Emile's right hand caught the swinging plasma rifle of an Elite Major. Overextending the massive alien, Noble Four brought his left hand around and plunged his signature twelve inch kukri into the beast's wrist and pulled the blade up the forearm, resulting in a shower of purple blood.

As the Major quickly succumb to the almost ridiculous amounts of blood pouring from its arm, the Spartan was already on to his next victim.

A Zealot swung his energy sword down, only for its smaller, superhuman opponent, to simply sidestep the attack and reward it with a cut across the exposed bicep.

Roaring in pain, the high ranking member of the Covenant swung the plasma blade around in an arc, which Emile simply ducked under, and brought his razor sharp knife in a slash across the Zealot's tricep. Switching the tactics, the alien grabbed the Spartan and lunged its sword towards his armored chest. Four, an expert hand to hand combatant, leveraged the arm grabbing at him and used it to throw the alien warrior's stab off target.

Emile used the advantage to slip past the Zealot, gouging a thick line in the monster's leg, forcing it to one knee. Bringing his large knife up with both hands, the surgically augmented super soldier rammed his knife into the back of its head.

Bringing his left elbow up, the Spartan managed to block a large four fingered fist. The block was followed by the wickedly curved kukri slamming in between two armor segments on the abdomen. The knife followed the seam out from between the armor plates, spilling purple blood and blue guts.

The plasma rifle in the dying alien's hand was wrenched away by the super soldier and fired into the shields of an oncoming Ultra. The rapid fire weapon quickly overheated, not quite enough to pop the shields of the powerful alien, but still managed to weaken them enough for a spinning kukri to break through and lodge itself in the creature's mouth.

Emile was forced to roll forward to avoid the green radioactive rounds of a Covenant Carbine rifle. Fortunately, the evasive maneuver was well thought out as he was able to snatch his previously discarded shotgun.

He came out of the roll and blocked a sword strike from a major. The Spartan wrenched the sword and the alien to the left and raised the shotgun.

BOOM!

Blue spread across the dusty remnants of whatever this particular province was once called before the Covenant had come.

A shimmer appeared, imposed over the distant mountains to Emile's right.

BOOM!

The shimmer flashed, shields popped, and the large majority of a Spec Ops Elite's face and shoulder exploded in a shower of purple and blue.

A roar warned Emile of the coming danger. Whirling around, the Spartan unloaded an 8 gauge shell into the maroon and purple Field Marshal charging him. Equipped with significantly more powerful shields, the alien was able to shrug off the shot, igniting two plasma swords and bringing them around in a diagonal slash.

Four leapt aside, avoiding the strike and landing on his back. The Spartan fired off another shell, but managed only a glancing blow and failing to disable the expert warrior's shields.

Emile brought his knees to his chest and kicked out, flipping himself back onto his feet just in time to slip past the burning sword of the Field Marshall. The super soldier lashed out with an exceptionally heavy boot and struck the massive alien's knee, staggering the creature long enough for Four to smash the durable butt of his M45-E into its back and send it sprawling to the ground.

The powerful boomstick was leveled with the alien, but before Emile could pull the trigger, one of the monster's hooves came around and kicked the weapon out of his hands. The Field Marshall rose quickly and brought both energy swords across from opposite ends of his body. Four, for his part, was able to just lean back, let both weapons pass over harmlessly before snapping himself back up and driving his fist into the mandibled jaw of the elite, setting up the one two jab combo into the alien's stomach to get it to take a step back, and a devastating uppercut that broke two of the creature's mandibles and ripping off a third.

The Field Marshall fell to its back, coughing up blood as it hit the ground. Four leapt up over the alien, fist raised, but never landed a strike. The alien rolled to the side, lashing out with one energy sword as he did, managing to pop the Spartan's shields and leave a grisly burn mark on the armor plating, but failed to do any real damage.

Emile hit the ground and rolled to his feet, snatching the magnum from his thigh plating and bringing it to bear on the elite that had achieved a similar feet, only with energy swords.

The first shot pinged off the thick head dressing, the second punched through the alien's left shoulder, and the third lodged itself in the thing's gut.

The final round finally dropped the beast onto its back, broken and bleeding out. A still target for the final shot Four's M6D would surely have delivered, were it not for the steady thumping of twin impulse engines and the whirring whine of plasma coils charging up.

A quick glance to his right revealed a phantom dropship passing between the burned out husks of what used to be the command center for the entire continents deployment of UNSC Army Assets. A small limb hanging from the nose of the aircraft glowed a luminescent blue with the gathering plasma.

Superheated ionized gas rained down on his position, forcing the Spartan back from his kill to be, and into one of the former office buildings. Fortunately the desks weren't cheap pine wood, but good old durable steel, and the glancing shots that managed to actually land anywhere near the super soldier were stopped by the thick piece of office furniture.

Snatching an M37 from the ground, Four popped out from behind the desk, spraying 7.62 millimeters of lead six hundred times a minute. The shots weren't going to take anything down, unless a lucky shot nailed an unshielded foe in the head, no the purpose of the quick burst was to keep any foes from advancing. An effort that was wasted, apparently, as currently two elites in minor blue were grabbing the Field Marshall.

Cursing under his breath, Emile threw the now empty assault rifle to the side and vaulted over his cover. Hitting the floor and scooping up a BR55 as he rose and charged the three aliens. One of the minors managed to get the wounded elite over its shoulder, the second stood in front of the two, shielding them with its body and trying to deter the rampaging Spartan with a barrage of plasma. It was not successful.

A third burst popped the shields and drilled one 9.5 millimeter shell straight through the saurian's armored head, dropping the hefty alien like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately the shots came too late, as the wounded Field Marshall was already slipping through the trap door at the bottom of the phantom, courtesy of the gravity lift.

The dropship shot off, completely abandoning the minor still on the ground.

With a frustrated growl, Emile raised both feet in a dropkick that shattered the shields and dropped the alien onto its back. As it tried to regain its footing a 12.7 millimeter round punched through the beast's armored skull and exploded after penetrating the bone, spraying grey matter and blue blood over the surrounding corpses.

No signs of enemy forces on his motion tracker, Noble Four just laid there, anger sinking beneath the surface and rage finally taking a back seat to exhaustion. Weeks of nonstop fighting, ever since Jorge and Six took out that fucking super carrier, unknowingly paving the way for a massive Covenant fleet, annihilating Reach's defenses and laying waste to every city on the planet. From that moment on, despite a brief rest inside a fallout shelter while the Covvies were glassing New Alexandria, Emile had been fighting every day. Catching catnaps in a pelican, or a warthog, eating whenever he came across a ration bar, which wasn't often, and it was probably best that the suit was airtight, or the smell coming from days without bathing or bathroom breaks would be enough to knock the poor Spartan out.

Kat fell during the glassing of New Alexandria. A needler to the back of the head. A fluke. A once in a lifetime random coincidence saw the Covenant Phantom to be in just the right place, and just the right time for the elite to take the shot. Four could feel the weight of Two's dog tags in the pouch on his left thigh.

Carter was next, the third Spartan of Noble to go, though he did so with a bang. Crashing a pelican into a scarab to clear the way for Emile and Six to get to the Pillar of Autumn. A239 had gone to the wreck later. Two days ago, maybe three, maybe it was yesterday. It's been approximately eighty four hours since he'd last slept, so Emile wasn't so sure on what day it was anymore. The Commander's dog tags, the only thing left of one of the only two men Four had ever actually looked up to, rested next to their sister's in his ammo pouch.

Six's tags were in there. A more impressive warrior spirit Emile had never seen. She was full of a quiet and cold fire. Fighting alongside the hyper lethal vector had pushed the Merciless Wrath of Noble to be even stronger, even faster, even better. She was impressive in her lethality, and even more impressive in her friendship. Thom had left a hole, Six had filled it, and only left an even larger one. Her tags were tangled with Jorge's, both retrieved from her corpse amid a field of dead Covenant.

Jun might still be out there. Annoying son of a bitch, and probably Emile's best friend if he were honest with himself. Most others were driven off by a sandpaper-ish personality, Jun was just far to congenial for that. Hopefully he made it off planet, Four would hate to be verbally assaulted once he reached whatever afterlife there might be. Or find out that his friend was dead. Suffice to say, Emile was conflicted about his feelings for the rifleman.

Finally there was the big man himself. Technically there was no evidence Jorge was dead. No body, not even any wreckage, just the flash of a slipspace drive, and then the middle third of a super carrier, just gone. Four and Five had their differences, but in the end, the Spartan II was the only man besides Carter that Emile looked up to. The only other person that he tried to model himself after. A consummate professional and a caring soul. A hard head and a soft heart.

The Spartan III let out a sigh in his helmet, "Getting all emotional up in here…"

He sat up, ignoring the ache in his muscles and the sharp pain in his ribs from a plasma burn. His shotgun was in one piece, if a little grimy with blood and dirt. The super soldier slotted more shells into the magazine with practiced ease and slipped the powerful weapon onto his back. The BR55 was in good shape, there were plenty of mags lying around, it joined the shotgun. Emile was low on ammunition for the M6D, but the weapon was small enough, there was no reason not to bring the weapon with him. Besides, there was nothing better than the magnum for finishing off wounded elites. Well, most wounded elites.

An ICW wouldn't hurt. The MA37 was practically indestructible, accurate up to six hundred yards if you can handle the recoil. You could smash a dozen brutes' skulls in and still hit a jackal right between the eyes. Despite his preference for his customized M45E, nothing was better for a long fight of attrition then the ICW, especially if one had access to all of the underbarrel attachments that can be applied.

Now, all that was left was his signature. His John Hancock. His thumbprint. The one weapon that was truly his… Which also happened to be nowhere to be found. Eyes snapped up to the quickly disappearing dot on the horizon that carried the wounded Field Marshal.

"You… fucking cunt!"

…

If there was one thing everyone on Noble team, or anyone who spent fifteen minutes around Emile knew. It was that his knife was important to him. It was the one thing that was truly his. A father who's face is long lost and who's voice is long forgotten, but the message stayed with the Spartan, even if the messenger was lost to the fragile memory of a child soldier. Take care of this, the very presence of authority bore down on his mind, keep it sharp, and it will keep you safe.

The mantra repeated itself in his head as gauntleted hands twisted the control stick of the Sparrowhawk. The gunship only seated one, which was fine considering he needed speed and maneuverability more than he needed to take a group of tourists on a scenic tour of the mountains.

The fusion torch thrusters spun, sending the heavily armed gunship into a severe pitch just in time to avoid the sickly green glow of a plasma bomb. Four's hands pulled the stick back, the Sparrowhawk responding by pitching its nose up and ascending, letting the Banshee giving pursuit soar right underneath. The Spartan slammed the stick forward, dropping the nose and putting the Covenant craft directly in the sights of two wing mounted 30 millimeter cannons.

Rolling away from the purple ball of fire, the gunship accelerated in order to keep ahead of the point defense weapons of the CCS class battlecruiser directly in front of the craft.

Tracking his knife had been easy. Covenant were keeping patrols to a minimum, so as to not worry about getting hit by their own anti-matter bombs that were wiping out any traces of humanity left on the planet. There was only one battle group still sending out and receiving craft, and the battlecruiser happened to be the flagship. Seemed like the logical place for a Field Marshal to be.

Briefly, Emile wondered what the UNSC would think about the mission he was currently undertaking. They would likely consider it a massive waste of resources just to retrieve a knife, even if it was a titanium blade twelve inch kukri. Fortunately for Noble Four, the UNSC had abandoned Reach…

Well it wasn't a good thing, but the fact that they couldn't force him to give up on his most prized possession, the one piece of his past, forgotten though it might be, was just an unexpected boon in an otherwise shitty situation. As it stood, this Sparrowhawk, the Spartan piloting it, and the AI currently downloaded onto a crystal memory chip were perhaps the only remaining assets the UNSC had on Reach.

"Plotting course for main hangar," a synthesized female voice sounded in Emile's ears, "Be advised, motion trackers are detecting more than two dozen distinct signatures inside the hangar. I do not believe you have en-"

"Shut up!" A239 spat as he stopped the Sparrowhawk on a dime, narrowly avoiding fire from a pulse laser point defense gun. The super soldier and admittedly average pilot slammed the stick to the side, avoiding another pulse, before pulling the stick up pointing the nose at the ship's underbelly.

"Dot, missile lock on those power conduits!"

"Acquired."

"Fuckin fire!"

Four short range surface-to-surface missiles lashed out from the tankbuster, too small for the Covenant battleship's point defense guns to track, and with a much better angle than any ship borne missile, slithered behind thick armor plating and slammed into pulsing blue plasma conduits that carried power to the massive pulse laser turrets.

Emile yanked on the stick, avoiding a jet of superheated gas that was now pouring from the crater left by his gunship's ordnance. Flashes of blue lanced by, alarms screeched at him, and the Spartan was forced to slam the stick forward, diving out of the way of another ball of green nasty. He was near the edge of the ship now, right underneath the entrance to the hangar he had been attempting to breach.

"Noble Four, probability analysis suggests you are about to attempt an Immelmann loop," Dot's voice filled the cockpit, "This aircraft is not designed for such a maneuver and I cannot sug-"

Completely ignoring the totally logical, and technically correct, AI, the super soldier pulled hard on the controls, forcing the normally strictly VTOL aircraft to perform something more at home for a Sabre or Longsword. The nose climbed in the sky, the vehicle following in short order, and kept climbing until it passed its zenith and began falling back down, in the other direction. Another harsh twist rolled the gunship, although perhaps too late as fusion torch thrusters at the end of each wing sputtered and struggled to keep the ship aloft. The craft wobbled towards the open hangar bay.

"Damage control subroutines suggest that the temporary inversion has compromised fuel delivery systems, total aviation failure in five seconds."

Fine, do it the hard way.

Not bothering with the ejectors, Emile simply ripped the glass canopy from its seat and pulled himself from the cockpit. As the bird began to nosedive, Four clambered up the body to the tail, using the battered piece of aviation as a platform, and launched himself backwards…

…

BOOM!

The minor fell back, missing a large portion of its right shoulder and chest.

Blue and red flashes forced Emile back into cover as he pumped his shotgun. Superheated gasses splashed against the strange metal barricade until the undisciplined jackals and grunts overheated their weapons.

Four burst from cover, assault rifle in his hand barking. Three large armor piercing rounds ripped open the chest cavity of a jackal. Before the birdlike alien even hit the ground, two rounds perforated the skull of the ammonia based, methane breathing grunt that had been holding a charged plasma pistol, the weapon discharging its localized EMP uselessly into the purple bulkhead. Shiny metallic blood sprayed as another grunt's body was torn open from four vicious tungsten tipped lead hollow points. Plasma slashed against armor plating as Emile was forced into cover once more.

The empty magazine dropped from the rifle, quickly replaced with another one. Four racked the chamber, slamming a round into the breach, then leaned out of cover, ready to…

The Spartan leapt back behind the extended bulkhead he had been using as cover as massive blue plasma bolts streaked by. A major had set up a plasma turret at the end of the corridor and was coating the hall in its hellish fire. Surrounded on both sides by portable plasma shields, the alien itself was too well shielded for Emile to take down quick enough before he burns himself. Fortunately he came prepared.

Four pumped the slide on the underbarrel of his ICW, racking a twenty five millimeter explosive shell into the grenade launcher. Without aiming, he launched a shot past his cover into the oncoming fire.

BANG!

He pumped it again and spun out, taking time to aim at the disoriented elite manning the turret.

Thloomp… BANG!

The explosion turned the alien to confetti and flushed many wounded and disoriented Covenant soldiers from their cover, easy pickings for the Spartan. The MA37 in his hand rattled as it fired short bursts into each alien. If he was going to appropriate UNSC ordnance for an unauthorized mission, he might as well make sure it was used well.

The Merciless Wrath of Noble strode forward with a purpose, putting the ICW back in its place and withdrawing his M90. He gave the weapon a pump and began pushing eight gauge shells into the magazine. The ship shuddered beneath him. Wrath knew not where they were going, but he knew only one was going to actually see their destination.

Done loading the shotgun, Emile held the weapon by the pistol grip in his right hand and grabbed three grenades from the bandolier on his chest. Variable charge explosives, the small things could pack one hell of a punch, or none at all, depending on what the user desired. Unfortunately this feature was somewhat wasted, Four only liked one kind of explosion…

The door swooshed open, three grenades flew through, then swooshed close. The muffled bang shook the walls of the corridor and Emile opened the door again, though this time the slab of strange metal was not nearly as smooth in its movement this time, and stepped through into a scene of death and carnage.

Bits of Covenant species were strewn across what Four could only assume had once been some sort of control center. Not the bridge, but beyond the room, through wide windows, was a giant green and purple… thing.

"That is the ship's engine core, Noble Four. The shielding surrounding is too strong to be penetrated by any weapons you currently possess, however it is possible for me to override the cooling systems and force an overload."

The door at the left end of the control room opened, without looking Emile unloaded an eight gauge shell into the occupant of the doorway. The blue minor's shields popped and steel buckshot ate into the armor, but otherwise the alien was alive.

BOOM!

For a moment anyway.

A smoking shell joined its twin on the floor as A239 replied to the AI currently residing in his head, "Fantastic, the fuck you need me to do?"

"Once you have installed me into the control interface, I will need you to draw attention away from my efforts. The overload will take some time to initiate, and there are multiple manual overrides that can impede my progress."

"Sounds fun."

…

Energy swords were weird. Probably not for the elites, they were designed for their hands after all, but give Emile a good old knife any day. Still, even the picky Spartan couldn't deny their effectiveness as he plunged the double edged plasma sword deep in an ultra's chest.

Throwing the hulking alien to the ground, Four spun and pumped a full round of steel buckshot into the shields of another white armored ultra, popping the creature's powerful energy shields but failing to down the monster itself. Fortunately there was a remedy for that as the powerful weapon BOOMed again and the ultra found that its head was missing.

A spec ops elite made the unfortunate decision to try and tackle the Spartan. It wasn't completely foolish, the alien was larger and technically stronger than the surgically enhanced super soldier, but really, had it not been watching anything that had been going on?

Emile's back smashed against a control panel on the bridge, pressing a random assortment of buttons. Screens started to flash in some sort of alarm, but neither combatant were necessarily paying attention, particularly not the elite as its head was suddenly rapidly accelerated towards, then decelerated by, the very solidly built control panel.

The alien tried to pry itself off the interface by pushing off with its arms, only to have its left arm pulled back and twisted violently to the sound of a sickening snap. The creature's muffled screams were silenced when its own wrist blade was activated, elbow bent the wrong way, and energy knife was stuck in its own neck.

The door to the bridge opened up, finally admitting the one Covenant soldier Emile had ever actually wanted to see.

The Field Marshall was still obviously wounded. The gunshots seemed to have received no medical treatment whatsoever. That was fine. Not like Four was feeling much better. No sleep for days, weeks since he was last out of the armor, he couldn't remember his last meal, and MJOLNIR ran out of water about six hours ago. Exhausted, filthy, starving, and dehydrated. Still kicking ass though.

"Why have you done this, Demon?"

They talk?

"Your miserable little planet is but glass! Your armies have turned to dust and your people burned to cinders and yet still you fight!" the huge alien 'reasoned' to him, "Why come here? Why fight?"

The skulled visage of Wrath tilted in consideration before an armored gauntlet pointed to the empty sheath on his right shoulder. The blood coated hand then pointed a finger at the hulking saurian before making what could only be called, the gimme gesture.

"A piece of metal?" it scoffed, withdrawing the kukri from a magnetic clip on its belt, "A sharpened twig?"

The high ranking elite threw the blade at the Spartan who caught it midair, "Have your pathetic toy, be reunited with you precious bit of metal, for now you die!"

Again two energy swords lit up, Emile cracked his neck, and red lights lit up the bridge.

"Noble Four, there is an error."

That's approximately the same time the world went white.

This chapter is super weird, and I like it like that.

I like how broken up it seems, I like how none of it really seems to come together to make sense. This chapter is from Emile's point of view, and at the point we join him, just fighting to fight on a planet that's long since been abandoned by everyone but the Covenant, he's not going to come up with a plan that makes sense, or even really a plan at all. He's never really been in the leadership role, so he's just doing this, for the sake of doing it. Instinct and habit are driving him.

Those of you who loved Mass Emile the first time around obviously don't recognize this chapter, it was different last time, but when I went back and took a look at redoing this story, I just didn't like it. Back then I really didn't know what to do, I was just winging it, and I don't really like the idea of Forerunner this, Forerunner that. I feel like it's overdone and just a cop out. Granted there's not a whole lot of difference between what I had before and what I have here, but whenever you include them, you run the risk of just going ahead and upgrading the characters with ancient alien technology, and Spartan's don't really need that kind of help with Mass Effect.

Krogan? Eat those toads for breakfast lunch and dinner. Biotics? Maybe a Matriarch like Benezia or Aria could give them some trouble, or a Justicar like Samara, but for the most part biotics manipulate the battlefield to force enemies out of cover, harass and confuse, or buff teammates. There's that one scene where Jack punches a YMIR to death, but all of a sudden, you never see it again, so I'm forced to conclude that a biotic explosion like that is more or less a fluke. Engineers could take down a Spartan's shields with an overload, but that's a far cry from actually taking one down. Geth? Don't make me laugh.

Sorry, just… thinking about some stories that kind of pissed me off lately. Plus I still hate Aria T'loak. And Arya Stark but that's completely unrelated to the story. Geez, someone would think I have a problem with people named Aria, or Arya, or any variation.

This story will progress similarly to the old one, but… I'm thinking of making a few storyline changes… For those of you new to Mass Emile, I'll try and keep it spoiler free… Go for those legit surprises.

Please review, don't want to write, what you don't want to read.