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Ronin

Ronin drove the Hog through the woods as fast as the terrain would allow. It...it was painful saying goodbye to his friend like that, but it was the only way that Ronin could think of that would let him do what he had to do. Sighing, he remembered how he had met him...

:_/:

It had been a year since Ronin had been free, one winter, one spring, one summer since Ronin had taken his life into his hands. He was now roaming the redwoods of his planet, looking for game when he noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. Without warning, something bit into the side of Ronin's arm, sending jolts of electricity through his body: a tazer round, Ronin realized. He fell to the ground, dirt getting into his mouth as he blacked out when a group of humans swarmed him and proceeded to beat him.

He woke up in a cell, and was then beaten again, and again, for what seemed like eternity. Eventually, they stopped beating him and just deprived him of sleep. Then it was loss of food. The last thing that Ronin went through as far as tortures went was to be in his cell with no light whatsoever. That nearly sent him over the brink, but every once in a while Ronin would hear a voice. A soft, timid voice, most certainly belonging to a girl, maybe aged five or six.

Then one day, Ronin was dragged out of his cell, and into a fairly large cement room. And when he was dropped in the middle of the room, there were three people in front of him. One was his mother, who he had not seen in eight years; there was a little Voxin girl next to his mother, and other than the black tips of her ears, looked like a dead ringer for him, and then the last person...

Was General de Santiago.

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Ronin shook his head, noting that he was getting close to the edge of the camp. Quickly, he activated his stealth gear. But instead of making him invisible, it instead made Ronin look like Tom in full armor. And gunning the engine, Ronin speed off to the enemy encampment.

And for the first time in a long time, Ronin started praying.

"Virgin of Guadalupe, I ask for you to watch over me, a humble sinner...."

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Zack growled as he looked over at the rather horrid maps that the Reaver scouts had made. "No, I want to be sure that nothing gets in our way!" he angrily told Mortis. "If that means we raze each and every single little village in our path, then so be it!"

Mortis shook his head. "You are impatient," he bluntly told the Spartan. "You can't expect the boy to simple come to us, attack us, and run off, do you?" Before Zack could retort to that, the sound of a Warthog engine reached their ears, along with a few notes of music growing louder and louder.

"Dammit, what the hell is that music?" Zack roared the Warthog crashed into the encampment, running over scouts, unprepared troops, equipment, and then crashed into one of the communications tents. Zack's eyes widened as what appeared to be Thomas got out of the driver seat, got on the Gauss Cannon, and aimed. "SHIT!!" Zack yelled as hypersonic rounds started flying through the air.

Thomas fired at everything that moved, wiping out tanks, recon vehicles, and even the ENVY Class SIN that almost ran into him. Eventually the cannon clicked dry, and the Spartan jumped down. Pulling out a pistol, he fired into the running infantry until the pistol ran dry. He was in the process of taking a Toshigan SMG off the ground when he was kicked in the side, flying into the side of a tank. Zack smirked, then frowned as Thomas's form flickered. Walking over to the prone figure, Zack ripped the helmet off, revealing not the freak he wanted dead, but that Voxin that hit him with a white hole. "You," Zack hissed, yanking Ronin to his feet. "Who sent you? Your weakling of a commander?"

Ronin responded very simply. He gave Zack the finger. Shaking his head and grinning evilly, Zack threw him into a steel chair. Making sure that he was disarmed, Zack took off Ronin's TMD and threw it away from him. "Now, can you contact your commander?" Zack asked sickly.

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Coyote was watching Tom and Gravis fight when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Excusing himself, he moved into the hallway behind the stands before answering his phone. Checking the caller I.D., Coyote immediately activated his phone. "Ronin, what are you-" he said quickly, before realizing that he wasn't talking to Ronin.

Zack grinned on the other end. "Well well," Zack commented, "So that's what you look like under the helmet. As you can see, I have your sniper behind me, and I will kill him in about three minutes, give or take."

Coyote stood there helpless as Zack turned Ronin's phone to look at him, showing the Voxin slowly grinning. "What's so funny?" Zack asked.

All of a sudden, the automated voice of a TMD in trouble spoke up. "Temporal Manipulation Device core critical. You have one hundred and eighty seconds before core detonation." There was silence before all havoc came loose where Zack was. People scrambled to get away from the device, and Ronin looked up at the phone, smiling softly. "I hope you can forgive a fool sir," Ronin said before he started to sing in a low voice. Coyote shook his head as his friend sang the National Anthem.

"Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?"

The crowd outside roared as Ronin continued. "And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave," Ronin stopped for breath, just as his revolver went off in the arena. "O'er the land of the free, and the home..." Ronin looked Gabe right in the eyes. "Of the brave."

Coyote shook his head as he sprinted towards the exposed exit out of the arena.

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Ronin closed his eyes, and he remembered.

:_/:

The general had been beating him, calling him a useless, ungrateful sack of fur. Ronin looked up at the man, defiant to the core. The general smirked, and taking his pistol, dragged Ronin's mother over to his field of view. Ronin watched in horror as the monster killed his mother in front of him. Moving onto the little girl, Santiago told Ronin that she was his sister. Yet instead of making the sixteen, almost seventeen year old slave break, it only made Ronin's resolve that much firmer. The walls shook as Santiago prepared to kill her. The general ignored it, and that was his mistake, as an egg shaped thing slammed through the wall next to him, sending the man sprawling to the floor. The guards quickly dragged the girl away screaming as Ronin dashed over to the general's pistol, taking the familiar redwood handle in his hand. He aimed at the man's chest, and fired all five rounds into it, making sure that the man stayed dead. Ronin would have ran after his sister if a voice behind him didn't speak-and restrain him, as circumstances had it.

"Don't!" the voice cried out. "You go after her, you will die! We can rescue her later, but right now, we need to get out of here, do you understand that!?" Ronin stopped struggling and sobbed.

"Ci," he answered. Turning his head, Ronin saw the faint impression of a face behind a blue metallic visor. "Who are you?" he asked. The armored soldier let go of Ronin and backed off, hefting his rather bulky assault gun.

"First Lieutenant Monnot, call-sign Coyote," replied the soldier. "Take what you need, and then we're out of here." Ronin nodded, and tokk the revolver, all of the ammunition for it from Santiago's body, and took the rifle he had taken from the bastard's armory and six magazines for it. Running out of the building, Coyote asked, "Hey, what's your name?"

Ronin looked to Coyote. "My name is Ronin."

:_/:

Ronin sighed. Maybe he wasn't a great warrior, or a good person. Maybe he never could find his sister in this life. But Ronin was willing to wait. And for a brief moment, as the TMD counted down the final seconds, Ronin was at peace.

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Coyote saw that Ronin was smiling, eyes closed. The time was up, but Coyote wouldn't accept it. "RONIN, NOOO!!!!!!" he yelled out, just as Ronin's TMD hit zero.

There was a flash of light, and Sergeant Major Nathaniel Jonah Ronin, of the Dimensional RIFT Recon's First Infantry Division, First Battalion, Second Company, was no more.