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Tobias watches in barely-concealed distress as one of his soldiers screams upon going down under an Elite, and he and the rest of his squadron ducks behind cover as they’re fired upon. They’re losing ground quickly, barely able to hunker down at the missile launch controls — not that those are much use, with the hatch to said missile being held shut by manual locks.
There’s Spartans out somewhere in the field, he knows that. But that’s not any help, considering the Spartans aren’t right there with them. Maybe the super soldiers are carving trenches into the enemy forces, but that won’t do them much good when more just keep coming and the main objective is unable to be completed.
There’s only so many of them on this mission. And there’s seemingly endless amounts of Elites… and bugs, weirdly enough. But not any buggers; just straight-up bugs. It’s actually more horrifying, at least for the soldiers who dislike such creepy-crawlies — they were hired to fight aliens, not massive bugs.
As the leader, Tobias has already tried to call command for either an extraction or reinforcements, but all he got was a firm command for them to hold their ground — no confirmation on even a possibility of the two options he requested.
As such, all they can do is shoot at every Grunt, Elite, or indiscriminate bug that comes close to their position, waiting for either their increasingly inevitable deaths, reinforcements, or the increasingly unlikely extraction.
Watching in despair as a pair of truly massive bugs marches down upon them, the damn things spitting green acid down upon anyone who pokes out for more than a second, Tobias sighs and loads another round into his shotgun — if nothing else, he’s going to go out guns blazing.
Making the signal to his team, for them all to take their final stand, Tobias pops out of cover and immediately aims for one of the big fucks-
Only to watch, gobsmacked, as some sort of pod crashes into its body. The blow instantly kills it, and the pod digs into the mixed mush of ground and giant-bug-guts.
A bit further away, he can see two more pods crash into the ground, one of them going through the other giant bug. However, he doesn’t spare enough time to see what will come of those three pods, as one of his men shouts and he immediately swings around to fill the face of another enemy with buckshot. Then another, and another, as their ranks are breached and he soon needs to reload again.
With not even a moment to spare, Tobias reloads his shotgun in a swift, practiced motion. Just as he’s swinging it back up to unload upon an Elite before him, a fourth pod crushes said Elite.
He gapes, wondering just what the literal hell his life has come to as the top of the pod splits open, and a tall suit of armor arises from it — fully kitted out with a frankly ridiculous amount of explosives and guns, and easily matching the height of the average Spartan.
Once fully risen, said suit takes a singular, confident step forward — alerting him to the fact that there’s actually a person wearing it, which is honestly an even bigger what the hell — and pulls out a gun that looks similar to what Tobias knows as the ARC-920.
“How ‘bout a nice cup of LIBER-TEA!?” The soldier fires the gun straight into the enemy masses, easily decimating anything it touches with what is most definitely a railgun.
Then, the soldier turns their head slightly in his direction, giving him the bare minimum equivalent of a salute as they charge their railgun and shoot down a screeching Elite. “Heard you guys needed reinforcements — hope me and my team are good enough for yeh, Sergeant!” A bit beyond the frankly baffling soldier, Tobias spies three more similarly-geared soldiers rise from the fallen pods and immediately start blasting at enemy forces.
With the sound of the active, on-field Spartans being contacted and informed of reinforcements in one ear, and the various shrieks and screams of the battlefield in the other, Tobias finds a grin splitting across his face as he cocks his shotgun.
“Odds sure do be looking a little better with you lads, I’ll say!”
He doesn’t know who the hell these guys are, especially with command keeping quiet, but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Reinforcements are reinforcements, especially when they’re loaded with enough high-quality gear that they look like they’re going to dive right into hell itself.