On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me six geese a-laying.

"What is geese?"

John paused long enough in his exercise routine to stare at T'ane as the Sangheili performed a steady rhythm of pull ups. He knew that the Sangheili were strong -he had felt several of the aliens lifting him off the ground during a firefight- but even he was impressed with the one not that far away. T'ane was still going strong after an hour. Master Chief, not to be out done, had been slamming his fists against a punching bag for as long as he could before it would bust. Without any battle that they were currently fighting, the most John or anyone else high in the ranking like T'ane, saw most of their excitement in these gyms. Sometimes they would be there at the same time and other times they would hardly see each other. And then there were even others where they would spar each other.

But, out of all the times that they had been in the gym together, T'ane hadn't asked such silly questions. The few times he spoke were much more intelligent than inquiring what geese were.

The Chief paused, bouncing lightly on his toes and wiping at his sweaty forehead with his wrapped hands and made a confused face. T'ane hardly stopped, simply flickering his mandibles before lifting himself once more. The Sangheili was still wearing his white armor but it didn't seem to effect him all that much. "What?"

"Geese. What is it?"

Deciding that he had worked out long enough, John began freeing his hands from the sweat stained bandages, turning his back to the Sangheili and focusing mostly on himself. T'ane grunted a few times, lifting himself up only a couple more before he settled his hooves on the cold floor and releasing the straining bar above. "Yes," the alien rumbled as he grabbed a towel nearby and wiped at his hands. "What is a geese?"

"Geese is the plural form of goose," John explained, yanking the soaked dark gray tee over his head before gathering a black one in his hands.

T'ane nodded in understanding before immediately becoming confused again. "I see... What is a goose?"

Huffing in annoyance, John pulled the black shirt over his sculpted chest and turned his head to lift an eyebrow at the Sangheili. "Why's the sudden interest in geese? Was it that song that Elyse made you read?"

He was slightly stunned to see T'ane shuffle a bit and become suddenly very interest in the towel in his four-fingered hands. His eyebrows narrowed in confusion as he returned to the assortment of electronically, war-destroyed devices that he had brought with him to the gym in case he got bored. Which was often. The death of Cortana had intrigued a new interest in him that most of the others -including Annabelle- called him the Toy Maker, something he seemed to be made fun of a lot. Then again, it was mostly just the people who wasn't scared of him though.

T'ane sighed, sitting himself on one of the many weight benches in the room, ignoring the fact that it squealed as he settled his full weight onto it. He cradled his face into his hand before sighing once more. "Must you humans be so complicated? Back on my home world, all a male had to do to attract a female was give them an animal."

"Dead or alive?"

"Dead, of course," T'ane scuffed. "Killing an impressive animal would show that you are willing to protect your mate from potential dangers."

"So you slaughtered a bird?"

"It was intact. Besides, there wasn't much anything else here."

John connected two dead pieces of metal together and hardly flinched when a spark ignited, a small thing that flew up into the air in blue light. He looked at T'ane and smiled, waving the now working mechanism in his hand. "You've got be like this machine here; you've got to woo her." The left pair of T'ane's mandibles twitched in confusion and he motioned for John to elaborate. He grabbed the back of a chair and pulled it up so he could sit in it, still playing with the toy in his hands. "Human women are hard to get, especially someone like Elyse. First you've got to..."

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