[b][indent][color=#800000][h3]Shipmaster Chur'R-Jev,[/h3]Tec, & Nol
Anvil Station, Commissary[/color][/indent][/b][hr]
Nol clacked his beak quickly in response to the declaration, the best approximation to a chuckle as far as Chur’R-Jev could ever say, as he shook a quilled head at the whole of the statement. [i]A bit tougher[/i]. That was always an understatement, though doubtless the Sangheili wouldn’t be pushing the humans as far as they would normally to their own. The softest - or perhaps youngest - had come to the station, because the eldest, the most experienced, the most fanatic were too busy butchering Jiralhanae to do anything else. This and the fact that the most experienced would rather continue to butcher humans than ever engage with them, that’s as the Shipmaster saw it. They had avoided, well enough, the idea of ‘defeat’ through the simple excuse that the whole of the War had been built on a lie. And yet, the fact that there had been defeats before still existed. Some Sangheili would never accept the truth of the matter.

He watched though as more Spartans - unfit second-hands, as far as the Shipmaster could say - walked in to all sit with one of the Sangheili in particular. A stare for a moment, that’s all Chur’R-Jev delivered as he considered exactly why they were all drawn together. Stupid little children, that’s the second-hands, who wanted to measure themselves against veterans of the War of Annihilation. Creatures who wanted to learn from hands who bloodied their kin once, and did not quite understand that the tease and temper given between humans normally was not as the Sangheili did things. Honor, stupid honor and oaths and hierarchies of tradition, that’s the Sangheili, and a new world had been built ramshackle on the old, blessed old, world that the Sangheili had grown to venerate and accept. It was all stupid, the Shipmaster thought, all stupid and measured and cut away.

Chur’R-Jev turned to the Marine though, manipulating a human knife with as much dexterity as could ever be managed to cut into his slice of steak. Picking one long cut up with the knife, the Kig-Yar chomped against it with his beak, swallowing most whole before pausing just a moment. Pepper, that’s what the humans called it, something that delivered just a bit of a burn in the taste, but cooked into the meat itself. It was…ground something, as the Shipmaster knew it, though he hadn’t seen the type in any Covenant rations before. They’d had to resort to such before, when the pickings were slim.

[color=#800000]”They’re going easy on you. They go easy on everything here. Their best hunt…Brutes, you call them? Ask them to not, and maybe you’ll learn quicker.”[/color] He chomped against another slice of steak, savoring it far less as the Shipmaster rasped out more. [color=#800000]”Or you’ll be dead quicker. One or the other. Maybe both.”[/color]