Halo: The Search

Chapter 5

September 5th, 2551
(Victor Huff) It'd probably been a couple days but to me, it felt like a week. Luckily enough, this forest seemed to be the host of many old war zones. After scavenging some abandoned battles, I managed to lose my innocence but found some pretty interesting supplies along the way.

There was a backpack that soldiers would use to hold their supplies. With it came a metal canteen, sitting in a side pocket. I also found a UNSC MRE in the bag, which I'd be messing with later once I found some wood for a fire.

My dad had always insisted that I learn how to live out in the wilderness. I'd picked up a few of the basic survival skills but I hadn't payed enough attention back then because my childish mind always distracted me from things that were now becoming my chances of survival.

I sat on a dead tree and looked at all the fallen things around me that had been the aftermath of many battles. A pelican was sitting about thirty meters away from me with a large trail of dirt behind it from where it crashed into the ground. Sangheili and human corpses riddled the ground that were decayed and forgotten. My eyes caught sight of a shimmering light near one of the bodies, piquing my interest.

I got up and walked over to the fallen body of a UNSC Marine. Next to him was a shotgun. I picked it up, expecting it to be pretty heavy but it was actually easy for me to handle. I aimed down the sights and found the safety, making sure it was on. I stuck the gun in my back pack, it's butt sticking out. There was a full clip but no extra rounds lying around. I decided that I was going to travel around and see if I could find anything worth carrying around. While doing this, I would search for a base that would hopefully have a radio or something for me to find a place to travel or reach out to. I took a deep breath set off further into the woods.

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(Brute Chieftain) I awoke with a quick start towards finding my target. Gathering all my stuff, I went towards my Revenant.

How I'd find him wasn't backed up with a sturdy plan but I had a radar that picked up signs of life like elites, humans and so on. Whenever something appeared on the radar, I'd track it down.

As I was walking, deep in thought, I collided with someone and stumbled back. When I looked up, it was a brute who seemed very surprised to see me.

"Chieftain! It's a great pleasure to see you made it out of that battle." I looked at the brute, surprised that there were any survivors. Seeing a face rather than an elites was reassuring, so I wasn't complaining.

"Glad to see someone survived... what happened back there?" The Brute grunted and looked down, seemingly unhappy to talk about recent events.

"The humans pushed back our forces and we retreated. The real problem was an ODST soldier who had snuck past us and was running away from battle, until we ran into him." My brow furrowed in confusion and the Brute continued, knowing I would prompt him further.

"He was fighting at first but something seem to have caught his attention. He started running towards the other side of our base, as if he were chasing something. When we ran into him, he just gave up whatever he was doing and then with a plasma pistol and magnum, he'd entered this... terrifying carnage, shooting the heads of multiple grunts and nailing brutes with fully charged plasma shots before taking them out with a shot to the head. He had gone down when he ran out of ammo and our few forces that were left managed to overwhelm him. It was-"

"Alright alright I get it. I hear enough about the ODST as it is, I don't need to hear about how he picked away at all my forces like that." I clenched my teeth in aggravation, trying to remember what I was going to ask him whilst pushing away my angered thoughts about those stupid ODST.

"What... what direction was he running that was away from our base?" The Brute crossed his arms.

"Mmmmm... he was heading towards that forest, about two miles away from where our base was. Why?" I grinned maliciously and put my hand on the brutes shoulder.

"Come with me. I have something I need to do." The brute shot me a confused look but complied. I went over to my revenant and revved it up, waiting for my surviving comrade to get in. Once he did, I drove off towards the forest.

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(Commander Huff) I paced back and forth in my quarters, where a projection of planet Venezia sat in the center of the room.

"I know you're out there somewhere..." I sighed and turned around, going to sit at my metal desk. There was a monitor and some paperwork on the table along with a blue trim on the desk that had blue energy flowing through it.

The sound of my door sliding open caught my attention and I saw one of my ODST walk in.

"Commander, we think you should see what we found." I got up from my desk, already intrigued by her urgency.

The only things we did around here anymore were find traces of my son. I had wanted to find him so bad and when my soldiers took note of that, they had vowed themselves to helping me until we found him. I knew they were doing this for my well being, which meant a great deal to me. Protecting the citizens of Venezia was a high priority and Victor was a citizen, plus my son.

I walked into another room where an even bigger projection of Venezia sat in the middle. A yellow dot was pulsing on a certain area and my female ODST was tapping away at some coding.

"A face cam was activated on a fallen soldier's helmet at an abandoned war site on Venezia. We'll... play it from the beginning." She pulled up a rectangular frame which held soon to be game-changing footage.

"BOOM" the sound of a shotgun rang through the audio.

"It detected motion and panned over here to check things out, since it's meant for human heat signatures. The thing hasn't spotted people for years." I nodded, becoming more and more entangled in what I was seeing.

"Well I'll be..."

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(Victor Huff) After a long time of scavenging, I decided to settle at yet another abandoned war zone. This time, there was just dirt and craters everywhere along with the average fallen trees and a blown up wraith.

I had made a fire since it was near nightfall but I couldn't fall asleep. To pass time, I stared at the gun protruding from my bag and decided to see how it worked, since I had some more ammo and was bored out of my mind. I took the gun out of my bag and looked it over, twisting and turning it. It held up to 6 shells and looked pretty gnarly.

I held it up, turning off safety as I aimed towards a tree. "Beeeeeep!" I jumped, pulling the trigger and before I knew it, the gun flew out of my hands and landed behind the wraith.

"S-shit!" I covered my mouth, realizing I had cursed. Even though no one was here, I felt bad. I walked towards where my shotgun fell and as I walked around the wraith, I noticed there was a blown up gauss hog behind it.

A helmet sat there with a green light blinking on it. I picked up the helmet and looked into the camera.

"Uhhhh... hello?" I had no idea what had happened but it seemed like the thingy on here had reacted to me. I almost dropped the helmet as some auditory device started crackling to life in it.

"V-v-Victor! Oh my gosh..." my eyes widened and tears filled my eyes as I couldn't believe the voice I was hearing.

"Dad...? Dad! I'm in a forest! There's a beep and I-I..."

"Vic...V-VICTOR! VIC-..." the voice became panicked and my hands started shaking.

"P-please wait! I'm in the forest, come fin- I felt something slam into the back of my head and fell to the ground. The whole world went black.