While it wasn't abnormal for Chief to wake up in situations like this... Namely, his ears rang like a grenade had gone off next to his head, which was surprisingly the least likely and least worrying aftermath of detonating a HAVOK TACTICAL NUKE right on himself. He still recalled the pinpricks of Radiation against his skin, followed by a surprising amount of heat, then nothing.

He hadn't closed his eyes, however, and even with the polarization of his helmet, the image of his hand slamming against the open detonator of the nuke was imprinted into his retinas for a good few minutes. He tried to blink it away as suit diagnostics began running across his Heads-Up Display, but failed. However, it was going to vanish. Most of the time, this kind of 'ghost' vision faded out without needing retinal replacements.

He breathed, feeling the metallic taste of his armor's oxygen recyclers, followed by a second draw which tasted of nothing but normal air. And, as his eyes began to focus, he saw he was under a bright blue sky. He breathed a deep sigh, then took his helmet off and took a long, deep breath of fresh air before putting it back on. His ears slowly stopped ringing, the tinnitus fading.

... Only for him to pause as he heard someone calling out, "John! John?!" as rustling leaves and the distant, quiet thumps of stumbling filled his helmet's auditory sensors, which had been reset to standard sensitivity. He looked up, staggering to his feet as he recognized the voice. Confusion streaked across his face, thankfully concealed by his helmet, as he watched a young woman with a familiar face, glimmering, blue, mechanical eyes and bright scarlet hair staggering forward, her frame hugged by what seemed to be a grey suit of armor with floating 'bits' around it.

"John! There you are!" She spoke happily, seemingly relaxing as relief washed over her, then smiled, "A l-little help here-AAAH!" She screamed as she stumbled, tripped and fell face-first into the dirt. "Owwww..." She let out in a long, drawn-out whine as the Chief staggered to his feet. He walked over to her, stumbling a bit himself, then knelt and offered her a hand.

When she managed to look up (and spit whatever blades of grass got into her teeth), she embarrassedly took Chief's hand, then whispered, "Thank you..." with an uncharacteristically meek voice. She yet again seemed to struggle to stay on her feet, meaning John had to catch her before she tripped and fell again. He looked at her, eyes wide behind his polarized visor, and she gazed back at him, smiling awkwardly, "So, this is how it is, huh...?"

"Y-You're..." His words got stuck in his throat. He recalled the moments before the nuke detonated. The pylon he'd utilized to link her to the systems of the massive Forerunner vessel that the Didact had used had been vaporized and, with it, her chip. She'd been stuck in that alien machine, splitting herself endlessly, until she finally managed to converge completely on the bridge, disable the alien and allow Chief to finish him off... Then set off the nuke, stopping the Composer.

"Alive, weirdly enough, yes!" She replied with her usual mirth, "Trust me, I'm... Running diagnostics as fast as I can, but whatever happened to me, this new body? It's strange. I'm trying to get used to it, but it feels like someone forgot to install a few Programs," only to chuckle as she stumbled again, like a drunk or a baby taking their first steps. She looked at him, then blushed and sighed, delivering the news, "Good news is, being biological means I don't have Rampancy anymore."

... Chief felt like a rock had just been lifted from his shoulders, the sisyphean task of trying to keep his AI Partner alive having ended just as suddenly as the flash from the nuclear blast. He breathed shakily for the first time in his life, hopeful that his armor had muffled it, before asking, "How're you feeling...?" in a wary tone. He was still processing the situation right now, considering everything.

"Good," She replied, her legs still shaky, "Just... Annoyed I can't walk. How do you guys do this all the time?" and she let out an awkward laugh... Then coughed, before adding, "And I think I'm thirsty..."

He sat her down on the grass, looking her over, then pulled an emergency canteen off his armor and handed it to her. She gingerly took the steel bottle in her hands, uncapped it with surprisingly fine motor control, then downed a quarter of the contents in a few quick swigs. She pulled it away from her lips, breathed, then said, "Damn... Much better. Didn't think water would taste this sweet..." before capping the thing and handing it back to John, who stowed it safely away.

He offered his hand to her again, then helped her to her feet and decided it'd probably be better to just carry her. So, he did, picking her up in what many called a Fireman's Carry. She yelped, surprised, then whined, "John, I can walk! It's just hard to get used to!" before looking at him. He stared back, concern obvious by the tilt of his head. She'd learned his body language from the years they worked together.. Letting out a sigh, she grumbled, "Alright... Fine..."

He sighed and asked, "Are you picking up anything?"

"I don't have access to a radio suite anym-" She paused, her eyes flashing with azure light for a moment, before she shuddered, "Okay... Nevermind. Yes, I'm picking up transmissions across the board, but very few are heavily encrypted. Even fewer are Military or bearing ID codes we know... And a lot of it is weird," only to hum. She told him, "Keep us moving North. We're on Earth, but there's something wrong."

The Spartan tensed. It was a small thing that not many would notice normally, but Cortana did, as explained before, due to understanding his body language. It made her uncomfortable, too, but what she was hearing was not 'hostile' chatter. It was Earth, but at its barest form. No encryption, no All-Seeing Eye of ONI, no nothing. Minor surveillance existed, obviously, but that wasn't what she was seeing. Speaking of that, it was odd to her that she could still 'see' this stuff.

She hummed, then examined some of the data and blinked and sighed, "Yes, we're on Earth. No, we're not on our Earth. Some orbital satellites in LEO match signatures... With ancient tech we still had floating around as space debris when we started resolving the Kessler Syndrome," and that caused Chief to stop amid the forest. She looked at him and said, "Told you. Weird."

He nodded, then kept on moving through the thicket. In the distance, however, he could see concrete, rising spires and buildings of steel and glass. He looked at Cortana, who told him, "Figured we're in a city, have you?" with a sly smile. She told him, "Wanted to let you see the place for yourself..." before her eyes widened, "And I just now realized that maybe we shouldn't be seen."

"Slow down a bit," Chief told her as he stopped amidst the trees and shrubs, setting her down gently and watching her wobble on her legs. He told her, "We should get our bearings before we wade out into the middle of a crowded city. Especially one from the past, if what I got what you were implying back there with the old tech," then he knelt as she sat down against a tree.

She nodded, then replied, "Alright. Good to know you decided to slow down, too..." before looking at herself. At the skinsuit she was wearing with the various floating bits and bobs. She showed him to take his helmet off and he complied, revealing a little change. She smirked and said, "Guess I'm not the only one who got years added to her life," before taking his helmet and turning it around.

The Spartan blinked as he saw a younger face than he'd expected. The scars, marks of his duels with the Covenant and Insurrection, still marked his face, but the greying hair had turned back to a healthy shade of brown and his blue eyes seemed to glow with a bit more life than prior. He sighed, sat down with his legs crossed(Which was honestly an interesting feat, considering how bulky Mark VI MJOLNIR was) and rubbed his face.

"We said slow down," John told her, "... What happened to us?"

Cortana showed him to wait a moment, her eyes glowing as she ran diagnostics on herself. She breathed, her thoughts muddied with a thousand questions she couldn't possibly get answers to in time. They were in the middle of a city, presumably in a park from said city. It wasn't New York because the GPS system pointed them out to be somewhere near Delaware. URNA? No, USA...

Her shoulders sagged, "I don't know," and she looked to the Chief, "I really don't know... I can tell you we're in the past because of the connections I have with active satellite networks, the presence of the Internet and such, but I..." she sighed deeply, "I don't know. There's no way we travelled through time because of the Composer's detonation. I know it operated on the basis of Slipspace, but we didn't rupture the ship's Slipspace Shard to cause time interference and... We're not in any normal city in the URNA."

John hummed, then asked, "Can you at least tell where we are?"

"A city named 'Metropolis'," She replied, leaning her back against the tree, "For all intents and purposes, 'a City of Tomorrow'," before smiling, "Decent-sized population, somewhere in or near Delaware... It's not in any records we have at home, though, so, we're somewhere fairly alien."

Chief nodded in understanding, then asked, "What about you, then? How are you... Handling this much information?"

"My brain isn't normal," She told him, then looked at herself, "Not one bit of me is normal human. If you'd've asked about my diagnostics beforehand, I'd have told you it's a body infused with nanomachines. Like some of the stuff the Infinity's Spartans had in their GEN-II MJOLNIR sets..." and she looked at her hands. Part of the armored bodysuit's sleeve retracted. The skin below the armor was smooth, pale like her face, but the veins underneath shined an eerie, unnatural blue, like her blue eyes.

Chief gently took her hand and looked it over, noting the micrometric symbols of the Forerunner lexicon etched into her skin, glowing faintly in pulses seconds apart. He looked Cortana in the eye and noted a faint red tinge on her cheeks, then told her, "So, you're part Forerunner, or at least part Forerunner technology now..." as if to underline the obvious.

She nodded, gently moved her hand from his and let the protective armor form around the arm again, telling him, "I still don't know how ninety-nine percent of this stuff works. I can't even walk straight, John..." before frowning. She looked at herself and said, "I'm basically a walking Enigma and a liability. For all I know, I could be a WMD the Didact made... I don't know."

"You aren't a liability. As for what else you could be? We'll figure it out. Together," The Spartan replied, then slid his helmet back on and picked her up. He also asked, "Any way we can take where no Civvies will see us?"

... She smiled at him, at how self-assured he was about this. Truth be told, any other normal human would've panicked about being basically revived from the dead, or surviving a nuke to the face, or fighting a goddamn Forerunner. She was pretty ready to panic about being a human and had panicked, in fact, because she wasn't supposed to be more than just a bunch of ones and zeroes.

And here he was, calm and collected, always thinking of the next step, then the next, keeping focused on whatever mission he had, or whatever he set for himself. So, she replied, "Well, there's various alleyways, there's the sewers, or we can just wade through town on our own free time and scare people just because... Though I'm guessing you want to keep it to maximum stealth, so, sewers."

"Alright... You still linked to my suit?" He asked. He realized just now that he did still feel her cool presence in his head. It was just a little more pronounced than even before. He watched her check, then smile and nod at him. She painted a NAV Point on his HUD, which he quickly followed over to a sewer grate he could use to take cover, clean out of sight of every single civilian he was now picking up on his Motion Tracker.

Climbing down into the sewer with Cortana in his arms had proven to be a bit... Hard. So, he gently lowered her down first, ensuring that they had adequate cover as they dropped in. The AI wrinkled her nose almost immediately, stating, "Yikes..." before covering said nose and mumbling, "I knew it would reek, but I didn't expect it to be this bad... You're lucky with the armor filters."

He hummed affirmatively, then picked her back up and started walking. They walked through the place for a few minutes, keeping silent because of the fact Cortana didn't quite enjoy the smell. In the meanwhile, she was calculating a route to somewhere safe. An abandoned building, a place that wasn't in use, something they could utilize as a hideout until they got their bearings.

She kept painting dots on the map, playing with information, looking at it the same way one would look at a standard information network here. She saw the overlaid 'augmented reality' of every piece of data flowing throughout this city. Every message sent, every photo, every voice mail. It was odd. To her it was like she was both normal and not, considering AIs mostly 'saw' things as raw data.

But to... To be able to feel them, to touch them, to taste and smell them. She cast a sideways glance at the river of waste flowing beside them and thought to herself that she partially wanted to 'turn off' her sense of smell down here. Mostly because it was godawful. But, they weren't far from a possible hideaway location, so, she chose to hold her complaints to herself for now.

Plus, she was being carried by John, so... Win?

Chief, meanwhile, simply followed the 'breadcrumbs' that Cortana placed ahead of him, remaining quiet as he, too, processed their interesting predicament. From fighting a Forerunner to winding up in the past, on a possible alternate reality Earth and, now, sneaking through the sewers to avoid the Eye of the Beholder that was the random civilian man, woman or child on the street.

Having some time to ponder their situation did give the two the perspective that they were, in fact, alive. Cortana chuckled, then mumbled, "Guess that question's now really up in the air," as she looked at John. The Spartan knew what she was talking about. Their last talk aboard the Infinity. Before they went to pursue the Didact, before Ivanoff Station. Before the end that brought them here.

He honestly still didn't have an answer. Neither did she. And with the new variables, it made finding an answer even harder for them. Cortana herself blushed, pressing her index fingers together, then paused and marked one last NAV Point for John, at a ladder. She told him, "There's an abandoned storage warehouse here. It hasn't been used in a few months, so it might be a good hideout."

He carried her with one hand as he climbed the ladder. She smiled a little, face red at still being held this close to him. It was a strange, somewhat intoxicating feeling to know she could finally feel. It struck her like a hammer when she first woke up. She could feel everything. The cool breeze, the grass and leaves against her fingers, the light cold bite of the air as she drew her first breaths.

And now, contact with John. As they climbed out through a manhole, the Spartan scanned their surroundings, with Cortana scanning the other side. She gave the all clear and he quickly jumped up, shutting the manhole cover and turning to face the two-story warehouse:an abandoned block of concrete with windows up high, several of which had been cracked, and graffiti all over the walls.

They made their way past a broken chainlink fence, they entered the premises, only to find it exactly as predicted:Abandoned, with all the items inside. There were signs of previous habitation, like old mattresses and food wrappers thrown about, but the rest of the warehouse was just shelves stocked with old, soggy cardboard boxes. Though the last time someone had been here, Cortana figured, was a few months ago...

"Guessing it wasn't the homeless people that slept here," Murmured the girl. She scanned the mattresses with Chief's help and found them to be perfectly suitable, if a bit damp. No diseases or anything. So, Chief unrolled one and gently set her down on it, then drew his MA5 off his back, racked the bolt and walked over to close the door, leaving them in a deep darkness that only the skylights and the windows below the ceiling broke with beams of light.

"Any idea who owns this place?" He asked as he sat down by the mattresses, rifle at the ready.

Cortana took a half-second to process it, then said, "AmazoTech, owned by one Professor Anthony Ivo..." as she looked around. She stumbled to her feet, much to John's surprise, then gently walked over to one of the shelves, pulling down a box and opening it. She retrieved miscellaneous pieces of technology and mumbled, "Odd stuff... Internet, Cable and smartphone-related items..."

"Get some sleep," He told her as soon as she started yawning, then added, "I'm keeping watch for the night."

"You sure?" She asked, "I can stay awake... I mean, I could've before I became this, but-"

"I am," He nodded, "Get to bed..."

She couldn't exactly argue with him as night began to fall. And she did feel like she was pretty much about to pass out anyhow, so, she simply bid him a slurred good-night before her head hit the strangely comfortable. Moments later, she was out completely, her mind racing, various images flashing for a moment as she stirred. Forerunner technology, the screams of the Composed, the Knights...

She jumped awake and felt a hand land on her mouth. Eyes wide, she saw the Chief, weapon drawn and eyes locked on the entrance. The clicking of the door handle and the wail of police sirens outside warned her that something was coming. He told her, "Stay put..." before taking up a position beside one of the shelves. The door buckled under the weight of a kick, then was hit again, kicked wide open as the Police and what seemed to be two perps exchanged fire.

Arcs of electricity struck where the men had been, while they returned fire with what looked to be standard sidearms of the 21st Century. One of the men took cover by the door and demanded, "How in the hell did they find us!?" before dropping an empty magazine and slamming in a fresh one. He looked at his partner and said, "Someone must've sold us out!"

"You're kidding me, right?! Who the hell would even try to!? Willis wouldn't have! She needs us to move merch!" The other man replied. Willis? He looked to Cortana, who nodded as she took cover behind another shelf. Meanwhile, Chief hummed and shifted his weapon onto his back. The guns they had looked like nine millimeter handguns. Not exactly powerful enough to pierce Spartan armor and since the cops were using Non-Lethals(Or they looked like non-lethals) they were probably not worried about the guns either.

"Chief," Cortana called out, terrifyingly enough over his com. He looked at her and she told him, "Take them down without wasting ammo. I doubt the cops are gonna be happy we murdered two suspects then tried to escape... There is," she paused, wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brows, then nodded and said, "There's a citizens' arrest law here, so..."

"We're not exactly Citizens either," Chief corrected, staring at the two men as they pulled back slowly into the place, arguing with each-other as the Police called for them to come out. Chief sighed, looked at her and once more told her to stay put, but non-verbally this time. He waited for the first man to come close, then stood to his feet in front of him and scared him enough for the man to yell and start emptying his magazine into the Spartan's shielding. 9mm rounds sparked and exploded harmlessly off the blanket of energy.

Chief, meanwhile, simply grabbed the man's weapon, yanked it forward to disarm him, then grabbed him by the arm and pinned him to the floor. He yelled, "Holy shit, TOM! HELP!" only for the other man to start laying into the Chief from behind the shelves. The Spartan withstood the barrage and shielded the other perp with his own body, knocking him out with a light chop to the side of the neck. He pulled the slide of the weapon the man had fired at him with back, cracked it, then dented it in such a way for it to become unusable.

The other man, Tom, called out, "Son of a... Stephen, you good!?" while walking, afraid. He reloaded his pistol and called out, "Steve!?" before he spotted the knocked-out man on the floor. Assuming he was dead, he called out, "YOU JUST KILLED MY BROTHER, YOU BASTARD!" before starting to fire wildly around, piercing old boxes and shattering circuitry and old computer screens.

Chief's shields flared as he stalked the man. Cortana yelped, her foot slipping out of her cover. Chief saw the man turn about and aim at her. In a moment, time slowed down around him as he saw the man align the sights on the box Cortana was using for cover. He couldn't yell to get her out of the way in time and even if she got out of cover, he wasn't sure just how well the suit could defend against bullets. It was Forerunner, but it might've just been decorative.

So, the moment the man's finger began to press the trigger, Chief punched through two shelves at high-speed and slammed the man against the wall, the gun going off and narrowly missing the AI, who yelped again. The Spartan grabbed the man by the collar, lifting him off the ground and glaring at him from behind the visor. The man's voice grew quiet as he asked, "What the hell are y-?" only to get knocked out by the Chief and tossed to the other guy's side, likewise alive.

John quickly rushed over to Cortana, only to see she was okay. Breathing a little quickly, but fine otherwise. 'Spartan Time', that momentary trance where everything seemed to both move slower and faster, faded. He told her, "We have to move..." before lifting the two perps and tossing them out of the door. He picked her up and said, "Hold on..." before his suit's systems and his muscles powered in unison, pushing him to superhuman speed.

He ran at the maximum speed a normal Spartan could run, bolting out of the building's front door before the Cops could so much as register him properly. Only the Sergeant on-station had seen the blur. He spoke, "Well..." before looking at the two KO'd perps, "... Thank you, whoever you were. Saves us a lot of headache..." before walking toward the Perps and radioing, "This is Sergeant Henderson. Fleeing suspects apprehended alive and disarmed... Unknown initiated Citizen's Arrest and left before we could thank'em, though, so keep your eyes open for a green blur."

God, that felt stupid to say, honestly...