Oliver better known as SPARTAN 021 exhaled and a coolness washed over him. He had trained for moments like these.
Taken in at seven years old and trained for six years just for it to come down like this.
The six hunters stood before him, three twins. They always came in pairs.
He stood up in the back of the warthog where the machine gun was placed and stared at his enemy with what wasn’t hate but had to be darn close to it.
The Jackals squawked and started shooting glowing pink crystals out of their needlers. Oliver felt one graze his arm and biofoam hissed from his armor, bringing a cool but stinging sensation to the shallow wound. He’d been through worse.
Just me and you marine, Oliver thought toward the driver, Sergeant Grayson, as the warthog sped toward the small army.
But what had happened instead of them making contact, when they reached a distance of about 10 feet between them and the small army, a needle broke through the glass of the warthog and slammed into the chest of Grayson.
Grayson mumbled a curse word, staring at the unexpected spike, creating a spreading blood stain around it, but then the crystal blew, sending fragments inside of his body. His biomonitor flat lined on Oliver's HUD.
Oliver knew that there was no surviving that. He would have had a chance before, but the small explosion surely punctured all the vital organs in his body.
Oliver braced himself as his driver died and the warthog swerved and then drifted.
Using the momentum from the warthog that was going to start cartwheeling, he launched himself toward a hunter.
Midair, he pulled the pins on two grenades and let one drop to the ground in front of the Jackals in Grunts who squawked and squealed in surprise and he fisted the other into the gooey orange flesh of a hunter’s abdomen. He heard a squelch as it went inside.
The hunter let out a roar of rage and pain and swatted Oliver back with what felt like being hit by a train. He skidded back in the dirt about twenty feet backwards as the Jackals and Grunts were blown to bits. His shields depleted.
Oliver got to his feet, letting out a groan. He was so going to ache in the morning. His assault rifle was gone, so he pulled out his pistol. But first, he pulled out his roster that marked all the Spartans.
He knew that he wasn’t going to make it out of this fight alive. He swiped down until he found his name and Spartan number and marked himself Missing in Action.
Never would have thought it would end like this. Never would have thought I’d be marking my own freaking grave, he thought. But he was ready.
He thought of all of his friends that he had lost to the covenant in battle. How they would punch each other’s shoulders aching and sore and tell each other good work after a successful mission. How they grew up together. They lost their innocence to war at an early age and a lot of them lost their lives to war.
One of his friends, Charlie, had once as children following a long day of training, after lights out whispered in the darkness from the bunk above him, “There’s no escaping war. After a while it takes its toll on everyone. And although I can’t guarantee that I’m going to make it out alive, I can guarantee that I won’t give you the satisfaction of dying before me. If you got my back, I got yours.”
It had been a long time since then. And he hadn’t given him the satisfaction, did he? He had died for Oliver and so had all the others, just as he would have done if their positions had been exchanged.
This one’s for you, he prayed for his fallen friends.
Filled with anger, stronger than he had ever felt before in his life, he rushed at the hunters.
The saying that Spartans didn’t feel emotion was a lie. But they were able to shut out their emotions during times of extreme risk and concentration.
Oliver was never someone to shut off his emotions. For him, there was a difference between being human and being an emotionless robot. And it was emotion that had gotten him this far.
He fired his pistol; emptied the magazine, reloaded, repeated. He was a killing machine. A tool of mass destruction.
Before he knew it, there were two hunters left and he was out of ammo. He ached from the blasts of the giant fuel rod cannons that the hunters wielded.
He tossed the pistol aside and grabbed a grenade from Grayson’s body. He avoided making contact with the fallen marine’s lifeless eyes.
He grabbed the assault rifle that had been thrown out of his own grasp when he had been hit by the hunter.
He killed another hunter, with two magazines and a knife to the spine, which left one more.
He held the assault rifle tightly in one hand and launched the unpulled grenade forward as he ran toward big and ugly.
The hunter bellowed at the sight of his fallen comrade. Now you know how I feel, you bastard, Oliver thought.
As the grenade bounced harmlessly off the hunters plated head, and started falling toward the dusty ground, Oliver shot at the grenade, never releasing his finger off of the trigger until his counter read 00.
He was within three feet of the hunter now and the blast blew up both of them.

Oliver regained consciousness, dusty dry sand sticking to his dark gray armor courtesy of the sticky creamy orange hunter blood and guts that had sprayed all over him.
The shrapnel tore through his armor in a thousand different places. He was far from numb from the pain. He moaned in pure pain and waited for death to take its process.
Despite the sun he felt cold, probably because of the biofoam.
He managed to lift his head up to inspect the damage. It was something out of a nightmare. The shrapnel had nearly torn his whole front side apart, armor and all. He could see muscle from some of the serious wounds. Blood covered him. His own blood. It moisturized the dust covering him, forming a paste.
He let his head drop.
Biofoam ain't gonna fix that, Oliver thought deliriously and chuckled to himself, shaking his head, which was the only body part he could move.
He felt the pain fade away as the life drained out of him.
And then he froze as he heard a familiar voice. There were his friends around him! They were gone but they were also here.
“Get up, you goof,” Sally laughed. Oliver got up and brushed himself off, oblivious to the fact that he no longer wore his Spartan Armor.
“What took you so long?, Charlie had asked, his voice filled with humor.
Oliver grinned and replied, “Had to handle some business. Been in meetings all day.”
They all laughed, creating a beautiful song. “Come on,” Charlie said. “There’s so much I want to show you.”
“Is that so?,” Oliver responded as they all walked into the light together, laughing.