One

Swaths of golds and reds shimmered over the smoking fields of Talian, the brilliant sunset seeming out of place to be ending a day so horrendous. Hundreds of thousands of people had died, possibly almost half of the planet's population. Talian wasn't a huge planet, not like Earth, but it had a decent amount of people trying to make a living on its dusty shores. It only had a couple million people in its entire population.

Red dirt kicked up into the wind before being forced to part to make room for a motorbike. The bike was a black and red blur in the late afternoon, skidding around crevices and gouges in the dirt where the Covenant had dropped bombs on the planet. What had once been lush and thriving farmland was now craters; caused by the numerous bombings that the Covenant did to keep the people of Talian under their iron rule. Coming to a stop near the edge of a forest, the figure riding the bike jumped off, hitting the dirt with a light thud and taking off her helmet.

Tai had been one of the only ones left alive at their base after the Covenant's most recent attack, as well as one of the very few who were both old enough and able to move, so she had been the one who was assigned lookout. That was how she managed to see the smoking trail of an incoming spaceship. Something had been wrong with it. It had been coming down far too fast to have been purposeful. Not to mention that their base hadn't actually heard anything about it over the radio they had managed to procure and hack into. Combining the smoke with the general wrongness of the cruiser, Tai took a stab and decided that it had more than likely been shot down.

By whom was something that she didn't know.

With the trees getting denser, Tai was forced off her bike and went after the downed cruiser on foot. Luckily for her, though rather unfortunate, the cruiser had decided to crash on land that had– once upon a time– been her family's farmland. Tai knew the forest like the back of her hands, and with the direction the ship had seemed to be heading, she could only assume that it had crashed down somewhere near the water-y ravine that was about five miles into the heart of the forest.

Hours later, when the suns had finished setting, Tai finally ran into the downed ship. It had created a huge crater where it crashed into the dirt; trees and shrubbery broken and splintered where they had been torn from their roots. Scratches wound their way across her arms and legs from the nettles and bushes she had to climb through. Bullets of blood dripped from her various wounds to run down her fingers and stain her once-white socks red. The injuries she managed to gather didn't bother her anymore, they were superficial in the grand scheme of things. The war had done much more to her than any vegetation could ever hope to possibly accomplish.

Behind her, the trees rustled, making the hair on her arms stand on end. Tai had to figure out if there was anybody still on the ship before it got too cold. If anyone had, miraculously, managed to survive the landing, they for sure wouldn't make it to see the next day, not with Talian's much colder nights. Tai shuddered, thumbing over the hilt of the offline energy-sword that sat at her hip, a makeshift scabbard tying it to her belt. The cold of the metal calmed her.

Carefully, she made her way closer to the downed ship, fiddling with the sword gently. Her thoughts ran wild. With the way the ship had been flown while it was heading down, there was most likely someone still on it. She could only hope that the pilot was a human, or at least someone not associated with the Covenant.

Tai wasn't disillusioned enough to believe herself capable of handling a Covenant soldier by herself should one get the jump on her. The only reason she had managed to get the sword from one of them in the first place was because she had snuck up on the Elite that had been messing with it. She'd hit it before it had ever realized she was there. That sword was now her most prized possession in this godforsaken war.

The need to help out what could be a possible human far outweighed the fear of a Covenant soldier jumping out at her. Nowadays, everyone had a better chance at survival if they stuck to a group and relied on each other. Besides, if the person in the ship was an enemy, then she had a good chance of injuring it enough that it died of its wounds should it kill her first. Might as well die while protecting the people back at her camp.

After what felt like an eternity, Tai finally made it to the downed ship. It was far bigger than it had looked, but it also looked more torn to shit than she had originally thought. Scars and more recent-looking wounds covered the hull and underbelly of the ship. It was flipped onto one of its sides, so it took a bit for Tai to find something that could work as an entrance. Aaaannnnndddd… It was buried against a large oak tree. Dammit.

The good news was, it was a Pelican ship, which meant that it was human. UNSC to be exact. Not exactly what Tai would call useful right now, but better than nothing. If she could manage to break in, she'd be able to scavenge for parts. With the state of the ship itself, along with how it landed and seemingly flipped, Tai doubted that anyone had survived, if they had managed to even survive breaking the atmosphere of Talian.

More rustling came from the trees in front of her. The breeze never came. Something was in the shrubbery. Hiding. Watching her. Tai swallowed. It was probably just a squirrel or something. Yeah, a squirrel.

Who was she kidding, she hadn't seen hide nor hair of any small mammals since the beginning of this damned war.

Glancing around, her heart rate calmed slightly before she looked up. The leather strap around her throat felt constricting all of a sudden. Suspended in the branches of a nearby tree was a suit of metallic-green armor. Tai couldn't help but compare the sight to a widow-maker she had seen once when she was a kid. Only this was a very large, very heavy widow-maker. And a very large, very heavy widow-maker that was about to fall on top of her.

SHIT.

Tai scrambled to get out of the way, throwing herself to the ground to the left of where she had been standing just as the branches holding the armor up snapped. The armor hit the ground with a resounding CRASH. Grunting, she barreled a couple of times before forcing herself to a stop by throwing out her arms. Her ribs screamed at her from the sudden, jarring movement. A large rock dug into the meat of her right thigh.

Hissing, Tai forced herself onto her butt, taking stock of the injuries she'd accidentally given herself. Her ribs were ultimately pissed at her. The boulder she had landed on had apparently been rather sharp and had dug its own miniature crater into the skin of her thigh. Scarlet blood ran in rivulets across the skin of her leg, dripping into the grass she still sat in. A few more bruises than she'd had coming into this godforsaken forest, but nothing she couldn't handle. Except maybe the ribs. The ribs were killing her.

She looked around quietly, trying to stifle the pain that was radiating from her very being. There was no telling where the Covenant was at any given moment. She hoped to all hell that they had been far, far away. And that they didn't hear the ground shaking boom that had rattled her bones. After a few minutes of loud silence (how was silence loud in the first place anyway?)Tai forced herself up and stumbled her way back to where the suit of armor lay splayed out on the forest floor.

Morbidly, she wondered if she'd find a dead body if she opened the suit of armor.

Shaking herself out of those rather depressing (but not uncommon) thoughts, she looked more carefully at the armor. It was a brilliant dark shade of green with multiple scars like the ship that it undoubtedly came from. Tai had a feeling that it had seen its fair share of battles, the charring on some of the plates making it look like some of the armor had been replaced to keep it up to full function.

To Tai, it looked like a mix of astronaut armor and medieval knight's armor. It also looked rather familiar. She just couldn't place her finger on why. Something about it just screamed "don't mess with me, or the person who wore me". Maybe she'd seen an art piece that resembled the look of the armor somewhere. Before all the shit with the Covenant broke out.

The closer she got, the more she started to notice the splatters of red that stained the armor an ugly brown in some places. It was blood, she realized. Blood that was currently pooling under the suit of armor. Which meant that whoever the armor had once belonged to, was still in it. And bleeding. Badly. Maybe they had managed to survive the fall–and impact–of the ship.

From far away, the plating of the armor had appeared to be dented, but now that she was closer, it was clear that something had managed to break into the armor. It was like whatever that something was, it had clawed into the armor. Gashes in the metal armor gave way to a black bodysuit; strange-looking patterns being sewn into the under armor. The patterning almost looked like scales. Whatever had attacked the person in the armor had obviously been strong enough to do some major damage if the tears in the metal suit were any indication. Which was terrifying in and of itself.

Tai shivered again. Taking a breath, she took the last final steps that put her right next to the suit of armor. The armor shifted slightly. Her eyes widened. Whoever was still in the suit was alive.

What. The. Hell.

She was running out of time. Shrugging out of her cropped jacket, Tai grasped the knife she kept tucking into her waistband and started sawing at the material of her undershirt. It wasn't bandages, but Tai had enough medical training from her mother to make makeshift wraps. It was as good as this person was going to get until Tai could get them back to her base.

With no way of getting the armor off, Tai set about cutting into the black material of the person's under armor. She needed to get the wounds out in the open if she wanted to have any chance of stopping the flow of blood. Tai scrunched up the fabric that she had ripped from her own shirt and pressed it into the worst of the wounds; a gaping hole in the person's abdomen. From what she could see, the suit of armor belonged to a man. A giant-ass man.

He still had too many open wounds, and Tai had no way of actually tying the makeshift bandages around his torso; she didn't have enough hands to deal with everything at once. So, she did the only thing she could actually think of. She sat on him. Thankfully, the wound on his stomach was closer to his side than the middle, so her thigh was easily able to keep pressure on it and keep it staunched while she worked on the multiple sores and lacerations the man had on his arms.

She had a bit more wiggle room where his arms were in his suit than she did at his torso, so it was easier for her to tie the bandages where she needed to. The man groaned, trying to shift his weight. Tai shushed him, keeping her voice low and moving faster. There was no telling when he would start waking up. Or what his reaction would be to a twenty-three year old sitting on him.

Tai let out a string of curses when the tell-tale humming of a wraith broke over the mountains on the other side of the forest. She was out of time and wasn't thinking when she started shaking the man, somehow not realizing that she was still motherfucking sitting on him. Up until now, the cracked visor had been dark, but suddenly Tai was looking into a rather bright orange light. The suit was on-lining.

And a very large hand was wrapping tightly around her throat.

FUCK.