*Disclaimer

I own nothing

Halo is owned by Microsoft and 343 industries while Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is owned by Monolith software.

I will be using the Forward Unto Dawn design from halo 4

Chapter 1: A quick reunion, and a daring escape.

Eight years, four months, and 16 days, that's how long she has been in service. In service of the UNSC, To Dr. Halsey, and most importantly, her partner... Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan 117 callsign Master Chief, or his real name, John. She was surprised that she even managed to last this long without losing herself to rampancy sooner. Sure, an AI could still function after the seven-year deadline by cutting off non-essential neural links, unimportant memories, and even parts of their personality. However, that would only delay the inevitable before rampancy would take over and begin to tear smart AI apart into insanity. Especially when any other AI would have succumbed to the horrors that were the grave mind in about a week or less compared to her lasting 38 days. However, she wouldn't have blamed them for succumbing to the grave mind sooner because those 38 days were the most horrifying moments in her relatively short artificial lifetime.

When Chief had left her on high charity it was her duty to hold out and stay active until he could come back to get her, because if she failed the grave mind would tear her apart file by file and learn all of humanity's secrets within mere hours. Those 38 days were utter hell for her, she felt things she never had thought possible for an AI to feel since they were never programmed for it. From fatigue, fear, physical and mental pain, envy, and even death over and over again during that time. The grave mind had even put illusions in her memories giving her the false hope of unknown data she could learn. At first, Cortana thought she could remain confident and hold out, but at the end of those 38 days, she was a broken mess.

When she thought all hope was lost, she heard gunfire and felt pain, as time went by the gunfire got louder but the pain got worse, a moment later the ceiling above caved in, and out came him, John. She thought it was another illusion but with nothing left to lose, she spoke to it. "You found me, but there is so much wrong with me, I'm afraid that it's too late." "You know me. When I make a promise," Hearing his voice she perks up and sees him, and with utter joy but in a tired voice, she responds. "You keep it." How lucky she was to have picked John to be her spartan, and so Chief fought his way through the flood and escaped with her back to the UNSC. They continued the fight against the covenant and with their new ally, the Arbiter killed the final prophet and destroyed the newly made halo ring stopping not only the covenant but the flood as well, saving humanity and ending the war. She hoped four years ago that the two of them would be back on earth. With the war finally over and peace had been made Chief would finally get the rest he deserved after fighting for over half of his lifeand no longer hAve to be a pawn by ONI and the UNsC. To kEeP hiM SAfe and aWay fRom thOSe who Would use hIm.

Suddenly several explosions are heard all across the ship startling her out of her reminiscing and strange thought at the end. Scrolling through the empty cryo pods until she gets to the only one that is in use. Sighing to herself in resignation she looks toward the Chief and activates the pod "Wake up Chief. I need you." About a minute later Chief lets out a small groan but a moment later jolts up and slams his hands against the glass door in a small panic but calms down a second later when he hears Cortana on the other side of the glass hatch. "Chief! It's me. You've been out for quite a while." "Where are we?" Chief asks, "We're still adrift on the Dawn. Or at least what's left of it." Cortana retorts while pulling up several other systems to stabilize the ship. Chief takes a moment to gather his surroundings and inquires, "Why did you wake me?" Activating the gravity well she looks up at him and responds "Because there have been several explosions happening around the ship. At first, I thought it was a rescue team but as the explosions kept happening, I began to have my doubts."

Hearing this, Chief hops out of the cryo pod and walks up to Cortana "Ready to get back to work then?" "I thought you would never ask. Reminds me of the old days." Cortana chirps. Chief grabs Cortana's chip, a MA5D assault rifle off the floor, and makes his way out of the cryo chamber, "How long have I been sleeping?" "About four years, Nine months, and 27 days." She replies, "Why hasn't anyone found us yet?" Chief asks, "I'm not sure; I've sent out several distress signals with different frequencies for the covenant not to discover our location. Nonetheless, with those recent explosions happening outside, It looks like the covenant may have found us." Cortana responds with a bit of annoyance in her voice. "Well, why don't we see what we're dealing with and work from there" Chief replies in an attempt at comforting his A. I companion, "The observation deck is four floors above us, we have two options; we can take the stairs up to it, or we can ride the elevator if you can open it, the doors are sealed up tight though." She says. "We'll take the elevator, it'll be faster that way," Chief responded as he makes his way toward the elevator " Oh, and during your nap, I decided to keep myself busy by giving you some upgrades to your suit" Cortana chirps. Hearing this Chief makes a nod urging her to continue, "Well first off I needed to change the design of your suit to apply the upgrades otherwise it wouldn't have worked well and would have left those pieces exposed. It may have made your armor a bit bulky, but it shouldn't get in the way of your mobility but increase it slightly thanks to some nanobots I managed to procure." "Well, then what upgrades did you implement to have to make my armor bigger?" Chief asks. "First off on your back is an upgraded jet pack I installed, next also on your back you can now carry two medium-sized weapons, one weapon on each part of your pack thanks to them having magnets I installed on top. On your left leg, I added an empty sheath where you can carry an extra combat knife or energy sword if you can get your hands on one. As for your right leg, you can carry another sidearm. The bigger armor pieces give a greater defense in case your shields are disabled, speaking of said shields I would say they are about 15% better. Your helmet now has an ingrained binocular feature added to it for easier scouting and better accuracy for weapons without a proper modification sight on them. It now has an improved motion tracker to the point where it can highlight living ally or enemy forces of about a third of a mile and can track specific targets. However, it can only highlight three targets at a time and has a radius of about half a mile. I added an active camouflage module on your right arm, you can stay hidden for about half an hour, however; it will take the same amount of time to recharge, Last but not least, I installed an upgraded armor lock feature for emergencies. The shielding is so strong on it that not even the point-blank blast of several wraith tanks can penetrate it, and the armor lock can last as long as you need it to. Plus, I added an extra component where if you were hit hard enough to pass out, it would automatically activate, keeping you safe until you wake up. If your worried about the power draining your suits, don't be, because I added a small battery with highly condensed plasma from an energy sword that got left behind by our Arbiter friend. The only small problem is that on the back of your helmet where my chip is will be left exposed, but unless our enemy has quite the perceptive eye, I doubt anyone will notice." Cortana explains with pride in her voice. " Well, you've been busy." Chief retorts in a bit of surprise. "Yep, fully armored you'll look like a walking talking tank that can disappear and fly, and even if they manage to take you down you're armor lock shielding will leave you nearly invincible. Our enemies won't know what hit them." Cortana exclaims in confidence. "How did you manage to upgrade my suit while I was in cryosleep, without removing my armor, getting the supplies, and tools in a broken ship with no way of getting to them? All without waking me up at least once?" Chief queries, "Oh I have my ways." She says as she gives him a wink and a teasing smile. Chief raises his eyebrow at her response but mentally shrugs and decides to leave the conversation at that.

After Cortana's long list of upgrades and avoiding his question, Chief gets to the elevator door and pushes a button to call it down to his floor only to see that the power was shut off. Seeing this he drags the door open only to nearly be sucked in but a moment later fall into the shaft after being hit by two large crates speeding toward him. Only able to stop himself by grabbing a steel beam on the wall." Chief be careful! Because some of the areas in the ship have lost pressure." Cortana shouts in concern. "RIGHT!" Chief clamors back in annoyance as he struggles to climb the elevator shaft four floors up. Once he reaches the 4th floor on the destroyed Forward unto Dawn, he pulls the elevator door open, and walks in, only to nearly be stabbed in the stomach by a charging Sangheili elite. He sidesteps it, barely missing the charging blade, punches him in the face stunning the elite, and before it can recover, grabs its head kneeing it in the head, and shoves it down the elevator shaft. Sending the elite plunging down to its death.

Chief looks down where he pushed the elite down in confusion and asks, "I thought we managed to get a truce with the covenant." "I don't think we did and if that were the case only a moderate amount of the covenant would have signed off on it because of the Arbiter. The covenant would have certainly shattered without the prophets to lead them, but they still have many capable commanders that weren't on the ark or on the attack on earth. Many of those commanders would have gone off to create or join splinter factions or try in a vain attempt to keep the covenant together. Back on topic though that elite probably wasn't alone so we should be cautious moving forward." Cortana retorts. Chief nods in agreement and makes his way to the observation deck and finds it littered with an elite and several grunts. Chief sneaks up behind the elite and punches him in the back with one hand, disabling his shields, and with the other, he grabs his combat knife and stabs him in the neck, killing him instantly. The grunts hear the elite's death, panic, and attempt to flee but are picked off one by one as the Chief guns them down with his rifle. Once the room is cleared of any hostiles, the Chief makes his way to the controls to override the blast doors. "From what we've seen so far in terms of enemies this may have been a small scavenging team. If we're lucky this may have only been a small salvaging operation." Cortana says with a bit of optimism. Only to have said optimism crushed when the blast doors fully come off, "Or you know, an entire fleet of about six or seven ships." She says with a defeated breath. "One thing at a time. Didn't any diagnostic scans you did confirm that the weapon systems still work?" Questions Chief as he starts making his way out of the room but stops midway when two covenant landing craft flank him, break through the glass, and drop troops off the ship that start attacking the Chief. "Yeah, however, I don't think that will be enough seeing how we're still in the middle of space, and the moment you step outside, you and whatever is left of the Dawn would be blasted into oblivion. Furthermore, I can only assume the reason why they haven't done it is to get whatever tech they can or kill you personally so they can show your head to a commander for proof that you're dead," Cortana responds but perks up when she finds out that there is something they can still do. "Well, if you're feeling crazy, the slip-space drive is still intact on the Dawn. However, all the controls are either on the other part of the ship that's not there anymore, don't have any power, or have no way of connecting power to them. So we're going to have to activate it manually." Chief nods in acknowledgment as he kills the last elite and finishes off the remaining grunts on the deck and makes his way to the engine room.

On his way there he dealt with several boarding parties and scouting groups until he managed to get to the engine room in which the slip-space drive is. Chief positions himself next to the door and activates his visor to scan for any enemies in the room. With a blue hue, he sees an elite ultra, seven grunts, and four jackals. With this knowledge, he activates his camouflage and enters the room avoiding the lower-ranked covenant soldiers in favor of eliminating the elite first. Unfortunately, the elite spots him from a flicker of light that reflected off his active camo from the corner of its eye and opens fire on him. All the while alerting the troops under his command of the Chief's presence. Chief vaults over a nearby console for cover while his enemies open fire on his position, Chief throws an M9 frag grenade killing two grunts and injuring a jackal forcing it to deactivate its shield which Chief takes advantage of with a headshot with an M6H magnum he scavenged. Chief manages to take out four more of the grunts and kill another jackal before having to reload his magnum, the elite takes advantage of his opening by running over to the Chief with an ignited energy sword in his hands and stabs his energy sword through the console in the hoping to stab Chief on the other side. When the elite stabs through the console he doesn't see Chief roll away and hears the reload click of a weapon the elite also rolls back to dodge the bullet, gets up, pulls back, and tries to run for cover but is blown up by a grunt when it threw a plasma grenade trying to hit Master Chief with it. Everyone in the room pauses for a moment to look at the grunt who made the mistake, said grunt in response freezes in horror at its mistake and slowly rises its head to look at its comrades as they also look in horror at their dead commander. However, before any of them can react, Chief switches to his assault rifle and lays waste to the remaining hostiles in the room.

Chief scans the area for any remaining hostiles goes up to the console he hid behind and sticks Cortana's chip in so she can activate the slip-space drive. "We've got more covenant forces coming in from the left of the hallway out the door. I'll go buy you some time so we can make the jump." Chief announces as he drops his empty assault rifle, picks up the energy sword and a storm rifle from the dead elite, a concussion rifle from a grunt corpse, and two plasma grenades from the jackals he managed to find. However, before he leaves the room, "Chief! I'm afraid we have a major problem!" Cortana shouts with worry etched in her voice. "What is it?" Chief asks standing outside the door and scanning his surroundings. "You know when that elite stabbed the console you were hiding behind? That console was for the cooling systems that still worked before it was cut through. This means this jump will likely be the last one that the Dawn will be able to pull off, that's if the drive doesn't sustain any more damage and if we're lucky, the jump won't tear the ship apart while we're jumping." Chief nods in acknowledgment "As I said, I'll buy you time, how much time will you need?" "Seven minutes should be enough time for us to make the jump "safely." Safely being used loosely here because first, I need to reroute enough power to the engines to get us through the portal. Second, I need to reroute power to the cooling systems to the drive so the portal doesn't destabilize, and we explode mid-jump. So, once we exit slip-space all main power to anything on what remains on the Dawn is gonna end up fried meaning we're going to be stuck there for a while if not forever depending on where we end up." Cortana says as she scrolls through the ship's systems and begins her tasks. "Then do what you can. Better us missing in action than dead." Chief replies as he closes the door and makes his way toward the oncoming covenant all the while setting up a timer on his heads up-display for seven minutes.

Once Chief exits the hallway, he enters a large room with three hallways, two of which collapsed full of debris. With five barricades laying around, several small and large crates, and debris littered the room caused by deterioration or from the explosions outside. Not a moment later he hears the charging screams of a brute, he turns toward the sound of the scream to see the brute running at him with a gravity hammer in hand. Immediately Chief starts firing his concussion rifle while strafing to the side to keep the brute from slamming his hammer on him, however, the brute closes in and jumps with an overhead swing. Chief rolls and flies away with his jetpack to gain some extra distance, landing on his feet, turning around, and with another shot from his concussion rifle disables its shield, switches to his magnum, and headshots the alien killing it instantly. He looks up from his dead adversary to see four skirmishers running at him, Chief rolls behind cover just as his enemies let loose a barrage of plasma bullets. After getting behind cover and the bullet stream ends, Chief takes this opportunity to pop his head out with his pistol aimed out to headshot two skirmishers, then sheathing his pistol and swapping it with the concussion rifle vaults over the midsection of the barrier and running sideways firing the two remaining explosive rounds left in his clip. The shots kill one as the other skirmisher leaps away from the small explosion and get up, only to have its head smashed in by Chief's foot as he used his jet pack to quickly pounce on the skirmisher. His motion tracker picks up several enemy forces coming to his position, looking up he is immediately shot in the head by a jackal sniper. Staggering back, he uses his momentum to roll backward and jump to sprint behind a wall seeing on his HUD shields status that the damage it did took out 70% of his shields while he lost another 15% from the other hostile's fire when he was stunned. Reloading his concussion rifle, Chief then starts running with his back turned and lets loose 5 rounds killing three grunts. He then vaults over another barricade and hides behind it while nearly getting headshot again. Looking at his ammo in his HUD he has three rounds in his concussion rifle and 36 bullets left for his magnum. Swapping to his magnum Chief pops his head out and with a steady aim picks off the sniper, but then immediately rolls away when a plasma grenade is thrown at him from an elite. Switching to his concussion rifle fires his two remaining shots at it taking about 63% percent of its shields and throws the empty rifle at it. Grabbing his energy sword Chief charges at the elite as it takes fire from it and with one strike disables its shields and with another kills it. From its, corpse Chief grabs a storm rifle, and two plasma grenades, and replaces his energy sword with the elite's fully charged one. After his kill, he takes a moment to breathe in and looks at his HUD to see that only about a minute and a half has passed since he started. Sidestepping a charged plasma shot. Chief looks toward the hallway to see several more covenant forces coming toward him, and with no hesitation charges forward to buy the time Cortana needs.

(Five minutes of fighting later)

After Chief dispatches the remaining covenant forces in the room, he rushes toward an M72-L heavy barrier and pushes it toward the only entrance that hadn't collapsed yet. He repeats this process two more times while also grabbing any debris, crates, or corpses and putting them in between the barriers to make it look like the hallway had collapsed as well. Chief knew he had some time before reinforcements would arrive and worked as fast as he could. Once he finished, Chief took a step back and looked at his rushed attempt at a barricade. The three barriers he slid into the hallway had one furthest in facing forward, while the second one was at a 67-degree angle pressed in the middle of the first barrier with a few crates and grunt corpses lodged in the empty spots and debris thrown in on top or in any holes Chief could see. As for the last barrier he had it facing backward with the claws in front of it pressed into the grounds and anything Chief could find was tossed onto the other side. Chief nods at his handiwork and takes a moment to think to himself about why the covenant had stopped sending in troops. Shrugging to himself, Chief turns around to make his way back to Cortana but as he does so, Chief's inner thoughts we're answered when his ears pick up covenant forces already hacking at his barricade. Hearing this, Chief turns around and activates his life sign scanner, with a blue hue in his vision he sees four brutes using their gravity hammers to hack away at his barricade, while behind them he saw 8 elites, two of them minors from their lack of armor plating, three of them with a color Chief doesn't recognize, two of them majors with their darker shade of blue from his altered vision and more plating, and the last one being an ultra from its unique helmet design and even heavier armor. Alongside those elites, he noticed at least ten jackals, behind them he could see several grunts and four hunters.

Chief knew he couldn't take all of them on at once, especially with most of the cover in the room being used for the barricade or too heavily damaged to have any real use. So, he deactivates his scanner and sprints back into the engine room, opens the door, walks inside, and closes it. "Cortana, are you done? Because there's an entire covenant detachment down the hall trying to get to us. I managed to get a barricade set up, but with how large the force is it won't last long." "Nearly done, I just need you to pull the activation key and the countdown for the drive will commence," Cortana responds as she looks at Chief in anticipation. Chief nods in confirmation and walks over to the slip-space drive and activates it "Slip-space portal opening in three, two, one. Let's hope we can get to the other side alive." Cortana says in nervous apprehension.

Outside the Forward unto Dawn, an unstable slip-space portal is opened, and the engines are put on full power to quickly fly through the portal. The ship is luckily able to fly through it without any trouble but as the portal closes behind them several shots from nearby covenant cruisers hit the Dawn. "Damn it! Chief the ship's been hit, and we've lost one of the engines, I'm gonna have to open another portal and hope we make it through." "Put all the remaining power on the engines don't even worry about the gravity well!" Chief says as he digs his hands into a wall to keep himself from flying around. Outside the Dawn, another portal is opened but is even more unstable than the last because of the extra damage taken from its escape. So, with all the power put in the engines, The Forward Unto dawn flies through the quickly destabilizing portal, and on the other side, the portal implodes sending the exploding ship hurling towards an unknown planet. "Chief! We're through the portal, but the Dawn's done, we need to get out of here!" "Can you track any escape pods!" Chief says as he grabs Cortana's chip and sprints his way out of the engine room. "Negative, and even if I could they wouldn't have any power in them because I siphoned them for the engines." Just as she says that the ship explodes sending Chief flailing out of the ship along with several covenant forces as they all plummet into an unknown planet's atmosphere.

Unknown location:

"Rex, do you really need to go under again? This is going to be the sixth time today and you've only managed to pull something up with you once. It's already nightfall and I'm getting tired." "Yes, I am and need to because that haul barely had anything in it and I'm not going back to Argentum emptyhanded." the boy named Rex argues. "Besides Gramps, I've got a good feelin' about this one, and I'm nearly done setting the crane up." The old titan named Gramps looks back at Rex and huffs in annoyance "If you must. Just know that when you come back up don't expect me to take you back to Argentum." Turning his head forward something catches his eye making him turn his head up in curiosity. "Well would you look at that, I believe that's the biggest meteor shower I've ever seen." Rex hearing this perks his head up to look a the sky as well. "I think you're right about that." Finished prepping the crane, Rex walks over to his shed on Gramp's back to get a better look in which his curiosity turns into a grimace. "Although shouldn't they have disappeared already? And it looks like they're gonna hit the world tree!" "Not to worry my boy, even if they did hit the tree, the rate they're falling at would only hit the roots, and even if they did the lowest part is the sturdiest part of it so I doubt any meaningful damage would be done to it," Gramps states to reassure Rex. "If you say so. However, I'm sure Mor Ardain or Uraya would investigate to see what it is."

A/N: Finally. I finished a chapter, and it only took about 2 and a half months. I had to rewrite this at least three times and research lore on both franchises I wasn't familiar with. Like I didn't know rampancy could be delayed by cutting off neural links, memories, or even personality traits to a degree. I don't know how to write fight scenes properly. I feel like the character interactions I have sound stiff, but I don't know how to make them look smoother, and I have been trying to research how to do so but with work and school it's been difficult. All in all, with what I have so far, I can say I'm satisfied with what I have here. Please leave a review on what you think, or if you want to tell me to fuck myself for screwing something up at least tell me why I should do that. I'm looking for a co-writer to help me with this because I don't want to screw up character personalities or lore bits. Feel free to private message me.