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Twisted fate, and sandwiches. by dom1



1Are you completely maimed in the brain!?!?
Date: 25 April 2005, 3:19 AM

Location: Installation 04
Time: A freckle past a hair. READ!!

      'Keep running, just keep running. They might not be able to catch up.' Even as he thought this, Lt. Kaston knew it was a lie. He heard the gutteral barks, followed by the expected woosh. The alarm in his brain went off. He turned and spent four shells of his shotgun, which resulted in the ultimate destruction of the Flood combat form following him.
      He neared a large gap in the ring. Despite the pain growing in his legs, he pushed harder, and leapt into the air. Just as he landed on the other side, the atmosphere sheared apart between the two broken sections.       He turned to check on his pursuers. As if on cue, the distorted figure of Seargeant Crespin landed at the edge.
      He knew it wasn't really him, after all, Flood didn't make people uglier than they already were. The Green Gut Machine tried to jump after him, but got caught in the gap of vacuum. Slowly it began to turn into inconstituite atoms. Kaston made the sign of the cross, then returned to his present goal.
       Only hours prior to this little excursion, Lt. Kaston had noticed a way off this godforsaken hunk of crap, a Covenant Phantom. Knowing this was his only chance for escape, he bolted for it. Unfortunately, he had disregarded the fact it was about 2 miles away.
       As of now, though, he was only 40 feet from it. But then, the Big rubber stoppers of space-time continum opened up, and he was confronted with around 100 Flood comabat forms, with them a handful of infection forms. 'Bigotous little bastards'
       He managed to get through the bulk of them, until he got to the ship itself. Almost immediately, they all became human based Flood forms. Worst of all, he recognized most of them.
       One of their arms flew off and tripped him, so he tried to crawl backwards the rest of the way. He was wasting much of AR rounds and would soon have to swith back to his shotgun.
       By now he had started crying, completey letting his eyes drain, because of the onslaught of his own friends attempting to kill him. He was screaming out their names as he dropped them, one by one. "Thompson!? McCain?! Evans!?!"
       His rounds had all run out in his weapons, and he couldn't reload, so he restorted to bash them to death. After every kill a hammertone struck his mind. He could feel his limbs begin to go numb. One of the Flood grabbed his rifle, so Kaston pulled out his 7 inch blade and begun hacking and stabbing.
      His blade found soft flesh to enter, and that was exactly what it did. The results weren't instant, but the end result was acceptable. Familiar faces came and died at his feet, and the resulting strain became a dreaded thing in his mind. It became an entity. His view became red hazed, his fingers caliced and bleeding.
      A combat form slung a punch at his face, and he could feel his nose break. He immediately cut the arm free from where it originated, and it landed square on his lap. He recognized the ring on it's stubbed finger. He reached down, removed it, and then swallowed it. He realized what he had done, and didn't care.
      A infection form appeared, and he swatted with his shotgun. It flew, hit a carrier form, exploded, and took four more with it. One of the combat forms was crawling towards him. He sat on his knees, landing blow after blow upon it. The shock was completely enveloping him. He was shaking, his teeth were chattering, his pupils were needle points, and he was losing blood from hundreds of minor wounds.
      His back touched the side of the dropship, and he whipped around with such force his already weakened arm dislocated. His sobbing had reached the point of not even making any more noise. As he looked up, he saw hundreds of combat,infection, and carrier forms rushing towards him.
       He tried to stand up and face his foe properly, but discovered his right leg was broken and his left ankle sprained. He sat, holding his shotgun like a baseball bat, and closed his his eyes waiting for the end. It never came.
       The dropship door opened just before the tidal death wave reached him, and he was pulled inside. He went completely berserk at the touch of another being. His weapons were stripped from him, and he felt himself being held down. He flailed around in vain, recovering nothing from his surroundings except pure agony.
      He felt a needle being inserted in the side of his neck, and his body went limp. His mind was on the verge of breaking, and the only thing he could do was scraeam through his teeth with his eyes closed.



2Frustrating Circumstances
Date: 28 April 2005, 3:28 AM

Location: Somewhere on an Istallation 04 chunk.
Time: Who knows.

      Kaston snapped his eyes open, and shuttered at the amount of pain he felt. He was shaking again, but he didn't realize it. He blinked a few times to orientate himself, and recognized the blue and purple color which permeated the room to be Covenant. He let out a slight groan.
      The thing he was resting up against moved and coughed. He turned around as best as his body allowed him in order to view his surroundings. There were sleeping bodies laying hither and tither, with most of them being camo green.There were a few neon blue fiqures also. The air reeked of body odor, and he groaned again.
      One of the bodies tilted a helmet up, and blinked. It was easy to make out the eyes, since the rest of the of the face was coated in soot. "Mornin' sunshine," he chuckled.
       Kaston rubbed his right eye with his good hand and tried to sleep again. The other man was standing up when he opened his eyes again. He stretched, and then cleared his throat. He inhaled deeply, and yelled "HEY! WAKE UP BOYS! Oh, and one girl." A grunt of acknowledgement came from the back.
      One of the figures to Kastons left piped up. "Hey Russman, shut up." He walked over, then kicked the figure in the leg. "Get the f*@k up Tipman!" Tipman let out a yelp. Russman turned around and pulled out a clipboard and took down who was there. "OK, anyone hurt?" Kaston tried to raise his hand. "Yeah, I got you down. By the way, what's your name, son?" "Kaston." "WHAT?" "KASTON, SIR!" He turned over and coughed. "Ehh. Good enough. OK, whose dead?" Someone from the back yelled "I'm Evil still!" "Yes, but your not dead, Munoz. Anyone else?" Tipman spoke up also, " I'm dead from the neck up." "We already knew that, Tipman."
      I need a medic over here to check up on Lietenant Kaston, pronto." There was some shifting in the back. Kaston looked over himself, and saw he was taped up, and that he had a bandage on his chest. He noticed the medic was female. She figured where he was looking at, and said "Yeah, You broke some ribs." "How many?" "Seven." Kaston gagged.
      "We saw you put up a pretty good fight against those nasty shits." "Why din't you help?" She pointed to Tipman and said "guard duty." "What's your unit?" "35th. ODSTs." Kaston let out a low whistle. "Who we flyin' with?"
She galnced around. "Covie rebels." Kaston coughed. "What?"
"Yeah, it turns out they have insurgents, too."
      After another minute or two, the checkup was complete. "Well, your bandages held up, and as long as we can get you to a decent med bay, you should be fine. Oh, and by the way, you owe us 40 bucks." "What for?" "All the metal we had to use as splints for your ribs."


       After another 4 hours of messing with Tipman's head, checkups, light conversations, and filling in, Russman walked out of the pilots cabin. We've arrived at our pit stop, gentlemen, and lady." Kaston began to feel the inertial pull of the dropship decelerating and stop.
       Only after the side door of the dropship slid up was Kaston able to hobble out on crutches to view his ne surroundings. Moving at a slow pace, he was enabled to get a better, longer view.
       There were Seraph fighters in racks against the wall to his right. To his left there was a quadret of Longsword fighters set next to two Pelican dropships. A Scarab was dangling from the cieling. However, one of the most perplexing things he ever saw were set in the middle of the room.
      It looked like a centurion, but without the horses body. There appeared to be two Seraph fighters facing front up, belly to belly, with a thrid facing belly forward on the bottom. On the sides were Scarab arms with grabbers at the ends.
       A man walked up. "You like those? They're the hunter ships. They looked cobbled together, because thay are. These guys are true geniuses. They can make almost anything. Hi, I'm Munoz, but my friends call me Tony, or Owl Eyes." He stuck out his hand, then retracted it, seeing Kastons condition. "Man, something really got a hold on you." "Flood." "Ah, say no more my friend. Hey, if you wanna catch some food, check out the Kitchetorium, or the galley to you. The cook there, he's human, he loves frozen stuff. He had his bunk moved to the freezer, but he's cool. Oh, no pun intended, sorry." "No, that was kinda funny, actually." "Yeah, they say laughter is the best medicine. Catch ya later." As he jogged away, his bandoleer of grenades fell of, and everyone within a 40 foot radius dove for cover.
      Kaston just walked past them, laughing to himself.



Explanation Mandatory {part three}
Date: 6 May 2005, 4:46 AM

Sorry about the long wait, there's no excuse for being late, I guess. Late nights aren't my forte.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Kaston loped out of the small, baige med-bay, cursing to himself. He nearly mowed down a group of people walking across his path. As of the moment, though, he was far from caring about any form of sentient life.
      He could hear someone calling his name, and he turned. Munoz had his right hand up, and was running towards him. He sent a death glance in his direction, and Munoz nearly tripped on his next step.

"Hey! What's got you so down?"

      Kaston glanced at him again.

"Erhm. Right. What happened?"

      Kaston waited a moment before answering. When he did, his tone was loathing.

"Did you know that I supposedly had seven broken ribs?"

"S-, wait, how are you able to use those crutches? Or walk?"

"My point exactly. You know that stupid field medic who treated me on the ship?"

"Yes."

"Did you know that I only had two broken ribs?"

"So?"

"She splinted all of them..."

"Eeep. So what are you gonna do now?"

"Plot my horrible revenge."

"Well, geez, don't go too hard on her, I mean, she's only pre-med."

"WHAT!"

      The outburst attracted the attention of all the people in the corridor, which had fallen to a hush. Munoz grabbed Kaston's collar and dragged him into a smaller, more secluded hallway as he grunted "Keep walking.."
      After a moment he hit Munoz in the back, saying "Oh get off."

"What? I'm just trying to help you avoid unwanted attention."

"Why didn't you tell me she was only pre-med!"

"Well, I was in an Evil flux. Besides, that's common these days. People get into school, and get the itch to join up."

"Well why didn't she put she hadn't recieved a full education?"

      Munoz gave him a blunt look, half lidding his large owl eyes."There's no 'half-done' spot on the paper. I guess she figured she knew enough."

"Yeah, really." Kaston let the mocking tone linger, along with a few moments of silence.

Munoz piped up again. "Anywho, where're you headed now?"

"'Conference' room."

"Oh, can't go there.

"Why the hell not?"

      Munoz grinned sheepishly and pointed to the front of his helmet. On it, a sticker shone brightly, reading "NEVER GIVE ME GRENADES, EVER".

"Mmmm hmmm. Well, I was gonna go look at the place before hand, but I guess it can wait. I have a few hours. I think we can go somewhere else I had in mind."



      A few minutes later Kaston found himself looking at the the ships along the the launch bay. He marveled at the fluidity of the mechanisms which moved the bay into its working state.

      He moved to the far corner, where the Hunter ships rested. He could see figures moving over and under them, most of them being large.
      As he got closer, he saw more details, and fell in love with them. He regretted not having more time to look at them before.
      They were hued a dark green, with red calligraphy on the sides. Other than that, he noticed small doors and pop-up panels in key locations. He let out a low whistle.
      A moment and a bang later, a small, battered, flame painted ODST helmet came up. The faceplate was down so he didn't have any idea who it could have been.
      A heavily gloved hand reached up and kicked the faceplate open. The face beneath it was almost solid black from grease. They stared at each other for almost a minute. Finally, the other man spoke up.
"Kaston?"

"Kieso?"

"The one and only."

      Kaston stood entirely still, a thick grin slowly forming on his haggard face.

"Where in the world have you been?" He was almost stuttering as he teedered toward his old friend on his crutches.

      Kieso tried to jump up and walk, but tripped on a wire and wound up tackeling Kaston. They hit the floor laughing, except Kaston was wincing.

      When they got up, they embraced each other in a crushing bear hug. When they let go, Kaston grunted.

"Man, we gotta lighten that up a little."

Kieso looked him over. "Looks like your a little under the weather."

"Ugh, don't ask. I came here to see these." He gestured towards the ships.

"Heh, these beauties," he nodded his head backwards," belong to a friend of mine." He turned around, cupped his hands over his mouth. "HEY! Chewbacca!"

      Behind him, an enourmas figure jumped down the side of the ship. It slowly lumbered towards the two men. It reeked of oil.

"Kaston, this is my friend, Bocca." The Hunter took a great sweeping bow. It grunted something, and Kieso translated. "He says hello."





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