DISCLAIMER: I do not own Bungee, 343 Industries, Halo Reach, or Noble Six (but I wish I did, and if I did, I wouldn't be here now!)

EQUIPMENT:

-HELMET: OPERATOR

- SHOULDERS: ODST

-CHEST: HP/HALO

-KNEES: FJ/PARA

-ACCESSORY: TACTICAL/TRAUMA KIT

-FOREARM: TACTICAL/TACPAD

COLOURS:

-VISOR: SILVER

-PRIMARY: STEEL

-SECONDARY: GREEN

A/N: Welcome, welcome one and all, to the newly remastered first chapter of Lone Wolf! I have taken a long leave of absence recently, and having had time to look over what I have written. I have decided that I majorly screwed up in terms of the plot and pacing of this story the first time, and so I have started to partially rewrite the story. I will not delete this story as is, but I will be performing changes to it on a chapter-by-chapter basis. At the time of writing, this chapter is the only one that has been redone, and if any chapters don't make sense considering the events of the previous one in future, that simply means I haven't gotten to fixing them yet. Thank you.

LONE WOLF

CHAPTER 1: LAST STAND

Six watched the Pillar of Autumn disappear into space. Give 'em hell, Keyes, she thought. She walked over to the base of the MAC cannon, stopping only to crouch by Emile's body.

"Well, at least you took them with you." she said, glancing at the corpses of the Elites around him, one still with the kukri lodged in its throat. She gently removed the dog tags from around his neck, hanging them next to Jorge's, Kat's, and her own - Carter's were unrecoverable, due to his sacrifice - and clamped his shotgun to the magnetic plates on her back, next to her DMR. Lastly, she removed the sheath from his upper arm, and, pulling the kukri from the dead alien, slid the knife in, and strapped the sheathed kukri onto her own armor.

"Let's do this." Six muttered, spotted a large group of Phantoms and Spirits flying toward her position. She bounded up the ladder, into the control seat of the MAC, and opened fire on the incoming Covenant. The gun managed to take out about half of the incoming aircraft, but enough got through to land a sizable force. Grunts squealed, like twisted caricatures of excited children. Jackals snarled, and Elites and Brutes roared their challenges at her. There was even the hulking shape of a pair of Hunters, behind the rest of the mob.

The Grunts and Jackals were the first into the fray, waving their weapons wildly. Six charged, unlimbering her pistol as plasma bolts and needler rounds flew around. She opened fire on the aliens, killing a large number of them before her ammunition ran dry and she was in their midst. Six hurled the pistol with inhuman force and accuracy, the unlikely projectile crushing the rebreather of a Grunt, yanked both her combat knife and Emile's kukri from their sheathes, and began killing.

The knives worked seemingly independently of each other, stabbing and cutting until Six's armor was painted with streaks and spatters of purple and turquoise gore. She impaled one Jackal, leaving the blades stuck in the corpse, and turned, dodging a flurry of needler rounds fired by one of the few remaining Grunts. Taking three long, quick strides to it, she snapped the terrified creature's neck, before flinging the corpse into yet another Jackal, and returning to the carcass of the first still with her knives lodged in it. Retrieving them, she turned and swung, ramming twenty centimetres of sharpened high-carbon steel through the gullet of a Skirmisher. The only remaining Grunt attempted to flee, flinging away its plasma pistol and resorting to loping on four limbs, but she caught up easily, knocking it to the ground and viciously caving the alien's skull in with an unforgiving, armoured boot.

A lucky shot from a Jackal's plasma pistol hit her, the overcharged shot leveling her shields, and a small salvo of plasma bolts from another Jackal impacted her across the chest and back. Six stumbled, groaning at the burning agony of plasma burning through her bodysuit in four places and losing her grip on her regular combat knife, but launched herself at the offender, grabbing the squawking bird-alien and bodily swinging it about, between her and a pair of its fellows to block their shots. Her meat-shield convulsed, howling in pain as crystalline spikes riddled its body; Six hurled the dying alien at its comrades as the shots supercombined and exploded, tearing the group apart. Again, she bucked suddenly at a searing pain in her shoulder, and looked to see her shoulder pierced by two shards of pink crystal, too short to be needler shots - shrapnel from the improvised living bomb, then. She stifled a groan as she yanked the fragments free and, pulling a canister of biofoam from her trauma kit as she wrenched her shoulder armor off, sprayed the wounds.

"Well?!" Six shouted at the remaining aliens - mostly Brute Minors, with the addition of a pair of Elite Zealots and with the so-far not engaged Hunters - rotating her arm to make sure she could still use it, and pulling out Emile's shotgun, while simultaneously sheathing the blood-soaked kukri. "Come get some, bastards!"

Enraged by the challenge, the Brutes and Zealots charged, roaring in fury, the Elites out in front and bearing their distinctive energy swords. Six jumped back, barely dodging a strike from the energy sword one of the Zealots carried, but was less lucky the second time, as the backswing cut through the front of her helmet, missing her face by mere millimetres. Seeing her HUD go dark, effectively blinding her, she tore the helmet off just in time to dodge another strike, ducking under the swipe and, grinning at the howl of pain from the other Zealot, who had evidently snuck up behind her, stuck her shotgun in the alien's abdomen. She fired, the Zealot's shields rendered useless at point-blank range, before pumping the shotgun and ramming the whole thing violently backwards, to smash directly into the second one's gut as well. Its breath explosively vacated its lungs with a long 'woof' sound, and Six took the opportunity to swivel, plant her shotgun's business end inside the gaping maw, and render the alien effectively headless with a spray of buckshot.

The Brutes fared no better. Their weak armour did little to protect them, and for the most part, their corpses sprawled to the ground riddled with shotgun pellets, or victimized by double-taps to the head, courtesy of her DMR, when the shotgun ran out. A single Minor managed to wrench the rifle from her grasp and fling it away, simultaneously knocking her to the ground with a punch to the chest. It attempted to finish the job in a fashion similar to how she had ended the Grunt not more than two minutes before. Rolling away from the heavy, clawed foot, she came to rest next to one of the downed Zealots. Snatching up the abandoned energy sword resting in the limp hand, she surged upward at the charging Brute. The sword was ignited and swung in the same motion, and moved in a seemingly lazy arc upward to cleave the alien open, vertically, from groin to sternum. The Brute's eyes bulged, and suddenly-twitching hands dropped the bruteshot that had been in their grasp, dropping to the split gut in a futile attempt to stem the flow of purple blood and the spilling of its entrails. The alien dropped to its knees, eyes clouding over, even as the purple-blue-white plasma blade came around again and separated its head from its shoulders.

Six heard a low, rumbling growl at that moment, right as the Hunters barged in, one smashing her off her feet and throwing her into a pile of wreckage that had once been a Spirit; she barely managed to keep her grip on the energy sword and not slash herself with it from the sudden acceleration. She leapt back to her feet, shouldering past the pain of the blunt trauma, and jumped on the Hunter, latching onto its back. As the giant thrashed, bellowing in fury, Six tore the kukri from its sheathe buried the blade to the hilt into the unarmoured flesh at the junction of the 'neck' and 'torso,' gripping the large knife as a handhold. With the pilfered energy sword, she swung repeatedly into the vulnerable 'neck' flesh, hacking the gestalt's head free of the rest of the body. The Hunter crumpled to the ground, 'headless,' and partially crushed a Brute corpse beneath its mammoth bulk. The remaining Hunter roared with rage, swinging its enormous sharp-edged shield at her with a speed that belied the thing's massive, unwieldy-looking frame.

Six ducked, and cleaved the Hunter's arm off at the elbow, half-watching the severed appendage continue moving past, a product of its own momentum. She saw the fuel rod cannon on the other arm glow a sickly, radioactive green as it primed to fire. Six's eyes widened, and knowing her energy shields could not take the hit she spun, sprinted toward where the severed arm had come to rest, and brought the heavy shield on it between her and the cannon with an apparent ease born of desperation. The amount of force from the shot actually forced her back a few feet, and the world was momentarily lit with an eerie glow reminiscent of Saint Elmo's fire. Six heaved the smoking lump of metal and scorched flesh to the side, and rammed the gestalt before it could fire again, blade leading. The energy sword tore easily through the vulnerable abdomen, and went straight through for its prongs to explode from the Hunter's lower back. She then wrenched the blade to one side, removing the sword in such a way that it very nearly bisected the massive creature above the waist.

As the goliath collapsed with a ground-shaking crash, Six did not drop her guard. She had counted more Elites than just that pair of Zealots. Where were they?

She came to a sudden realization. Oh, hell. I'm surrounded, aren't I?

As if on cue, five Elites in a circle around her dropped their Active Camouflage, plasma weaponry raised. And one, in armour as black as midnight, was holding an energy sword to her throat.

….

Special Operations Officer K'tal 'Varthikai looked at the female demon he was holding his sword to. It was looking at him with a hate-filled glare through a coating of sweat and the mingled blue, purple, and burnt orange blood of Covenant fighters, as well as its own carmine red. The armor that it wore was battered, scorched, and covered in dirt, the chestplate melted and warped by plasma damage, and was missing a shoulder plate. A plasma sword, looted from the corpse of a fallen brother, was gripped in a filthy gauntlet, the silvery metal handle, inscribed with fine runes, clashing with the ugly functionality of the human armour.

"Demon." he said, activating his translator. "Surrender. This world is dust, there is have nothing left to fight for. Surrender, and we will take you from this place."

The female chuckled humorlessly. "So you can torture me for the location of Humanity's homeworld?" - its eyes narrowed, and teeth were bared in a feral snarl - "Burn in hell, Covvie." The energy sword was dropped, and the demon exploded into acton before the hilt hit the ground. Two plasma grenades were pulled out, primed, and hurled simultaneously to adhere to the armour of two different Sangheili, where they promptly exploded with enough heat and a strong enough pressure wave to melt armour and cause his battle-brothers' chests to cave in like eggshells.

K'tal leapt back as the grenades detonated, killing both of the warriors they were stuck to, and maiming another who was unlucky enough to be caught in the blast. The warrior's entire left side was covered in plasma burns, and he writhed on the ground in agony. K'tal wished to end his brother's suffering, but the demon was the more immediate concern. It darted toward his remaining, uninjured subordinate as the detonation occurred. His brother was ended with quick, brutal efficiency, his throat crushed and nearly torn out by the gripping hand of the demon, and his plasma repeater snatched from nerveless talons.

….

Six swept the field with the plasma repeater. She knew there was one more Elite to deal with: the one who had held a sword to her. The Elite had probably reactivated its Active Camo by now, and that put her at an extreme disadvantage. Her helmet was destroyed, so she couldn't use the VISR function she had specially built into it.

The pained growls of the wounded Elite on the ground grew louder, and Six glared at the crippled alien. It was getting on her already frayed nerves, and against her training and better judgment, walked over to the alien, and crouched down, looking it in the eye as she set down the repeater and drew Emile's kukri.

"This is more than you deserve." she said, holding the blade to the Elite's neck. The alien held her gaze as she sliced its throat open, spilling the Elite's lifeblood onto the ground, and its eye glazed over in death. She heard the hum of an energy sword behind her.

She didn't bother to go for the plasma repeater, knowing that the Elite could easily kill her before she could get around to face it.

"Well?" she demanded. "Hurry up and get it over with."

"Why so eager to die, demon?" the Elite asked.

Six shot back: "I'm on the ground, you are in a perfect position to kill me. So why don't you? Are you too honourable for that?" she spat. "Some honour."

The Elite paused for a moment. "What do you mean?" it asked.

"You know exactly what I mean, child-killer." Six snarled. "How many civilians have you murdered, personally?"

She heard rush of air over a fast-moving object, and then felt a moment of pain at the back of her skull. Darkness took her.

….

K'tal glared at the unconscious demon, shaking the ache from the hand he had knocked it out with. It had hit a nerve by even daring to slander his honour. By rights he should kill it, and he did not know why he hadn't already. But maybe he would gain some of his frayed sense of personal honour by taking the demon prisoner.

At least that was what he told himself, but he could not hide from the truth. The human had fought honourably, against overwhelming odds, and almost won. It had delivered one of his brothers from his suffering, at the cost of being helpless against attack, and he had to respect it for that. And, whatever he might think, he could not deny the fact that, despite the vaunted honour of his race, if not the others in the Covenant, he could not rationalize the fact that they had in fact, slain hundreds of millions of helpless noncombatants in this war, even if they were the blasphemous humans.

Shaking aside his feelings of guilt, K'tal activated his communicator. "Shipmaster." He said into it.

….

Aboard the Covenant assault carrier Indomitable Retribution, Shipmaster Veld 'Raklamee looked at the video feed before him, relayed from the powerful camera on the carrier's belly, stunned. A single human demon had managed to obliterate an entire company of Covenant, including almost a full squad of Special Operations Sangheili and a bonded pair of Mgalekgolo, with only minor injuries to show for it. The only remaining warrior of the entire group, the last Spec Ops Sangheili, had only narrowly defeated the demon.

"Shipmaster." came a voice from the screen, and it switched to show the face of Special Operations Officer K'tal 'Varthikai, the same one who had defeated the demon.

"Report." Veld said shortly.

"Your Excellency, I have captured the demon, and request permission to bring it aboard as a prisoner." The Sangheili paused, looking, presumably, at the prone form of the demon. "It may have useful information."

"Very well." Veld conceded. "I will dispatch a dropship to your location."

"By your word, Shipmaster."

Perhaps the demon would talk, perhaps not. Either way, it would die eventually, and it would break before that. He smiled unpleasantly, and leaned back in his command chair. Yes, he thought, it would be broken, and it would realize the true glory of the Great Journey before dying.

TO BE CONTINUED

A/N: Well, I hope you liked the story. If you review, you get a heaping plate of Internet cookies, and I shall update! Praise or constructive criticism only, please, because that's what keeps the world from plunging into the sun! Seriously, if you want to keep the world alive, review! And, as this is my first (well, second, since I'm revamping the story) attempt at a Halo fanfiction, that means constructive criticism is appreciated (no flames, or I WILL FIND YOU. *eyes narrow, and a giant scythe appears in Hawk's hand*)