To say this mission had gone to shit would be putting it nicely. They had planned extensively for this – orders from fucking Makarov himself to infiltrate Task Force 141 who had proven to be a far more stubborn thorn in the Kingfish’s side than he had expected.

Except of course after gathering intel from an inside source about one of the 141’s fledgling bases that its core members were currently occupying they couldn’t just do the simple option of sending in their best operatives to do their usual wetwork and take care of the problem – no, Makarov had put his foot down and called for a different approach. Instead of their usual methods – they’d use the chance to put to the test a new weapon his R&D contacts had been putting together: a shrinking ray.

It was top-secret. The only people to know of this prototype was its makers, Makarov and his lackies, and the field team assigned to the task of infiltrating the base: Echo-Nine. When the team had first heard of this weapon – a sense of quiet excitement settled over them. Task Force 141 had mowed down countless members of their militia – from low-level grunts to commanders and generals. The prospect of reducing the elite soldiers down to truly pathetic levels and capturing them quite literally by hand seemed almost too good to be true and the crew had been fighting over which one would get to grab the infamous Ghost himself.

That jubilee instantly faded when further orders had come in. They would not be storming the base and using this prototype on 141 – Echo-Nine would be shrunken down to infiltrate, gather information and get into position to set up for a future siege of the base. None of the crew had the authority or rank to protest this of course, and the cowardly subordinates below Makarov had nodded and agreed to this plan like the yes-men they were. There was no going back on this assignment either – they had agreed to as much in order to be told about this weapon in the first place. Echo-Nine quickly realised they were fucked – but the only path where they survived was doing the mission and making it out alive.

The only positive here was that the size they were to be reduced to would make it practically impossible to be recognised – and given that none of Echo-Nine was stupid enough to think they could win a fight against the top brass of 141, a stealthier approach would work in their favour. They had been through missions everyone else thought doomed to failure before – Echo-Nine would come out of this one with their staunch determinism and accuracy as always.

It was that stupid, damned motto that the last survivor felt repeat over and over in his head as if to mock him. Sergeant Flare ignored the dull throb of pain radiating through his body as he continued to climb up the dripping drain – trying to drown out the memories of his crew that flashed through his mind.

The team navigator and their survivalist – not even making it inside the base thanks to their handlers dropping them at their minuscule size a way off from the base to avoid detection. It turned out even an elite militia was no match for simple wildlife when speck sized.

The team medic was the next casualty during their journey through the vents. As the merc guarding their back, he stood no chance when distant THOOMS below were followed by the flick of a switch as the nearby grate blasted to life and near-instantly sucked the medic out and into the room below. Flare had tried to grab him, but missed and instead watched the medic fall multiple stories down below onto the floor in a broken mess.

From there the arms expert was next – they had made it out of the vents and down to the base floor itself when a member of the 141 that Flare had ID’ed as ‘Captain Price’ had entered and marched across the room. While the rest of them managed to leap to safety, the arms expert’s laces tangled, and he stumbled flat onto the floor only getting a single second to look up in horror at an army-green socked foot descending straight onto him. They didn’t even get the chance to recover his dog tags as the crushed body stuck fast to the sock as Price marched away.

With only half their original team left – their field leader decided to avoid any contact with members of the 141 – the earlier relief that they would at least be hard to notice now recognised as the deadly truth it was – how many bugs and specks had they stepped on without knowing? Being under the notice of the 141 was no safer than being directly spotted. The plan shifted instead to getting inside the locker room and using their remote bugs to tag the uniform and gear of each Task Force member to get a constant ping of their location while out on the field.

The journey to the locker room claimed the life of their comms specialist – unceremoniously crushed under a dripping towel as it fell loose from its wall hook. It had been just their leader, the second-in-command and Flare, the tech specialist left as they slide under the door to the locker room. They had kept to the walls as best they could, taking a path through the shower-blocks to avoid a route currently occupied by several soldiers that weren’t close enough for Flare to identify. This though, would prove their undoing as a titan fresh from the gym had entered – giving just enough time for Flare’s eyes widen and to scream at the others that this was Sergeant MacTavish before the shower head above switched on and sent a cascade of water that flooded the ground, catching all three men in its tidal wave.

Through the blind drowning panic, Flare had seen the second-in-command be flung off to the side while he and the leader helplessly were washed away right towards the awaiting shower drain. The metal grate narrowly avoided scraping them to mush but the two were unable to resist the water flow as they were tossed inside. Flare watched the leader fall down to a watery tomb, doomed to drown somewhere deep within the base plumbing, but he himself had met with a miracle as his backpack snagged on a bit of loose piping – leaving him dangling a short distance down inside the grate, coughing and choking on shower run-off water from the washing titan above as he prayed for the deluge to stop.

Flare couldn’t tell how long had passed. Eventually the torrential rain came to an end, and the drenched tech expert began the slow climb upwards, pausing to stop and hug the wall whenever booming footsteps from above shook the ground and threatened to send more water down. His body seemed to move an autopilot as his mind raced – he was the last one left, what could he even do? Grappling for some kind of solution, his brain’s last hope was to set up a tag on some senior 141 brass and get the fuck out of here while praying it would be enough to stop Makarov from having him killed.

When he finally pulled himself out from the drain, he slumped to the ground – arms utterly exhausted. It must have taken him a while – the locker room seemed empty now and only the sound of dripping water kept him company. Eyes scrambling, Flare glanced around for some kind of plan here… when he spotted it.

A sports-bag – bulging with contents and sitting atop a nearby bench. Someone had left their gear here… and would likely be returning. He couldn’t ID whose clothes these were yet, but he could sneak up there, plant his bugs, retreat, and get an ID before fleeing. It… wasn’t an ironclad plan, but anything that didn’t involve him directly getting up-close to these lumbering titans was good with Flare.

It was ten minutes into his hurried jog across tiled floor that funeral bells sounded in the form of the door opening. Flare blinked and clenched his fists – if this was his guy then he could at least find out who it was and adjust his plan—

Raw terror flooded his spine – forcing him to stand up straight. Flare had spent days studying the leaked profiles of 141 members – committing their code names, usual appearance, and history to memory… but every member of Echo-Nine would recognise this new arrival. With his skull balaclava – the Ghost.

Every cell in Flare’s body begged the titan to walk to the side – sit down at a bench that wasn’t this one… but the giant walked closer and closer to the sports bag Flare was hiding under and it became more and more clear to the tech expert whose bag he had tried to bug. Ignorant and uncaring of his impending breakdown, Ghost stomped closer and closer.

He needed to run. Hide. Do something. But all Flare could do was just stand there – as if watching the Grim Reaper himself arrive to reap his soul. It was when the boot slammed down next to him and toppled him onto his ass that fight-or-flight finally kicked in and the tech man screeched and unfolded his rifle. Fumbling hands took multiple tries to finally get it operational, but Flare aimed the gun upwards right as the gigantic soldier set himself down on the very bench the micro had been planning to scale.

He was huge. Fuck he was huge. Pure fear struck him as he watched one heavy boot slam down… and an equally giant hand lean down and start fiddling with laces. Worn aglets sailed through the air – slamming down over and over again as the soldier tugged at his laces – pulling them loose and unknotting them. Throughout this, a basic, desperate plan finally struck Flare – if he could just tag some part of Ghost then he’d be set – Ghost held the highest kill-count of Makarov’s men… if he made it back to extraction, they’d celebrate him as a hero!

It was with that pitiful, desperate resolve that he began a few unsteady steps forward… right in time to shriek as the ground shook from a boot being kicked off and landing underneath the bench. It was now he caught sight of the beast contained within… as a truly disgusting sight presented itself. At no doubt the cotton covering Ghost’s foot had once been a smart, uniform white… but judging by the fraying and the dirt permanently staining it – this sock had been used one too many times years ago – at this point for someone of his size it was practically a biohazard… an observation not nearly as overly-dramatic as it seemed from the actual steam wafting from the socked foot.

But Flare had miscalculated. In the fear of that immense socked monster – his eyes had slipped from the true danger – its master. By the time he noticed the shadow, it was too late. Glancing up in confusion, it quickly turned to screaming horror as the boot-treads hovered directly above – showing off the grungy, filthy footwear with caked mud, dirt, a crushed cigarette and—

“No… no!” The smeared, unrecognisable remains of the second-in-command – body twisted and warped. Flare held down his trigger and fired a pitiful stream of bullets which merely absorbed into the boot filth. He fell backwards onto his rear and dropped the rifle in favour of shielding his face and making one last desperate plea to that masked face above, staring down at him with no emotion behind it.

The shadow grew bigger.

“I surrender— I surrender! I can tell you about Makarov, he knows about your—”

===

crunch.

Ghost stared down in disinterest as his boot flattened another pest. A second later, he returned to tugging at the laces of his remaining boot, pulling it off and planting both feet flat on the ground.

Makarov had been quiet as of late. Too quiet – it didn’t take a genius to figure out he was planning something… but until he either showed his hand or the base strategists figured something out, they were stuck out here.

He’d been getting a little stir crazy when Soap, with his eerie habit of reading people, challenged him to see who could lift the heaviest weight in the gym. Of course, the outcome was fairly obvious from the start, but Soap hadn’t completely embarrassed himself… all things considered. Ghost would never say it – but he appreciated the distraction.

A small smile crossed under his mask as he moved to peel off his socks – when Makarov struck, they’d be ready. Bastards couldn’t escape their watch.

___

A very enjoyable perspective piece from digital artist and Halo extraordinaire  LickwidZekrom who is currently open for commissions and I highly recommend! I think ‘shrinking to infiltrate an enemy location’ is a storyline I use far too often but y’know what? Cliches get repeated so often because they work.