The year was 2552, humanity had spread out amongst the stars decades prior, establishing distant colonies across the galaxy. All had seemed prosperous despite the Insurrection, until the Covenant reared its head, declaring a campaign of extermination against humanity as they unleashed the full might of their terrifying war machine against them and their UNSC protectors. Glassing planet after planet in a decade long war. Humanity was down to a handful of planets, and with the Fall of Reach a few days ago, their future looked bleak in the universe.

Things would take an interesting turn though, as one of the UNSC’s ships; the Pillar of Autumn,  fled the burning planet, jumping to supposedly random coordinates that would lead them to the discovery of Installation 04, better known as Halo, one of seven superweapons designed to support life on their inner surfaces that once activated, would wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy to starve out the Flood, but no one onboard knew this as they crashed on the ringworld. The survivors pursued by Covenant forces wherever they went, the Master Chief, John-117, one of the last few surviving Spartan-II supersoldiers, among them as they did their best to regroup and organize a resistance force, with the Master Chief spearheading important missions across the surface of Halo. All seemed fine until the dissapearance of Captain Keyes as he'd gone off radar to investigate an alleged Covenant supply depot, intel fed to them directly from the split-jawed mouth of a captured Elite.

It had been days since the Autumn had crashed onto the surface of the ring and Alpha Base had been established. Since then Master Chief and his trusty AI-companion; Cortana, had been sent into the bowels of the superstructure, discovering an underground network of tunnels after finding the Cartographer. Their current objective was locating the Control Room, and that meant walking down the similarly designed endless corridors and open rooms. The journey soon grew to be a slog; the same endless grey rooms and walls followed by a Covenant patrol that the Chief would silence with brutal efficiency before moving on. Their boredom however, would soon end as the Chief comes across a split in the path, testing both doors, the Chief finds both unlocked, offering two paths he could go down. Before he could decide however, Cortana’s voice blips in through the built-in radio in his helmet.

“My scans indicate the door to the left leads to a large open space, bigger than any we’ve seen so far, think it's worth a look? The other seems to lead to a repeat of the same room and tunnel layout we’ve come across multiple times.” With a simple shrug of his shoulder, Chief tromps down the left corridor as he follows Cortana’s suggestion. He wouldn’t know however, that by doing so he’d forsaken the fate of humanity, the correct version of events playing out differently in another timeline where if he’d just continued on the right path, he would’ve made contact with Sgt Johnson’s squad pinned out in the open by Covenant troops and heavy vehicles.

As the triangle doors slide open, Chief comes face to face with a strange Forerunner device, held in suspension within a room that was about as large as the ones he’d seen before but filled with machinery and having a different structural layout. As he approaches the device however, his enhanced senses and Mjolnir armor radar detects an incoming blip on his right, dodging right as the hissing blade of an Energy Sword blazes past where his head had been moments before. Readying his Assault Rifle, Chief barely has time to fire off a few shots before the Zealot is on him, dashing past as his shields flare to life, bullets pinging and ricocheting off the walls. Chief sneaks a punch in as he dodges past the Sangheili, growling in annoyance. Before Chief can fire off the finishing shot, the gun clicks empty, ammo counter reading zero as he holsters the gun, flexing his arms as the Zealot paces the Chief, the Forerunner device in the middle of the two.

“Foul Demon...your taint shall not spread any further...i would rather die than see your filthy hands defile one of the holy relics blessed in the foundries of the great-!” Dsitracted by his rambling, the Chief breaks into a sprint towards the device, superhuman speed giving him the advantage as he grabs hold of it, breaking it free from its stasis as the Zealot roars in religious rage, leaping the gap between them in an instant thanks to the triple-jointed feet lined with raw pulsing muscles that was signature with the Sangheili. As the two clash, the device in the Chief’s hand glows bright for a brief moment, Cortana’s warning to let go going unheeded as the light dims and fades, Chief nowhere to be found as the device falls silently to the ground where he once stood, the Zealot left howling his rage to the stars as the Covenant finish mopping up Johnson’s squad outside.

Chief stood still for a moment, looking around in a white void with nothing around him for miles. “I told you to let go Chief! That thing gave off serious readings right as you grabbed onto it...we’re lucky to be alive! According to my readings...we’re nowhere…” Looking around the white void around him, Chief begins to feel a dizzying nausea fall over him as he struggles to stay up, his augmented body had been conditioned and trained to stay conscious even in conditions where a regular human would’ve either died or fainted within minutes. Sensing his condition, the neural implant in his Mjolnir sends a fresh injection of stims and meds into his bloodstream, but even those aren’t enough as Chief loses the fight, falling flat out on the floor as he finds himself unable to move, as if he was sapped entirely of strength. Cortana’s panicked cries slowly turn to static in his helmet as her AI chip vanishes from the helmet, leaving him truly alone as he awaited his fate in this empty void, an unseen governing force making plans for the paralyzed supersoldier.

As Chief remains frozen on the ground, the unseen force sends its invisible hands through the Mjolnir armor and around the body of the Chief. Moulding his form into one more suitable for the world it intended to send him to as his chiselled body shrinks down about a feet in height as his muscles thin out, leaving his limbs slender yet strong as healthy amounts of fat and tender flesh fill in alongside the visible, albeit reduced muscle bulging against now tender soft hairless skin, his titanium treated, augmented bones changing as they regain their former regularity, albeit shrinking in sizes a bit too small and wide in some places to be a man’s skeletal system, his pelvis cracking as it sends his hips exploding outwards. The next to go was his bald head, as new locks of blonde hair take root, growing out into a long silky mane of hair where once there was none.

Panic fills the Chief as his augmentations and genetic treatments fade, leaving him as a normal human once more (not counting the new DNA of another species now in his genetic makeup as new, foreign augments etch themselves into him). The feeling of being utterly incapable of doing anything as his body was tampered with was new to him, usually repressed by the blockers and augmentations the Spartan-II programme had gifted him. The panic only grew however, as he felt his chest beginning to itch, as mounds of soft tender flesh give rise to a pert set of tits now rising and falling with each airy breath. He was being turned into a girl?! Unseen by him, the Chief’s once massive member had already retracted back into his body, losing to the unseen force as invisible hands push the shrinking penis into his body ,tender walls of moist flesh forming in their place. The Master Chief was unmade, all that remained was a frail human woman under the now ill-fitting suit of Mjolnir armor, unaware of the gifts her new body had been bestowed with that made her just as strong and fast as the Chief was, but the unseen force had plans for those as well. Working its magic on the useless shell that was far too large to fit the frame of the girl now lying within.

The woman beneath the armor twitches as she feels the previously bulky frame of the Mjolnir techsuit begin to stick to her slender, lithe figure. Foreign sensations flowing through her as the suit becomes smooth to the touch, indentations and solid armor pieces melt into one shiny material that looked like latex but was so much more stronger, black nanofibers and mesh dyeing themselves blue with futuristic patterns etching themselves over the tight fitting bodysuit the lady now adorned as she got used to the material clinging tightly against her crotch and bosom, her long mane of blonde hair tying themselves up into a fashionable ponytail behind her head as she slowly lost all fear and panic, an ingrained formality to wearing the suit for decades growing in her within an instant as information begins to flow into her mind, her past as John-117, the Master Chief, beginning to fade. All while the Mjolnir itself begins to melt and warp, rough edges and war-torn armor turning organic and curved as they realign themselves to fit their new owner’s proportions.

Beneath the thinning, morphing blob of armor, the woman begins to relax into her new body and identity, as memories of being abducted off of the dustball planet that was Eridanus-II to be inducted into the Spartan-II programme are replaced by those of growing up on the Chozo homeworld of Zebes after losing her parents and home to Space Pirates led by the infamous bioform;Ridley. Her augmentations as a Spartan-II were replaced by those of the Chozo and their DNA, allowing her to both live life freely on Zebes as well as the ability to wield her Power Suit and its arsenal. As the memories continue to overwrite those of the Chief, the woman beneath the now changed suit of armor flexes her fingers as control returns to her body, allowing her to move once more as she leaps to her feet right as the lingering vestiges of the Chief are erased along with the unfamiliarity she once felt with the female body. She was Samus Aran, famed galactic bounty hunter who’d saved the galaxy and it’s people many times over; from the threat of the Metroid to the resurgence of the X-Parasites, and her most favoured one of all, revenge for her parents with the death of Ridley, not counting his recently deceased clone, once and for all after the destruction of Zebes and Mother Brain. Samus had gotten weary after encountering him multiple times over in various forms as he returned again and again, hopefully this time, he truly was dead and buried.

Samus had more pressing matters to attend to as she shook off her lightheadedness, returning to her full height clad in her trusty Power Suit as she aimed her arm cannon down a dimly lit mechanical corridor that was definitely not a natural formation as she checked her surroundings for hostiles, finding nothing but the eerie silence around her. The last thing she recalled was coming down to the surface of the planet; ZDR, where she was supposed to find and eliminate the last surviving X-Parasite, footage of which had been obtained by the Federation. What she had not expected was the appearance of an overwhelmingly strong Chozo warrior who had stripped her of all her suit upgrades and weapons, knocking her out in the process. Looking over her armored hand at its original form with the upgrades no longer there, she shakes off the concerned thoughts floating around in her head as this mission started to stink, starting to suspect the whole thing to be a ruse to lure her down to the planet for another purpose altogehter, the bait being the  obvious danger of allowing even one X-Parasite to roam free.

As Samus Aran would once again find herself charging head first into yet another galaxy threatening plot, elsewhere in another universe entirely, humanity would find itself in a losing battle against a religious, space faring galactic empire that was mere seconds away from firing the most powerful weapon known to the galaxy, with their biggest pain in the figurative ass now out of the way, the galaxy would fall silent once more as the Halo’s were fired with no one there to stop the hands that hovered over the trigger of the gun pointed at the head of the universe…

THE END