Return of the Chief

Return of the Chief
Date of Scene:	27 June 2014
Location:	Void - Deep Void (West)
Synopsis:	The Master Chief returns from places unknown.
Cast of Characters:	37, 474

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John-117 (474) has posed:
The deep void. Things get lost in the deep void - ships, people. When there's a multiverse-spanning war between two superpowers, that's inevitable. In this section of the deep void, husks of broken starships linger like silent monsters, the long dead cadavers of some ancient battle.

One of those starships is the Confederate warship Indomitable. For whatever reason, the vessel has started transmitting a distress signal. It's an automated beacon. And surely there's nothing inside the old hulk, right?

Serori (37) has posed:
The Void is easy enough to navigate thanks to the warp gate network. After only a few hops from the Citadel, Serori is in the right sector, and a short flight later leads her right to the defunct warship itself. Flying there on her own doesn't seem like a wise expenditure of energy, given the extent of her injuries; she approaches in a small, dark ship, its matte hull difficult to spot against the starry background, its repulsors similarly muted.

So, what happened here? She'd presumed the vessel was one in recent action, but its condition suggests otherwise. A missing bird, then? Something left derelict after a long battle? Serori realizes she could probably fly her personal vessel right through some of the ragged holes punched in the hull of this old behemoth. The conclusion reached is an uncomfortable one -- someone or something /must/ be aboard. What else could have happened to trigger the distress signal? How is the signal even functioning? Are any systems active?

She tries a few wideband radio sweeps, but only gets more of the same distress signal that's brought her here in the first place.

Only one thing left to do, then. Serori activates her cruiser's autopilot, setting the vessel on a wide orbit of the much, much larger Indomitable, and pops the canopy. Moving stiffly, her body responding poorly thanks to its roughed-up condition, she drifts out from her cockpit, and flies toward the warship's nearest bulkhead.

The air here is thin, but it's good enough for a saiyan.

John-117 (474) has posed:
Approaching the warship as Serori is, there might just be the subtle fear of old weapon systems opening up - but then, as Serori approaches that invisible demarcation, nothing happens. Except for the distress signal on, playing on an endless, static-filled loop, this ship is as silent and dead as it appears to be.

Inside, the ship is lit only by the few lights that still function on emergency power. There doesn't appear to be any obvious signs of violence - no gun shot craters or carbon scoring from energy weapons. And yet something must have killed this ship and prompted the distress call.

The distress beacon would be found on the bridge. If there's any indication of where to head, that's the first point of call.

Serori (37) has posed:
Anger has burned inside Serori since she woke in Medical earlier today; it sears away any semblance of patience she might possess. She proceeds recklessly down the cramped halls, hovering an inch or two above the ground, her scouter lens shining green in the darkness. Soon, the way becomes so cramped and black she has to activate her device's small headlamp. Comparable to an LED bulb, the small light is a fixed portion of the ear mount keeping her scouter attached to her head, precisely angled to make the most of its narrow field.

Periodically, she stops to look into one doorway or the next, but she's mostly making her way to the bridge. Her steps echo through the shadows. It would be disconcerting, if she wasn't so furious inside.

John-117 (474) has posed:
There are no bodies. It's the first thing Serori might realise upon reaching the command deck, something backed up by the simple fact that, with every doorway she looked through, there was no sign of life - or former life. It's entirely possible that the crew managed to evacuate before whatever cataclysm took the Indomitable. Still, maybe if Serori was less furious she might've noted some of the stranger things through those doorways - black filaments threading across bulkheads and strange blue things that might be fireflies nestled amongst them.

On the bridge, the distress beacon icon blinks again and again at one of the consoles. It'd be a simple thing to turn it off, especially with Confederate command authorisation!

Serori (37) has posed:
That's right; she's in a stupid place right now, stupidly doing something she shouldn't, all because she lost a fight. There's a limp in her step, bandages keeping her together, painkillers fuzzing her senses, and a throb in her head. Through all that, she almost misses the frisson of instinct telling her to get on guard. It's too quiet, that shiver tells her. There should be /something/ here besides errant ghosts.

Feeling increasingly on edge, Serori approaches the console, caution in her stride. She takes a moment to look over the bridge's command controls, wondering what happened to the men who were once responsible for the warship. After a long period of thoughtful inaction, she attempts to disable the distress beacon, providing her codes when prompted. Is the ship's database even up to date enough to recognize her credentials?

John-117 (474) has posed:
After a moment, the distress beacon deactivates. The system must recognise her. Good. That's good. It's a simple mission, and the Confederacy might be able to even recover this derelict vessel. All in all, not a bad way to try and work off some of that steam.

And then, from behind Serori, something speaks.

The man there wears the uniform of a Confederate soldier, but all he's mumbling is incoherent phrases. The words make sense, but they're strung together randomly, like the man is pulling from random entries in a dictionary over and over. Black filaments spool through his eyes and over his limbs, his eyes are lit by a faint blue incandescence, and something thick and brown leaks from his mouth.

And he's advancing on Serori.

Serori (37) has posed:
The first dragging footstep drops ice down Serori's spine. The muttered gibberish keeps it there. Serori turns, slowly, to stare wide-eyed at the man. All the fur on her tail stands on end, making the appendage look twice its normal size, and it stands out straight from her back, almost like she's been electrocuted or something. "Wh..."

It's not a situation where reason can prevail; she recognizes that right away. Life support systems should not have sustained human life for this long, and the way the man moves and speaks is not exactly indicative of a present mind. Serori opts to shoot first, and ask questions later -- assuming a quick, simple ki burst will lay the man out. The unliving can be stern stuff, sometimes. She's got a second blast charged and ready if the first doesn't do it.

If the first little blast /works/, she'll creep over toward the man, then bend to investigate the black filaments attached to his face. Though she isn't sure it's safe to get so close.

Is he the one who activated the beacon? Is there more?

She wraps her tail around her waist and prepares for a fight she's not sure she can actually handle. The confidence she displays on the radio is more than mere posturing; it's an outright lie.

"Checking in. The Indomitable is defunct, the crew missing, except for one. I've killed him; something's...wrong with him. I can't explain it yet."

John-117 (474) has posed:
The first ki burst certainly lays him out. The man hits the deck and doesn't rise - for a few moments. Then, slowly, the thing in the shape of a man begins to move! It's like something is pupetting him, moving the body even when it shouldn't be moving. It's possible it's the work of those filaments, but who could be absolutely certain?

It's not looking good. As Serori wonders if there's more, several more of them enter the command deck. All mumbling nonsense phrases, all wrapped with black, glossy threads, and all leaking some brown goo from their mouths.

The whole situation might just be beginning to feel like a trap.

Serori (37) has posed:
Serori quicksteps away from the shuffling corpse, putting a good eight foot distance between herself and the limits of the man's reach. A hard glare is leveled at the reanimated corpse, and she prepares two more ki blasts, the light and heat crackling inside her grasp for only a moment before the spheres are let loose on their target. The resulting blast is pretty hefty, but Serori knows better than to annihilate the bridge -- she's not stupid enough to put herself in /that/ position.

When more corpses start coming her way, she shifts her stance into a defensive and ready half-crouch. Black eyes snap from target to target to target. The number creeping out from the shadows is disconcerting, but she's not going to back down from the challenge, no way -- not after yesterday. With a snarl, she leaps into action.

Pushing her body to behave up to her usual standards...it hurts. She's slower than she'd like to be, more awkward, and less reactive. Dulled senses mean dulled reflexes, so she does her best to keep her distance. A confident smirk comes over her, anyway, as she begins firing more energy blasts in between moderate kicks and defensive twists. These aren't so rough. There aren't /so/ many.

Serori tries to breach the swarm and reach the hallway. If she can get outside the bridge, she'll maybe be in better shape, assuming the cramped hall isn't already flooded.

John-117 (474) has posed:
They drop. The 'zombies' - for lack of a better term - are slow and unwieldy. If something's puppeting them, it's not doing it well. Serori has no problem with knocking them down with ki blasts, kicking them around and twisting past them - this is good, because most of them seem to try and spray her with that thick brown goo. Serori can hazard a guess that, if it touches her, she'd probably end up like them.

And such a fate is not befitting a true Saiyan warrior!

She gets through the swarm, however, and out into the hallway. Even before Serori can take a second to catch her breath, there's a quick 'bark-bark-bark' of a distinctive rifle report, the bullets whispering past her ear. Behind her, one of the zombies - unseen - dies.

Something huge shifts in the darkness ahead of Serori - something big and eight foot tall. Something angular and clearly inhuman. Whatever it is, its footsteps are slow and deliberate and heavy. Whatever it is, it is clad in green battle plate, with a familiar set of three numbers emblazoned on one breast plate, with its facial features hidden behind a golden visor.

John-117 lowers his battle rifle and says evenly, "Colonel Serori."

Serori (37) has posed:
The acrobatics she's required to put herself through just to /avoid/ the brown goop is taxing on her body. It's magic holding some of her bones together, and the magic /can/ be strained to the breaking point. Hell, she's still got stitches keeping some of her /muscles/ together -- and those are /much/ more fragile. So it's no surprise that by the time she makes it to the door, she's limping, and more than a little out of breath. No wonder she missed the zombie sneaking up behind her!

You can bet those bullets whizzing past her head puts her right back on full alert, though. Serori gasps, and freezes -- unsure which way to react first.

She opts to plunge ahead, skidding down the hall to where the hulking and familiar figure of Sierra One-One-Seven looms in her way, for once a welcome bulwark instead of a threat to her life.

"/John/." Not much else can be said, though, not yet -- Serori leans into his waist and stretches an arm past him, firing a beam back down the hall.

"What are these things."

John-117 (474) has posed:
"I've got your back," John says in that unflappable rasp, picking off some of the zombies that are walking, crawling, or pulling their ruined bodies along the deck. On some level, they remind him of the Flood - but worse. He's landing headshot after headshot, but these things just don't seem to mind. They stop, fall, and get right back up.

"Your guess is as good as mine, Colonel," Cortana says from John's helmet, even as John continues putting down targets with terrifying, mechanical precision. "We've never seen anything like them before. We need to destroy this warship - I trust you don't mind?"

Serori (37) has posed:
'I've got your back.' Four words she /never/ expected to hear from the likes of Sierra One-One-Seven. Startled, Serori recoils from him enough to give him a wide-eyed look of pure incredulity, but then she figures it's best not to look a gift horse in the mouth and to roll with the sudden change in attitude. Besides...there's no way in /hell/ she could punch her way past him, not tonight. Her expression slams shut, becoming a mask of raw determination again, and she nods once, crisply and mutely pledging her allegiance to /his/ plated backside.

What a unique experience /this/ will be.

"I don't think I /do/ mind, but the xenobiologist will want samples. What I've got splashed on my armor might not be enough, and I'd like to be prepared if we encounter these things again. Do you have any kind of secure packaging? A casing.../anything/?"

Serori whirls to clear the hallway another time, rapidfire bolts escaping her palms.

John-117 (474) has posed:
"No," John replies.

Serori's ki blasts light up the hallway, glinting off John's golden visor. "Fire in the hole," John remarks, pulling a grenade free from his belt and chucking it into the bridge proper. It detonates, throwing fire and shrapnel in a wide arc.

"We were going to pull a page from our old playbook, Colonel," Cortana remarks, "And destroy this entire ship. Its reactor core should vaporise the entire infectious agent. Oh, and as a preliminary finding? I wouldn't let this thing get on your skin and I sure as hell wouldn't ingest it."

Serori (37) has posed:
Serori flinches and turns her head from the grenade blast. "Fine -- " A growl escapes her, and she twists past the SPARTAN, slipping ahead of him to work on clearing the next path with more precision than a grenade allows. Something thumps above her and she cocks a wary eye toward the ceiling, but when nothing immediately comes of the noise, she carries on ahead. "I'll do wide sweeps, and you get the stragglers. Keep up!"

True to her claims, she works quickly, but contrary to her demands for speed, she remains pretty close to him, making sure she never /actually/ outpaces him. More zombies fall before her, and the rush of battle gets into her blood, so much so that she actually laughs here and there. The cocky smirk returns as she falls into step beside the Master Chief. She finds a good pattern -- a /great/ pattern, almost like she's /used/ to this.

Well, she's fought him so much that maybe she really can anticipate him. Like when he's ready to reload, she slinks back into a guard position.

"Which way to the core? Can you get a read?" Serori's own scouter is picking up so many life forms, it's hard to fix on anything else. Cortana's /got/ to be more advanced.

John-117 (474) has posed:
"I'll manage," John replies as Serori moves off. As Serori moves, firing off ki blasts however she likes, John is turning here and there, battle rifle raised and firing. A zombie lurches at him from a doorway and John drops it with a punch, following it up by dropping the rest of his MJOLNIR-suited weight down through his knee and onto its torso. That's one down.

"I'm assuming it's the largest remaining power source," Cortana says. "I'll relay the information. There."

A small marker should blip into life on Serori's scouter HUD.

On the other side of a terrific hole in the ship's outer hull. Beneath and above, lies nothing but the void. The SPARTAN pauses at the edge and then turns back around, deciding to pick off a few more stragglers - luckily, they're slow. But they keep coming. "After you," he comments. "Reloading."

Serori (37) has posed:
John's gonna feel a tug on his collar.

Serori can move mountains, if she puts her mind to it. What's one SPARTAN?

An underhanded /toss/ sends Sierra into low-grav flight across the gulf. The weight he carries, mostly the weight of his armor, pulls sharply on Serori's shoulder -- enough to leave her gasping, once John's actually thrown. Hovering above the divide, Serori stops to roll her shoulder a few grinding times before pale-faced and cursing she zips forward to catch up to Sierra, and maybe even nudge him back onto the proper course. It's not elegant, and he's gonna hit the far side pretty hard, but it's better than leaving him on his own among a space-zombie swarm.

Just how many are waiting on the other side, anyway? Serori is leery of the readings she's getting on her scouter. "Cortana," she mutters, "does he have enough equipment to get through this?"

Ah, fuck it. Serori plunges into the next cramped corridor, aura blazing, power surging behind her fists. Her tail cracks the air once like a whip. If this is the heart of the hive, she's ready to take it on, and ready to reach that core.

John-117 (474) has posed:
John has a moment of surprise as Serori picks him up and hurls him across the gulf. The gravity might be on the low side, but the bulkhead he hits still crumples around his weight. He pulls himself out and sets his feet to the deck, magnetising them. "I could have managed," John replies.

"Running low on ammunition," Cortana states, giving a thoughtful 'hmm' at Serori's question. "But we still have two grenades, a combat knife, and his bare hands. I'm sure we can make something work with that."

And then Serori's off again, charging down the next corridor, and John stomps after her. Here, is where things get weird.

This is certainly near the heart of the hive. There's less zombies and the reason for that is probably related to the thick, brown viscera that is coating the walls, thickening and growing more and more prevalent as they approach main engineering. It seems almost like mud - but it pulsates, glows in sections, and is lined with more and more of those black filaments. There are certain familiar shapes, too, embedded in it.

It isn't mud then.

It's flesh.

But less zombies is a rather general phrase - they're all still here, too. Dozens of them. And they come climbing over the walls and running down the corridor, hanging upside down from the roof as they scrabble across its surface. These ones are different. These ones are smarter. When John drops the leader with a short burst, they shove its corpse out of the way.

And then they're on them.

Serori (37) has posed:
Let's face it, the armor Serori favors isn't much of a HAZMAT suit. A light chestplate is all she wears over a form-fitting battlesuit that doesn't look like anything more than a fancy leotard. Parts of her body -- like her arms, upper legs, and face -- are fully exposed to the pathogen threat, and she's got injuries, the kind which are bleeding into the bandages she had taped down hours ago. There is a great deal of risk in any kind of close encounter, and now that the enemies have become smarter and less predictable, Serori's in even more danger.

"How far along is the core." Serori's tone has shifted. After blasting another creature off the ceiling and smashing in another's head with a well-placed set of rock-hard knuckles, she's put aside all her smirking sense of fun, and adopted a rather grim outlook in its place. Slipping around behind John -- so close she's almost literally back to back with him -- she finishes off a twitching straggler by sweeping a compressed beam across its throat. Another beam like it carves through another trio near the ceiling, but keeping her eyes /up/ has taken her eyes off of what's /down/, and something blunt grabs her ankle.

Serori yells out in surprise and drives her free heel down against the head of her grabber, but the delay separates her from John, and three more zombies leap in to fill the gap. "Behind you!" she snaps, probably in the same instant Cortana provides her own warning.

The fleshy goop sure /stinks/ whenever a few other compressed blasts sear across it. Serori is being very careful, here -- trying not to make more of a mess than is necessary, fearing what'll happen if she blows up the wrong thing. It slows her down, but better safe than sorry, huh? Her ankle released, she sweeps the ceiling of crawlers again, and tries to fight her way back to the Master Chief.

John-117 (474) has posed:
"One hundred meters," Cortana replies. "Get me inside and - Behind you! - we'll send this place sky high."

Grabbing, clawing hands slide off John's shielded armor, leaving little golden bursts of light where they hit him. Eventually, though, they'd just bring him down through sheer weight of numbers.

But, until then? It's going to be one hell of a dog fight.

As those three leap in to get him, John manages to down one with his last remaining burst of battle rifle fire. Reaching down to his hip, he draws a wicked-looking combat knife and buries it in the head of his next target. That's two. The third is on him and John kicks him down the length of the corridor. Three.

% John pushes his way down the corridor, step by step, turning every step into a blow. To a SPARTAN and a Saiyan, these zombies are just so fragile. Dangerous, sure, but fragile all the same. John stomps down hard on another grabber trying to snare Serori and takes a moment to retrieve his combat knife.

He sends it spinning through the air, putting down another zombie that seems like it was going to try and vomit all over the Saiyan. "Behind you," John states.

The engineering deck is much like the rest of this particular half of the Indomitable. That strange fleshy paste - almost certainly the raw materials of most of the crew - is covering everything, and the reactor core in particular. It is pulsating blue incandescence at a steady rhythm, almost like a heartbeat, and lined with pipes, wiring, all of it intertwined.

Even the SPARTAN stops and stares at it for a moment.

"It must be drawing energy from the reactor," Cortana says, "Somehow. Do you have a plan, Colonel?"

Serori (37) has posed:
Serori tips back her head to give the engineering deck a narrow look. From what she can tell, the core is shielded by the thick layers of reconstituted flesh and shipwork. It's a nauseating sight. The pulsing doesn't help.

A casual backhand pastes the skull of the next zombie to leap at her. Its blunted teeth end up tearing off her glove. "A plan?" she spits. "It looks like the cabling is feeding energy to the...whatever you wanna call it. I'm going to tear the cables down, and sever the energy feed. John's going to have to get you into the core itself, and I don't know how to do that. The consoles might still be working, if there's power this far into it." The gesture she makes points out a shit-covered series of flat surfaces. Maybe a terminal's buried in the muck.

Without further adieu, Serori zips skyward, becoming a nimble little corkscrew as she twists and turns her way toward the ceiling, where the cabling looks weakest. There, she reaches in with her still-gloved hand, and starts /yanking/, resolutely ignoring the way her collarbone starts to grind against itself. From above, she has a pretty good vantage, too -- she can keep popping zombies from her new position -- but what she discovers is that the cabling is pretty stubborn, and she has to put real effort into tearing things apart. If that's even going to /work/!

The two of them alone might not be able to do this, she thinks. Reinforcements should have been called...though of course /now/ it's much too late. She's going to have to make the best she can of a bad situation.

Gold radiance combats the musty darkness as Serori shouts her way to Super Saiyan, boosting the strength she applies to the core's tubes and cables.

John-117 (474) has posed:
Luckily, SPARTANs were never trained to be squeamish about things. As Serori begins to shout and Cortana remarks that she's doing her thing again with a touch of confusion in her voice, John makes his way over to a series of relatively flat surfaces. His hand brushes against the thick goo and wipes it clear. John places his palm against the panel beneath and, for a moment, it glows purple.

"I'm in," Cortana reports. "I'll need a few moments. The architecture here is... strange."

As Serori yanks on the cabling, managing to pull it free, she might find that those black filaments go swingng in every which direction, as if caught in an invisible hurricane. Where they hit her golden aura, however, they seem to combust - and, boy, do they ever burn well!

Whatever has happened here, whether it's the result of an experiment gone wrong, some sort of Elite weapon or something else entirely, doesn't really matter. Serori's got a good handle on ruining it.

There's a detonation from somewhere on the main deck. "I'm out," the Master Chief reports. That must've been his last grenade.

Serori (37) has posed:
Serori looks down on the Chief. The altered color of her eyes blazes in the strange atmosphere like two sunlit emeralds, and nevermind what her /aura/ does to the place -- she's practically the sun herself. Cortana's confusion is understandable, but for Serori, approaching the matter /without/ Super Saiyan carried far too much risk. It may be a pointless show of power on the surface, but beneath all the glitzy gold, she feels much more secure, much more confident -- confident enough to drop back down to the ground and resume backing up the Chief.

"How much time do you need, Cortana?" Power echoes in Serori's voice. "John? Don't tell me you decided to make this a fair fight!"

As the zombies come, she's ready. Whether she's blasting them away or pulverizing 'em into chunks via the healthy application of her /fists/, she keeps well ahead of the curve. But Sierra's sharp eyes will see it. The exhaustion slowing her down. The weakening endurance. No matter how shiny a face she puts on, she's still getting run down.

She can't keep this up for long.

John-117 (474) has posed:
Cortana says nothing when Serori calls down to her. John stands there, fists balled, and lays out a zombie with a mean right hook. "We didn't come loaded for bear," John replies, kicking another zombie down. He breaks a bar of metal from the ship's wall and hefts it like an impromptu baseball bat. Eventually, though, that gets embedded in one zombie. They're thinning now, because suddenly Cortana laughs from somewhere and remarks that she's set a timer. John slaps his fist against the terminal and draws her out, giving Serori a nod. Not a moment too soon by the looks of it - Serori's tiring.

"Time to go," John remarks, and a timer blips into life on his HUD and Serori's scouter. Two minutes until detonation!

Serori (37) has posed:
Serori nods once, sharply, and gets that look on her face that warns the whole world she's about to do something stupid. Reaching into her armor, she pulls out a flat black device, rectangular in shape and sporting a few surface buttons. She pushes one of those buttons -- recalling her ship to her immediate location. Now, it's going to take a little time for the vessel to make the journey, but it's going to be less than two minutes.

"Let's back to the divide. I'll get us out. Is Cortana /okay/? She didn't pick up something weird in there, did she?" Seems like even Serori recognized how out of character that /laughter/ was.

A few very sluggish strides propel Serori into a dash back the narrow hallway which brought the unlikely pair to the core. About halfway to the door, she stumbles -- actually falls to her knees! -- and with a gasp she loses her Super Saiyan status. It takes a few deep breaths and maybe Chief's nudge to get her moving again. "T-tch..."

At least once she /does/, she's able to get back to clearing a path alongside him. By the time they get back to the divide, her ship should be waiting -- assuming they can make it...

John-117 (474) has posed:
"She'll be fine," John says, and luckily his voice betrays no emotion. Anyone who knows John, however, knows that any remark of 'fine' is his way of diverting attention, which is easily enough when you're a huge walking tank.

When Serori falls, John is there and his gauntletted fist grabs the back of her armor and hauls the Saiyan to her feet. "On your feet, Colonel," he advises. John puts his shoulder down and rushes any zombies that get in his path, knocking them down and crushing them beneath his armored feet. As they approach Serori's vessel, John comments: "We're hitching a ride."

Serori (37) has posed:
It's not the canopy that's open this time -- it's the rear of the vessel. The port's spacious enough to accommodate a SPARTAN and all his gear, provided he can make the leap. Serori whirls a final time to blast a few more grasping hands, and then -- "Go!"

Serori doesn't have to jump; she can fly. She'll soar in behind John, and slap the control panel to close the port before any clever zombies can try to follow along. Before she can try to catch her breath, she's moving past the SPARTAN to take over the cockpit, where she'll key in a few commands and let the little Confederate skimmer get on its way.

"I have no idea what coordinates I struck," she realizes. And then she sits down /hard/, hangs her head, and just /breathes/ awhile, completely unguarded despite the company.

John-117 (474) has posed:
John breaks into a run at the sight of Serori's vessel. It's a surprisingly welcome sight. It's quite the gap, but between the low gravity and the Chief's SPARTAN strength, he might just be able to make it. He leaps.

John slams into the deck of Serori's vessel, rolling with the impact and rising in a smooth, practiced motion. And then Serori's there and John takes a few seconds to check if any zombies have followed them - none appear to.

"N-" Cortana's voice is distorted, staticy, but returns to normal by the end of her sentence. "N-neutral territory, I assume?"

John stands outside of the cockpit, seeming to fill the whole space.

Serori (37) has posed:
After a moment, Serori grips the side of her pilot's chair and pulls herself upright. A bad limp sets off her prowling stride. The console's prodded, and one or two alterations made to programmed destination coordinates. "...now we are, yes. Neutral territory." Exhaustion pulls her back down to a slump. She watches John at a strange angle, her eyes narrowed against the dizzy harassment brought on by her failing strength.

"You helped me," she murmurs. "Both of you. I won't ask why. I understand /why/." Serori struggles to get the words out. Two syllables, faint for having made it past her pride, a considerable force even battered by Taylita's victory.

"Thank you."

John-117 (474) has posed:
"We were in the neighbourhood," Cortana replies. John's golden visor remains impassive and he doesn't move - just like a big green statue. "You're welcome, Colonel. But do try to avoid any more entanglements with creatures like that. We won't always be around."

John extends his right hand towards the Colonel, the oldest - and perhaps only - gesture he knows.

Serori (37) has posed:
Serori snorts weary amusement at Cortana's rebuke. "Next time, those things won't stand a chance! A meteor fell on me yesterday, you know." She smiles crookedly at the ghost riding around in John's head. "Next time, maybe I'll be the one rescuing /you/."

The hand is offered. Serori stares at it in confusion, but a moment later, she's reached up to clasp it. Far from friends, maybe...but at least for now, there's peace between them.