User:Distant Tide

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"I'll be honest, when some guy showed up for Status Quo trying to orbital drop in some boats, I had my concerns..."

- describing his first encounters with Distant Tide.

Distant Tide, often known as simply Tide, is a member of the Halo Fanon community who made his presence known in mid-2017. Following an agonizing college-examination week, Distant Tide spontaneously came up with the idea for the 21st Century AR-15 being transferred over to the 26th Century, and thus, the Colt Blaster HDW Mk.15 was born and became his first article on Halo Fanon. While the article was not well received at first, it grew on many people and has come to define Tide's presence in the community as an unorthodox-topic writer.

Before coming to Halo Fanon, Distant Tide was a frequent presence on Fanfiction.Net and took part as moderators for several RP servers and was a semi-respectable writer in his own fandoms. Much of his current writing style was formed through his life experiences and consumption of media from a young age. Distant Tide is a relatively big fan of anime and nerd culture. He enjoys movies, video games, comics, etc. Much of his actual Halo writing is inspired by his family's military history, modern and historical politics, the popular literary fiction he has consumed, and anime. A lot of anime.

On Halo Fanon, Distant Tide's main focus is on the characters Merlin-D032 and Andra-D054 of SPARTAN-III Delta Company and their relationship with each other and the Galaxy at large. Outside Halo Fanon and Fanfiction, Distant Tide is also a frequent traveler. He enjoys swimming, drawing, video games, and writing as hobbies. His unofficial title is Halo Fanon's "Welcome Wagon" for his active presence in trying to work with and retain newer users.

Writing Projects

 * Halo: Corporeal Delta
 * Corporeal Delta on FFN.net
 * Halo: The Invisibles
 * The Invisibles on FFN.net

Medals
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It was January again. It was actually Andra’s first January among civilization in some time. On this winter night, she attempted to focus on her breathing and to meditate her way into a comfortable slumber. Her blue pupils darted across the dark, shadowy ceiling of her bedroom however and her eyelids remained as light and wide-open as they were three hours ago.

She groaned incoherently and planted a hand over her face, blocking out what little city-light seeped through her bedroom curtains. Sleep remained out of reach.

Staring into her pitch-black palm, she considered the implications of her insomnia. Not of one night, but many nights – every single one since taking up residence on Earth about a month ago. There wasn’t a particular reason but her general assumption placed the source of her sleep difficulties with her supersoldier augmentations and culture shock from her new “home.”

Andra listened for the icy rain pounding on the roof two floors above her. With her enhanced hearing, it was as if she could sense each individual thump. The rain’s rhythmic-endless beating was distant and dull, perfect to put her to sleep under the right circumstances, but not tonight. Andra squeezed her temples in frustration as her mind drifted back to her old dormitory space on Argus V, the planet she spent four years on, training to become a Spartan supersoldier.

The last time Andra was there, it was October 2557, only a few months ago actually. Andra’s old dormitory space, as she remembered it nostalgically, was minimalistic and sparse in decorum. Two row of beds, a single window, and a single restroom. There was a significant lack of privacy, having shared that room with nine other children. Five of them became her closest friends in the entire Universe. They survived the SPARTAN-III Program’s fourth generation, Delta Company, together, along with the other three hundred-odd graduates.

On Argus V, Andra’s team did everything together. Eat. Sleep. Defecate. Shower. Suffer through indoctrination. Train. Learn. They received punishment for their shortcomings together.

Here on Earth, sleeping alone in a lavish high-rise apartment space near the city's downtown district, Andra was the closest she had ever been to civilization. And yet, it was the most isolating experience of her life. She didn’t know what it meant to sleep alone, until now.

In the past, she was an introverted personality, even to this day, however, this was a new level of loneliness. This wasn’t the alone time she sought; this was the opposite of everything she wanted. This was isolating, stress-inducing.

The thought of her rough, rock-like cot mattress on Argus V whispered into Andra’s mind, bringing further details regarding the two vastly different environments to the forefront. Back then, she fell asleep to her friends' soft breathing within arm's length distance. Here, her queen-sized bed was far too soft. The industrial-satin comforters, cool and soft to the touch, augmented her sense of self-awareness. The bed’s spongey interior pulled Andra in, slowly, feeling like quicksand.

She was sinking as her heart thumped harder and harder in her chest. Oh no! She was sinking!

She grabbed her bed sheets and threw them aside violently, freeing herself from its confines. She ignored the evaporation of her bed’s radiating warmth and clambered off the mattress briskly as her breathing tempo accelerated.

She tiptoe-ran to the window and threw back the navy-blue curtains, filling her vision with the briefly-blinding sight of her city’s urban sprawl. Andra brought her hand up once again to shield her eyes but let it fall to her side in the second they adjusted.

In every direction were the glaring lights of a city seemingly alive with power and activity, skyscrapers filling every confine and lights on in every residential and office building. A vast highway network weaved between towers. This was New Phoenix, a vast mega-city in the Arizona desert. Her home of a month.

Taking in the vast lights, the towers that reached to the light-polluted night sky above, her sped-up breathing halted before visibly subsiding from a hitch in her tempo. She could hear her heart pounding distantly in her ear.

Andra counted to herself on a breathless whisper, "One. Two. Three. Four..."

She intended to say "five" but it came out as a puff of air, calmed by the breathing exercise. Losing herself in the city's nightlife, Andra's eyes lazily trailed the metal landscape, scanning over the neon glow of advertisements and corporate logos. This was a good kind of loss, forgetting her own tensions and fears and simply letting them wash away. It wasn't much different from staring into the endless forests or massive seas of Argus V, it was hypnotic.

Her eyes locked onto the few festive holograms that stuck out against the matte greys, whites, and reds of New Phoenix, spotting a few elves and a dancing reindeer. A giant-transparent Christmas tree, hundreds of feet tall, marked the city's shopping district where a very real Christmas tree, the original to its massive holographic doppelganger, stood sentinel-like over a once-populated communal space.

And it was all an illusion.

Andra closed her eyes and sucked in her room's stale, cold air. She exhaled slowly and reopened her eyes, looking upon New Phoenix once again. A modern ghost town.

Every single building in front of her was empty and devoid of life. Quarantined off after a great disaster, the New Phoenix Incident. The city looked intact, it looked lived in and maintained well, but it was all an artifice. A monument to how efficient automated technology had become in the pursuit of endless technological progress. Even after ninety-nine-percent-whatever of the population died, the city that once housed six million residents still carried on.

Andra sighed again only for her outwards breath to catch in her throat at the soft sound of her bedroom door slowly slinking open. Her hearing picked up the subtle sound of a socked foot touching down on the carpet. Spinning around, she reached for her thigh out of habit where her M6C duty pistol was typically holstered. She was dressed in a waist-cropped tee shirt and some leggings. She wasn't in her combat-wear, this was her sleepwear. She wasn't prepared for an intruder, and this was by far, no battlefield.

"Uh, Morning...I can come back if you're busy?" Merlin, Andra's teammate, mumbled uncertainly and groggily as he stared at his friend behind one alarmed eyeball and a thumb rubbing the tired out of the other. His focus seemed directed at her jerk motion toward the imaginary weapon at her side.

Andra blinked twice in confusion before she responded, her gun-reaching hands falling limp at her sides. "Oh! Uh, no, go ahead, come...come-in?"

Merlin glanced at his foot already in the bedroom and shrugged his shoulders half-casually. He stepped fully into the room and closed the door softly behind him without breaking eye contact with Andra.

"Can't sleep?" He asked once the door closed with a light click.

"That was what I was about to ask," Andra stated, shifting her weight to one hip. Merlin crossed his arms and leaned against the wall adjacent to the door he closed. "what are you doing up this early?"

A small, knowing half-smirk appeared on Merlin's face. "Can't sleep."

Andra felt the shadow of a grin cross her own lips as she moved across the room, back to her bed. The bed gave off an audible squinch sound at her weighty presence. Her eyes trailed back to Merlin, noticing his usual sleep attire: black boxers and a dark tee shirt a size too big. His dark brown hair had taken the form of a bird's nest, the result of letting his hair grow out of regulation for a full two weeks.

"It's just about three in the morning," Merlin commented, glancing out the window at New Phoenix in the rainy night then back at Andra. "You and I got the morning patrol at five. I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep if I go back to my room, I've been up for maybe thirty minutes now..."

Andra was quick to catch on. "So you came here?"

"Yeah," Merlin said, exasperated. A slight sense of awkwardness hung in the air. His eyes trailed away from Andra, refusing to make eye contact. "I was thinking back to training and..."

Andra looked down at her bed, feeling blood lightly tint her cheeks. They'd play this game before, starting on their graduation night from the SPARTAN-III Program. Well, maybe even before that if they counted all their team-building field exercises. The two of them were a team, the intensity...

An eight-year-old Merlin Boyd was jostled awake by the shuffling of the teenage girl sleep-sitting in the bus seat to his left. She was a lot bigger than him but he didn't mind her presence much, even if her height over him was a little intimidating.

She'd been quiet this entire trip, listening to her headphones and sleeping. It didn't bother Merlin that much that she occasionally kicked him in her sleep. Blinking slowly at the tired still hanging on his vision's edge, he brought his fists to his eye sockets and rubbed them out gently. He glanced out to the window view on his right and found Ballast's wonderful blue sky staring back at him and a turquoise oceanfront beneath it. A small smile curled on his cheeks, seeing the beach once again.

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