Carter marched into the CCTS, his weapon strapped to his back as he and Kat helped the Chief search for Cortana. The man stood guard beside his 2iC as she tapped in commands on the holographic terminal they were accessing-one of the farthest away from prying eyes. She murmured something to herself behind the helmet, then hummed and looked to Carter and shrugged.
"Nothing?" He asked, crossing his arms.
"Like Chief said, looks like she just up and vanished," Kat replied, standing to her feet and closing the terminal after wiping the access log in the last hour. Outside, the sun began to set. The two had been in high gear for the better part of the day, too, helping the search and rescue of their AI companion. Kat sighed, taking her helmet off and rubbing her eyes with her human hand, "She didn't even leave a trail we could follow..."
"If all else fails, we go check with Penny," The man stated, then inquired with concern behind his words, "Are you okay?"
"Headache," She replied with a grunt. Carter narrowed his lips, removing his helmet and turning to face her. There was concern behind every move as he looked over the girl. Sure, whatever brought them here kept the memories of their untimely demises. Carter himself still felt the prickles of heat from his suicide run against that Scarab near the Aszod Break Yards. He still had to keep it together for his team.
He set a hand on her shoulder, then said, "Let's get you some rest."
"I'll be fine..." She murmured, "Just have to take an aspirin back at home..." then she scoffed and snorted, "Who'd have known...? The great Catherine-B320, brought down by a meager headache..."
"Let's remember what's causing that headache," He replied, crossing his arms. She smirked, then nodded as the pain began its sharp decline. She had become accustomed to it, so she found it less and less painfully annoying whenever it happened. Sliding her helmet back onto her head just as Carter did the same, the two departed the tower. He spoke, probably trying to take her attention away from the middling pain she now felt, "Did you see the cat Chief brought in?"
Kat giggled, "Yeah. Wonder what he's gonna name it."
"Knowing the man, he'll have picked something for it by the time we finish our patrol route," He replied as they marched toward their home. The duo of young Spartan-IIIs garnered a few glances of surprise once more, but their new classmates had seemingly gotten used to them, with or without armor. Some waved, others gave nods and thumbs-ups as greetings, while several tended to just outright let them do their thing.
"So, what's your take on this, Commander?" She asked, looking to him. He looked back at her, a hint surprised, then he gazed back down the road. She clarified, "I meant on our revival. I didn't get to ask you. We were all too worried about Alice," and she thought for a moment. Truly, the entire team had been so immersed in the problem with Alice that a lot of them were barely registering their own issues.
She winced. That was probably not particularly healthy, but still, better than wallowing alone in self-pity, she guessed. The two entered the building, then looked to him and said, "You still haven't answered, Carter... Are you alright?" as she saw him staring out into nothingness. The man removed his helmet, setting it on the stand first, then nodded. Kat narrowed her lips. She knew that stare. He wasn't okay.
They saw Alice then, already tending to her kit as she seemed to enjoy doing. She offered a curt nod to them, then turned back to seemingly trying to disassemble a targeting sensor from her helmet so she could safely recalibrate it. Meanwhile, Kurt tended to the only SPI suit currently within the UNSC's limited armory, only turning to face Carter and Kat. He stood to his feet and approached them, asking, "You two alright?"
"Yessir," Both of them nodded.
"Good. First search gone smoothly?" He then inquired.
"As smoothly as it could, honestly," Carter sighed, "Still not a sign of her."
"It's barely the first day of searches... We'll find her," Kurt offered, then turned to the SPI suit again as the kids followed. He checked the suit's specialized chameleon circuit, then said, "Chief wants me to make a run-around within Vale's borders. Scout out other possible White Fang locations... Y'know, while searching for Cortana," and he shrugged. The two Spartan-IIIs nodded understandingly, to which Kurt dismissed them with a nod and said, "You kids ever need someone to talk to, we're all here..."
"All due respect, sir, I'd tell that to Alice," Kat noted, tilting her head to their Hyper-lethal Vector. Kurt nodded knowingly, a frown on his face, then turned back to work. The two moved to the back of the room, starting to disassemble their armors as Marines arrived with freshly-cooked food for them. Giving them quick thanks, Carter hummed as he looked at the plated stuff. Actual fresh veggies, fries and meats just off the grill.
Kat whistled, "We moved up in the world when we died..."
Carter snorted, "Sure looks like it..." And he took his plate, sitting himself down by his armor stand and starting to eat.
She joined him, gently picking up her plate with her robotic hand and the fork with the other. She looked over to the man as he ate, then narrowed her lips and said, "You still haven't answered if you're okay or not, Carter. We've been stuck together for so long, I know pretty much every deadpan stare of yours..." and she watched him turn to look her right in the eye.
He sighed, "You always did have me dialed in... Fine. I'm not particularly okay. My skin's still itching like crazy because of the burns and It's been itching since the start of this entire debacle... It's a constant reminder of what happened to me... And to the rest of you before and after that."
"So, why not just mention it...?" Kat inquired calmly, "I can still feel the pain in the back of my head and my eye. Emile's still got the abdominal pains... Jorge still feels tingles because of the Radiation and Alice has her own wounds she's contending with. We're all in the same boat... Not to mention everyone else around here and how they died. I've seen Sergeant Johnson scratching his breastplate."
"He got blasted by a Forerunner drone, didn't he?" Carter inquired. She nodded.
"The few Spartans in the area who aren't actually dead are the Chief and Blue Team. And we know that because they survived to tell us we won the war," Kat noted, then sighed deeply, "Y'know. I'd have thought being told your sacrifice mattered and that humanity now thrives after surviving the war would ease the idea that we died back into us, but no..."
"It ain't pretty, that's for sure," Emile noted from behind them as he approached, "Hey, Boss. Kat."
"Emile," Kat nodded, "How are you holding up?"
"Just fine," He replied, sitting himself down in front of them with his own stacked plate in hand. He flashed a pearly-white smirk at them as he started digging into the food. The man was descended from a family known for sending their children into the ranks of the Gurkhas. He was basically the last in a long line of the toughest bastards to ever walk the Earth and All Her Colonies, though, so...
"Figures you'd be fine," Jorge laughed as he approached them, hefting his machine gun.
"Hey, big man," He greeted.
"Take it you kids are still processing..." He noted.
"I think we've been moping enough, honestly," Carter noted, sighing. He looked to the right and saw Alice approaching, then said, "Ah, Lieutenant. Finally coming to join the family discussion?"
"Sir," She nodded, then sat herself down. What they hadn't noticed at first, however, was the presence of the tiny animal in her hands. She extended it forward, then said, "This is Keyes... Chief named him," and the tiny cat let out the sharpest, shrillest and most adorable meow any cat could ever let out. All four present members of Noble that weren't Alice stared, dumbfound.
"Uh..." Jorge looked to Alice, "You alright, Six?"
"Fine," She nodded, then brought the creature close and coddled it, "I think Penny called this pet therapy... And frankly, it's working..." and she nuzzled the creature's back fur. She looked to the Commander, extended the cat and said, "Try it... I swear you won't regret it. I'm... Somehow more calm with Keyes around." and she saw Carter reluctantly and gently pick up the creature, staring it in the eye.
It meowed and the Commander narrowed his lips, then set it down on his thigh armor and started scratching its back. Carter noted, "He has Aura..." then he looked to Alice. She nodded. Apparently, animals had souls, which honestly registered. He pet the creature calmly, looking over to Kat, then said, "How is this working...?" to which the girl shrugged. The creature meowed again and even Emile cracked a genuine smile.
"... I think it might be his semblance," Alice supposed, "If anyone remembers the classes on the soulstuff powers..."
"... A cat that's already unlocked its semblance..." Kat murmured, "And it's literally just soothing the people around it?"
Alice shrugged, "It's just a theory."
"Plausible as anything right now," Jorge smirked, then leaned in to pet the little cat, too, "He is a cute lil' bugger, though," before taking a knee. The ground around him shook as he let the weight of his armor press down onto the carpet and onto the floor. Several Marines around snorted, looking at the exchange. Johnson himself stifled a laugh as he and Carol shared a drink.
"What in the seven circles of hell am I looking at, Sarge?" Carol inquired, taking a sip from her glass.
"I don't know, Rawley. I don't know," The man hummed, grinning, "But hey, at least we know cats work."
"I ain't takin' care of a litter, Sarge," The pilot commented, words to which the man snorted. Indeed, nobody was going to take care of a litter of cats, but they felt they wouldn't need to. Still... "The fact Chief called the little thing 'Keyes' to honor both the Captain and his kid..." and Johnson snorted. Yeah, that was a thing. Chief had given the cat the name based on the Keyes Family.
"He's got a sense of humor," The Sergeant-Major quipped, "I'll give him that."
The group watched the Chief descending from his room. Penny, meanwhile, was playing a video game with some of the younger Marines in the background, so she didn't notice as he and BLUE Team, clad in full kit, marched out the door. They were probably aiming for another few sections of the city to scout out as well. Kurt had left with them, in full SPI armor.
There was a lot in motion between the Spartans and the rest of the UNSC personnel, Johnson felt. They needed to find Cortana and fast, before someone else like Atlas got their hands on her.
Mantle.
Doctor Halsey's hand hovered over her handgun as she watched the uniformed group approach her. They weren't Atlas soldiers, clearly, seeing as they lacked the armor and equipment, but they had animal features like those last few people she'd seen. Her concern was that these folks didn't seem none too friendly. In fact, several of them looked like they were carrying firearms hidden below their uniforms and glaring at her from behind strange plastic masks.
She scoffed, hand wrapped around the grip of her pistol, but hidden beneath her labcoat. She turned around and marched forth and through into the crowds of people around her. She blinked, the Heads-Up Display system in her thick-framed glasses turning on. She could keep count of her ammunition and had a basic motion tracker, but she didn't have the ability to tag hostiles, so everything moving around her made a big blob of gray on the circular HUD appliance.
She saw more of them in her peripheral vision, wearing cloaks, but advancing toward her through the crowd. She scoffed, drawing the handgun from its holster and keeping it concealed, but at the ready. If she did have to engage in a firefight to escape her pursuers, she would. Just not in a crowded place like this. She narrowed her lips, looking around. A couple more cloaked figures, hanging out in the rain. One of them noticed her and approached.
She didn't have time to draw her pistol. The figure caught her hand and spoke with a hardy female voice, "Calm down... We're friends..."
"I'll believe that..." Halsey murmured skeptically, "Those people in uniforms also friends of yours?" and she tilted her head back toward the Faunus who were trailing her. The woman that'd just spoken to her scoffed, then looked to a couple more of her associates and gave them a nod. The two ladies advanced and Halsey could faintly see the concealed weaponry below their clothes...
She looked the woman to her left in the eye, only to be met by a tanned amazon beauty with cream-colored hair and blue eyes. She flashed Halsey a grin, then said "I'm Robyn. Don't worry, we'll get the Fang off your back, but you're coming with us. We have to talk..." to which Halsey hummed. Well, this Robyn did already have her in a precarious position, but she'd proved friendly. The woman turned to see the 'Fang' troopers being dragged away by the woman's helpers, out of sight of the crowd.
Halsey sighed, "I don't have much of a choice in the matter of people now, do I?"
"Nope," She replied, "C'mon. I'll guarantee your safety and you can keep that gun, but we do need to talk."
"I understand," Halsey nodded. She holstered the pistol and tightly clipped it to her thigh, then followed Robyn and her fellows out of the crowd. They entered a damp, but somewhat-lit alleyway where all four girls removed their hoods, revealing a bunch of beautiful, tough-looking girls in raggedy uniforms and wielding staves that had guns and blades at each end. They holstered the weapons as they walked forward and the tallest of the lot turned to Halsey.
"Didn't think we'd get an Atlas doc down here," She quipped.
"She isn't Atlas," Voiced a white-haired one with... Sheep ears? And green eyes.
"'Course she is. Look at the labcoat," Voiced the tall one again. She then gave the doctor a once-over and noticed the badge clipped to her breast pocket, a memorabilia piece more than anything. She hummed, seeing the strange pyramid of the ONI symbol, probably, and stating, "O... Okay...? That's a weird symbol... What's your name, ma'am? IF ya don't mind a bunch of Happy Huntresses asking."
"Catherine Halsey," She replied firmly, "Doctor Catherine Halsey."
"Nice to meet ya, Doc," The Tall One smiled, "I'm Joanna. That there to your right is Fiona and behind us is May."
"Hello!" Fiona greeted, smiling.
"Hi. You got an odd name. Old-school." May nodded, smiling. She had long blue hair with a strange 'ponytail' of sorts hanging off the right and amber eyes, while Joanna had spiky green hair, green eyes, a darker skin tone and a few tattooed lines on her face, including one over her nose. All of them wore a similar badge, that of a bird of some kind. Halsey didn't pay it much mind.
"So it would seem..." She commented, taking off her glasses and sliding them into her breast pocket, "Thank you for the timely rescue, ladies... I don't know what those 'Fang' soldiers intended to do, but I think it's better I didn't find out."
"You ain't wrong about that one," Robyn turned toward her as they walked forward, "The White Fang's been acting all the more active as of late. They could've just been looking for a random human to harass. You could've probably scared them off, though. That pistol tells me as much... What's that, fifty caliber?" and Halsey hummed, then nodded.
"Semi-Armor Piercing High Explosive rounds," The woman replied.
Robyn whistled, "That's a lot of death packed into a neat package... Who are you, Doctor? Does Atlas usually let their top researchers go about on the ground like this, or is it like Fiona said and you aren't Atlas...?"
"I am not an Atlas researcher, no," Halsey replied, looking between the girls, "Where are we going now?"
"Our hideout," Robyn noted, "You've also been noticed by the Atlas security forces present here in Mantle, even if they haven't come for you directly."
"I see... It would be preferable not to get myself captured by them... For now, at least," She remarked as the group entered an abandoned factory hall of some kind. Upon entering it, the Doctor's nostrils were assaulted by the scent of sweat and cooking food of some kind. She gagged, then tugged at the collar of her turtleneck and said, "That is definitely an... Interesting smell..."
"Heh. Thanks, doc," Robyn noted, smiling, "C'mon. Dinner's almost ready. You can tell us about how you got here and what you're actually doing in a place like this..."
Meanwhile, Cortana hummed, regarding the machine where her body was slowly being assembled with a hint of muted awe. The amount of precision engineering that must've gone into the creation of such a machine was staggering, to say the least, but she couldn't deny the fact that it still felt a bit crude. The muscle and tendon recreations were something else, but the grafted artificial skin and the specialized attachments for various sensory input/output systems were a bit rudimentary, a surprise that also annoyed Cortana to no end because how had she not noticed the mistakes in Penny?
Oh, well, no time to mope about it now, she thought. There were more pressing matters at hand.
Then again, there was the matter of the contact down below...
She'd find said contact when she got loose.