Courtesy of an ancient film reel projector, Sergeant Johnson watched as his first mission, then the Battle of Harvest, the frozen wastelands of Seoba, John-117, the Fall of Reach, and then that ring, flashed before his eyes. Then, there he was in his last moments, remembering him and his marines fending off a voracious Covenant boarding party, and it happened. A plasma grenade detonated behind cover, but the blast force hurled a frag grenade towards his direction. He could see that ruptured frag passing by him in slow motion, the splinters whooshing from the fiery propellent inside.

"Oh hell n-" Were the last words he uttered internally before he was blasted away.

"Lord, this is not what I had mind when I said go out with a bang." The Gunny glanced upward and said.

Though he got no response, the Gunny chuckled and looked back at the screen, the projector clicking and flickering out moments later. "That's the story of my life, eh?" Johnson muttered. "Well to tell you the truth, I don't exactly have a retirement plan in place. If you're lookin' to recruit me, however, then you just happened to have found the right man. If not, I hope you don't mind if I head downstairs, 'cause I think the devil is begging for my assistance."

There was no response, but he saw the film projector dematerialise in his peripherals, the white screen vanishing into the darkness. Normally, the Gunny would be immediately alert; however, even though he already stood up, his chair having disappeared thereafter, there was no tension, no worries, no pain, and no other extra baggage. There was calmness.

Then, there was a slither of white light blaring in the distance, a rectangular doorway sliding open. When Johnson's eyes finally adjusted, a gentle smirk formed on his face, albeit briefly. "You really do have a sense of humor after all." The Gunny mused. "God almighty, looks like we're gonna be good friends for a VERY long time."

He took one step, then another, another one, and it transformed into a disciplined stroll. This is was not what he wanted to do, but as a marine, he had an eternal duty to the corps. Nonetheless, he marched onward…until he got halfway.

"Whoa…" The Gunny gasped sternly, feeling a sudden rumble in the ambience.

There was silence for a moment, but the rumbling gradually intensified for ten seconds.

"O Lord, you listen to me now, don't you pull a fast one on me. I got a lotta work to do once I get over there." The Gunny said while sternly pointing at the doorway. "And yo boys be ready too, 'cause I'm about to give 'em h- a real workout."

Though he almost cursed within His presence, the Gunny kept a straight face. But when he taken a few more steps, the rumble became too intense for him to maintain his balance. Then, there was nothingness again.

When the Gunny finally realised what was happening, he lethargically opened his eyes, the beeping heart monitor faintly taunting his right ear. He could have sworn he heard some high-pitched digital trilling above his forehead, but it must have been his imagination. Nonetheless, the stench of glossy latex and caustic iron assaulted his nostrils, no doubtfully belonging to a medical bay. Then, there was a couple soft garbles to his left, but his vision was too blurry and feeble to see anything. Fortunately, his eyes recognised the familiar architecture on the ceiling, eventually refocusing to confirm his suspicions.

"Sergeant?" A familiar voice called to him from his right. "Sergeant, can you hear me?"

"No need to scream in my ear, Captain. Argh, my jaw…" The Gunny said, curtly nodding; however, it felt like he was nodding for the very first in his life.

He finally mustered enough strength to peer to his right, Captain Keyes towered over him. Ignoring the numbed pain in his body, the Gunny flashed a light smile towards his superior. In that moment, his hearing was fully restored, finally registering the muffled rumbling of the ship's reactor.

"Name and rank, soldier." Keyes said.

Before he spoke, he felt his own breath swooshing against some plastic shielding, courtesy of the respirator mask on his nose and lips. His right arm felt stiff, however, courtesy of a thick white cast resting on the white blanket. So he removed the mask with his left and said. "Avery Johnson, Gunnery Sergeant, sir. Ain't you a sight for sore eyes?"

"Yep, that's him alright." The doctor sniggered from the left, a medical mask and hair cap hiding his 30-something-year-old features.

"You been busy." Keyes deadpanned.

"Marines never die, sir. They're just simply reassigned. I thought you would know that by now."

The captain cracked a gentle smile at his remark.

"See, I was about to get ready to join God's army after He showed me the wonderful story of my life. Too bad we were so rudely interrupted."

Keyes kept a straight face, however, and said. "Well, God's going to have to wait a little longer. You can finish your service here and then I'll send him a recommendation."

"That's very kind of you, Captain. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Curtly nodding, Johnson finally mustered enough strength to sit upright; however, his left peripherals caught sight of a couple men in white tunics and black trousers. "Say, since when did my beloved corps get a new dress code?"

Cortana flickered beside the Gunny and said. "I'm glad you asked, Sergeant. Welcome back to the land of the living."

"Cortana. Nice to hear your voice again."

"Likewise." She smiled lightly. "These two gentlemen beside me belong to a species called Homonyms. Don't let their appearance deceive you, they're as alien as we are to them."

"Homonyms, huh?" The Gunny parroted, squinting at the humanoids momentarily. "Well butter my ass and call me a biscuit, I must be blind or stupid, 'cause I don't see anything alien to me."

"There are plentiful differences between our species, Sergeant Johnson." The brown haired whiteshirt said, his distinctively posh accent mildly surprising the Gunny. "It was surprisingly difficult for our medical replicators to map and reconstruct your brain. According to your medical report, you received a life-threatening concussion. Had you not received medical treatment in 30 hours, you would have been effectively dead."

"Well, no shit, I noticed that."

"Not to mention all the shrapnel stuck in your right arm." The 'human' doctor said as he arrived with a cup of water on a metal tray. "This would've been a breeze, but the Covenant destroyed half of our equipment, never mind most of our supplies."

"That's mighty kind of you, doc. You can take that outta my pay when we get home." The Gunny said as he accepted and sipped the drink.

The Human doctor simply rolled his eyes before the Homonym doctor spoke again. "Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that we were not able to precisely reconstruct your left prefrontal cortex; however, your neural pathways might allow you to retain some of our characteristics."

"So you changed me, eh?"

The Homonym paused for a long second before curtly nodding. "Yes, sir."

"Hmm." Johnson hummed before said as he took one more sip and set aside. "Welp, let's see if my dogs are still barkin' and go for a spin, shall we?"

Both the Human and Homonym doctors jolted when the Gunny swung out of bed, his legs momentarily bearing his weight before he collapsed.

"Take it easy, sergeant." Keyes said, hooking the Gunny's left underarm and lifting him up. "I don't want you dying on me again."

"You can save that for the Master Chief, sir." The Gunny grunted before he was lifted and lowered onto the side of the bed. "As a matter of fact, how is he?"

"He's fine, but let's focus on you first." The captain said. "I won't bore you with the details or sugarcoat anything, so I'll get straight to the point. We're in another galaxy."

If not for the captain's seriousness and ranking, the Gunny would have simply scoffed or berate such claims. Reasonably, the Gunny almost choked on his sip of water when he heard those words left the captain's lips. After coughing heavily, the Gunny exclaimed. "Say WHAT?!"

"We traveled over 2.1 million lightyears to the Andromeda galaxy." Cortana said. "Apparently, those Halo rings served as a giant transgalactic FTL device. Without it, the Covenant would've blown us to kingdom come."

"A transgalactic FTL device." Johnson muttered, processing the word in his head for a moment. "Here I had my bet on a giant anti-son-of-a-bitch machine."

"Our slipspace drive is toast, so we're stranded in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, we acquainted ourselves with another species, the Homonyms. They retain our likeness, but like I said, don't let that fool you. And before you ask, yes, they somehow speak our own languages. How? Don't ask, I'm already trying to figure that out."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

"Now, I estimated we have 27 days until the Covenant figure out how to reactivate the rings. Though the Homonyms have called for help, they'll be arriving in 40 days. You're going to be apart of an agreement that we arranged to prepare the Homonyms for the Covenant invasion."

"An agreement, eh? What are we gettin' in return?"

Keyes cleared his throat and said. "They'll see what they can do with what remains of our slipspace drive. In the meantime, I'm ordering all surviving NCOs to prepare for briefing within the next 72 hours. Thanks to the Homonyms, everyone is going to be recovering in no time. You can thank them later, sergeant. For now, I'm going to leave you with Cortana and these fine gentlemen here. She'll help answer any questions you might have and walk you through the wringer. Get well and I'll see you soon, sergeant."

"Aye, aye, sir." Johnson said and nodded; however, when the captain left, the Homonym doctors proceeded towards him, laying a metal briefcase on the adjacent metal table.

Accompanied by their Human counterpart, the Homonym introduced himself as he hovered a featureless P-shaped device over Johnson's arm. "I do offer my sincerest apologies, Mr Johnson, I haven't introduced myself."

"Oh, please, don't call me Mister, doc." Johnson chuckled. "I'm already old as it is."

"Very well. My name is Ferdinand Ocampo, and the gentlemen beside me is Tarou Yoshika."

"Ohaiyo." The dark haired whiteshirt chirped.

There was a moment of silence until Ocampo finished scanning Johnson's cast. While he was switching tools, he said. "Third and second degree burns. No doubtfully fire damage and molten metal. Fortunately, your doctor has managed to remove all but scant traces of shrapnel. Thanks to his assistance, aside from restoring your brain functions, your internal organs are functioning normally. That being said, we're now going to finish your treatment."

"My treatment?" Johnson parroted. "Yeah, that reminds me…how long was I out again?"

"According to your records you been dead for…"

"Four hours, thirty minutes, and 54 seconds." Yoshika said almost robotically. "Non metric."

Lightly rolling his eyes at the younger man's statement, he turned and said to Ocampo. "You know, death isn't that bad, he's a pretty nice guy, actually. It's the transition that's a real bitch."

Pretending the African American human didn't say anything, the older dark-haired flipino-esque Homonym slipped a smooth, white, curvy vise-like device around the cast and said. "It was a miracle you found us. We saved over four hundred patients within the past several hours, although we had to take some of your comrades aboard our station."

"You taken some of my boys aboard your station?"

"Yes, sir." He said as he pressed a few buttons on the machine. "We were unable to prevent some untimely amputations and surgeries, but through our own 'objections', we're going to undo the butchery with basic cybernetics."

"You mean prosthetics?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hot damn, pompousness much? I mean, seriously, it's getting really annoying."

"Now, hold still, please. This will take five minutes." Ocampo said after pressing a dozen more buttons, pressing one last button.

"Oh yeah, uh, what is this thingamagjig?"

"They call it a portable medical replicator." Cortana said. "It works similar to our ultrasonic scanners, but instead of simple nano-vibrations, it generates high intensity atto-vibrations to destabilize and reassemble the molecular bonds of your nerve and musculoskeletal composition. In simple words, it's going to regenerate your flesh and bones, as long as it's not an amputation. But first, it has to scan your arm, and fortunately, our casts are thin enough to permit the procedure."

Before the Gunny could say anything, the vise-like device trilled quietly. There was at least seven deep beeps before a flurry of rapid hollow beeps erupted. Though his arm was cocooned in a cast, there was a warm sensation, courtesy of the padded and gauzed injuries underneath. Other than a few twitches in his fingers and modest nerve activity in his bicep, his arm was immobile; however, such a sensation only intensified when the machine got to work. Instinctively, his fingers immediately clenched, rapidly registering newfound control and motor functions, and also crushing the overlapping bandages. His arm was now hot underneath, the machine releasing a high-pitched trill after five minutes.

"Hey, that sounds familiar!" He realised, recalling the strange trill from earlier.

"There we go." Ocampo mused calmly, removing the device, the trilling suddenly stopping. "How are you feeling, sergeant?"

The Gunny didn't respond immediately. He could feel his entire arm squished inside the cast, full sensation restored and accompanied by an irritating itch.

"I assume you are taking it very well, judging by your dexterity." The Homonym said with an uncannily straight face.

"Hell I am! If we had this sort of technology, we be back in the field in no time!" The Gunny uttered internally, the cast warping as he twisted his arm around, courtesy of his SPARTAN-I strength. Despite his augmented strength, however, weakness continued to persist in his undamaged left arm. When he tried clawing and removing the cast unsuccessfully, the human doctor saw his vain efforts and used the cast saw.

"Just like new, huh?" Johnson mused out loud, flexing and lifting his arm repeatedly, the burns, scars, lesions, and bruises completely gone. "Tell me something, how come we don't have one of these at home?"

Meanwhile, Yoshika whispered, knowing Cortana could hear him from faraway. "Has he always been this obnoxious?"

She flickered and reappeared beside him and whispered. "I wouldn't say he's obnoxious. Rather, he's a very gung ho individual. Being a drill sergeant does that to you."

"Gung-Ho? That sounds like 'gōnghé', which, if I recall, is Chinese for 'to work together'."

"It rhymes with 'slung low', but the word has no meaning other than simply describing someone with extreme enthusiasm."

"Oh…that makes sense."

Finally, when Ocampo and the Gunny were done exchanging a few more words, the Gunny was able to stand, turning and asking Cortana. "Now that the treatments and formalities are over, I think you know what I'm about to say, right, Cortana?"

"Way ahead of you." Cortana quipped, turning and walking away for him to follow. "Right this way."

With an amused 'hmph', Johnson followed after her in his patient gown, allowing the two Homonyms to proceed towards their next patient.