Red vs. Blue: Unleashed

Lament for Captain Keyes

"Okay, you need to explain a lot of shit. Who the fuck is the Monitor, and how is he going to kill us?" Tucker asked.

"Maybe he will do it by saying something really funny, that will make us laugh, and we will laugh, and ha, haha, HAHAHHAHAHAHAAHHAHA! Yeah, and then we die," Caboose replied.

"What. The fuck. Are you saying."

"That isn't even close, Private... in fact, that would probably be anyone's last guess," came a female voice.

"Whoa, invisible chick!" Tucker exclaimed.

A blue hologram of a woman appeared next to Chief.

"Not invisible anymore."

"Oh, come on! You're only a hologram!"

"Cortana, explain," Chief ordered.

"Anyway, the Monitor is named 343 Guilty Spark, and he's in charge of the going-ons on this ring, which is apparently called Halo. Halo is a weapon—one designed to kill all sentient life on a galactic scale in order to stop the spread of the Flood," Cortana informed the soldiers.

"Wait, so we're on a floating ring, and this guy controls everything and he wants to kill everyone because there's going to be a flood. Yeah, that makes a fuckton of sense," Tucker summarized poorly.

"Not a flood, Private Tucker, the Flood. A parasitic infection that only aims to spread across the known universe. The parasites are able to crawl inside of anything of sufficient biomass and horrifically mutate it, and I'm assuming you've fought those enemies before," Cortana clarified.

"Oh, shit, so this Monitor is trying to use Halo to kill everyone, because the Flood feeds on us to survive?" Tucker concluded.

"I'm... surprised you understood that."

"I surprise all the ladies. Bow-chicka-bow-wow."

"I think we should give this Monitor fella what for! Show him the power of shotgun to the face!" Sarge butted in.

"I'm not sure you understand. The Monitor isn't a person, he's a Forerunner construct assigned to oversee this ring."

"So getting rid of him isn't nearly as easy as any normal human or alien," Doc replied, half-asking for clarification.

"To put it simply, no. Plus, he controls many Sentinels, which is what you saw earlier in the swamp, right before Chief and I found you," Cortana added.

Tucker was having trouble processing all of this. A lot had happened, from the initial attack to the plane crash to this. And it had only been a few hours.

"Stay sharp. Covenant movement ahead," Chief commanded.

Tucker perked up, deciding to tuck away the information he'd just been given for later. "We get to fight aliens? Fuck yeah."

"This is what you lot signed on for, so get ready. As far as I know, you've only been fighting each other, considering the armor you're wearing. So this is your first time fighting against the Covenant, meaning you should just follow Chief's lead."

"I don't think I want to follow anyone's lead but his, and especially not Sarge's. I only started tolerating him when he ran out of ammo," Tucker commented.

"Well, you're in luck." With that, Cortana disappeared and returned to the Master Chief's helmet.

Everyone seemed to turn to Chief for orders. "Get ready, we're going in," came his unexpressive voice.

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Spark had abandoned them. Well, not exactly, but he had left to go repair one of the doors to get them out. Church was hopelessly hacking away at a holographic Forerunner interface, with zero idea what he was actually doing. Grif and Simmons were fighting the zombies, something Church physically could not do.