The ODST Lance Corporal nicknamed "Rookie" was one of those strong, silent types. Someone who got the job done no matter what the circumstance or situation. Despite that, finding himself in the middle of an alien city surrounded by blue tentacle-haired women needed some thinking about. He had no weapons and no radio contact with the rest of his team, since his weapons were in the pod that had crashed into a nearby building and his team... who know's where the hell they were, or for that matter where he was. Police, or what seemed to be police, had already cordoned off the area and were scanning the pod thoroughly with glowing orange gauntlets. Sooner or later they would be taking out the weapons and searching for their owner.

He limped further through the alleyway. His body had taken a lot of shock when he jumped from his pod moments before the crash. He was certain a few bones were broken somewhere and he was bleeding out of his leg despite the bio foam. Leaning on a wall to catch his breath the Rookie began to think about what to do next. Obviously outnumbered and without intel he was utterly lost. First thing he had to do was to find out where he was and get his weapons. Then figure out what to do next. Night was close, if the sunset was any indication. He would make his move then. Hopefully the pain would start to subside after a nap. It made it hard to function when his body felt like it had been pummeled by a Brute. He closed his eyes and started to fall asleep...

3 hours ago

"Someone check if Rookie's still alive, he hasn't moved for hours."

Thwack! A hard slap hit Rookie straight where his ear would be if it weren't covered by his helmet. Looking up, he saw Mickey with a rocket launcher waving hello.

"No worries! He was sleeping' his ass off while the real soldiers worked! Here Rookie, this is the last of it Come on, we got a drop in thirty.." Mickey held out the launcher which Rookie took and placed inside his pod along with all the other weapons and gear. The HEV pod had been practically filled to the brim with ammo and all other sorts of equipment. Right now they were about to drop onto the Ark, the central command of the Halo rings, to provide assistance to Master Chief as he made his way to the Prophet of Truth. That's why every pod had been loaded with so much gear, just in case the walking tank needed yet another gun. Before the pod closed the Rookie heard a voice he hadn't heard since New Mombasa. Captain Dare's.

"Rookie! Hold up; I got something for you." She walked over to him and showed him a data chip. More specifically, a data chip for AI.

"Remember when that Engineer integrated with the Superintendent? This is it. Apparently it became a smart A.I. because of that. We've never had an AI that was integrated with an Engineer before. Rewrote nearly its whole code in the past few months." She held out the chip to the Rookie.

"And it requested to be paired with you. Normally ONI wouldn't even think to give out a smart A.I. to a foot soldier, but it caused a ruckus with headquarters until they agreed, so they want you to obtain intelligence on Forerunner tech while you're down there."

The Rookie took the chip and attached it to the neural interface within his helmet. He saw superimposed images of the superintendent on his HUD flashing before him and the familiar beeping greeting of the VERGIL subroutine he'd come to know; it was unexpectedly followed by a rather womanly voice in his headset.

"Interface accepted. Pleased to meet you again 'Rookie'." It's voice sounded human, but it had undertones of both the Engineer's noises and the Superintendent's beeps that made it distinctly foreign to his ears.

"Good luck Rookie." Dare turned away and closed his pod. He saw her moving towards Buck before the signal to jump had turned on and everyone scrambled for their pods. A few minutes later the pods were released and-

His sleep was interrupted by the voice of... Something... It was directed at him and rapid, even if he couldn't recognize the words. Without moving he opened his eyes and saw the face of one of those blue aliens looking straight into his helmet. Around it he saw more aliens, all of them blue and all of them women, if the body type was anything like human. They all carried pistols in their hands, all aimed at his direction. The alien called out to her companions and he heard the beeping of the superintendent AI.

"Extra species contact doesn't match known Covenant profiles. Proceed with caution."

Detective Moya Santeas and her squad couldn't believe her eyes when they saw the suit of armor in the alleyway. It was distinctly foreign even on Illium and probably belonged to the pod full of weaponry they had found earlier crashed in Nassanna Dantius' building. She had determined it to be human based on the lettering, but it didn't look close to anything she had seen in her 300 years of policing. That and the strange weaponry It had been filled to the brim with gave her the impression of an Alliance black ops. Although sending a chunk of metal hurtling through the air wasn't really stealthy at all.

The squad approached the armored figure slowly with weapons drawn. If it really was a black ops unit on Illium there could be a political hurricane, and the higher ups would flay her if she let something like this go public. She knelt down over the body and checked it for weapons. None, so far as she should see, except for an old fashioned combat knife in a sheath on his chest. She started asking him questions.

"Sir? Are you alive? Can you hear me? Are you alive? Who are you?" Nothing.

But then the man in the armor moved. She jumped back, and the squad raised their weapons in preparation. Slowly, he raised his hand and reached for his helmet, pressing a button on the side.

The helmet did a strange sequence of beeps before a female human voice spoke.

"Please make way for emergency personnel providing medical assistance." Strange, it was a woman? And why speak like a public service announcement? Nonetheless, she saw a small pool of blood collecting under him/her and called for a medical team ASAP. She needed answers and it needed to be alive to answer them. Sighing as the medics arrived, she watched them load the human into the ambulance. She surveyed the scene around her and just knew.

"This is going to be a whole heap of shit isn't it?"