http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1038394&page=152
Wait so Blue Team all got the Gen 2 armor? When? I know Fred was wearing the Gen 2 prototype armor and Kelly and Linda probably got them some time when they are on earth but when did Chief get it?
H5 takes place 8 months after H4.
"HAHA, Jem! That's right! Nanobots… man, I feel dumb sometimes. LOL lots of the times, actually. Jem's right everybody! JEM'S RIGHT. Anyway Halohalohalo, amirite?"
**The smile slides off my face as I draw back into my darkened home, The Cave of Rarely-Posting, the racous din and danger of GAF pre-E3 reduced to a wasp-nest buzz as the GAFdoor logged out. Another lame attempt at engaging.
"Nanobots.
Fuckin nanobots!" Even my hissing sounds loud in the dank emptiness of my mostly solitary lair. The soft scrabbling escape of my companions are a sympathetic echo. Lurkers. I'm not sure what they are exactly, though I was one of them once. Most of us were, but some small mercy doesn't allow us recall of those times. Who would want to remember that anyway? Some say that one could exist as a Lurker on GAF for… Well, long enough to have seen so much but no mouth with which to complain and be salty. Hell.
A shiver at the thought and suddenly the dark feels so close, so hungry, "Xbox on!" Nothing. "XBOX. ON." Same. "Ecks-bawks awwn." The blasted machine finally accepts my painfully enunciated plea, but it's too late: I've sprained my tongue. Later, I'll have to turn it off manually like a goddamn animal.
My gamerpic, (the best one (and a quietly fucked up one)), a cartoon hamburger with a face eating a smaller, regular, faceless hamburger greets me.
Television light makes everything visible. Too visible. Some things I'd rather not see. AR starts. Flagnum. QTE boss battles...
#butts.
I start sifting around through the junk, not frantic, but sweating all the same. Urgent. I toss aside a pretentious #NoMotionTracker but I can still see it in my lower periphery. An eternally ignored 'Frankie pls', still in it's wrapper, skids across the floor and drops further back up the thread as the conversation moves on. An MCC wrapped with duct tape that no repairman seems to be able to totally fix. Messaging issues peek out from under a rug. An empty box of old hype.
"Where is it?!" Aching, panting…
A moldy bag I carelessly cast aside turns out to contain a lot of fragile old Halo Traditionalists' Opinion and Entitlement Posts. Halo 4 era. Some Reach, even. The strong shit. The bad old shit. It flies and shatters musically against the Wall of Progress, same as any other philosophy. I've worked up a grunty thirst, but no time for the nipple. I find what I was looking for.
Getting comfortable with the small box on the floor, I want to share this suddenly. I whistle, and my Junior tag comes limping in. A small pathetic thing, it got struck by a Bad Opinion Train and while it lived it was never the same. Three months old and sixty-seven posts long; it's good I'm fond of it, because we're going to be together for a long long time.
I scratch it's J, and it's affectionate attempt to burrow into my side makes me smile, "Look what I got, buddy boy, yes! Look!" It doesn't, of course, but I don't care. I'm happy to share my excitement. After all, E3 hasn't even started, and yet I already know everything there is to know.
I reverently lift the lid off the box, rubbing my thumb over the waxy crayon-scrawl of the label as I read it aloud, "Halo 5: Gorditas - 2013 Pre-Order Advance Edition." God, I had to go to some deep places of the web to get my hads on this. My brow pops anew with cold sweat. The words "HaloFollower" flash searing and lurid in my memory. Nevermind. That's over now.
Beneath the box-top, are a number of icons carved of ore and gem. This is a concrete Assumption in the shape of a human female. This, a crystalline HypeTrain. Here's a pyrite Insider carved as a grotesque ear and lips gestalt. And here, the obsidian sphere of Unrealistic Expectations worked into a mirror polish and perched on a wobbly Confirmation Bias display, roughly hewn from limestone. So many others of such debatable value. And yet so precious.
My shoulder's jerk, I almost rise, almost scamper to the GAFdoor, log it open and post… But why? I'm not really adding to the conversation and even if I was I don't really have time to constantly refresh the page, just to see if anyone replied. Just to feel oddly depressed when they don't. Hell, it's been two hours since my last post anyway! No, I'll keep this for myself.
I arrange all the icons in front of me. Touch them. Savor their texture and certainty. Smear them with Taco Bell Fire Sauce.
I hug my Junior tag close. He whimpers when I hear one of his underdeveloped opinions crack. I lift him in front of my sickly TV-lit face, look him in his stupid eyes, and I whisper, "Halo 5 is gonna be
fucking awesome."**