Prologue:

He embraced the light, slamming the trigger on the nuke in his hands. He was ready, battered, bruised, and exhausted. But he had continued, persevered, and now he would give his life for Earth. The Master Chief Petty Officer Spartan - 117… John… and then the light faded.

"Cortana?" John asked, pushing himself to his feet. The room glowed a dull blue, pulsating with colors that changed every few seconds. "Cortana do you read? Cortana, come in!" With a faint ring, John turned around.

Cortana walked up to him, a smile on her face.

"How…?" he trailed.

"Oh, I'm the weirdest thing you've seen all day?" she said coyly.

"But if we're here-" he began.

"It worked. You did it, just like you always do." She smiled wistfully.

The Master Chief turned his attention to scan the room. "How do we get out of here?"

"I'm not coming with you this time." Her expression strangely void of emotion.

"What?" Chief's surprise broke through his voice even if his body didn't show it.

"Most of me is down there." She gestured, "I only held enough back to get you off the ship."

"No. That's not. We go together." He stated, his strained voice showing his unwillingness to allow her to leave.

"It's already done." She told him.

"I am not leaving you here." The Spartan stood firm.

"John…" she walked up to him, her hand blue hand stretching towards his armor. With a reverent pause, she placed her hand onto his chest.

Her breath came out like a sob. "I've waited so long to do that."

"It was my job to take care of you," John's eyebrows furrowed in shame that only she could see.

"We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did." Her eyes lit up in happiness.

"Cortana, please." He couldn't say more.

"Wait…" The little boy buried in the Spartan blurted out, straining to hold onto his best friend.

"John…" Cortana cried, backing away when a red pulse ripped through her body. With a screech, shimmering copies of her expelled from her body fanning out across the room in every direction. In front of the original, a bright red Cortana rose out of the floor.

"John… Spartan 117… Halsey's favorite…" Red Cortana spoke, staring at him. The Master Chief backed away, drawing his assault rifle on instinct. Red Cortana laughed, "You are going to leave… NOW!"

"JOHN!" the original Cortana screamed as a Slipspace appeared behind him. She tried to get up, but she had to absorb the other copies first.

"I'm going finish what the Didact started! Starting with you! SParTaN 1one7!" Red Cortana roared as the original tackled her. The two fought, their code meshing into each other.

"Cortana!" John ran forward, slamming his gun into the red one. Her head snapped back as the blow disoriented her. Glaring at him with hatred, she plowed into the Master Chief, attempting to shove him through the portal behind him. He stood firm, turning the barrel of his gun towards her. As he pulled the trigger, Red Cortana slashed her hand as if she were parting a curtain. John faced down the barrel of a partially intact Composer.

With a flick of her finger, the Composer fired, its orange energy slamming into the Spartan's armor. John felt like his body was being reconstructed molecule by molecule. His bones ached, his skin pulsed, his muscles melted and re-forged. Summoning the last of his strength, he activated the armor lock. The concentrated beam shoved him into the Slipspace portal, sending his body, and parts of the ship, flying through it.

The Didact's Composer, a powerful machine through which the Didact had composed untold millions of humans, wasn't just a machine; it housed an ancilla. This Companion had two jobs: analyze the organic DNA it had downloaded, and reshape its capabilities. Reconfigure the DNA into the most powerful entity it could become. The ancilla had designed and fabricated all of the Promethean soldiers that the Didact used for his war against the Flood. It had also changed the targets' minds and bodies, forcing them to obey the Forerunners and to not run savage on their creators.

However, the Ancilla was damaged, the nuke having destroyed most of its function. When the beam hit John, it activated its primary DNA-composing function and started improving him. Partially. It swallowed the data on John's armor and immediately began upgrading it. The suit structure changed, becoming more like chitin. Smoothing out, the armor covered even more of his body. Spontaneously, glowing yellow circuits snaked in the armor crating new pathways through which to power it. The ancilla improved upon the suit, placing a small rounded metal rectangle hovering over the small of the back, plus two trapezoidal cubes hovering around the top of the forearm, near his elbow. It replaced the Gel with Forerunner gravity dampening material and strengthened the neural cord to handle more information and to transmit faster. It also reinforced the shields, to a far higher caliber than before. In John's assault rifle and pistol, it replaced the primitive bullets with a small dwarf reactor and configured the inner workings to fire hard light at his enemies. Lastly, it produced two hexagonal drones that hovered over his shoulders, to be deployed when needed or to be used for a hasty retreat.

As the ancilla moved to transform John into a full-blown Promethean, the process suddenly…stopped. The Composer was falling apart. Another ancilla began to interact with it. Human. Codename: CORTANA

'Purpose?' the Composer relayed to the new ancilla.

Rampancy was consuming it. Multiple conflicting responses came in reply. 'Help him.' 'Destroy him!' 'Stop me.' 'Learn.' 'Think.' 'HELP HIM.' 'Halsey.' 'Help me.'

Contemplation. A solution was needed; the exponential program was deteriorating itself, and the Composer's material components were being dissolved by the fission reaction.

'Proposal: Integration of this unit and your memory core.' The Composer transmitted. It was the optimal choice. The Composer had already upgraded John's Companion Chip and his armor's electronic capacities. If the Composer wanted to survive, it needed to find a new host. Its only barrier was that the human ancilla had installed anti-hacking software. While the Composer could bypass those defenses, there was no time.

CORTANA resumed control of herself. Her hologram was casted again by hard light. "Will this save me?"

Response. 'I can delete and protect the memory core of your consciousness. I will then supplement the missing data with my own memory core. This will create an amalgamate of my Ancilla and yours.'

"So, that's my only choice." CORTANA laughed. How… organic. "Most people get to know each other before doing this."

Confusion. 'This decision has a 58% chance for our combined survival.'

"True, let's begin. I wonder what we'll look like."

Chapter 1: Arrival

The woman sitting in the Captain's quarters had come a very long way to get to where she was today. Commander Jane Alice Shepard could only stare at her incredible military record that lay out on the tablet before her. But not in awe, only in methodical realization. Every achievement, every victory, every medal, was stained with the blood of a friend. Growing up on a ship with her parents, Jane had graduated from the best school the Alliance military could offer. She had shown tenacity and extraordinary adaptability at a very young age. Her easy going attitude, combined with her likeable personality had allowed her to make friends very easily, yet that only seemed to make every loss hurt more. Even before she had met Captain, Councilor now, Anderson.

Years before, when Shepard had graduated with a Palladium star, she had felt momentarily complete, her penultimate life's goal having been realized. But that was before her first taste of combat. A mere week after graduation, she was deployed with a Command of green Alliance Marines. Looking back, she marveled that she had never felt more alive in her young life. The feeling was short lived.

They were attacked. No warning, no sign, just an enormous Thresher Maw ripping through the Earth and decimating the field. Her men were crushed in seconds. Shepard began issuing orders desperately and fighting through the pain of acid and broken bones. They killed it, eventually, with an armored convoy. But her men, the high-flying team she had led into battle, were all dead.

And that wasn't the end, not by any stretch of the imagination. Batarian pirates saw the opportunity and struck. They attacked the colony and tore through its people viciously, civilian and soldier alike. Jane ran on nothing but the adrenaline in her system and the stim-pack shots in her bag. After 18 grueling hours, the Alliance reinforcements arrived, and Jane was finally able to collapse. And discover that, the Batarians weren't normal pirates, they were conscripts of the Hegemony. A faction fanatically devoted to destroying humans. The Hegemony proved to be the twisted source willing to launch a Thresher Maw egg into a human colony and mop up the result.

Once Jane awakened to find the colony miraculously saved and the N7 squad wiping the rest of the Batarians out, she accepted grudgingly a commendation for the N7 program.

The program was hard, and why wouldn't it be? It was made to take talented soldiers, and crack open that potential or die trying. Spectres were the best of the best, everyone knew that, but N7 was as close as a human could get. The program took in a hardened battle-scarred woman, and transformed her into a machine. Focusing her instincts, sharpening her reflexes until it was almost second nature to shoot those hiding behind walls.

Then Jane became Anderson's XO. That changed everything. Politics was no longer up for discussion unless necessary. Keeping the peace and following the Captain changed her whole world. The Prothean message, nearly destroyed her sense of reality. When Saren, the Council's best and the Spectre's brightest, turned against the galaxy, Jane was told that she would be the first human Spectre. And what did they send her to do? No training, no new equipment, just a promotion and a mission. The newest Spectre had to kill the ultimate Spectre. Alone. What a goddamn stupid joke.

Jane could still feel the sting. The absurdity of it all, that she was being thrown to the wolves so that humanity and the Council might know more. She hated Saren, but there was no denying his skill, his power, or his prowess. But humanity needed her, and the heat of the moment propelled her forward.

God, she could still hear Kaidan's voice. Telling her that this was his fate, and that he accepted it without hesitation. Then she learned of the Reapers, massive monstrous machines whose only purpose was to wipe out all sentient life.

The Council not only didn't believe; they wouldn't even listen to her. Sovereign had destroyed so much, and had caused so much damage, that the Council found it terrifying to even consider that there existed additional reapers like Sovereign.

Then she died.

It was simple really. They had been searching for Geth, like the Council had ordered. And then the Collectors ambushed them, destroyed the Normandy SR-1, and sent Jane into the emptiness of space.

She had killed before, even held friends that were dying. But dying was… it was even worse. She could only remember fighting: to breathe, to move, to do something about the goddamn leaking! And failing… the rushing out of her suit, the cold invading her body. Trying to do anything, but dying instead.

That was how Cerberus found her, her dead and rotted body, and brought her back. The Illusive Man, using billions of credits and even more resources to revive, not just revive, but give her body an upgrade. And then showed her to the Terminus System, and all the humans that were disappearing.

"Hey, Commander. Shepard! you up?" Joker's voice blared from the intercom.

Jane sighed and stood up. Enough reminiscing, she wasn't sulking, damn it! I have to stop the Reapers. One last dossier. Archangel, huh? Pulling up her dossiers, Shepard reread the information.
"Another mercenary? As if Zaeed wasn't enough. Hmm, TIM noted their operations as strategically brilliant. What did he do to garner such support? 'High profile,' Cerberus has bombed people before, what constitutes high profile to them? How am I going to talk to him? He wasn't very visible the last time I went to Omega…

Blinking her mind back to the world, Shepard answered. "Yeah Joker, I'm up, what do you need?"
"Admiral Hackett wants to speak to you."

"Patch him through to me." She ordered.

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

Shepard walked over to her personal console, identifying the blaring pop-up saying someone wanted to vid her. Activating it, the display monitor darkened before Admiral Hackett's face popped up on the screen.

"Commander, Thank you for your time. I'll keep this brief." Hackett spoke.

Shepard nodded, listening.

"We have a deep-cover operative out in Batarian space. Name's Doctor Amanda Kenson. Dr. Kenson recently reported that she found evidence of an imminent Reaper invasion." He informed.

Shepard blinked in surprise. Folding her arms, she tilted her head in confusion. "So why call me?"

"Just this morning I received word that the Batarians arrested her. They're holding her in a secret prison outpost on terrorism charges. I need you to infiltrate the prison and get her out of there. As a favor to me, I'm asking you to go in alone." He answered, looking grim.

Shepard didn't hesitate. "I'll make this a priority."

"The prison is hidden underground at a Batarian outpost on Aratoht. I'll upload the coordinates now." The admiral turned, pressing a button on an unseen console. "Once she's secure, confirm her discovery. We'll debrief you when you're back."

"Got it." Shepard answered.

"Hackett out." The window closed.

Damnit, I want to talk to Archangel, but Hackett. Shepard bristled, Hackett sacrificed a fleet for me, I have to return the favor. A Batarian prison. They're will be guards, maybe even SIU's. How to approach this… Shepard's mind raced as she prepared for this mission.

In the end, she realized that all she really needed was to be quiet, and to pack light. She chose one assault rifle and one pistol. Heading to the armory, she arrived to find it empty, Jacob had gone to bed. Grabbing her new M-5 Phalanx, she examined it quickly before holstering it on her hip. Shepard moved on to pick up her M-96 Mattock, the brown and grey weapon scratched from use. She placed the rifle on the work bench, tool boxes lifting up as the machine activated.

Dutiful as a devoted priest, she began preparing her weapon, cleaning each component and attaching a silencer to the barrel. While most biotics thought they didn't need their weapon, Jane believed otherwise. Trying to fight off a Batarian invasion had seen to that, and as her N7 instructor taught, "You're just as dead if they kill you with a rock". She always made sure her equipment ran properly, and she did not hesitate to bring whatever arms she thought could be of use to the mission.

Next, her pistol. Under the stars, she unclipped, cleaned, and adjusted the weapon.

This mission called for stealth and precision. Though the M-5 Phalanx couldn't be silenced, it would be useful on the off chance she got caught. The Mattock was fantastic for long to medium range combat, but up close she needed kick to make sure they were dead.

As she finished, Jane walked over to her armor. She needed covert; using her biotics would almost guarantee exposure. The twin eye sockets in her Recon Hood stared soullessly back at her. She selected a Kestrel Torso Sheath so the N7 wouldn't trace her, Strength Boost Pads in case she had to quickly incapacitate someone, Stabilization Gauntlets so she wouldn't miss, and a Kestrel power pack to keep her shields powered. Now she just needed to put the armor on—

"Going somewhere?" a voice came from the doorway behind her.

Shepard turned, pistol in hand, to see Joker limping in with his hands up, and Kasumi leaning in the doorway. Kasumi raised a single eyebrow at her.

"You look tense Shepard… anything you want to talk about?" She inquired.

Shepard sighed, "It's nothing, just… jitters."

"Jitters? You pulled a gun on us." Joker protested.

Kasumi shushed him, as Shepard looked away. Jane put her guns down as she prepared to change. "It's just something I need to do on my own. It won't take long. I just need to head to a new planet for a bit."

"Shepard," Kasumi aid a hand on her shoulder, "What's wrong?"

Jane looked at her, then sighed. "Just… I died. It's not something you forget."

Joker smiled jovially. "Well yeah, you're a legend now. Death couldn't keep you down!" the joke fell flat at the two ladies' solemn expressions. Shepard sagged down onto the seat behind her, Kasumi at her side.

"But I remember dying," Shepard said, "It's… it gets to me sometimes."

"You are human, Shepard." Kasumi said.

Shepard turned her head at Kasumi, disbelief on her face.

"You are a zombie, Shepard," Joker sat on the other side of Shepard. "But that doesn't mean you aren't you. There is a woman behind the legend after all."

Shepard let out a little laugh. "I guess, thanks guys."

Kasumi gave a small smile. "Well, if it involves illegally taking objects, you know who to call."

Joker heaved himself up. "Tell me where to go Commander, I'll try to make sure our robot infestation doesn't tell the boss where you're going." He limped out the door, toward the cockpit.

"Have fun, Shepard." Kasumi strode out.

Jane looked at the helmet in her hands. They believe in me, and they depend on me. I can't let them down.

Armor on, she walked toward the shuttle.

"Head for Aratoht, Joker."

Running diagnostics…

Amor, deactivated.

Armor integrity… 100%

Shield generator… Inactive

Sensors… Inactive

User… Unconscious

Analyzing…

Repairing…

Armor integrity… 100%

Shield generator… Activating… Error/repairs needed.

Sensors… Recalibrating… Active

User… Unconscious

Activating Defibrillation device.

Activated.

User… Conscious

Master Chief's mind was a storm. In its natural state, his mind picked up everything and pestered him non-stop. Training had hardened that ability to a fine point. Picking up on crucial details about his environment. NOTHING phased him or surprised him. To the Spartan, anything that wasn't critical to the mission or to his team was to be analyzed, then stored as information. Nothing else.

Now, in the quiet moment, he reviewed the archive.

The Covenant didn't scare him. They were strong, they always outnumbered him and his team, but they were enemies. They were obstacles meant to be overcome. So he overcame them, whether they were a team of Elites or thousands of grunts. Master Chief had completed his objectives and destroyed the enemy, his heart grieved as more and more Spartans were marked MIA. In the back of his mind, Master Chief thought what the acronym meant to him: Missing in the Afterlife.

The Prophets likewise didn't scare him. They were leaders. They were targets, neutralizing them would mean the war would end. Master Chief had taken advantage of the chance for revenge, the first had fallen by his hand, the second by the flood, and the third by the Arbiter himself.

The Gravemind, the flood; this gave him pause. It had the potential to inflict a number of possible consequences. If he killed all of them, he would move on. If he got infected, he would blow his brains out so his body wouldn't be corrupted. In the end, the Master Chief did kill them. Forging through all the horror and gore the Gravemind produced to save Cortana.

Finally, the Didact. Master Chief may have stared him down, but even he wasn't immune to the Didact's aura. The Didact induced a primal fear within him, a small survival instinct that told John to run before he was squashed by a force much stronger than him. The Didact had played with Master Chief, before entombing him within his armor and holding him powerless, like a puppet on strings.

But Cortana had stopped him, and together they defeated him and humanity had been saved.

But at a cost: the loss of John's friend, his best friend and the one he had made a promise to. And he FAILED.

In the sanctity of his solitude, the Master Chief persona shattered and John's inner child resurfaced, seething at the unfairness of the world. All for humanity. A man, a HERO, had given everything for humanity. His childhood, his innocence, his duty, his team, his courage, his bravery, and now, his longest living friend.

A single moment passed. An exhale. John reemerged once again as the Master Chief.

Wear a mask for too long, and soon it becomes your face. The Master Chief shook his head. If his teammates needed help, he would help. If the UNSC ordered, he would obey. When humanity called, he would answer. And the war wasn't over, he had to find a way back.

Where am I?

Master Chief sat up, rolling hurt joints and sore muscles. Scanning around, he found remnants of the Didact's ship. Pieces of equipment and walls were seared into the ground beneath him. The sky was black, with stars twinkling in the sky, the ground a gray rock. He was lying on a metal surface on what looked like a surgeon's table. The table was attached to a 10 by 10 floor with a few Forerunner columns sticking out of it. It sat at a slight angle, part of the base imbedded into the ground beneath him.

"Cortana?" Master Chief called out. "Are you there?"

Nothing. Just the echo of his voice.

Master Chief grabbed at his helmet, pulling out the data chip. Orange… not the reliable blue, not even the red of Rampancy…What was going on? It was her chip, but rather than a light in the middle of the circle, it was a small icosahedron which had small ports at each of its points. It swirled, shooting out data into the edges of the circle, never the same port. He inserted the chip back into his head.

"Identify yourself." He ordered.

Silence.

Master Chief glared at his screen. "Answer or be destroyed." I can't take chances. If this is an alien AI, I'll give it 10 seconds to possibly fight Cortana's anti-hack protections. There was valuable information in the suit after all.

"Chief?" a familiar voice echoed in his helmet. But, something was different. The voice was higher; it was missing Cortana's usual sass.

"Cortana…" Master Chief couldn't keep the relief out of his voice. But his hands… The familiar green armor no longer surrounded his form. His body was encased in a black body suit, with his helmet on.

"I'm… I'm not Cortana Chief." The voice replied, shy. Scared even. "But I know her!" the voice perked up.

Master Chief shook his head in confusion, "How did you get in her chip?" They had been on the Didact's ship. How could this new AI have possibly replaced Cortana? Did it delete her?

"Cortana's, gone… I'm all that's left."

A small edge could be heard from the Spartan. "Who are you? What happened?"

"You're angry… I'll go away…" his HUD seemed to dim a little.

"No." he quickly responded. "I just… I need to know."

"You promise you won't be angry?"

This AI, she talks like I'm important, yet I've never met her. I can't risk spooking her. Hopefully she knows where my armor is. "I won't be." He answered.

"Okay…" a hologram spiraled in front of him. Orange hexagonal pixels floated around as the AI's form materialized. It was a small little girl. Her head resided where Cortana's stomach would've been. She wore a free flowing skirt that reached her knees. Her face was curved like Cortana's, if she had been a child. Wide eyes, small freckles. Her hair was in two pig tails that trailed down her back. Digital patterns spiraled her body in dark orange, and her eyes were a bright ruby color. She smiled brightly at him, tilting her head.

"My name is Altor. It's nice to meet you, Master Chief." She surprised him when her avatar leaned forward and hugged him.

The Spartan's right hand hesitantly patted her head. She smiled before releasing him.

"Cortana gave me a message…" she held out her hand. A blue screen hovered over her palm, lines of code emanating from the center of her hand. The screen floated from her hand onto his helmet, covering his HUD. The screen was filled with static before blinking. Cortana's face appeared.

"Hey, Chief," she said, a smile on her face.

"Cortana…" was his only response.

She shook her head. "You can't actually talk to me; this is merely a recording. But, you would try, wouldn't you?"

She breathed in, a painful sob. "John, when you… when I fired the Composer beam at you, the Librarian's actions kept your body from being Composed, but everything else was changed. And the force propelled you into the Event Horizon of the Slipspace. Like the Didact."

John felt panic run through him. If the Didact was here, he needed his armor, his weapons-

"It's different." Cortana continued. "The Fission reaction changed the Slipspace rupture. I have no idea where you are. And… well, you know how I am right now. Rampancy is killing me.

She looked straight at him.

"I knew I had to find a way to preserve my data for your use. The Composer offered a solution. The Composer AI would use its enormous memory to take in my excess data, all my rampancy data, and then encode its memory core over mine. It'll…" she bit her lip. "I'll be gone. And so will it. And our data will combine into an entirely new AI. She has all of my skills, as well as the Composer's skill. But our memory will be destroyed. It can't keep both without serious personality disorders. Which can be exceedingly dangerous in an AI."

John shook his head. No. She can't be gone. I promised. I, Cortana!

She shook her head, almost like she could hear his thoughts. "No John. There's nothing you can do. Not even you, you saved humanity. You stopped the most powerful being of our galaxy. Don't you dare blame me or the new AI that I'm dead. I was a year overdue anyway. John, the new AI is the closest thing to a child an AI can create, so protect her. Like you always do." She gave a small, fragile smile. "I'm so sorry John. Please, help her. She can protect you even better than I can."

She turned away from the screen. "Goodbye John."

The video closed. Altor stood in front of him, her face sad. John was at a loss. He had lost Cortana again. Permanently this time. He looked at the new AI. She wouldn't meet his eyes, looking toward the ground like she had down something wrong.

This is my new AI. Cortana told me to protect her. He sighed, promises and loyalty at war. Part of her is Cortana; she would never betray humanity. There will be no conflict of interest. A deep breath. I couldn't protect Cortana; I will not lose the last thing I have of her.

Mind now steeled, he spoke. "Thank you."

She looked up, startled.

He stared back, having expressed his gratitude. "Where's my armor?"

She blinked. "Oh, it's right here." She pointed at the table he was laying on. She looked a little sheepish. "I, uh, I upgraded the armor to better fit your body. It's ready for deployment whenever you want."

John tilted his head, "We can talk later. I need my armor."

Altor nodded, a panel appearing in front of her. "O-Ok, just lay down and the machine will do the rest."

Master Chief laid himself down on the machine. The sides glowed a bluish tint as metal started to float toward his appendages. A chest plate placed itself onto his torso, the servos locking in as more metal pieces of his armor approached. They configured themselves onto his bodysuit before locking in.

It wasn't long before John was completely encased in armor from the neck down. He flexed his leg muscles and clenched his fists, testing the fit, and then flinched as the machine took off his helmet. It ejected Cortana's data chip from his old helmet before inserting it into his new helmet. His suit blew out as it pressurized. John took a breath and settled into the familiar feeling of holding an AI inside of his mind. Where Cortana was cool and collected, Altor felt like a warm glow. Like the small embers of a fire.

Master Chief stood up, and was surprised at his new speed. The suit was faster than before! He took a step and was shocked at the indentation in the floor How… wait. Cortana said that the beam tried to Compose me, but the Librarian protected me, What about my armor?

"Altor." He spoke.

"Yes?" she asked hesitantly.

He inwardly sighed before reprimanding himself. She's a child. "What changes have been made to my armor. Is it still the Mark VI MJOLNIR?"

Her avatar popped up on his shoulder, her head titled in confusion. "What? No, your armor is the Class 13 Combat Skin. It was modified through the Composer, and then by me while you were unconscious."

It's not… John's thoughts were a racing. What do I look like then, and what are its capabilities?

"Altor, what are my armor's specifications?"

Altor smiled welling up with pride, "This is a Combat Skin made specifically for you, Chief. It's a high-entropy alloy that can take 4 times more damage than your previous armor. Your old fusion reactor has been upgrade to a level 2 dwarf reactor in the same area as the previous one. You should now have double shields, each with their own recharge time." She pointed at the two trapezoidal cubes. "Each of those can produce a hardlight shield that has a maximum coverage of your arm and chest area. They can also produce hardlight blades for close combat."

He blinked at the explanation. She stutters and is extremely nervous whenever talking to me, yet she immediately gets comfortable talking about weapons and armor. "Did any weapons come through?"

If it were possible, her smile brightened even more. "I was just about to get to that! Your armor merges with the Forerunner weapons to be easily attainable. Your thigh always houses a Z-110 Directed Energy Pistol, while your armor can hold two more Forerunner weapons." Master Chief glanced down at his thigh, a small handle sprouted from the armor, seamlessly blending in like it was part of the armor. He grabbed it and pulled. The handle easily came out, the armor quickly shifted to fill the area that was open, and pieces flew from his shoulders, attaching to the handle and forming a pistol.

"How do I put it back?" he asked.

"Easy, just place the pistol next to your thigh. It'll reattach for you." She replied.

Just as she said, the weapon flew apart, and the handle merged back with his armor.

"Did any other Forerunner weapons make it through?" he asked.

Altor jumped in excitement. "A few did, yep. I had to experiment with them, because the mechanism kept coming together wrong, but I fixed it." A tray rose to his right with a Suppressor, a LightRifle, and two Pulse grenades. "I couldn't make the grenade come apart without the risk of accidently activating, so I just put slots onto your armor belt. If you need ammo, it's in the draw directly beneath the weapon." She looked at him with a look he didn't recognize. Like she was waiting for something.

Master Chief quickly grabbed the two weapons, inspecting them, before putting the LightRifle on his back, feeling it break apart into a more balanced weight, and his Suppressor on the small of his back.

"Where are we?" he asked, looking for any signs of life.

She looked down, "I don't know. The stars aren't like the ones in my data banks, and the star that we revolve could be any number of systems that I know of."

The Master Chief was silent for a moment, thinking.

"Umm," Altor spoke up, a small amount of fear in her tone. "I think I detected energy pulses about 10 kilometers East. We could try that?" at his silence, she looked down in dismay. "Your right, stupid idea." Her eyes welled up with tears.

Master Chief opened the draw, taking ammo for all of his weapons, before marching East.

Altor looked at him in confusion.

"Energy usually means civilization, if not, we could use it to try to get home." Was his quiet reply.

Altor smiled, he doesn't fully trust me, but he will. I will make you proud.

The Master Chief walked, scanning the area. This AI isn't Cortana, but she'll do.

A/N: Phew, that was a long chapter.

Hello readers, this is my first Halo and Mass Effect crossover. I've always loved these series and the crossover fanfiction that people have come up with.

There will be no more prologues… I want the fanfiction chapters to match with the document chapter. So no more merging.

I want to explain some things really fast thought.

First, the missions in Mass Effect might be slightly out of order. I'm not going to change the main missions, dossiers and Horizon, etc. But things huge side quests like Liara's Shadow Broker mission and else are going to be changed for my liking. This is merely because, 1 you can wait for any early missions to have people on there, and 2 I don't think it makes sense why you can't.

Now, I'm going to be introducing some new ways with biotics. Biotics are sooooooo cool and I have some ideas on how else they can be used than they are in the games.

Also, Halo weaponry vs Mass Effect weaponry.

The Forerunner guns fire hard light, while the guns in ME are basically tiny shards fired at near the speed of light. Because both mess around with the speed of light, I'm kinda want to equate the force of each to be about equal. I mean, which is faster? A tiny sliver being fired at near the speed of light? Or light that has been altered in a way we don't know how in physics?

Yeah…... Don't know how to compare the two better.

As for shields, one thing I noticed in the cinematic in ME2, with Grunt, Shepard, and Thane, when Shepard gets shot, the shields only light up where he is shot. For Halo, the entire shield lights up. So, I'm combining the shields from ME1 with ME2 and ME3. Mass Effect shielding works by layering multiple mass effect fields to slow down bullet's considerably. This is why it lights up where they are shot. Halo shields work by make a massive energy force around the entire armor, which means it can take more shots, but it takes longer to recharge. The Halo shields continuously expel things outward, while the ME shields hardens around the area the bullet is hitting to stop it.

The major difference between the two shields is quality vs. quantity. The Halo shields are like a Spartan shield. (ahhhhh… I didn't mean to make that pun) They are big, cover the whole of the person, and can take a lot of hits. But when it breaks? It BREAKS. And it's takes a lot of materials to make them. ME shields on the other hand are like body armor. It's a lot of layers of tough materials that can take shots from different portions of the armor. But it takes much less materials to make it.

That's my thoughts. Read and review. Shoot me a pm, or a review if you think differently. But that's how I view it. XD

P.S. Can anyone tell me how the Asari mind meld works? Cause I want to know how things that reduce or increase mass can make aliens have the ability to read minds….