Disclaimer: Clearly I own nothing. I'm not smart enough, creative enough, or god enough of a programmer to have anything to do with the development of either one of these franchises. Hell, the jury is still out on if I'm a good enough writer to write fanfiction about these two we'll soon see about that.

If anyone character seems out of character please tell me. I would rather be called out on my mistakes and better myself than continue making the same mistake.

Mugen Tenshin Ninja Clan Compound

Hayate gazed into the forest he had spent most of his childhood in, silent and still as he digested the situation he and the clan found themselves in. But as the elders of his clan, as well as those who followed his word, waited on him to speak with bated breath, he couldn't allow himself to show any indecision or weakness.

He did, however, wonder to himself what his father would have done in his place when faced with such... a unique position.

Ryu Hayabusa, his childhood friend, stood with him. The veteran shinobi seemed as shocked and confused as he was about the newest roadblock they were currently facing in their war with the former head of DOAtech, the man known only as Victor Donovan, despite his usual stoicism.

"You're telling me the Facility that we have been gathering intelligence on for months, has been wiped out?" For as much as Hayate wanted to portray the image of the serious and in control clan leader, confusion and anger still crept into his voice.

Hushed whispers followed his question, shock, and confusion overriding the usual silence that followed Hayate when he spoke. Not like he could blame them of course, it wasn't every day when someone eliminated a target of the Mugen Tenshin Ninja clan under their very nose.

"It is what I said before Hayate-Sama," the scout said with all the respect he could muster, but it seemed the first-person account had taken an effect on him. He was shaking slightly, not enough for normal people to notice but to the trained eyes of his fellow shinobi, he looked downright traumatized. His nerves were wrecked, his gi was disheveled, and he looked as if he hadn't slept in days, Not even stopping to rest once in his mission to get the information here as quickly as possible.

It had been a training compound of a radical fringe paramilitary group who had been on the rise these past few years. Its sole mission seemed to be to "Cleanse the gene pool" of whatever their ideology deemed "unnatural and Impure."

This group, whose forced numbered in the hundreds if many reports were to be believed, were behind several high profile bombings of government facilities and had taken credit for dozens of mass shootings all around the globe. Their most recent act, and most heinous in many people's eyes, were a string of mass kidnappings targeting farming and rural communities all around Central America. Hundreds of men, women, and children taken from their beds in the middle of the night, to potentially be sold as slaves on the black market.

While many in the intelligence communities disagreed on basic facts regarding their numbers or the location of their base of operations, they seemed to agree on two things, the group called themselves "The Militia" and should be considered extremely dangerous. Unknown to a majority of those same organizations, however, but known to The Mugen Tenshin Ninjas was that these men, were also linked to Victor Donovan back from his DOAtch days and if their sources were to be believed, still in on good terms with the mad doctor through his newest "research" organization, M.I.S.T.

"The compound was attacked and destroyed, gutted inside and out by an unknown force" he paused to gauge his master's reaction" Every single Militia operative was neutralized, whatever hostages they held escaped."

"The hostages escaped?" it was the first words Ryu had said since the clan meeting started, he was always intent on listening to all the information before voicing his opinion. "You are sure of this?"

"Yes, the only bodies I found belonged to the guards or mercenaries, all armed. It seemed the attacking force spared those they didn't view as a threat."

That caused Hayate to pause; While it would be easy to paint this as a government-issued strike team rescuing the hostages, it didn't sit right with him. There had been no news reports about the incident yet, or any statement was given by any governmental body that may have ordered it. The complete destruction of a terrorist cell and the rescue of hundreds of people was something that just happened out of the blue. If the attack was supposed to be kept a secret, such as a black ops group not going through any official channels, the hostages would have been eliminated to ensure there would be no witnesses to the mission.

Over the course of only a few hours, a global terrorist facility was wiped off the face of the earth. Dozens, if not hundreds of armed criminals were butchered and no one knew who did it. But Hayate had some theories. With friends like Donovan, these men must have thought they were safe to continue to kill and destroy to their heart's content while Donovan's influence covered their tracks. Someone apparently didn't like that prospect.

Ever since the oil rig incident, both the clan and their allies had been more vigilant than ever in their war with Donovan and had been tracking any and all shipments this particular facility had been receiving. According to Helena's information, many of Donovan's closest confidants had received several of the clones as a trial before they go to the black market for sale.

Each of the clones of his sister was designed to be the perfect soldier, the perfect fighter. They were as fierce as they come. Stronger, faster, and tougher than most any human being on the planet, and with the fighting knowledge and skill of his sister, Kasumi, these...things were some of the most dangerous creatures in the world.

It was the main reason why they had taken such an interest in the Militia. A paramilitary organization with a pension for violence and genocide seemed to be the perfect place to field test the weapons.

"Can you tell us anything about the attackers? How many were there? Any distinguishing marks or symbols? Anything we can use to track them down?"

The scout looked down, not daring to look in Hayate's eyes, all the answer the council needed to know they had no leads, Hayate was about to dismiss the meeting so he could converse with Ryu privately when the scout spoke up again.

"I thought I saw something when the building was on fire." the young man said, pausing for a moment to find the best words to describe what he had seen. "It looked like a man but... bigger."

With that, the young shinobi was dismissed, soon followed by the remaining ninjas. Leaving the room empty save for the two childhood friends.

"That compound was a fortress, we've been collecting recon for the past two months and haven't found a weekend point for the attack yet, and then suddenly an unknown group storms in overnight and completely obliterates it. what are we dealing with Ryu?"

"If they were a force of any substantial number, they would have been noticed, the only corpses were of Donovan's men, so they had the element of surprise, maybe an inside job?"

"Or perhaps Helena preferred a more direct approach in dealing with Donovan? Maybe she hired someone to take down Donovan's known associates one by one to get to him. We know whoever did this had the money to hire not only a team of capable fighters to take the facility out but to also get them out without leaving evidence. The strike was precise, fast, and efficient."

"Too many variables to be sure, Miss Douglas seemed to show us all of her cards the last we spoke. But it's possible she's been hiding this from us," Ryu said as he moved across the room.

With the facility and the backing of a small army lost in one night even someone as meticulous and dangerous as Victor Donovan would be set back, it would be the perfect time for them to strike while the iron was hot.

The problem was he didn't have the manpower, he needed more shinobi, and he needed to find Donovan. Unfortunately, the man was as paranoid as he was dangerous, and with a setback like this, it wasn't likely he would make a public appearance for some time.

"We should Speak with Miss Douglas regardless, she may already know, but perhaps she can shed some light," Ryu said, as he strapped his sword to his back preparing to take his leave, either with Hayate or not.

"She may be lying to us."

"Perhaps she is, maybe she isn't, we should confront her regardless. Whoever these men work for could be the key to putting down Donovan once and for all."

36 hours before Tokyo, Japan

"Come on girls," Kasumi said with a sigh her voice quiet and weary from the night's activities. "It's two in the morning, we need some sleep."

"Just a few more minutes," Honoka repeated the same words Kasumi had heard used just a few hours ago when Honoka's grandmother reminded them that it was getting late.

"Not likely." The former kunoichi turned college student mumbled, half-turning towards the window next to the bed she was sitting on.

Kasumi wished it could have been just an average night between friends filled with eating junk food and watching cheesy horror films but her thoughts kept on going back to the upcoming tournament.

It was a foregone conclusion that she would be invited and dragged into another one of Donovan's sick plans, and while she loathed having anything to do with the manipulative bastard, she made a promise to herself and to Hayate that she would stop him once and for all.

"There's no way anyone can beat Honoka, she's too good" one girl, Sakura, with chestnut brown pigtails said as she threw her controller to the ground after another failed attempt at defeating the party hostess.

"Not with that attitude you can't."

"Oh come on, you guys give up too easily?" the top-heavy teen said with a good-natured smile. "Come on guys, at least, make this a challenge."

A blonde teenager, Yuri, stared at the controller. This was one of her favorite games, and the idea of wiping that smirk off Honokas face sounded better and better each second.

"Y'know what?" Yuri held the controller. "I still need to get the "I kicked your butt" achievement." the short-haired blonde smirked.

"I don't think that is an achievement," Honoka said pondering her friend's comment.

"Oh, I'm so gonna enjoy this."

"Get her Honoka!"

Kasumi watched her friends with a smile as she turned back towards looking at the night sky. Usually, the bright lights of the city made star gazing almost impossible even at such a late-night such as this, but this night seemed different. The stars littered the sky as when she was a little girl living in her village.

When she was home.

Even after all these years, after everything that had happened to her, she still called the village her home. A home that wants her dead and a home she can never return to.

She wonders if her brother and sister are watching the same stars from the village, and she wonders when, if at all there will ever be a time when she'll stop feeling this way about her exile, even after all these years the pain persisted.

But now it's different

Ever since the incident regarding her clone at the oil rig, fighting alongside her family, her desire to go home had done nothing but increase.

When Donovan is finally defeated and when all traces of his evil is wiped from the earth, maybe she'll return to the village.

And maybe Mr. Armstrong will take up interpretive dance as a hobby.

She really couldn't keep doing this to herself; it was only making things worse. She had made her decision, and whether or not it was right or wrong, it was her decision to make.

"Hayate, Ayane..."Kasumi whispered to herself as she continued to stare at the sky until something caught her eye.

A shooting star.

Like the ones her mother always told her to make wishes to when she was a little girl.

"Oh wow, guys look," Honoka said after wiping the floor with her friend as she rushed over to the window.

The shooting star was so bright it illuminated the night sky as it was the middle of the day.

"Hey, let's make a wish! If you wish on a shooting star its bound to come true."

"Says who?"

"Oh don't be a party pooper."

The girls continued to go back in forth, but Kasumi paid them no mind, her attention was solely on the magnificent sight in front of her

"Please," Kasumi started "please give me a way to stop Donovan once and for all, please let me go home."

Inside the "Shooting Star."

Wake me, when you need me

It was a simple request, made what seemed like an eternity ago for the Artificial intelligence known as Cortona. She had thought about those words extensively over the past few months. This was, in fact, the 29,894th time she repeated her Spartans words to her since he began his cryo-sleep.

She wondered what would have been an acceptable reason to wake him. The first and most obvious reason was the best-case scenario for them, a rescue party finds their beacon and come and save them from their endless drifting. The second was if the ship was attacked by enemy forces, anything outside of those, however, would be disagreeable to her favorite barbarian. She doubted her just missing the sound of his voice or his presence would be considered an "acceptable reason." to him.

If he were a bit more explicit about what he meant, then maybe she wouldn't think about so much. If he said "wake me, when help arrives" or "wake me when I'm needed" she wouldn't be in this situation.

If it were a particular event he was waiting for then, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem though was that She just needed him. She wanted to be around him, she wanted to talk to him, she wanted to sit silently with him, and the fact that she can't do any of that was driving her insane.

Luckily for her sanity, but unfortunately, for her well-being (and the wellbeing of both John and the ship) her train of thought was stopped by what she would assume her spartan would find an "acceptable reason" to wake him up.

"Chief, wake up! John, you have to wake up now! We have to go!"

He woke to a familiar woman's voice, and it took him almost a full second to realize who it was, a snail's pace for a spartan. It was Cortana, and the AI sounded more worried than he was used to hearing his sarcastic companion sounding.

"Cortana, can you tell me what's going on?" he asked, pushing the release button on the broken cryotube in vein, finally giving up and deciding to smash the hatch open, with the bulletproof glass was rendered useless against his enhanced strength. The ship's artificial gravity was barely noticeable to the awakening super soldier and John's significantly enhanced senses felt that Forward Unto Dawn was accelerating slowly.

"Oh, Good morning to you too Spartan. Well where to start, it is kind of good news, bad news, REALLY bad news type of thing. The good news is we arrived alive and in one piece back to earth, the bad news? Well, I haven't had any feedback from any ships in the area and no signals from the planet. The really bad news? Well, we currently entered the earth's atmosphere, and the ship has no power. So your chances of a cushy desk job in retirement decrease every second we're on this hunk of junk."

"How long was I sleeping?"

"A little over a year, and while I'm glad to see you've caught up on your beauty sleep, we need to get the hell of this flying coffin or go down with the ship. The Dawn's free fall is projected to take us right into the Pacific Ocean, and you aren't exactly a good swimmer in that Pelican you wear for armor. "

"So exactly how much time do we have before?"

"Enough time to get out of here, but not enough time to stick around and asked questions about it. The AI said urging the towering Spartan onward. "If we want to land on solid ground, ten minutes at the most. If that dream you were having weren't so friendly and pleasant, we would have more time, but nooo you just needed to hit that snooze button."

"I've already tried falling uncontrollably from space before, It's not exactly my idea of a good time," John responded to her, as he picked up an M6G pistol and strapped a MA5C assault rifle to his back.

The Dawn was a complete mess, but he could make due. The battle of the Ark and one rather volatile Slip space portal had seen to that. And it was getting noticeably warmer by the second.

"Oh so you did have fun without me, you're lucky I'm not as clingy as I should be or I would be incredibly jealous right now. But you're right while we might regret it later, we got to get to the Dawns lower deck, we can ride an HEV down to the ground in hopefully one piece."

"There are still HEVs left? Anything else lying around? If there's a Longsword or a Shortsword hidden somewhere around here-"

"Nooo. You might be lucky, but not THAT lucky. The entire hanger has been cleared out, they're either floating out in space or burning through reentry as we speak."

"It's not luck, it's just skill," he told her for the umpteenth time.

"And a pretty good partner to save you from your mistakes!"

"A damn good partner I might add." for which he got a thumbs-up symbol on his HUD.

Entering a service hallway, he jumped down an elevator shaft and into what was left of one of the ships many armories, John picked out an assortment of guns that might come in handy. Many of the armories' contents would not survive being dropped from orbit, even in the MAPs, but there was no risk of the delay yet. Half a dozen small arms, several shotguns and a sniper rifle, a Spartan laser, a dozen or so grenades, two silenced submachine guns, a heavy assault rifle, and some Covenant plasma rifles, all tightly packed into two heavy duffel bags and carried down to the HEV launchers. It was hopefully enough firepower for whatever was down there. After everything, they had faced getting here? He wasn't taking any chances. For all, he knew he was landing right in a battle situation.

Planting the guns into the MAPs and ammo into the two beaten-up HEVs, he picked a target landing site below on the planet and let Cortana take over the calculations for the pods, before stepping into the only seemingly undamaged HEV of the remaining drop-pods there.

"Considering everything around us is burning to the ground and the one thing that could save us is in one piece, lady luck must seriously have the hots for you Spartan."

There was a sudden free fall, several seconds of complete and utter silence, and then the pod entered the atmosphere. The shields flared to life and even in the most powerful and advanced suit of armor in human history, John felt the vehicle heating up. A small data-screen showed both Dawn and the other pods. The ship was being torn to pieces by the forces of the atmosphere; thousands of the pieces were streaking and burning across the sky of the land below, giving the population of earth one hell of a show. The damaged HEVs, while certainly feeling the effects of the orbit entry, were still holding up, if only barely.

And then there was a crash, like if the metal around him was falling apart around him, then suddenly another sensation that felt like if one of the chutes failed, and a sudden spike in speed and acceleration that told him that they were about to land a lot harder than they had hoped. When the braking system neglected to work as they were supposed to, John began to feel himself become increasingly nervous, the HEV started shaking and turning, and with a frustrated sigh, Master Chief prepared himself to be sent back to the land of dreams.

"Of course..."

Several minutes later...

Cortana, in her usual way, was once again the one to wake him up, And while he was glad to be among the living once more, he distinctly felt the after-effects of his harsh landing. He looked around but found that the fall had locked his armor and was restricting his movements. He had the sinking feeling that Cortona enjoyed seeing him in this particular state.

"John, thank goodness, you are okay. I got worried there; your life signs were all over the place for a while. Think the suit may have gotten a bit damaged from the crash, " Cortana's voice filled John's ears as he slowly rose to his feet.

"I'm feeling a bit slower myself. I'll start repairs at once, should get the armor plates and my systems back to good health in a couple of days, but there are some parts I can't quickly fix. Considering all the damage it has taken since you put it on the back on board Cairo Station, I suppose this was the straw that broke the camels back for some of the systems."

"Not your fault. We made it down here and we're still alive." He jumped out of the crashed pod. He wasn't going to be operating at 100 percent for a while, but he should be all right until he could collect the materials to fix the armor completely." It's more than you can say about most."

Looking at his surroundings, he found himself in the middle of what was once a small field of green grass between two forests, but now was now a small man-made canyon with fallen trees scattered around his landing site. The outer parts of his drop-pod were scattered all over, it was a miracle that he was still alive, maybe all the talk about his luck was more than just idle talk.

The weapon and ammo filled pods had thankfully landed not too far away in almost identical impact sites. Gathering the weapons together, he began the process of arming himself. He put a pistol and an SMG on his left and right hip, a battle-rifle and the assault rifle on his back, and the rest of the guns were placed in a single pod.

"So where are we Cortona? where's the nearest city or settlement?

"Remember the part where I said it was a "good news, bad news, really bad news" type of situation? I might have forgotten to add a little something to that, the "Insane and impossible kind of news."

John paused, not making a single noise as he listened to his companion reiterate the information she herself had referred to as both "insane" and "impossible"

"The data I managed to get from the satellites and the fact that there's no mention of the UNSC in any of the databases we might have traveled through time! we're in the past chief, "

Now that was certainly a lot to take in, time travel was theoretically impossible, or so he and several of the UNSC brightest minds thought, but considering the things he had seen in his life, he couldn't find it in him to be surprised what he found himself in.

"How much time?"

"Long story short? over 500 years if the data is right, we are around the first half of the 21 century."

"Could you make that short story a bit longer?"

"Well, Nothing fits with our time, no reports of the rain forest wars, Mars colonization, the development of the slip space drives, no insurrection, no mention of the covenant anywhere. Every piece of technology I can find is early 21st century levels at the very best. Hell, they don't even use hydrogen fuel cells for their cars! They are still using fossil fuels for most of their energy consumption. A bunch of barbarians if you ask me."

"What kind of governments we got here? Anything resembling a unifying body?"

"Oh, what happened? You skip out on that part of your World History 101 lecture? Well, we have different governments in various countries, conflicting alliances crisscrossing over the globe. We got the UN at least but nothing like we're used to."

Silence filled the air as both soldier and A.I. seemed to wait for the other to speak next.

"So, now where do we go? I mean I'm all for some sightseeing but I doubt you're in the mood for some quiet reflection" the AI asked him. "we're in the middle of nowhere, without allies, or even the faintest way of getting back home. What do you expect to do? Go all "Lone Wanderer" and walk the earth righting wrongs and having these backward barbarians write folk songs about you?"

"See if we can find some friendlies, and ask for directions. Maybe we can get away to contact home."

"And do you have a plan B if we can't John?. As I said, we're in the 21st century. The most advanced piece of tech we are going to find is a smartphone with an unlimited data plan, and I doubt they're going to invent time travel while we're here."

"Aren't you the one who always comes up with the plans?" That got an insulted huff from his AI partner. For someone who considered herself a genius in most if not all fields of study, she was surprisingly sensitive when her intellect was brought into question.

"Not for this one, I'm afraid, I'm gonna make you take off the training wheels and let you come up with the plan, this time, John, make me proud."

"Well first we will find out where we are, Second we find a way to get back home. In between those points, we do what we do best: protect humanity, save lives."

"You're a very simple man spartan."

"It's part of my charm."

Please leave a review- don't be afraid to be critical, I can take it.