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Kyle sat there and thought about his first battle with those Covie b*****d's
four year's ago when he was 18, all of a sudden...
"Get down!! NOW!!" screamed his CO. "Banshee's 6'O clock!" Kyle
sprinted through the battered battlefield, screaming,
"Gimme cover fire over here!" his voice was hoarse from yelling, but ten second's later he was hit in the face from the shrapnel from a Bruteshot. When Kyle woke up from the hard blow he had blood all over him, Kyle began looking around, seeing his whole platoon whiped out and only seeing four O.D.S.T.'s coming to his aid. Kyle passed out again when he saw them coming to him. When he awoke three day's later in a Med-Bay bed, he slowly walked around, counting the body bag's of his squad mate's, his friend's, his goddamn family. He found a mirror and relized he had and X shaped wound on his left cheek, it was stitched up. Kyle snapped out of it looking around relizing he was just beside Bishop, not in that damn Med-Bay.

((I just want to clear something up. Lipton's Pelicans were travelling from Voi to the Bunker/bomb shelter thing. So you'd find the crash once you arrived.))

((Yes Hege, I know. But Dansmith's bird went down. So I'm going to get it.))

Dansmith groaned, and groped in the pitch black. He fumbled forward, but his legs gave out and he collapsed onto his face in a spatter of blood from his nose. He grimaced at the pain from his broken nose, and began to feel his eyes sting and smart. He heard voices first, the moans, screams, the orders being shouted, the cries being muffled. The black veil lifted some, and blurry smudges of amber, red, and green began to condense like magic from the void: a fire. A pool of blood. A jungle floor. A face. ... A FACE?!?! He jerked himself up from his reprieve on the floor, and saw the face's owner: the marine who had been sitting next to him, now dead.

His movements seemed surreal to him, so slow, yet everything was percieved as going so fast. Exhuberant effort was put into the simple act of sitting up and rolling onto his rump. Now seated, Ashton shook his head clear of the fog of war, and saw the wreckage he was in the center of: a blazing spear of charred and broken trees and shrubs pointed directly at 738, or what was left of it. He felt quite tired, but...

....No. He thought. A cold knife stabbed his mind, and he reeled forward, crunched in the fetal postition. He thought he screamed, but he heard nothing: his lungs burned, his mouth was agape and taught, but he heard nothing. The marines near him looked and startled, but still he heard nothing. Only felt. The. Pain. The. Other. Wouldn't. LEAVE!!
....ASHTON!!!! Ashton, it's me!! It's Angel!. Calm. His throat was sore. His mind pounded. His eyes were clamped shut against the scene. But he was calm. He knew her, somehow, this woman in his mind.

Angel...? You sound familiar. Ang-- ANGEL!! "Angel!!" He cried out loud now, forgetting that he had only to think his ideas, and she would know them as her own. He forgot that there were 40 other marines staring at him in utter disbelief, though most went back to securing the Crash Site.
He stopped himself, the memories flooded back with the loss of neural trauma. He had been in Echo-738 when a group of Banshee's had shot them down. They had been running from...

"Oh, ******** me." He whispered, staring now at the gargantuan structure that had raised itself into the air, the many large, flat panels now glowing and pointing skyward. A rumble coursed through him, and he looked up into the sky to see the entire force of UNSC ships that had survived thus far, zooming into the Crater Site, engines flaring. Lonswords. Frigates. Cruisers. Pelicans. Everything. All that humanity had left was screaming its way towards whatever the hell that thing was, that Ark.

--------

"Compensate!! Fire the port-side thrusters and bring our hull back to balance, Hullmaster!" Quan-Vrek pointed with his sword at the Hullmaster's station, indicating the correct procedure for leveling out their failing craft.
"Yes, Shipmaster, it shall be done!" The holopanels glowed a cool blue as the Heart of the Blade's Intelligence made the necessary calculations for their maneuver.

Damnable Jiralhanae!! Quan-Vrek thought with venom, Those lumbering simians have tricked us!! I will burn them MYSELF for that! He was refering to the Jiralhanae's second attempt at disabling the Heart of the Blade, the Super-Carrier that was now the second-largest ship in the Shangheili Fleet above Earth. Those bastards had baited in Quan-Vrek and the gullible Human Shipmasters with the promise of an intelligence-housing Mother-Cruiser: a ship that held the Jiralhanae's command staff. But it had been a decoy, a regular cruiser rigged to simulate its alias' energy emmissions, and then loaded with enough Plasma Cells to terrify any Shipmaster within 40 kilometers.

It had worked.

While the rest of the Jiralhanae Fleet had coalesced upon a peculuar energy signature down on the edge of one of the human's larger continents, the Heart of the Blade had been chasing a bomb-laiden decoy, and had suffered for it. His starboard-side thrusters and propulsion pods had been compromised by the concussive blast, and the shields had held, barely. But now an even more daring move came to the attention of Quan-Vrek...

"Oh mighty Shipmaster, boarding parties are inbound upon the Heart of the Blade!! At least ten of their craft are withing docking range, and our plasma defenses are cooling down! They shall succeed, Shipmaster!!" The transmission cut out in an abrupt halt as the angered Shangheili at the other end ran off to arm himself for the defense of the Heart of the Blade. So, too, would Quan-Vrek.

"My faithful brother, you have command of the Bridge, now. Use the ship as an extension of your will, not as a tool. With this extension, lay waste to any who dare challenge us again!" He bellowed to his XO, who bowed deeply before assuming the proper place in the Shipmaster's chair. Quan-Vrek had Apes to kill...

He stalked down the main hallway, Shangheili linking up with him from other parts of the ship, deeper parts that were immune to an immediate boarding attempt. No words need be spoken: they all knew where to go, what to do. Soon a gathering of over thirty Shangheili were inside the main Hangar hub, Quan-Vrek included. His new, Crimson and Gold armor glistened underneath its over-sized energy shield, and in his hands were gripped his two weapons of choice: his right hand held the honorable Plasma Blade, his left, the powerful Plasma Rifle. The hole burned itself through the hull, the umbilical of the large boarding craft acting like a phalice which deposited its contents into the Heart of the Blade. But they were not welcome guests.

"Kill them ALL!!!" Quan-Vrek hollared as he ran forward to meet the first Jiralhanae as he emerged. The beast did not get so much as a chance to flinch before his head was severed, and soon more holes were burning themselves into the hull around the first: more boarding craft.
"Shipmaster! They've inserted into our engine rooms!! Our Plasma-Induction Coils are under siege!! If they are lost, the Planet's gravity well will pull us in! We will try our best to remove them form here, but we--" The transmission from the Engine Rooms was cut short. The ship's inertia took over as Quan-Vrek witnessed the human planet grow ever larger in the view-screen mounted into the walls of the Hangar...

"BASTARDS!!!" He cried, then dashed over to a collection of seven or eight brutes: He plunged his blade, up to the knuckled, into the chest of another Jiralhanae warrior, who stared at the small glowing portion that was visible from the long, searing-hot blade that had entered him. Quan-Vrek did not so much as grimace as he twisted the blade counter-clockwise, and pulled it from the beast's chest. Blood gushed and squirted from the gaping hole, and he forcefully jammed the end of his Plasma Rifle up into the wound, and discharged the weapon. Plasma ate away at the beast's lower chest cavity, and up towards its lungs. Those were vaporized quickly as the steady stream bore through the Jiralhanae's heart, throat, and finally out the top of its skull. Cored, from Nave to Brain. The body dropped in a sputtering, smoking wreck of destituted flesh and carbon.

Estimates put the boarding party's combined numbers at over 250 Jiralhanae.
So much anger... thought Quan-Vrek, So few Bastards to loose it upon!...

Looking back at the still-shaken men and women from Echo-738, he stood tall and windmilled his arm towards Echo-116.
"Come on, dammit, do you really have to wait for an invitation?! Onto the bird, go! Go!" Ashton waited for all of the men and women to pass him, then he helped another who had lost consiousness, being carried by another marine as well, into the bay of the Pelican. The engines howled ferociously as they dusted off in a flurry of dust, flaming twigs, and rocks. The rear bay sealed, and they were safe, once again, inside a Pelican.
Inbound to Fox Hole 2, and a bit of peace and quiet....

((Just to make sure, I'm in your Pelican right Norijutsu??))

Ti sat in the Pelican as Doyle yelled a question to Officer Karr," Sir, is Dansmith gonna need some help and when are we gonna get to the NAV point? I'm wanna shoot some Covenant A** Doyle asked. Ti agreed with him, they had done not much so far except sit in the 'Peli and watched Karr blow Covenant Beothches to hell.