UNSC ABANDONED OUTPOST

DRAETHEUS SYSTEM

A feminine figure stepped through the smoking debris of what was once a defense tower. The Corporal sighed with relief, the hand gripping his M6C dropping off his knee and hitting the debris-scattered sand.

"Takao, you missed the party…" He wheezed, finding it harder and harder to keep the air in his lungs.

Takao's heart sank when she saw the ODST leaning on the bullet riddled concrete divider inside the base. Blood from many wounds streaming down his camouflaged armour and pooled around him in a dark crimson puddle.

"Xin An!" She yelled rushing toward the fallen soldier and looking over his wounds, she saw the jagged piece of metal in his side yet dare not touch it for fear of making it worse.

"H-hey grab the canister of biofoam in my rucksack, it should stop the bleeding…" He said, trying to sit up for her to grab the backpack but eliciting another bout of blood-specked coughing instead.

"やめる！(Yameru! Stop!) Stop moving, let me see!" The woman ordered, lifting the hand that he kept over the wound and saw the metal that had pierced him and winched when she saw its extent.

Following his instructions, the Cruiser grabbed the canister from within. She knew it operated similar to an aerosol canister, but first the piece of metal needed to be out for the biofoam to do its work.

"T-that's the first time you used my given name…" Lee wheezed, feeling darkness creep into the edges of his vision.

"Stop talking please… and this may hurt." She said. Before he could question her, Takao pulled.

"EEEAAAAAAUUUGGGGGGHHH!" He screamed, pure agony burned his nerves as the foreign object had been ripped from its self-made home.

Blood splattered as the metal was pulled out, spreading across the sand in an arc. It sprayed a bit from the wound, splattering on her tattered clothing and onto her face. She tasted something metallic. Was this what human blood tasted like? It tasted of steel.

His scream though… Takao had heard screams of pain before but never from Lee. Seeing him react like this wasn't unexpected, but hearing his scream in pure uncensored agony as his blood sprayed from his body was something that burned itself into her mind.

Jabbing the nozzle and releasing the clotting agent into the ODST's gaping wound elicited another long scream of burning pain. It felt like a thousand tiny needles stabbing his internal organs, a colony of burning fire-ants nibbling at his wounded side as the white foam turned pink, then red with his blood. The Corporal began to thrash and shake, convulsing as he muscles twitched where they were torn, Takao held him down- pinning him by his chest to stop him from moving as the wound was sealed.

His screams must have attracted attention since the drones that remained buzzed up and down to find him. Thankfully he screamed so loud that the sound echoed in parts of the FOB, making it harder to for the drones pinpoint. However, Takao knew that at some point they would find them. She couldn't protect Lee, keep him still, shut him up, and prevent him from bleeding out with her arms occupied all at the same time, so she had but one choice.

She surged forwards, using her teeth to pull his shattered helmet off his head. Messy black hair flowed as she captured his lips. Despite the dire situation they were in, she couldn't help but notice every last detail.

There it was… that taste, that steely metallic taste of human blood on the soldier's lips, her soft lips contrasting his.

For Lee? He was in pain… so much pain but it felt… Good? Whatever it was it tasted of alcohol or oil… Diesel perhaps? An unstoppable barrage of stimuli was too much. His eyes rolled back and the young man passed out from a mixture of pure suffering, blood loss, exhaustion, dehydration and confusingly enough-pleasure.

A single drone flew past unnervingly close, hovering right around the corner until the lack of noise caused it to scan another area.

Even though Takao had only kissed him to keep him quiet… she couldn't help but take notice in the feeling of his lips. They weren't soft, yet that slightly rough texture suited him nicely.

"It was all for the mission… right?" She questioned herself.

Shaking her head to clear her… impure thoughts, she walked towards the mission objective. It sat on a concrete pylon with an electronic bell, a large red button that would signal the end of the "exercise" that was meant to end up with Lee dead, and Takao in an ONI research facility.

Takao approached, happy to finally set this whole ordeal behind her. Her hand hovered over the red button when suddenly, a monolith of titanium smashed into her ribcage, sending the Heavy Cruiser careening into one of the abandoned barracks, the half-cylindrical metal structure denting inwards and collapsing onto her in a huge pile of debris.

"Hull plating warped amidships, damage control crews dispatched. Type 89 gun turrets 3 and 4 disabled". Takao ignored her mental warning and pushed through the rubble above her to face the thing that dare sucker punch her.

It rose from the sand slowly. First a robotic arm of some sort. It housed a multi-barrelled autocannon followed closely by a yellow-green hull that resembled the carapace of an insect or crab- smooth, angled armour covered the central torso that connected to the engine servos that drove the arms. Another arm mounted a quintuple-barrelled weapon that housed white-tipped missiles within the tubes. Finally long, triple jointed legs came into view with segmented armor plating that covered all the sections of its limbs.

Sand streamed down its structure, flowing off its joints from where it had been buried. It loomed ominously over the ship turned woman, prepared to eradicate her as it had been programmed to do.

Takao had been heavily warned of this weapon system by Lee. This was the single most dangerous and advanced land unit that the UNSC possesed. The HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL Mark IX, better known to the UNSC grunts as the 'Mantis'.

Takao felt a split above her left eye, oil streaming down the side of her head. Pain stemmed from her leg, her propeller shaft on her left had been bent out of shape. She tried to stand and walk, only managing to limp weakly. Even so, she raised the elevation of her two remaining main battery cannons and fired.

Lee was awoken from his rather abrupt nap by vibration and cannon-fire. Well, even the dead could wake if a quartet of 203 mm naval guns went off about twenty meters away. Lee strained to look up, feeling a sharp stab of pain from his wound.

The towering figure of a Mantis caught his eye, the yellow sparks and flashes of its reverse engineered Forerunner energy shields hurting his eyes slightly. Lee tried to move his leg, finding it responsive but painfully so. His vision was still somewhat hazy and his muscles sore and weak from bloodloss.

An earth shaking impact that staggered the remote-controlled exosuit signalled a full salvo from Takao had hit home, bringing down its shields. Lee was about to cheer if he could, but a salvo of rockets from the mech's M5920 Surface-Ground launcher followed by a sharp yelp of pain that unmistakeably belonged to Takao brought panic to Corporal Lee's mind.

"Damn it all!" Lee cursed, punching the ground he laid on in frustration at his uselessness.

He looked around for something, anything that would let Lee harm the Mantis or at least distract it for Takao to land another good hit. His eyes widened when he spotted a functional training drone pinned under a fallen concrete pillar. An inkling of an idea began to form in his mind...

Takao fired another one salvo of her main guns and her remaining secondary guns, but the vast majority had been destroyed in her previous engagements and the rockets of the Mantis. The fight would have been heavily in Takao's favor if she was unhurt… but she was far from being in top shape at this point. After all, she had just fought off the equivalent of a small mechanized army, taking quite a bit of damage in the process.

The damage sustained by her optics and rangefinder caused her shells to fly wide of the target.

"W-what! Did you really think that you'd win with a technological advantage!?" She defiantly taunted, firing another salvo of Type 91 Armour piercing shells... which also completely missed.

The Mantis opened up with its chain gun, the armor piercing rounds forcing Takao to the ground through sheer weight of fire. Then the combat mech closed the distance with a grace unexpected from something so bulky, raised an armored leg with a hydraulic hiss, and brought it down on top of Takao's prone form with an earth shattering force that would have crushed a Scorpion flat.

Takao saw red, then black as her body was smashed into the concrete foundation of the base.

When the Mantis finally lifted its foot off Takao, she could see that the combat mech had prepped another weapon. Glowing motes of red light began to gather around the machine's left shoulder.

A Spartan Laser she thought to herself.

The weapon discharged, sending out a red beam of pure energy that managed to just barely graze the fallen shipgirl on her waist.

Takao yelped in pain as the skin around her left side turned glowed bright orange with heat. The combat mech re-adjusted its aim, it's weapon sights apparently having been shock-damaged by Takao's earlier return fire.

She would die here most likely, no longer able to go home and see Atago or the rest of her sisters again.

At the very least this time she could proudly sink flying her battle colours and firing her guns and… what was that buzzing noise?

"LEE-CHAN!?" Takao exclaimed watching the damnest sight anyone in or outside UNSC service could ever see.

The ODST had taken off his armour, only his machete's scabbard still strapped onto his left bicep and his pouched belt. Both hands clutched a hijacked camera drone that had been stripped of it's weapon. Its rotors whined in protest of the weight of a human soldier.

The Mantis seemed to take notice of where Takao was looking because it turned to see what she was looking at. It was met with an ODST grabbing onto it from above, latching onto its frontal hull. Lee hung on for dear life as the Mantis bucked and fired its weapons wildly in a futile attempt to dislodge its unwanted passenger.

For most, attacking a Mantis a machete would be nothing short of suicidal. For one that knew most of the ins and outs of a Mark IX Mantis such as an ODST, it was a matter of hacking at its exposed sensors until the thing was 'blind'. Tossing his machete away, Lee pulled out his Type 18 Bayonet/ Magnetic charge and attached it to the 'head' of the Mantis with a sharp *Thunk* before letting go.

The ODST was flung to the side, sand and dust kicking up around him as he rolled to a stop. The Mantis still fired its weapons wildly, thinking the ODST was still on top of it. It was completely unaware of the device stuck to its hull until it exploded.

With no more energy shield to absorb the damage, the force quite literally blew the mech's limbs off their mounts, scattering metal scrap all over the compound.

Takao slowly hauled herself up from the concrete that she was half-embedded in.

"Th-thanks Lee-chan"

"Let's not do that again." Lee groaned, hooking an arm over Takao's shoulders to let her help him up.

"Agreed." The warship nodded.

The buzz of the bell rang but a moment later, and a the high pitched whine of thruster engines could be heard as their ride away from the killing grounds approached in the distance.

DEEP SPACE ONI RESEARCH FACILITY

GALACTIC COORDINATES: 9896-8766-XXX

Pain. Suffering. Revenge. She had once been consumed by such emotions, the hatred boiling just beneath her skin and controlling her every move. But now, her consciousness felt liberated, freed from the constricting chain of... some unexplainable dark force that channeled pure rage through her being. Instead of desiring to tear every human she laid eyes on in half, she now felt a sense of pride, a duty to serve and protect all of mankind as if it were the very purpose of her existence.

And with that, Dawn opened her eyes and stepped back into the world of the living.

A/N: Yeah I'm not gonna use an OC for my RWBY project. Message received.