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It's been a long day at home. Gordon just wants to get to the mess hall and get something to eat. He's not sure what they've been making in the White Forest kitchens but he doesn't think it matters all that much; as long as he gets his blood sugar up he'll be-

Wait, this isn't the mess hall.

Oh. Huh. He should've paid more attention when he walked through the door. Well, no harm done; he can order something at the Bar and settle down to eat it somewhere more comfortable. Beats fillet of leech, that's for sure.

[tinytag: Master Chief]

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Glasses wearing man that walks in attracts the soldier's attention. Outwardly, there appears to be nothing significant about the new arrival. John, however, notices the minute details of a veteran soldier: a slight stiffness in posture, a collection of tiny scars, and a subdued heart-beat. But there's an unnameable quality to the man. A quality that the Spartan was very familiar with.

The seven foot tall super soldier encased in green armor looks up from the collection of maps in front of him to examine the target in more detail. As the man is about to pass by his table, John nods at him.

"You remind me of my team," he says plainly.

Gordon looks up, blinking. And then his eyes get very, very wide. He's seen this man before. Several times, in fact, since every time the Cubefall holiday rolls around he gets offered that get-up as a possible configuration change.

"I hope that's a good thing," he says when he remembers to talk. And then winces, because he really doubts that anyone who would make that kind of comparison would be denigrating their own people in any way. "I mean. Thank you."

John wonders if his observation was something that deserved thanks.

He tilts his head slightly. "I'm just stating a fact."

Gordon nods slowly. "I thought-" He pauses, considers, and eventually says, "It sounded like a compliment. I thought I should react appropriately."

That, and his nerves are frazzled in about four different ways. Today was something of a WHAM! day, starting at the early morning briefing and not letting up even after Alyx's speech went off the air. It meant a lot of crossed mental wires and faulty reaction signals.

"Should I know you?"

Everyone knows what Spartans are in John's universe. It surprises him that someone from another universe might recognize him.

"The Spartan program has been highly publicized for morale purposes," the soldier suggests.

Hm. That explains the Cubefall choice, then. And now that he thinks about it, Alyx was costumed that way at Halloween, albeit with a few changes.

"The Bar must've been notified about it," he murmurs. "I meant more- should I recognize you, specifically. For some reason you seem familiar." It may, for all he knows, be a simple matter of attitude, body kinesics, similarity of situation; he doesn't know. He's not used to encountering people who set off the recognition bell.

He had been on an UNSC broadcast as he received another Colonial Cross, the highest honor the UNSC awarded, for the cameras. It was possible that this man was from John's universe. There was also the fact that John had just blown up another halo and ended the 27 year long Human-Covenant war. If he had been listed as MIA, then the UNSC had probably gone public with his achievements as an after-war morale booster. He approved, if that was the case. Humanity needed hope to rebuild what it had lost.

"I was awarded the Colonial Cross on an international broadcast a few days ago," John states.

"Not from my Earth, then," Gordon says. "You're human." It makes perfect sense to him, and given the events of the past twenty-four hours he wants very much to stop using words and leave it at that, but he's aware that that's probably not the best idea. Clarifying, he adds, "The only beings with colonial anything back home are all the enemy. And I can count the number of worldwide broadcasts we've had in the past week on the fingers of one hand."

Dr. Kleiner's, the request to all Resistance cells to report local city activity, and Alyx's. The Combine haven't been able to properly muster any of their own other than orders directly to their forces since the City 17 Citadel exploded.

"Name's Freeman," he says, and watches for any form of reaction at all. "Do the words 'Combine Empire' or 'Universal Union' mean anything where you come from?"

"Spartan John-117. Master Chief Petty Officer of the United Nations Space Command Navy," the soldier offers. "We just finished a 27 year long war with an alien hierarchy that called themselves the Covenant, back in my universe. It was good timing. There's not much left of the UNSC, or its colonies, at this point."

"Different deal altogether," Gordon says. "The Combine Empire portaled onto Earth's doorstep sometime in 2005, four years after a dimensional incident opened Earth up to massive invasion by alien lifeforms from a place called Xen. The Combine had Earth on its knees in seven hours." He grimaces. "I wasn't there for that. I'm with the human and Vortigaunt resistance forces now."

Freeman has the opportunity to fight the aggressors off ground-side, and takes it, whatever the odds are. John respects that. "You fight," the Spartan says. "That's what I know."

The Covenant melted the surface of any human planet they found from space. The Chief, his team, and others had destroyed the Unyielding Hierophant along with 488 out of the 500 Covenant warships stationed there before the battle of Earth. If the Covenant had arrived in full force, he would have considered any square mile of the human home world left un-glassed after seven hours an unthinkable victory.

( "I know you were a scientist, dear, and I'm sure you were very good at it- but what you are now is what you're really needed to be, and I'd suggest you concentrate on that instead of holding on to old dreams." )

"It's what I'm good at," Gordon says. "Not sure how that happened. Used to be a theoretical physicist." His mouth quirks a moment. "That's not what they need these days."

The Spartan had seen average soldiers and civilians do the impossible in the defense of humanity. Freeman was following in that tradition.

"My team was meant to finish a civil war before it began," says John. "I ended up stopping an interstellar extermination instead."

Gordon nods fractionally. "Nothing like that on my end," he says. "Just an experiment in quantum teleportation that went very, very wrong. I was trying to go for help. I've had to fight ever since. Especially now that they're getting serious about wiping us out."

The evaluation period for Overwatch transhumans is over. The Combine wouldn't've started force-growing the atmosphere-killing synths if they planned on any further consideration.

Why were aliens so intent on wiping out humanity? Everywhere John turned, it was another story of humans fighting for their existence. Was that a common across all universes? That humanity had to earn their survival?

The soldier examines the expression on Freeman's face. An unending conflict with no break. "I've had experience with that."

"Fun stuff," says Gordon dryly. "What was yours like?"

It'd be nice to hear from someone who came out on top. Reassuring, anyway.

"The UNSC's fleet was cut down to a fifteenth of its original size. Dozens of colonies were glassed. Billions of people died. All sentient life in the galaxy was almost destroyed by an ancient weapons system, then by an intelligent parasite. We were lucky."

By all counts, they should have lost. A very specific set of circumstances was what had saved them.

"...."

Yeah, next to that, what's happening with the Combine doesn't seem like nearly the same order of magnitude as before.

Damn.

"Do what it takes," John concludes.

Gordon shakes his head slowly. "And I thought sixteen years of Combine occupation and no human reproduction of any kind was bad," he says. "Ouch."

No reproduction? That would end the human race in a matter of years.

John turns to directly face the man. "It sounds like you're in a difficult situation in your universe."

"We're in it up to our eyeballs, if that's what you mean," Gordon says. "We've managed to wipe out the Combine's central governance point on Earth and cut off their ability to portal in reinforcements from their homeworld. The suppression field they had in place preventing a successful conception or pregnancy's down now, but-" He shrugs; that's a long-term issue. "We're still analyzing the data we just got out of one of their combat terraforming centers this morning. The situation's changing faster than anyone expected."

His tone is a little flat. Not because he doesn't want to report on this, but because being whiplashed around from the Vortigaunt's revelation in the morning to the field of open battle on the dead zone border, to the unexpected local victory, to the discovery of what was happening to everyone the Combine had rounded up in the cities... that kind of thing tends to drain a man.

"If the situation keeps changing, I'll be here," he offers. He couldn't return to his universe, and it was not in a Spartan's training to languish in inaction. "Defending Earth and her colonies is what I'm for."

"Thank you," says Gordon, and means it. "We're... probably going to be calling for volunteers at some point. I've done it often enough here. Not until we've worked out our next strategic step, though. I don't plan on making anyone go in blind. Not for this."

John nods. Initiative and skill could win a battle, but preparation and planning, along with luck, was what won wars. "Let me know when you decide to mobilize."

"I will," says Gordon. "Or Alyx will. My fiancee's in command of the movement; if she's not here just yet, she will be. A little shorter than me, black hair, darker skin, tends to wear a patched jacket over whatever else she might have on."

He has a feeling that once they've got everything sorted out, the Combine aren't going to know what hit them.

"I'll be here when you need me," John agrees.

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