Work Text:
Halo Learns to Ride a Bike
Please insert the Halo 2: Anniversary Official Soundtrack Disc into your portable music player and switch to the track Halo Theme Gungnir Mix.
Story starts in:
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Beep
Halo felt a poke in his neural interlink as Joyeuse requested to appear on the holo-emitter built into his hand.
“Halo…” She shuffled, internally debating how to phrase the question, “how do you ride a bike?”
Halo froze. Given that he had been kidnapped and replaced with a clone at the age of six - like all Spartan Twos - he had never been taught to ride a bike.
Joyeuse looked up, her holographic eyes staring straight into the reflective surface of his visor - yet through their neural connection, she knew exactly how he felt.
“You… Don’t know, do you?”
A voice yelled across the pelican dropship as Fernando Esparza spoke up from the cockpit, simultaneously navigating across the Banished-controlled Halo ring’s airspace.
“You’ve never been on a bike?”
The shock was evident in his voice.
Halo looked up, slowly, his movements firm and steady even as the pelican violently swerved to avoid detection.
“No… never…”
“Well, it’ll have to wait. Halo’s control center is dead ahead, I’ll drop you here then head out of range,” Fernando yelled back, setting the pelican down ahead of the control room’s doors, “radio in when you need pick-up.”
Halo’s fist closed, shutting off Joyeuse’s emitter and grabbed the MA40 assault rifle on his back. The two of them had a mission to do - the ghost of Tartarus had returned, and was moments away from reactivating the Halo array. The gun pointed at the head of the universe.
“Just like old times” he remarked to himself, before setting off through the Forerunner structure.
“Well, for you. For me, this’ll be a first,” Joyeuse chirped cheerfully through Halo’s built-in speakers, her always-happy tone a stark contrast to the current stakes.
****
Zeta Halo’s Control Room
Atriox smashed aside Jiralhanae warrior after Jiralhanae warrior, his gravity mace Chainbreaker and his power gauntlet sending waves of Covenant remnant Brutes flying off the control room’s platform to their deaths. A roar sounded directly behind him as one Brute launched a fuel rod cannon straight towards his back.
Defying physics, Atriox spun around at an impossible speed, evading the projectile and wrapping his fist around the Brute’s skull. As his gauntlet squeezed and began to crack his opponent’s skull, only one question escaped his lips.
“Where does the creature hide?” he demanded with a fury rivalled only by the one he felt after Doisac’s destruction at the hands of the Apparition.
“I do not hide.”
Atriox crushed the skull and turned to face the ghastly form of Tartarus, ex-Chieftain of the Brutes during the Covenant’s Ninth Age of Reclamation.
“Tartarus. Even in death you cling to their lies.”
Atriox readied his mace and began to approach the undead Chieftain, when another Brute - this time a red and black painted Captain who came here alongside Atriox’s forces - stopped him with a question.
“Wait. Why do we not simply show him the truth? Once he realises the Journey is false, he is sure to -”
“No,” Atriox interrupted, his legs resuming their stride, “he is set. For him, there is only one way this will end.”
The Banished Warmaster made sure to keep Tartarus’ attention focused solely on him, and not on the approach of the Kig-Yar snipers taking aim to their side. In but seconds, they would fire, and if all went as planned, this would be over.
Seconds passed. The distinct cackle of energy sounded throughout the air as their beam rifles fired in unison.
It was not over.
The shots passed through Tartarus’ ghostly form, as the snipers kept firing. Atriox enabled his comms to command them to freeze, only to find proximity to the ghost interfered with the signal. Instead, he raised his free hand, visually signalling for them to halt.
He paced side to side, keeping Tartarus centred in his sights and ensuring his form still stood imposing. Naturally, he had planned for his plan to fail, and even now, his blademaster Jega ‘Rdomnai was enacting their back-up plan.
All he had to do was stop the Chieftain from activating the array - but first he had to figure out how Tartarus planned to do so. He of course needed a reclaimer - a human - to insert the index, but there was nobody in sight. Nobody, except…
A Banished Brute stormed into the control room, his breath ragged and his speech frantic as he attempted to relay a message to Atriox.
No, not just a message.
A warning.
“He’s here!” the Brute yelled for all to hear.
“Who?”
“The demon! He has come!”
Halo himself was here. The Apparition had called him John. John Halo, perhaps? Atriox wondered these things quietly, to himself, while he yelled orders to his remaining troops. They must hold off the demon and prevent him from approaching Tartarus.
“I see your plan now, creature. The Tartarus I knew could never be so strategic.”
The warmaster stepped back slightly as he circled around the ghost.
“What are you?”
The ghost did not answer. Instead, it waited, doing nothing but stare at the entrance. Only when Halo sprinted inside, assault rifle firing at the Grunts attempting to stop him, did the ghost act.
It did not speak. It did not move. It only laughed.
First, the laugh came solely from the figure. Then, it enveloped the room as the door slammed shut, trapping them all inside.
Atriox glanced towards his Jackal snipers and saw nothing.
“Spartan!” he yelled, “do not approach the ghost.”
He turned his entire figure away from the Spartan, symbolic of his (for now) good intent.
***
“Halo, wait. Atriox is right, I’m getting some weird readings from this place. Do not get near Tartarus,” Joyeuse cautioned.
Halo’s steps slowed to a halt, but he kept his rifle aimed forwards. What else was he supposed to do? That’s what he has Joy for, he supposed.
“Joy, any ideas?” he asked.
“From what you’ve told me, he can’t activate the ring himself, right? I assumed we’d find he’d captured another human - we’ve been seeing that a lot lately - but there’s nobody here. There’s no signs of any being here, alive or dead, so that could only mean…”
Her voice trailed off as the realization dawned.
“He’s going to use you!” she gasped, realising this must be a trap somehow.
“But he can’t. I mean, you’re… well, you. So what’s his plan? There’s something we’re missing here.”
Halo’s eyes darted to the side of his vision, to where Atriox was standing. It looked like he was… Sniffing?
For a tiny, brief moment, Halo swore he saw panic hit the warmaster, before he composed himself once more.
It wasn’t long before his theory was proven correct, as Atriox turned and ran towards the Spartan. A familiar noise, a scuttle of tiny feet - no, tendrils - hit his ears and Halo, too, realised what was going on.
“What is it? Your vitals spiked, and not because you’re in combat,” Joyeuse asked, unaware of what approached.
The distinct screech of the Flood shook Halo to his core. He barely reacted to Atriox’s sudden arrival as his mind flashed back to Alpha Halo and the Ark. He snapped out of it quickly and scanned the room with his rifle. Infection forms were crawling up the walls of the chasm below, approaching quickly, as combat forms assembled behind the door.
“Spartan, you have fought the Flood before, yes?” Atriox asked, acutely aware of the enemy-of-his-enemy’s history.
Halo gave him a short nod as he released a burst into the creatures crawling closer. The bullets pierced the infection forms, taking out a large group with one burst, though more came to take their place.
Still, he never wavered in his resolve, odds would not break him.
Atriox - though concerned - was similarly composed. He, too, was used to facing impossible odds, and was confident that if anybody could escape this, it would be the two of them.
Joyeuse pinged approaching enemies, though it was hardly necessary.
“I’m getting no signal to Fernando, we’re being jammed.”
No good. Even if they did get out, they couldn’t call for a pick-up.
“My troops are still outside. Even if you’ve killed them all, more will already be here,” Atriox shouted over the gunfire, “if we find a way through this door, we can reach them. Our priority is keeping humans away from the Flood.”
A moment passed before he spoke again.
“And if that were to fail… I will make sure you die, demon.”
“He has a point…” Joyeuse chimed in, over their private comm channel, away from Atriox’s ears.
“Okayy. About the door. I can’t open it remotely, I’ll need to be in the system. The only terminal we can reach… Is the main control. And with you-know-what, I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“Do we have any other choice?” Halo asked grimly.
“Only ones that involve jumping down a very large shaft.”
Halo switched to his suit’s external speakers and spoke to Atriox.
“I can open the door, but I need to reach the controls. On the count o-”
“That will not be necessary!” Zeta Halo’s submonitor, Adjutant Resolution interrupted, arriving with a contingent of sentinels. “I can open this door.”
Atriox chose this time to speak up.
“There’s still an army of Flood between us. This will be a hard fight.”
Offering assistance once more, Adjutant Resolution replied, “perhaps I can help with that. My sentinels shall attempt to clear the way, but you will need to be quick.”
A blue light materialised as an object began to teleport into the control room.
“So, I brought you this.”
A two-seater bicycle appeared out of thin air, teleported into the room by the monitor.
“I apologise for the lack of weapons. It was all I could find on short notice. But my knowledge of modern humanity shows that this is a preferred mode of transport by some.”
Halo sighed, silently.
Atriox awkwardly hurried to the bicycle and sat on the passenger seat.
“Spartan, I trust you know how to pilot this vehicle.”
“No… I don’t,” Halo replied, even as he sat on the front seat. He would have to learn.
As soon as his feet left the floor, the bicycle immediately began to fall, and he hurriedly planted his legs again.
“Why do you hesitate? My sentinels cannot keep the parasite away from you for long.”
Joyeuse spoke up again, “I’m going to try to ask the monitor to boost your suit’s comms range. Hold on.”
Halo (7ft 11) and Atriox (8ft 6.5) awkwardly sat together on the bicycle (3ft 4), tightly squashed on seats that are far too small for their abnormally large frames, as they waited.
“Got it! Thank you!” Joy spoke through Halo’s speakers.
“I’m contacting Fernando now.”
“Halo? What’s happening? I lost you for-” Fernando began.
“No time to explain. I need you to teach him to ride a bike. It’s urgent, life or death, you get the idea.”
“Okay, uhh,” Fernando hesitated as he considered his words.
“Start gliding by pushing your feet off the ground.”
As Fernando spoke, Halo copied his instructions, and soon enough he was riding - albeit slowly - a bicycle forwards.
“This is embarrassing,” Atriox remarked.
Within a minute, Halo had figured out how to ride a bike - at least in a straight line, turning was an entirely different problem. He could learn that on the go.
“Open the doors,” he asked Adjutant Resolution.
As the doors open, sentinels swooped in to blow away the Flood crowding their path. A line in the crowd formed as Halo and Atriox sped through the Forerunner hallway.
Flood combat forms attempted to fire upon the two, but Halo’s genetically modified legs pushed the bike to unparalleled speeds. Any shots that hit were absorbed by their energy shields, and Atriox did his best to deflect Flood that attempted to jump on.
“I know where we must go. Turn left here,” Atriox ordered.
Not waiting for Fernando to explain how, Halo turned the handles sharply, causing the bicycle to indeed turn - but the sharp change in direction flung the two off the bike. As Flood swarmed them, Atriox released a gravity blast from his Chainbreaker to kill those getting close.
Just as quickly as they fell off, the two had climbed back on and begun speeding away, with Halo following Atriox’s directions.
After enough turns, Halo had figured out how to ride a bike. As the Combat Evolved box said, he was “master of any weapon, pilot of any vehicle”.
“Here. My team is around this corner, claiming the weapon we shall use to destroy the parasite. Come with me.”
Upon reaching their destination, Atriox dismounted the bike and proceeded further into the structure.
***
Zeta Halo’s Control Room
Twenty minutes had passed since the human and Brute had left. The submonitor was still here, fighting off the Flood. They could not, they would not, take the control room.
The endless supply of sentinels fended off the endless supply of Flood. Adjutant Resolution wondered which would run out first, though at this rate, the battle could last for days if nothing changed.
The larger sentinel tunnels had already been sealed by the Flood, preventing enforcer sentinels from joining the fight. It was smart, too smart for Flood in the feral stage.
This meant only one thing.
A Gravemind had formed.
Here, in the control room, most likely, given there was no Flood presence elsewhere on the ring. The Palace of Pain had been cleansed one hundred thousand years ago, and Despondent Pyre kept security very tight.
The spectral Brute stood before the central terminal was a puzzling sight. In all the Domain, the monitor couldn’t find any sort of reference to what he was seeing. Lasers phased through it, and it spoke only with the voice of the dead.
He needed to do more research, if only Despondent Pyre was still here, she would have access to data he lacked the clearance for…
Checking upon the surviving Brute and human’s locations, he was faced with more questions. Why had they not escaped? They had gone deeper into the structure, and were now closing in on the control room once more. Why would they come back?
His subroutines were fully preoccupied with combating the Flood, otherwise he would check on them. Given even he could not kill the human, he supposed the odds of his survival were quite high in the circumstances. Though were he to become one with the parasite, his combat skin and martial prowess would make for quite the deadly agent of the Flood.
Five more minutes passed as the stale battle raged on. Flood bodies burned by sentinel beams meant that they could not be revived, yet somehow it always had more.
The tide of battle did not shift. Space was gained and space was lost in equal measure. For every ten infection forms popped, a sentinel crashed and burned.
Something had to change.
Then, something changed.
The door to the control room made the telltale sound of a Forerunner door opening.
There stood a ghastly figure, imposing and armoured, wielding a scrap cannon and a modified gravity hammer strapped to its back.
“BEAR WITNESS” Escharum, War Chief of the Banished, risen from the dead as a spectral figure, charged into battle, leading Atriox, Halo and Jega ‘Rdomnai forwards.
Flood tried its best to swarm and kill Escharum quickly, but his ghostly being prevented any and all harm from befalling him. He fired the scrap cannon into the swarm, tearing the Flood to pieces as he was completely invulnerable.
Soon after, the Flood assault paused. No more reinforcements came.
All that stood before Escharum was the ghost of Tartarus.
“You did not deserve to lead our Jiralhanae brothers in life, nor do you deserve to haunt the galaxy in death. With my final fight, you end here.”
Escharum roared, dropping his cannon and switching to the Diminisher of Hope, his gravity hammer.
Tartarus, or the ghost of him, likewise retrieved his hammer - the Fist of Rukt - and leapt at Escharum.
They matched blow after blow, each gravity wave countering the other’s. Yet Escharum, in all his years of experience, had the upper hand. As a ghost, he was free from the mortal troubles of age and illness, and fighting now at his physical peak, he was more than a match for Tartarus.
After an epic battle for the fate of the galaxy, the ghost of Tartarus faded into nothingness, any evidence of his corpse or time here permanently erased from existence.
Escharum stood triumphantly, a grin etched onto his face. The final fight of Escharum, War Chief of the Banished, to save the new home for the Brutes that he had conquered on Zeta Halo.
He turned to face the four allies - John Halo, Atriox, Jega and Adjutant Resolution - and bellowed loud enough to be heard throughout the entire Forerunner structure.
“Remember my story. I expect you to tell of this battle for generations to come,” Escharum announced, promptly leaping into the chasm below the control room, chasing the retreating Flood back to its source - wherever the Gravemind had formed, he would kill it.
Neither he nor the Flood would be seen again. At least, not on Zeta Halo.
***
Soon after, Banished reinforcements began to show up en masse. As Atriox cleared John Halo for safe passage - this time - Halo mounted the bicycle once more.
To Joyeuse only, he remarked, “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”
Joy, however, still had questions on her mind.
While they rode back to Pelican Echo-216 for extraction, she made her concerns public.
“Halo… From what I’ve heard, the Halo Array was used against the Flood. It fought desperately alongside you before to stop it from firing. So why would it want to fire it now? What could the Flood possibly want to kill on this ring, that it would willingly kill itself over?”
Halo pondered the question. It was a good point, the Flood really had no motivation.
“Whatever it is, it means there’s more danger. We’re not done here. I think we’re just getting started.”
With that, they rode back to the extraction, ready to face whatever new threats may arise. But for now, they’d continue their war to free Zeta Halo and the human survivors from the Banished. Halo already knew their alliance today would not hold, and come the morning sun, they would be once again locked in conflict for survival.
The end.