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"You have worried there. I thought we were both going to die when you were blown off that ledge."
"Well, I guess we got lucky EVA."

He continued to fire his rail gun, blasting through the enemies that were still desperately trying to take out the retreating dropship.

*FTEW*
"AHHH!!! My arm!!!!!"
(Try to see it through!!! Not another point of reference!!)

Shadow smiled a bit, still standing on the dropship. As soon as they were out of range, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and looked to the sky. Any normal person would easily loose balance on the rickety dropship, but Shadow was different. His black baggy jeans were wavering wildly in the great sandy winds blowing up again him. His black wolf shirt was torn and charred.

They had done it. They had done the impossible. Break into a high security building and assassinate a few of the most highly respected and guarded commanders of the government. That was quite a feat they had pulled off. He sighed deeply and sat down on the top of the dropship. All of a sudden, there was static interrupting his music. It irritated him a bit, but he knew the message might be important.

***Hey Shad, you mind coming inside the dropship?***
***How do you suppose to I do that?***
***Oh, right. You have a point there.***

All of a sudden, the dropship shifted to its right, throwing him off balance. He rolled over on the ship and began sliding down as the ship turned to its side. He grabbed his rifle and grasped for a nearby metal ring attached to the ship. The gun caught hold and he pulled himself to the ring and held onto it with his other arm. He watched as soaring rocket zoomed right by the ship. So that's what made the ship go into evasive maneuvers. Quite odd.

***More rockets! Incoming! All personnel brace for impact!***
***AND WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?***
***Shadow, you're still alive? Hold on buddy!***
***What else am I going to do?***

He heard the crackling sound of three more rockets launched his way. The ship swung to the left, flinging him off to the other side of the ship. His hands desperately grasped for anything that would keep him on the ship, but to no avail. He was flung off the ship entirely and fell down towards the rocky concrete ground of the city. His mind kept cool, no matter horrible his situation was. He watched as his sniper rifle flew down right next to him, also sending itself towards its doom. The ship was at least 40 stories up, and he had no parachute. He was pretty screwed. He grasped for his pistol. He pulled it out quickly and fired the grappling hook. It clicked out and attached to the side of a three-story building. He shortened the line as he reached the ground. The wind pounded at his face and tore through his skin. The damn sand was getting in his eyes. As he came down on the swing towards the ground, the gravity and inertia pulled so hard on his arms that they felt like they were going to snap any moment. He was near the second floor of that building now, and was loosing his grip. He tried to hold on, but his sweaty hands just couldn't clutch it. He slipped off and was send soaring forwards at 2 stories high. He landed in a 2 foot slide, the concrete digging into his skin. There he laid for 3 minutes, unmoving...

"Shit! Shadow's gone!"
"We have more important thing to worry about. LIKE US!"

More rockets came flying towards the dropship like mad hornets toward an intruder. Three of them zinged past the dropship, barely missing. Geb questioned.

"What the hell is shooting at us?"
"Gee, maybe the government troops got a little pissed that some of their best commanders were just assassinated."
"Alright, I get the picture."

A jolt was felt as a rocket came streaming towards the dropship. The intercom sounded and a worried pilot spoke through.

"The wing is clipped, we're going down!"

The dropship rattled profusely as it made its slow uncontrollable descent towards the ground. Cal sounded off.

"Fuck, just when I thought we were getting out of this alive."

The dropship was still upright and overall doing alright, but it couldn't keep its altitude. The pilot tried steering the ship towards an open road within the city.

"SHIT!"

The pilot had pulled too far to the right, and the other wing was clipped off by a nearby building. Their slow descended had slipped to a wild fall. Pieces of metal began breaking off on the Pelican, and fires started up all around the soldiers in the cabin area. The dropship hit the road nose first, smashing up the cockpit, and sending many of the Dark Wolves and Spartans flying out of the ship. What was left of the Pelican continued to slide along the rugged ground for a few seconds before coming to a complete stop.

Shadow slowly opened his eyes. His back felt like it was broken, a thousand needles stuck in his back, stabbing at his nerves. His arms felt like jelly, and his right leg felt like it was dislocated. He slowly gathered the energy to pull himself up with his weak arms. He tried moving his leg. It was alright, just badly bruised. That was good. Having a dislocated leg in a hostile environment was NOT good, and he was lucky to not have one of those. Damn, he was even lucky to have survived that. A 40 foot drop, cushioned by a grappling hook. He felt his back and remembered the assault rifle. When he landed on his back, the assault rifle must have made the pain so much worse. He snapped it off its strap and looked at it. It seemed to be in working condition. He took his left hand and rummaged around in his pouch, counting the amount of clips he had. 4 extras. Good enough. He slowly stood up, and took a look around him. No sniper rifle. That sucked. He was in a small alley, and no one seemed to have noticed him yet.

"EVA, you still working?"
"Yes. Nice job klutz!"
"I guess your sarcasm logics are starting to adapt. Anyway, I need you to calculate the fastest route out of the city from this position."
"That's going to be hard. You're right in the middle of it."
"Fuck."
"Hold....got it! Got straight through this alley and through the road up ahead."
"Right."

He lifted his assault rifle and looked at the ammo reading. 58 bullets. Good enough. He picked himself up and started up a job through the alley, jerking eyes left, right and above to scan for enemies. He came to the end of the alley, and kneeled down, looking at his COM system to scan for enemies. There was one contact, coming down through the main street now. If he hanged in the alley, he could get the soldier by surprise. He flattened himself up against the right wall as the soldier slowly walked along the sidewalk. The footsteps came closer, and closer. As soon as he saw the hand of the enemy soldier around the corner, he pushed himself off the side wall off the alley. He dove into the middle of the street, gun blazing at the government trooper. They pierced right through the soldier, and blood exploded from his chest, flying everywhere. The body crumpled to the ground, and Shadow policed his weapon. It was a standard assault rifle. He pulled the gun out of the dead hands of the soldier and took a frag grenade. Now he had two assault rifles, one for each hand. That would of course lessen his accuracy without two hands on each gun, but at least he'd get better bullet volume. Any normal soldier would probably break his arms trying to fire a rifle one handed. Not Shadow...not any of the Spartan III's.

"EVA, what's my next destination?"
"Take a right on this main road and keep going. It will take you out of the city."
"Alright."

John slowly pulled himself up. He was conscious for these few minutes on the ground, but he hadn't energy to pick himself up. Now that he was up and going, he'd have to see if there were any other survivors.

"Anyone else alive?"

John heard a slight grinding of metal against concrete and immediately swung around to the sound. It was a dark wolf, stuck under a slab of titanium. He quickly ran over and grasped the plate with one hand. He lifted it up and tossed it aside. The dark wolf was a female, but he couldn't remember her name. She didn't seem permanently hurt, and there were no mortal wounds.

"Ugh. What kind of flying was that?"

Jan felt an extreme pang of pain her left arm, but it wasn't too bad. She slowly stood up and brushed herself off.

"Well, now that we're alive I recommend that we go now."

She spoke extremely fast, and John had a hard time understanding her. He could barely make it out, but responded.

"No, we need to see if the others are alive as well."
"Count me in on that list."

John turned around and saw Geb was alive. His shirt was torn, and there was an enormous gash on his chest, but he seemed to be alright otherwise. The gash wasn't even too deep. Two more sounds came from the dropship, and he walked over. It was Kelly and James. They were fine as always. A little bit of dented armor, but nothing other than that. He knew that they would probably be fine, but he was worried a bit about the Dark Wolves. They were more vulnerable without the MJNOLNIR. Luckily the final two Dark Wolves also came out of the dropship with James and Kelly. Fred and Linda walked to the area from the other side of the ship. Linda spoke.

"Sorry boss. We were checking on the pilot. His skull was crushed. There was nothing we could do."
"It's alright. We'll add him and Shadow up on our list of first casualties. Let me contact Kroeger first."

***Commander Kroeger, this is Spartan group. Come in.***
***I read you John. What's going on?***
***We were attacked by some type of AA weapon and we crash landed on the ground. We lost two. Shadow and the pilot.***
***Shadow? *sigh* That's a pity. You now have two new mission parameters. I am air-dropping you some higher-tech weapons that weren't stationed at our base. Your mission parameter is to make contact with those weapons and pick them up. Your second mission parameter is to get out of the city in any way possible. There is a dropship hangar near a construction yard. I have detailed it for you on your minimap. Good luck.***
***Yes sir.***

John had rerouted the entire conversation to the general team COM system so that all could hear what they were supposed to do. There was an eerie silence after the message was terminated. Kroeger didn't seem REALLY sorry that Shadow had died. It seemed as if the commander was almost happy and faking his sadness. Something was wrong. Cal finally spoke up with a sardonic question.

"So...how much are we getting paid for this again?"
"1 billion dollars."
"Damnit Kelly, I was being sarcastic. Do you know what that means?"

Kelly head silent for a few seconds and then repeated a dictionary definition verbatim.

"A form of wit that is marked by the use of sardonic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule."
"Arg. I give up on you."

Az jumped in the conversation.

"I don't think we should be arguing. Lets get to that dropped weapons cache and get out of here."
"I'm all with Az."
"Then lets go team."

The group scavenged what they could in the way of weapons. There wasn't much. A few pistols an assault rifle and a shotgun. Linda didn't even have her sniper rifle anymore. After they got what they could, they jumped into position. John thought of a minimap, and the transplant in his brain did all the work. The minimap immediately showed up on his HUD and pointed out the position of the weapons cache. It was just around the corner. How convenient. He began to break out in a jog, and the other followed suit. He stopped at the corner, and motioned for them to all go around at the same time. They did so, but nothing was there but a large metal box for them. John smiled behind his helmet and ran to the box. He pressed a code in on the keypad the box opened up, revealing a large rack of pulse rifles. The pulse rifles we crystal powered laser weapons that could inflict amazing damage. They were the top of the line technology, and they finally could get their hands on it. In addition, there were two Tarantula laser chainguns. The laser chainguns were four barreled weapons that rotated every round to give rapid laser power. There was also a laser sniper rifle, dubbed the Mantis. It looked like a normal sniper rifle besides a few key things. The rifle was doubled barreled and there were two bend metal rods on the sides of the rifle. The rods were placed a 45 degree angel on each side and bent down in the opposite 45 degree at about halfway up the rod. On the end of the rods were two crystals that powered the weapon. The performance differences were quite noticeable between the standard old sniper rifle and the new laser sniper rifle. First, this weapon was powerful enough to penetrate even the toughest Covenant armor. A golden elite could go down with one shot to the leg, even with its full shields up. That's how powerful it was. In addition, the Mantis had unlimited rounds and a faster firing rate than the older sniper rifle. The double barrel was for faster firing rates. The faster rates were only useful when facing armored tanks and those types. The Mantis was quite powerful again armored vehicles but still needed a few shots pumped in to destroy an enemy vehicle. Thus the higher firing rate. Needless to say, Linda was ecstatic when she picked up the weapon. She had be waiting years for the weapon to be released to the military market, and it was like a god weapon to her. They nodded to each other and started up again down the road. At the first crossing, there were three enemy guards, their backs facing to them. The Dark Wolves smiled, and the Spartans nodded. The guards were impaled with a huge rain of laser blasts. The first guard had both his arms blown off by laser bolts before a bolt went through his face. The second guard was decapitated by three shots to the head. And the final guard was hit by one of the laser chainguns. The hail of bolts tore through him, leaving almost nothing left of his body. They quickly ran forwards, not needing to police the enemies' weapons. To the left was a construction yard.

"Shit. I got 30 enemy soldiers and two scorpion tanks moving to our position. They'll be within firing range in 20 seconds."
"We need to take cover in that construction yard."

They quickly ran down the street, sprinting as fast as they could. The Spartans began to take the lead with their heightened abilities in the suit and cybernetic augmentations. The yard was mainly one three-story building that was only made of steel beams. It was apparently unfinished, and with the enemy firepower, it would probably never get finished. It was still night, and the team needed to use night vision to navigate to the yard. The ground level was made mostly of dry dirt and a few useless construction vehicles.

"Sensors indicate that there's a dropship somewhere in this vicinity."
"Fuck. You mean we need to find that damn thing in this huge jungle of twisted metal and broken down vehicles?"

Shadow kept on running when he heard a very interesting sound. It was the sound of laser rifle blasts. He had only seen those things once before on the black market when they were busting out of an assassination job. Those things could give hell to the enemy. He just hoped that it was the military that had it, and not the government. He kept on sprinting down the road, searching for enemies. But there seemed to be none at all. Where the hell WAS everyone?

(So you take me, and you break me, and you see that I'm falling apart!!!!!)

He rounded a corner and saw a construction yard ahead.

"Shadow, there's dropship in that construction yard!"
"EVA, how the hell would you know?"
"I just can. It's complicated stuff. The problem is that there are 30 enemy troops and two tanks moving to that position. I'm guessing that the rest of the team that survived the dropship fall is in the construction yard, under siege."
"Are there any other flying vehicles around?"
"No...wait. Yes. There's a Mad Hornet in an adjacent building. A fighter/bomber like that could hold all the troops should they fail getting to the dropship."
"Right, and if they do. We'll just take the Mad Hornet for ourselves. Sounds like a good plan. Lets get going."
(GET DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS!!!!)

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