While he had to admit the game had been fun, the Chief could not wait to get back to his usual work. Upon their return, the Spartans and Marines had all travelled back to their accommodations, leaving teams RWBY and JNPR to rest their sore muscles after the Spartans had also had a round to play against each-other. Chief's team barely topped the leaderboard, but that was because Sam had outflanked Fred's snipers and taken them out before Fred had a chance to use them to their fullest potential.
He breathed a sigh, noticing NOBLE Team was just returning from their patrol as well. He blinked as he entered his room, then let out a deep sigh. He was so used to being forever-the-active Master Chief that he forgot how strange it was to just be able to sit back and relax. It was, admittedly, why he wanted to get back to figuring out the White Fang before the situation got even worse. He knew and remembered how Insurgents and groups like them operated.
He pulled Caliburn out from beneath the bed and gave the weapon a once-over after he removed it from the box that contained it. He hummed, setting the weapon aside on his bed and turning to his armor. He could go for a patrol to clear his head. Chat with Cortana on the way, seeing as she was still around. He sighed, then started donning the kit. In record time, beating even his last one. Last thing on was the helmet.
As he slid it on and it connected with his neural lace, something felt eerily empty. There was no frozen chill, no sensation of a second presence in his mind. He paused, then whispered, "Cortana?" as he slid the last piece of the kit, his weapon, on his back. He awaited a response, but found none within five seconds. He spoke again, "Cortana," his voice firm. If she was pulling a prank on him... Another five seconds. He spoke again, "Cortana, respond," as if ordering her would help.
He narrowed his eyes, then slid his hand to the back of his helmet and removed the crystalline chip containing his AI partner. He paused, eyes suddenly shooting wide open as he locked onto the device. The faint blue glow he had grown so accustomed to seeing in the transparent middle that stored the AI's neural matrix was gone. Cortana was gone. His heart stopped, a feeling the Spartans had rarely felt, as he slid the chip back into place and drew his Scroll.
He checked the messages and data streams that he knew she'd have connected to, scanning them and running through the data with programs she had specifically left behind as executables in the communication device's back-access and settings. He thumbed it, distraught for the first time in forever as he could see no trace of the girl. He slid the item into one of the pouches on his belt, then thumbed the com and set it to BLUE Team's common frequency. He transmitted the familiar tune of Olly Olly Oxen Free, but rapidly. A distress call.
Kelly, Fred, Sam and Linda all burst into his room moments later, each with their sidearm drawn. Fred stepped up, holstering his pistol and asking, "What's the situation, Chief? We got the ping on our Scrolls..." before he paused as he saw the Chief pull the AI containment device out again and lift it, showing them that the blue glow was gone. Fred gave one motion of the hand and Sam shut the door behind them. Mister Ellsworth then asked, "She's gone?"
"Missing," John nodded, "I don't know for how long. I've been here for the past ten minutes trying to figure out where she went..."
"This ain't good," Kelly remarked, holstering her own sidearm as she approached, "This is one hell of a security breach..."
"Maybe she got nicked when accessing the CCTS Network again," Sam offered, though he, too, was uneasy. John had taken time a while back to tell him how closely the Spartan and the AI had come to operate and how they depended on each-other, even during Cortana's Rampancy back on Requiem and on the Second Battle for Earth aboard the Mantle's Approach. The AI had split herself off so many times...
"She'd have left a note if she went snooping, or wouldn't have gotten caught..." Linda noted, arms crossed. "I don't like this, Chief... Could there have been a security breach? Atlas operatives? General Ironwood looked fairly interested in our equipment, even if the man wasn't saying," She then stated. Indeed, general Ironwood had shown an interest in the MJOLNIR armor from the looks he had given the Chief at first, then every other SPARTAN-II that had arrived.
"Penny is an Atlas Liaison," Kelly suggested, then murmured almost apologetically to Penny, "Though I doubt that girl would do anything like this..."
"She's a suspect, no matter our personal feelings," John sighed. He disliked pinning this on Penny, seeing as the girl had been nothing but sunshine and smiles since he'd met her. She'd helped him acclimatize to Beacon. It still didn't spare her. She was an asset to Ironwood, that much had been clear when she was sent their way by the man himself. She was either the best infiltrator the man had, or an honest-to-god kindhearted girl roped into being military by belonging to Atlas's academy...
He sighed deeply. God, he hated this. Speculation was no good. He stated firmly, "There's no point in speculating right now. When we get concrete evidence, we'll see what we do, but for now? The information that Cortana's missing doesn't leave this house. You can tell Johnson, Kurt and the others, but keep it out of earshot of Penny. They'll help with the search as we make up patrol patterns... Some of us will need to be in the CCTS every waking hour of the day. Select our tech experts. Get Noble Two in on first shift, see if she can't help. Cal was good with tech, not just with sniping. She takes second shift with another team."
"I can take third shift with Jorge," Fred offered, "I'm gonna have to drag Blake along for it, though."
"Gonna be a problem?" John raised a brow. Fred shook his head and Chief replied, "Good. Noble Six patrols with me now. Tell her to armor up. Let's get moving. The faster we find her, the faster we can re-secure our com lines and everything else. The others are to set up on normal patrol duties as they see fit, but keep their eyes and ears open for anything that even remotely hints at Cortana's location. Let's get to it, Spartans. We're burning sunshine..." and he tightened the last few bolts on the Armor with a specialized tool.
"Sir," The four Spartans in the room nodded and departed. Sam, however, halted before he left through the door. He turned to the Chief and said to him, "Don't worry. We'll find her..." and he smiled. John nodded. He knew they would find her. They were the best damn force on Remnant, both in terms of military prowess and deduction skills, especially with people like Joshua and Kurt around.
He breathed in the recycled air of his armor, tasting the faint scent of the titanium, then made a mental note to check up on the scrubbers. He stepped outside his room minutes later and watched as Johnson turned toward him. The man, after clearly having been briefed by the others, gave Chief a nod and flashed him a pearly-white grin. Surprising, but not unwelcome.
The Spartan descended, turning to the right to see Six had joined him, donning her full RECON kit, as well as full mags for her MA37K assault rifle and her M6G. The Chief and the girl nodded to one-another, then departed for their security op. She saluted and the Chief saluted back, then said, "Like I said, Lieutenant, there's no need..." to which she hummed. The pair then departed the house and went on their patrol route.
They'd go around the dorms, cut back around the mess hall and then hit the Library to ensure proper coverage of the wide outer area. The others would pick out their targets based on where they saw Chief and his fellow Hyper-Lethal Vector going. He'd taken time to read her censored file. What little he got out of it painted her as nothing more than a weapons system, rather than a Spartan.
He didn't see any of his Spartans as such. They were fellow soldiers. And NOBLE had become part of his force not too long ago. They'd been the ones to protect the Autumn when it was taking off from the Aszod Break Yards, they were the ones who fought tooth and nail for Reach and they were the ones who died alongside other Spartans on it. Jorge had been kind enough to recount everything for them in written form and the Chief had gone through it.
Still, he couldn't read Six. Alice. She was a mystery. He could usually read Spartans, tell what their intentions and skills were. Admittedly, he hadn't operated on any kind of mission with her beyond that one time, if he recalled correctly, where they took down Torchwick's stolen Paladin. Still, she seemed reliable and skilled enough, if Carol Rawley was to be believed. Foe Hammer had given them information in regards to her and her co-pilot's timely rescue by NOBLE.
Just as he was about to start talking to the Lieutenant, to ask her her own opinion on the matter at hand, the two stopped as they heard the yowl of a little creature nearby. Confused, the two Spartans turned to the left, toward an alleyway between Beacon's First and Second-Year Dormitories. The Chief hummed, then looked to see Alice's hand hovering over her gun. Raising his hand to show her to stay calm, the Spartan approached the corner that led into the dark alley carefully.
Peering past it as slowly and carefully as he could, he saw nothing but a dead-end with two 'backdoors' into the dorms, as well as a pair of dumpsters sat by each door. He hummed, then walked forward. And he heard the noise again. From below him, this time. He gazed down, to see... Well, what one would call a grey ball of fur if they didn't have the visual acuity of a SPARTAN.
In front of the Chief's boot(and standing at about a quarter the size) sat a malnourished grey animal with small ears and blue eyes, the eyes themselves looking up at him and widening from a pair of slits. It whined, slowly backing away on its four tiny legs. It bowed its head and felt itself backed into a corner, looking up at the superhuman giant that must've seemed like a monster. Alice looked past the Chief, then hummed.
"... What is that...?" Doing here, Chief had wanted to ask, but barely got out the first half of the sentence. If Alice didn't know better...
"... Uh, sir? You serious?" The S-III inquired just to be sure, "It's... A kitten..."
"I know, Lieutenant," The Chief stated, his voice hardy as he was taking a knee, "It's... Small."
"Yes, well... Kittens generally are small, sir," The girl replied, looking at it. She hummed as she saw it cover its eyes with its two front paws, its hind ones curled up beneath its tiny body and its tail wrapped around them. Calmly, the Lieutenant stated, "It's scared... Of us... And clearly hungry," as a few thoughts ran through her mind in regards to what to do. She paused, however, when she saw the unthinkably weird.
The Master Chief retrieved a half-eaten ration bar out of his pocket. It was thankfully a harmless food for the kitten. Meat and congealed fat had been packed alongside nutrients into an edible, if slightly tasteless bar of food meant to withstand every type of environment, temperature and duration of operation the SPARTANs would endure. UNSC wartime ration packs weren't the most visually appealing... But they had the stuff needed to survive. That was what mattered.
"I... Didn't know you carry half-eaten food with you, sir..." The woman stated, surprised.
"These things don't go bad quick enough for me to consider throwing it away..." He replied calmly, extending the unpacked meat paddy toward the creature. It shrunk and shied, but sniffed the air and sprung up a moment later. Dashing forward as fast as its spindly little legs could hold it, it bit into the packed meat with its front teeth and the tiny incisors, digging into the meat as quickly as Chief could unpack the thing.
It began to... Emanate a weirdly soothing sound the two Spartans had forgotten as it ate. It purred, eating the food it had been given in several rapid bites, which left the Chief with an empty tin foil which he threw in the nearby dumpster. He pulled out his canteen, uncapped it and poured some water into the cap while Alice regarded the gentle care with which the man moved. She couldn't contain herself, so she was thankful to remember she still had her helmet as she actually cracked a smile when the kitten licked up the water. Chief poured another couple of caps before stopping, disinfecting the thing that kept his water from spilling and capping the canteen again.
He stood to his feet, then looked to the Lieutenant and said, "Let's move. We've lost a few minutes of our patrol, so we'll have to move fast."
"Sir," She nodded, the smile fading quickly as she remembered their job. The two turned to leave, managing to get a couple of steps away before they heard the yowl of the little kitten again. Both of them turned to see it, now healthy and on its four paws. It had followed them and was looking up at both of them. Chief hummed, then both turned and walked away again, focusing on their patrol. A few feet later, another yowl. Both turned to see the kitten had followed them over.
"... Lieutenant. It's following us," Chief stated rather bluntly.
Alice snorted, then said, "It is, sir... If we keep moving, it should lose interest..."
"Mhm..." John nodded, then both left. Another few feet, a third yowl. This time the Spartans didn't have time to turn around before the kitten approached the Chief. Standing on its hind paws while its front ones settled onto the right boot of his MJOLNIR suit, the kitten looked up at the Chief with the saddest pair of eyes the Spartan had ever seen. Alice brought a hand up to where her mouth would be, trying to stifle a laugh. How was this happening?
Chief bent down and picked the kitten up gently by the scruff of its neck. It looked at him, then tilted its head, curious and sad at the same time, it seemed. The Spartan blinked. He knew he had a mission to find Cortana, but for some reason, he felt like a knife was stabbing into his heart at the thought of leaving the little creature alone. He murmured, "I'm not qualified for this..."
It meowed at him and he narrowed his lips. With a sigh, he said, "I'm afraid it won't leave us alone, Lieutenant."
"Doesn't look like it will... Sir..." Alice was holding in an actual laugh. It'd been ages since she was able to laugh, but here she was. Spartan B312, ONI's personal grim reaper, was about to burst laughing at her CO. She stated, "Maybe we could take it with us until we find a proper shelter for it, sir... It can do no harm. Look at the size of it, it's barely the size of your thumb."
"... Hmm..." Chief sighed. He deactivated his shield emitters just so he wouldn't fry the creature, then did the most surprising thing yet. He put it on his shoulder. The panels of the plate were just close enough to each-other that it wouldn't fall and could still move around, but that it wouldn't impede Chief's range of motion with his head. So, the Spartans now marched down their intended patrol path...
With the Chief having a cat on his shoulder...
It meowed again, right into the Chief's helmet auditive sensor. Then, it curled up in a ball and laid down on the flat point between the armor plates and started purring. Alice hummed, then stated, "It seems to like you, sir..." as they continued. Chief had just gotten stuck with a cat while he wanted to find Cortana. It was not an ideal situation, but at the very least it would not get worse.
The Spartans had thoroughly searched every inch of their patrol path, including parsing every damn terminal in the library to make sure Cortana hadn't hidden herself in them. All while the cat had fallen asleep, not even bothered by the seemingly sudden movements of the Spartans while they searched. It'd garnered a few looks of surprise and a few squeals and smiles from the girls around them, but Chief was none too bothered by it.
"... Chief, what the hell is that on your shoulder?" Johnson asked the moment they walked in. While one would think the Sergeant-Major was angry or something, considering the phrase he'd used, the man was, in fact, just surprised. A few of the female Marines swooned the moment they saw the little kitten on Chief's shoulder yawn and wake up with the weirdest case of cat bedhead anyone had ever seen... Like the Cat had become electrified. Its fur had puffed out wildly.
Chief watched as Alice excused herself and left for their section of the makeshift armory...
He just wanted to find Cortana.
Atlas
Cortana had travelled through the data streams of the CCTS and into a secured connection that she could barely do anything to in time. To leave a trail or something, or at least let the Chief know she was fine, had been out of the question the moment Penny had hit the 'SEND' button on her and thrown her halfway across the world. Still, she'd arrived in record time, damn near eight-point-five miliseconds from her POV. Still, the internal clock of the machine she was in pointed out it had been a few hours until she fully 'awoke'.
Admittedly, Cortana had shut down most of her processing power and subsystems to ensure her travel was as smooth and undetectable as possible. To the eyes of any Atlas-built tech, it would've seemed like another speck of random data travelling through their secure channels. Which, while weird in and of itself, would not have attracted as much suspicion as it probably should have. Or it could draw none at all as the codes she was sent through with were Penny's ID Codes, Cortana remembered.
She 'yawned', a general reaction to an AI entering 'sleep' mode by shutting down a multitude of sub-systems. Each system was individually woken up by the AI as she examined the construction of her surroundings now. Aside from the standard and admittedly bland Atlas cyberspace, the AI could see the bland white panel walls, recessed lights and clean-room-like materials out of which the room was built. Around the terminal she ended up in, there were a series of tools for machine construction and upgrading, a pair of pods in the far left corner, an operating table of some kind in the middle, right in front of her and a desk to the far right.
"... Well, this is eerily familiar..." The AI remarked in a murmur, then took some of the processing power of the holographic display to project herself to the right of the screen she was viewing the details in the place through. She crossed her arms to her chest now that she had them, then scanned her surroundings. She paused as she heard the faint whirr of a mechanical item.
She let out a gasp as she saw an elderly man moving toward her. He was a bit on the plus side, with freckles on his cheeks, darker skin and a grey beard like that of the representative fictional man of the celebratory period of Christmas:Santa. The man pushed a pair of glasses up onto his thicker nose, then smiled and spoke, his voice warm and welcoming, "Hello! You must be that friend Penny sent me a message for!"
"... Hello...?" Cortana paused. While nominally, the man was friendly enough, he was wearing the white shirt and pants of an Atlas technician, "Are you okay?"
"What do you-" he paused, then he looked down at himself and let out a mirthful laugh, "Oh, this old thing!" and he knocked on the four-legged robot chair's left armrest. He smiled and said, "I'm fine, miss Cortana. You don't need to worry."
"Right..." Cortana hummed, then lowered her hands to her sides, "I take it Penny managed to send a message before I arrived?"
"Indeed," The man nodded as he approached the table, which Cortana had just realized was a tad too thick all around to be just a table. He set his hand onto the side of the device and a holo-light flashed. He spoke as billows of steam pushed their way out of the box, temporarily obscuring the AI's vision, "I was able to start preparations for a body already!"
"... Oh, Penny was really thorough..." The AI stated.
"That's my girl," The man declared with a smile, then paused and said, "Oh, where are my manners? I'm Pietro Polendina... Penny's... I guess you AI would give us the title 'creator', but I prefer 'father'."
Cortana couldn't help but smile. The title seemed to fit the man better than creator, considering the way he acted. She then gazed down as the smoke had cleared, to see the actual body being built. An endoskeletal structure with a face molded to resemble hers sat in the tank, submerged in a clear liquid and attached to several ports in the pod. Lights silhouetted the frame of the machine and Cortana could see the artificial muscle structures still being constructed by some form of nanomachinery and solidifying around the alloy frame of the endoskeleton. Visual and auditive sensors, her eyes and ears, had also been installed already and she'd clearly received a slight boost in height. She'd be a tall woman, that was for sure...
"Wow..." The AI murmured, "Looking closer at the intricacies of the design, you've... Basically created an artificial human..." and then she noticed the extras. Various 'organs' meant to simulate certain bodily functions. She hummed, then parsed through the data as she linked to the pod's systems. She asked, "Am I a testbed for future improvements to Penny's frame?"
"Clever," Pietro smiled, "Yes, I figured I should try to see if I can't... Help Penny... The poor girl doesn't need to eat or drink, so she doesn't exactly 'blend in well' with the people, as general Ironwood put it. She can simulate the acts of eating, but it doesn't help much when people decide to look into it. These artificial organs will act as an added bonus that processes the food into extra fuel for a secondary bio-reactor within the systems, keeping the batteries of the android body charged even if the main reactor itself has consumed all the Dust it has in store... Which is, admittedly, a good failsafe to have if we didn't load reactors to capacity here."
Cortana hummed, cupping her own chin with her hand and scratching her chin. She accessed some of the classified files on the PENNY android project and pulled up schematics for the reactors and their component Dust power cells. Thoroughly, the AI checked up data piece after data piece, then murmured, "Certainly could prove beneficial to upgrade the component Dust... Professor Polendina, right?"
"It's just Pietro for friends of Penny's, dear," The man replied, smiling. He was on another console and had closed the 'casket' in which Cortana's future artificial body resided. She smiled, then pulled up a series of possible improvements. Hmm. The Dust composition meant to provide energy used a combination of volatile electric Dust crystals and a speck of gravity Dust to keep the entire mixture together... With a few mods...
She spoke, rather proud of herself, "Based on mathematical equations that take into account the volatility of the Dust types being combined to provide energy through the Dust reactors in the heart of all PENNY-type android bodies, I'd suggest these improvements to the composition. It should reduce volatility to much more acceptable levels than even now. It'll also boost efficiency of the reactor by twelve-point-five percent. I could go for one that boosts the power by twenty-point-six percent, but that'd be too volatile for even me to put into my body, much less Penny's. Here, I'll send the relevant data."
She quickly 'mailed' the calculations she'd made in milliseconds to the Professor's systems. The man gave a once-over of the data. A few added specks of Dust to provide the mixture's stability, not to mention a pair of chemical compounds known to interact well with all kinds of Dust. It'd caused the mixture required to grow in price, but it was still decently cheap, considering... Pietro whistled, "Did Penny not know about your capabilities, miss Cortana? Because these calculations are accurate to the milliliter... And surprisingly more thorough in regards to heat-to-energy conversion offset calculations than even one of my friends who works in the Energy department of Atlas could've made..."
Cortana snorted, "I'm just decent at math, prof."
"You undersell your capabilities," The man smiled, "Penny has certainly made good friends."
Cortana chuckled. He wasn't particularly wrong about them being friends, though in this case it was more through John's own interactions with Penny than by her own choice. She sighed, then said, "Well, let's get to work... I didn't get to leave my friends and handler a note to tell them I'll be fine and if I try to ping one their way from here, Atlas may find me no matter what countermeasures I put into place."
"I agree," The man nodded, "We wouldn't want your comrades worrying."
The AI and the Doctor began their work in earnest, with Cortana already making alterations to the body as she saw fit. Certainly, much of the artificial organs were to later be used as prosthetics for any man or woman of the Atlas military that had survived the damage long enough to be recovered and brought in for surgeries that could save their lives. The material that the organs were made of was a mix of STEM cells(meant to ensure that a human or Faunus body wouldn't reject them) and various artificial components meant to replicate the original's functions.
Sure, Cortana knew her 'kidneys' were filters for the coolant in the reactor that would just re-cycle the thing through into her system rather than give the requirement for them to be eliminated and that her artificial stomach could easily process everything organic down to the bone of the item that she ate. What she didn't expect, however, was for doc Polendina to include a tongue with artificial taste sensors.
It was going to be an interesting experience. Cortana expected as much, anyway. But it still wasn't going to be a real body...
... Meanwhile, in Mantle, Doctor Halsey had luckily found the clinic empty enough to shelter within. She had sat herself down in the waiting room. The lights inside had been turned off, of course, seeing as there was no occupant to speak of inside. She breathed in and out, drawing her tablet from her pocket and looking through the data she had again. She didn't know what caused the transfer, but something told her she'd find the answers on this planet.
She started typing out several theories as she warmed up in the confines of the building. They must've been somewhere in the far north of the planet if it was this damn cold outside. She hummed, then sighed. She wasn't going to get anything from just speculating. She needed to get back out, find information, data, anything to tell her where she was and how she'd gotten here, but without some form of backing or aid from a wider governmental organization... Perhaps she could ask the higher-ups of this 'kingdom', as she'd heard it called in passing. Atlas.
She wondered if it was even worth trying, however. Tightening the labcoat around her form to ensure she had at least some extra layer of protection between her and the biting cold, she exited the clinic again, looking out into the wider, bustling streets. Pushing her glasses to the top of her nose, she scanned the place for any sort of store or anything to ask for directions.
She only stopped as she saw uniformed men approaching her from the right...
And they were looking right at her.
Oh, wonderful...