A New World

I

The sun was barely shining through the overcast skies over the large valley, driving away the last of the moist morning fog that had managed to linger on into the afternoon. The weather was mild and cool for the summer, a typical Washington day. A close pair of seventeen year olds sat snuggled together on a couch in a dim basement, blissfully unaware and uncaring of the weather outside.

A gray pattern blanket covered them as they battled through the virtual icy canyons of Halo: Combat Evolved. They had met because of their mutual enjoyment of the series, and the two had managed to create one of those rare high school romances that would make it beyond graduation. The silent teamwork they had managed to employ came from years of regular playthroughs, however it was a link that was fragile. The interruption came when David's mother called down, forcing them to pause the game.

"David, do you or Zach need anything to drink?" She asked from the top of the stairs.

"No mom, we're fine!" David shouted back and took a sip from the can he had left from last night. His Best friend, Zach, had a mug of coffee he had swiped from the kitchen before they had begun this segment.

The game was un-paused and the duo finished up Assault on the Control Room. They were playing all the games in chronological order on the Legendary difficulty to gear up for the release of Halo 4 in the next month and a half. Zach and David had begun the night before and finished the Reach campaign before starting CE this morning.

A few missions later, they had just finished fighting through the tight frantic canyons of the desert plateau and taken the gravity lift into the Flood infected Truth and Reconciliation. When suddenly static washed over the TV's speakers and the screen faded in and out for a moment. Instead of immediately returning to the fight, it looked like the cutscene had been extended.

The view was still in first-person as the Master Chief looked around the grav-lift room, which was strange on its own, as that kind of storytelling mechanic was not used in Halo until a few games later. Cortana began her normal lines of dialogue for this section of the game.

It went on as normal, until something different slipped in. "The Covenant Battle-net is a mess. I can't access the ship's schematics... wait something just pushed me off the network... that's strange..."

"What is it, Cortana?" The Master Chief spoke.

"Some massive burst of data just brought down the Battle-net, and even caused some interference with your armor systems. I was not able to intercept anything except for-" Unfortunately, neither David or Zach would find out what Cortana was talking about. The game froze up and the screen turned green with corrupted information.

"Oh what the hell is this?" David threw his hand up at the screen.

"I know, right? Some secret cutscene and your Xbox crashes? Total BS." Zach agreed.

David stood up and pressed the Xbox's power button and the light went off, however the screen continued to display the bugged code. He groaned and pulled the plug from the console's power brick, there was no way that electricity was making it to the console; but yet, the code remained. As a final attempt to fix the issue, David switched off the powerstip to the entire entertainment center, and everything went dark.

"Damn, that was strange... I hope my disk isn't broken, that was an original Xbox disk." David said, waiting the usual thirty seconds before powering everything back up. "Think we should just skip the Maw and move to Halo 2?"

"Alright, that sounds like a plan. We were close enough to the end anyway." Zach said, stretching out her limbs from under the blanket.

Flipping the powerstrip back on, David ejected Halo and placed Halo 2 into the tray. He looked at the Halo disk and saw it was fine; no scratches, heat marks, or any real defects of any kind. With a shrug, he put it back into its' case.