rifle. The Meta made the most of his surprise attack by positioning himself above Washington and, unlike his opponent, did not hesitate in his assault. The monster began to beat down on Washington relentlessly with his fists, his armor doing little to prevent the cracking of bones with each blow. Just as Washington's vision began to fade from the pain, the Meta was pulled off of him and he watched as his old friend was dragged off a cliff to his death. A soldier in red armor, the one who seemed to defeat the Meta, stood in front of the broken man with his back to him.

Washington could barely manage to sit up and squeeze out the words, "Thank you".

The red soldier turned to look at Wash, and he got the feeling that he could trust his savior. The feeling was short lived, for as he looked at his rescuer, he felt an odd stinging in his chest, looking down to find that a glowing sword had been stabbed through his back and was now protruding from the center of his chest. The sword was pulled back out, and Washington fell backwards into his previous position on the ground.

As his vision faded for the final time, he saw all of the Reds and Blues gather around him. Being too weak to properly produce words, Washington was only able to wonder to himself, "Why?".

He realized that he already knew the answer to his question as the Red and Blue soldiers aimed their weapons at his broken body.

He was their enemy.

He had killed and betrayed them in his own selfish pursuit of freedom.

It seemed only natural that they would want revenge. Then, they opened fire.

Washington jolted out of his sleeping position in a cold sweat. He found himself breathing hard, and slowly calmed himself down with the reassurance that it was just a dream, despite how real it had all felt.

After taking a few moments to regain his senses, he came to the realization that he couldn't hear any of the Red or Blue sim troopers talking like they normally do.

He picked himself up off the seat, deciding to look into the reason for such an obnoxiously loud group of individuals to be so quiet.

Entering the cockpit, he found it to be vacated. Looking at the fuel levels, it was still nearly empty, along with the keys being missing.

"Well, they abandoned me while I was out." He came to this conclusion based on all he had seen. "I suppose it's well deserved, and something like this was bound to happen eventually."

Though the more he thought about it the more angry he became. He was mad at the troopers for leaving him stranded, but he was more so mad at himself for placing any trust in them in the first place. He stormed back to the location he had set his helmet and swiftly put it back on again.

"I've screwed up again. How many times until I learn that I just can't trust…" Washington berated himself with these thoughts as he exited the ship, and was quite surprised at what he found.

The Reds and Blues had their hands up in the air facing what looked to be 30, no, 40 armed UNSC troops.

Upon exiting the Falcon, many of the troops focused their weapons on Washington, who also raised his arms in response.

Grif looked over his shoulder, "Welcome to the party. Tonight's game is not getting fucking shot"

Washington whispered to the Reds and Blues, "Who are these people?"

As if they could hear him, one of the UNSC troops lifted a megaphone to say, "We are not here to kill you! We just have someone here that wants to talk to you. So no more shooting! Got it!?"

"You shot at them!?" Washington blurted.

"Mostly stuff around them…" Simmons responded.

"Why the hell did you do that?"

"They didn't tell us why they were here. We saw guys with guns. So we shot at them!" Tucker said defensively.

"Hey! We were going to talk, but then you started shooting" yelled the same soldier with the megaphone.

"Is anyone injured?"

"We didn't hit jack shit." Sarge commented. "The only person to hit someone was Caboose, and that's because he threw his damn gun!"

"Sorry guy that I hit!" Caboose called out to the crowd of soldiers, waving one of his raised hands.

After a few seconds of silence, one of the soldiers responded, "Apology accepted"

The soldier with the megaphone began to speak again saying, "Yeah yeah. We can accept that the shooting was a misunderstanding, but you all have to come with us now and talk to the man in charge on our ship."

Washington whispered to the Reds and Blues asking, "What are our options looking like?"

Simmons responded, "Well, we're all out of ammo…"

"So talking may be our only way out…" Washington finished. "Okay!" He shouted out to the soldiers. "We'll come with you guys!"

The soldiers escorted everyone across the refueling station they were located in. It was a large station, mostly empty save a few ships here and there. The long walk across the station gave the UNSC soldiers and the sim troopers time to interact and talk with each other, leading to laughter and everyone seemingly having a good time.

Seeing this took a lot of stress off of Washington's shoulders. "If they're acting this friendly, then surely they're not here to capture and punish us. Maybe even, best case scenario, they're here to congratulate us for helping to take down Freelancer." Despite his bettering mood, he made sure to be on his guard and keep watch for the quickest ways out of danger, should things go south.

After a while of walking, Grif panted out, "This is taking forever! I don't see any more ships. Is it behind that huge building ahead?"

"Well, no. It is that huge 'building' ahead." One soldier responded, while the rest laughed.

Washington and the other troopers were astonished at the size of the ship before them. The former Freelancer noted that it was nearly as large as the Mother of Creation. Along the side of the ship read "UNSC Ikaru".

Boarding the ship, the group was led through the winding halls all the way to the bridge where the "man in charge" was waiting. Finally making it into the were already at least another 20 soldiers standing by, while in the middle of the room, elevated by stairs onto his pedestal, stood a man who seemed to command authority.

The man had gray hairs and wrinkles around his eyes, but despite his apparent old age, he stood before the group of multicolored marines with an upright posture and a smile on his face.

"Welcome aboard troopers! I'm the commander of this ship, the UNSC Ikaru, as a Brigadier of the UNSC, I've brought you all here to -"

In the middle of the commander's speech, the red colored soldier had walked right up to him and struck him in the jaw.