The year was 2553. A joint force of the UNSC's SPARTAN Branch and the Swords of Sanghelios had just put down a Brute Loyalist occupation on Beta Gabriel. In the calm that followed that conflict, there was a rare moment for the two forces to mingle and trade stories.
"Demon, huh? So that's what you Covies called the Spartan-IIs?" Cassandra-A096 asked the small group of Covenant warriors. She had her helmet off, exposing her short, spikey blonde hair to the evening air. She had a fierce grin that did not quite match her eyes. "So, what's the next step above 'unkillable demon'?"
"The next step?" one of Sangheili warriors asked, carefully thinking over the Spartan's words. At long last, he told her "Nirshaddun."
"Nirshaddamn?" Cassandra asked.
"Nirshaddun," the warrior corrected her. "It is a fell demon of folklore. It is said that such a creature stalks the night winds with armor made of polished shadows. Many warriors were eager to test their mettle against the demon, but the Nirshaddun always came when they let down their guard."
"That's metal as fuck," Cassandra said.
Five years later
"Cass, I've been going over texts from our last cultural exchange with Sangheilios," Charles said. His hologram hummed to life in the armory's holotank. "And I've found more information about this Nirshaddun."
"Go ahead," Cassandra said. She did not interrupt her steady rhythm of slamming clips of ammo into magazines.
"The ancient tales do say that the Nirshaddun is a dangerous demon," Charles said. He paused, and his avatar folded his hands. Clearly, the AI was devoting a lot of processing cycles to formulating his next sentence. "But, ah, in terms of comparative folklore, the Nirshaddun is really more of... it's, er, a succubus that preys upon very young warriors."
The rhythm stopped. The Spartan's head turned like a Breakwater turret until her eyes bored a hole through the holotank.
"What. Did you. Say." she demanded, as a vision passed before her eyes of every strange look she got from an Elite whenever she bragged of being a Nirshaddun.
"I'm quite sure you heard me. And the armor of polished shadow, well, it's actually-"
"What was that fucker's name?"
"According to your contact report, the Elite who told you of the Nirshaddun introduced himself as Tarshe Kandonom."
"I'm going to find that son of a bitch and tear his tongue out through his asshole!"
"The odds of encountering that Elite again-"
"Don't tell me the odds!"
Five Years After That
Cassandra-A096 called in every favor she was owed to get PERUN assigned to this mission. Frankly, the target was hardly worth crushing with a team of Spartans. The Oathsworn of Duuvan Nizat was a small warrior order that was moving arms from who-cares-where to a minor power player in the Kirsaadian Reach. It was one of those rare conflicts where neither the UNSC nor the Swords of Sanghelios had a dog in the fight, save for a general dislike of arms smugglers.
Cassandra wanted this mission like nothing else, because Tarshe Kandonom was one of the Oathsworn.
The shooting already started when the Pelican touched down at the pirate port. It was one of those turf wars that frequently erupt between rival bands of arms smugglers, and it looked like the Oathsworn were winning. That was good. It meant that PERUN was weapons free as soon as they cleared the Pelican, and Cassandra had a license to even those odds.
PERUN tore through one room after another, dropping aliens and barely stopping to secure evidence. Finally, when the team was temporarily stalled in a disused hangar, Cassandra saw her quarry. An Elite in red armor was ordering his troops into cover behind dust-covered service vehicles on the far side of the room. For a moment, their eyes locked together, and the Spartan saw Tarshe's mandibles widen in surprise as he somehow recognized her.
Tarshe fled. Cassandra fired a trio of shots from her shortened sniper rifle, but only one round hit before the Elite ducked through a door. With a scream, Cassandra broke cover and sprinted to follow.
On a clear field, an Elite had no chance of outrunning a Spartan III in MJOLNIR. This was not a clear field. There were turns and obstacles every which way, and Tarshe knew the territory. Worse, the Oathsworn apparently weren't the kind to shoot deserters who were fleeing battle, not when there was a Spartan to shoot instead. Cassandra moved fast and shot Tarshe's compatriots only when they got in her way, yet she was quickly forced to resort to her M6 sidearm to save ammunition. She shot, jumped, and sprinted to catch up, never daring to lose sight of that red-armored Elite.
The chase ended in another hangar, where an Oathsworn freighter with an open cargo bay was warming up its engines, just a few seconds shy of taking off. Tarshe crossed the tarmac in great bounding strides. Cassandra never broke stride, just slowed down a bit to keep her crosshairs zeroed on the alien's back.
CRACK!
The Elite's shields flared like a struck match.
CRACK!
The shields collapsed entirely. And Cassandra's sniper rifle locked open on an empty magazine.
Cursing, the Spartan dropped the mag and rammed a fresh one into the magazine well, fumbled, corrected the fumble in a split second, and felt the bolt slam home. But by then, Tarshe had already dove into the cargo bay and punched a control panel with his fist. A hard barrier of blue energy winked into existence, closing off the whole cargo ramp.
Still at a dead run, Cassandra dumped the whole magazine into the energy barrier, to no avail. She hit the barrier in a flying tackle to equally disappointing results, save that she smashed the scope of her rifle.
On the other side of the barrier, Tarshe was nearly doubled over trying to catch his breath. Cassandra hammered on the energy barrier with her fist until she caught the Elite's attention, and then she drew a combat knife.
"I found you once, Tarshe Kandonom," she said, clicking her radio over to the Q-BAND on the Covenant Battlenet. "I'll find you again. And when I do, I'm going to tear you a new asshole."
The Sangheili's mandibles split in a toothy grin.
"Truly spoken like a demon of carnal pleasure," he retorted.
Cassandra-A096's banshee screech of frustration was lost in the roar of the freighter taking off.
Some Time After That
The chase continued for many years. All across the territory of the former Covenant empire, sometimes with PERUN at her side, sometimes as a lone wolf, Cassandra-A096 hunted that smartassed Elite. But Tarshe's luck was always as good as his wit, and he always slipped away. Eventually it fell to Bodark-B076 and Obadiah-A227, the two 'team parents' of PERUN, to do something about it. As part of OPERATION: VELVET HUSTLE, they finally managed to detain the fugitive Elite and hold him in the brig of the UNSC Tours. Cassandra was told of the arrangement, and asked to make it quick. Bodark-B076 wanted to get the mission-derailing vendetta behind her.
"So, it has come to this," Tarshe said as he looked out the armored window. Bodark and Obadiah coolly returned his gaze from the other side.
"Hell yeah," Cassandra replied as she drew a knife. It was no mere combat knife. This one had serrations and hooks ground into the edge, the kind of blade you could intimidate a witness or skin a crocodile with. "You and I, we're going to have one Hell of a time."
Tarshe's mandibles twitched as he spent heroic levels of effort toward swallowing another smartass remark. He calmly gauged her progress across the deck and then asked "How many years have you chased me across the stars? How many times have we clashed? And after all that, there is but one more thing I need to know.
Cassandra stopped just short of him, and her eyes narrowed to slits. "If it's another smart-assed quip, go ahead and say it. I'll just take it out on your hide."
"Cassandra, demoness warrior of the Yun-escee," Tarshe said as he took off his helmet. He then dropped to one knee, and pulled a gold ring out of a pouch. "Will you be my lawfully wedded wife?"
In that moment, all of her vitals registered as KIA. Obediah-A227 would later write in his report that he thought Cassandra was having a stroke.
Tarshe seized the knife hand and tackled her. In the ensuing wrestle for the knife, Tarshe came out on top, and Bodark and Obediah had a hostage situation on their hands.
Cassandra spent most of the standoff in a leglock, and her screams of "This is not what it looks like!" were omitted from the after-action report.
A/N: Cassandra, Bodark, and Obediah are not my characters, and this is not a Daybreak fic. I borrowed the characters from EvanManatee887 of the Halofanon server. He shared shared art of Cassandra-A096 on Twitter and Instagram alongside that wannabe-badass boast, and that got my gears turning. Evan told me that he based her character off of Bakugo from MHA, so I paired Cassandra up with the one personality type that a hothead like her can't beat: A smartass who can turn every boast into innuendo, and has a pretty good sprint speed.
Further rounds of joking in the chat server turned up this whole fic. I had so much fun writing it, I don't want it to waste away in some server logs.