Argo the Rat

Argo ducked into the alleyway as a burst of metallic gunfire crackled from the other side of the narrow street and bullets punched the nearby brick wall into sandy powder inches from his neck. He wrapped his left arm around his domed helmet in an attempt to provide further protection while he gripped hard onto the plasma pistol held in his right palm.

Yells in the Human-Portuguese language told Argo his enemies were jeering at him, taking an enjoyment in their carefree hunt of their prey.

Prey. It wasn’t the word Argo would call himself under normal circumstances; however, this was far from his ideal expectations. Ideal expectations were worlds and stars away and in a time where his name was associated with an honorable warrior rather than a desperate thief.

The steep stairway that ran down this alleyway caught Argo off-guard and he felt his left, hooved foot lose its traction on the smaller steps not intended for his reptilian feet. Frantic and without balance, he sailed down those steps into a barrel roll of pain, hitting every single stone on the way down and falling two building stories in height.

His whole body was on fire as exposed points in his attire gave way to thrashed and torn scaly skin, drenching the ground beneath him in small droplets of purple blood.

“Sangreto…” Argo groaned, speaking the word for blood in Portuguese and an obscene phrase in his mother tongue. He craned his neck up, moving even as his sore ribs told him to stay down on the ground.

The humans appeared like shadows against the sunset behind them as they crossed into view at the top of the alleyway. Their silhouettes danced a happy jig in their drunken stupors and raising their crude firearms into the sky as they moved in on Argo. Their movements were sluggish, poisoned by their consumption of heavy liquor, but, with their numbers, weapons, and Argo in his weakened state, they would kill him easily enough.

Seeing their prey lie there, broken, invigorated their rage and happy hatred. The distinct sound of an M6C pistol discharging sent Argo back onto his hands and feet, forcing him to move. The first round went high, the shooter too intoxicated to aim properly. He pulled himself up and leaned against the brick wall next to him. Without looking at his pursuers, he aimed his plasma pistol as if he were to shoot them.

A scream of alarm escaped one of the human’s lips as they tried to duck into cover at the sight of the alien weapon. Argo didn’t bother pulling the trigger; the weapon ran out of battery power days ago. He didn’t wait to see what the humans were doing; he limped and jogged down this new narrow passage.

The shouts of the humans around the bend told him they recovered from their initial shock and were giving chase again. The sound of a toppled trash bin behind Argo told him his pursuers were also taking their time to reach him.

Coming around a bend, he saw the Sun’s light catching in an open courtyard and the cheers of happy human children playing a game. A ball made of white-and-black hexagons raced by kicking up loose dirt and trampled grass as it zoomed by. Argo paused.

Children chased after the ball, kicking at it toward some goal at the other end of the courtyard. Looking to a straggler, Argo locked one of the smaller children into a vice grip with his left arm and raced past the entourage of children as they screamed at the approach of a massive alien, one of the “Monstros”. They quickly scattered but the one in Argo’s grip screamed and sobbed the loudest, drawing the drunk men back onto his heels. Gunfire let loose around Argo as he sprinted back into another alleyway at the other end of the courtyard.

One of the bullets caught Argo along his armored shoulder plate where the energy shields were weak from age and war. It pierced clean through turned a piece of the once ceremonial-design to shreds. He winced in pain and felt his mandibles fray in alarm but he silenced his internal scream of pain and kept running.

The boy sobbed heavily, calling for help in his childish, repetitive manner. Ignoring his own pain and his own distaste for seizing the child, Argo simply ran. His legs raced across the ground as bullets grazed and barely missed his imposing form racing through the shadowy rows of a human favela.

He paused and cursed himself when he crossed another street and found himself at a dead end. He unfurled the military bags magnetically latched to his armor and tossed them quickly into an open dumpster next to him. He paid no glance or pause to the UNSC emblem emblazed on the pouches once intended to contain ammunition for human weapons. He turned around and stared defiantly at the drunken men that pursued him. Running on his half-baked instincts, he held the boy in a vice grip at his waist and pointed his empty plasma pistol at the boy’s head.

The men froze in the street as they stared down Argo, bathed in shadows while the Sun’s last light enveloped them in the open. Argo breathed heavily, desperately. He kept the pistol trained on the boy’s head and remained silent, praying as he stared his enemies down to whatever omnipotence still ruled over this galaxy for salvation. He long since abandoned his creed and faith in the Covenant religion, however, habits die-hard. Maybe literally.

The men raised their weapons and pointed them directly at Argo. They screamed at him in angry Portuguese but his understanding of the language was limited, and in this final terror, he didn’t bother trying to translate it from Human to Sangheili tongue. He only hoped his hunch and gamble paid off, that he made the right turn. The men were still screaming and the boy was sobbing, his eyes locked shut, prepared to die.

Then zipper sounds from Covenant carbines erupted from down the street and ripped into the men shouting at Argo. They didn’t get the chance to turn. The blood was already pooling beneath them as they hit the ground. Argo threw his plasma pistol into the dumpster and held onto the child who simply kept crying. He froze in place as Sangheili and Unggoy marched into view, poking at the bodies of the fallen humans.

One of the Sangheili looked at Argo and snarled at him. The glint of the sunlight against his armor reflected into Argo’s eye for a moment and upon trying to rub it out of his eye, he swore he saw himself? Could it be?

The Sangheili was dressed like a proper warrior. Dark maroon armor maintained to a soldier’s precision. A well-maintained plasma rifle at his hip. A warrior’s sash wrapped around his collar. He held himself up proudly and staring down through his visor slits with an immense distaste. An entourage of proud warriors seem to appear behind him, proud and numerous, the Covenant’s best and deadliest.

“Look at what you’ve stooped down to…” the doppelganger of a past life seemed to speak in Argo’s voice, in his mother tongue. “Nothing but a rat.”

Argo blinked rapidly, chasing the ghosts of his past out of sight but the doppelganger remained. He stared at it, his eyes widening in shock. He attempted to form words but only the babbles of something less than dirt escaped his quivering mandibles.

The doppelganger continued in decent Human English, “Get out of my sight, filth – and drop the nishum hatchling. You disgrace my presence. I see you again in the territory of the Syndicate, I won’t pity you a second time.”

Argo blinked again and his doppelganger disappeared, replaced by a Sangheili in battered armor. While better maintained than Argo’s, it was the armor of a Minor Domo – the rank of a mere hatchling compared to Argo’s more impressive past. A past that was not his, lost to him in another lifetime. He dared not speak out against the hot-blooded youth reprimanding him. He simply bowed his head and let the human child in his arm go. The boy did not move. Nodding to the Syndicate enforcer, he spoke simply, “Of course, I will go.”

The enforcer huffed at Argo and marched on down the street, his patrol team following closely behind. Silence filled the alleyway as Argo suddenly let oxygen return to his lungs having unconsciously clenched it during the encounter. He fell to his knees and the child, startled by the act, took the chance to run. He rushed past the dead drunks and disappeared down the alley back toward his playfield and his friends.

Argo’s hand shivered and his mandibles quivered in a hurricane of emotions. Doubt. Shock. Fear. Happiness. Disappointment. Confusion. He was lost in his own mind, unable to comprehend the events that just happened. He looked down at himself and all the dirt and mud that caked his badly aged Special Operations armor. It was barely recognizable now, compared to that trick of the light.

He rose on shaky legs and inspected the dead goat strapped to his chest that started this whole ordeal. It was intact enough that it should be edible if cooked over a warm fire. He glanced over to the dumpster where he tossed his scavenged military gear. Sniffing to himself, he wandered over to the dumpster and reached down into the dirt, muddy water, mosquitoes, and flies. He pulled out his wasted plasma pistol and his soiled human gear. He gently placed them back atop his armor one by one and then glanced to the skies as the last golden lights of the Sun descended past the mountains and bathed the city of Rio de Janeiro in the dusk.

He walked on his tired and shaking legs back into the darkness of the favela’s maze of alleyways. This was his life now, a warrior turned thief. A husk of his former self. He had no honor anymore, to his own kind he was a lesser creature. His past self would never accept him for what he becomes. Without honor, without purpose. He was nothing but a rat in the alleyways of Rio. Argo the Nobody. Argo the Rat.