Cryo two... What a heck hole it was now.
The herd had disposed of a couple of infection forms, plus a couple of Sentinels, before jumping over the pipes and entering cryo two. Those enemies were like a sign. A sign that there was more ahead, and Fluttershy cursed herself for not paying attention to it.
The cryo bay was chock-a-block with Flood, and a few Sentinels, but mainly Flood. Normally, Twilight would've instructed them to wait it out, see which side wins and tackle them after, but it was pretty clear the Sentinels didn't stand a chance, so it would be wiser to go in and lend the droids a hoof, even if they didn't appreciate it. Also, more Flood were somewhere behind them, so it would be a good idea to stay ahead.
Despite the assistance, the Sentinels didn't take too kindly to the Ponies' presence, and they directed lasers at them, when they weren't busy lasering the Flood, that is. The Flood were the most dangerous threat, but the Ponies were on a mission, and the Sentinels had orders to stop them.
Cryo tubes lined the walls of the room like an audience baring witness to the frantic show taking place centre stage. Their lids had been smashed by Elites before the crash, glass shards sprinkling the floor.
Four more cryo pods leaned back to back on a central pillar, and one of them was wide open and undamaged. Fluttershy remembered that one; the one she'd slept in, and she almost wanted to crawl back into it... almost. Two hours kip on the butte wasn't enough to stop her from being tired. Three separate armies trying to kill her certainly kept her on the tips of her hooves though.
"WRUURGIIEE!" snarled a crimson armoured Elite with what looked like a giant scorpion's tail attached to his shoulder. It came leaping over, firing a needler down at the squad.
"Waa!" Fluttershy yelped, braving the needles and turning her head in fear, pulling the trigger of her shotgun to convert the ex-elite into a blob of flying mush that came flopping down on top of her.
She fell under the weight and hoisted herself out from underneath its ravaged form, grunting with the pain in her foreleg. The others provided covering fire. Good.
Duel wielding her shotgun and plasma rifle, Colgate the Unicorn burned the Flood across the room and blew them apart when they got close. The long range - short range combination was a good one, and she gritted her teeth in determination as more and more monstrosities came rolling up.
The five Mares shuffled along, covering each other. A ladder at the far end was where they needed to be. It lead up to a balcony that traversed the length of the room and ended close to the smashed window of the observation booth. The observation booth where Vinyl Scratch had been, sooo long ago.
"One at a time!" Twilight advised. "Don't let any Flood close!"
An infected Jackal shrieked as it fell victim to the shotgun squad.
Once they reached the ladder, they took turns to climb up it, Applejack going first. The rest of the team fired out into the swarming ghouls as they closed in, protecting their Sergeant.
Once Applejack arrived at the top of the ladder, an infection form flew straight at her face. She yelped and swung her hoof at it, making it dissipate in a cloud of putrid green spores.
Waving the spores away, she clambered onto the balcony and gazed out over the tumult. A Sentinel buzzed right beside her and accidently nudged into her, so she pulled it down and smacked it against the deck over and over again until it was reduced to a pile of scrap.
Aloe came up after, with Colgate pushing her up, just in case she decided she couldn't be bothered again.
The three high up Ponies had a great view of the main floor and growing amount of Flood, so they fired everything into them, making them bellow and come leaping up. Applejack kept her shotgun handy, allowing the other two to focus more on the distant mutants. Grenades blew them apart with bone rattling explosions.
"Come on up, Fluttershy!" AJ hollered, peering down at the last two Mares.
Fluttershy couldn't take her eyes off the Flood. There was just so many, and she didn't want to turn her back to them. What if one shot her in the back? What if a parasite latched onto her? What if... No time for "what ifs;" she had a job to do, so uneasily, she turned to clamber up the ladder, leaving Lieutenant Commander Zecora down there on her own.
The Zebra was an excellent fighter. When she wasn't using her shotgun, she was jumping about, kicking the Flood, real martial arts style. One of the quadruped combat forms pounced and folded around Zecora's hoof as she booted it in the stomach. Blood, guts and the infection form all came spewing out of its twisted mouth, painting the ladder.
Peering over the ladder, Fluttershy grated, "Zecora! Up here!" reaching a hoof out.
After crushing the infection form between her hooves and blasting another ex-pony in the face, Zecora spun and leaped up to the highest rung of the ladder she could reach, pulling herself up quickly.
Even as the other soldiers rained down fire on the plague, some still managed to get past. A gagging Jackal with no eyes and three legs sprinted straight over to Zecora, only to have its head booted off. But because it didn't know how it was supposed to react to being beheaded, it simply grasped the ladder and raced up it.
Zecora had just made it to the top when the headless Jackal popped up, and Fluttershy cried, "Look out!" before blowing it away with a lethal buckshot.
"Nice work, Fluttershy! I swear I almost died!"
Wow. Praise from such a high ranking officer was like praise from Princess Celestia herself.
"Oh, I'm sure you would've been fine without me!" she shouted over the clamour, shooting a high jumping combat form.
Now that they were on the balcony, it was time to shimmy along to the observation theatre. Sentinels posted on Flood kept blocking their way, and shotguns kept clearing it.
Just like the ladder, the troops took it in turns to hop through the broken window and into the theatre, AJ first and Zecora last. However, as they were about to find out, huddling up in the cramped observation theatre was a big mistake.
Two Sentinels had been waiting for them there, and they were crippled immediately. More Flood entered the cryo bay on the main floor via the door that the herd had used to gain access themselves. There was a lot of them, and even more funnelling through the corridor ahead where they needed to be. There was another corridor behind, but it was blocked by scrap. There was a door that lead to the observation theatre for a separate cryo bay, but it was sealed, meaning the Mares were well and truly trapped.
Assessing the dire situation, Twilight ordered, "Fluttershy, Applejack; you fight them off behind us! Zecora, Aloe, Colgate; you concentrate on what's ahead!"
Following the AI's instructions, the Mares got into position and fired at their appointed targets.
All the Sentinels had been destroyed now, leaving only the Flood to panic about. Those tentacle beasts roared continuously, drowning out the sounds of gunfire. Their horrible odour intruded Fluttershy's nose, and she began wishing she'd never eaten that apple earlier.
Since the Flood preferred to simply jump up rather than use the ladder, most of their corpses came landing in the observation theatre, right by Applejack's and Fluttershy's hooves, forming what looked like a sandbag wall. Some of those sandbags wriggled back up though, and the two friends were forced to expend more shotgun ammo on putting them down.
One of the ravaged Ponies that came hooting up into the observation theatre thwacked Fluttershy across the face, reigniting the stinging in her neck, the aching of her black eye, and fuelling her fear. The yellow Pegasus got a good eyeful of her poorly assailant. It was Roseluck.
Before she could scream and pull the trigger, Applejack bucked Roseluck back down into the gathering mass and reloaded her shotgun.
"You ok, Fluttershy?!" she checked, taking a break from inserting shells into her gun's receiver to expend two on something that was once an Elite.
"Ahh - ahh - I - I - think - so!" Hyperventilating.
"Good! Keep it up!"
After a while, and a tonne of ammo, the cryo bay floor was clear, but the corridor was still jam packed with howling abominations. Zecora and Colgate had had to reload their shotguns four times, and the latter had ditched her plasma rifle due to it running dry. She did pry a plasma pistol from dead claws however, so she was still up to her duel wielding.
Aloe was getting into the fight, firing her magnum into the gangrenous crowd. She sent a carrier form exploding, and the explosion threw a number of combat forms off their feet and hooves. The grenades they possessed went up in chain reaction, throwing warped metal debris around the narrow passage.
Now that Fluttershy and Applejack had joined the others in taking on the Flood in the corridor, the Ponies could... get pushed back? It would seem there was too much Flood to handle, and the Mares were forced into a cramped, adjacent chamber, closer to the blocking scrap and sealed door.
"Where are these vermin even comin' from?!" Applejack demanded to know, shooting a cluster of wall-riding infection forms.
Twilight responded over the ruckus, "All I can say is that they're originating from somewhere further up! Not much help, I know, but it's all I can say!"
AJ grunted as she triggered a carrier form's detonation and vile green blood added more freckles to her face. "There any other way to the engine room?!"
"Not unless we back-track a mile!"
A grenade blast came courtesy of Fluttershy, and the whole deck vibrated in response.
The Flood were being real noisy. The volume of their sounds could only be matched by the volume of their stench. Each Flood form stunk as nasty as the last, and blowing their bodies apart only intensified the stench.
Ammo began to dwindle, along with time, and the soldiers soon began harvesting the Flood for shells whilst they were still fighting them. Luckily, they had Colgate. The squad Unicorn could multitask pretty well; almost at Fleur de Lis' level. Her pale indigo magic aura embraced fallen shotguns and their ammo, and she shared them out to the others. She even provided Aloe with one, just so she could kick more flank. In addition to the shotgun ammo, she also pried a new plasma rifle from the rotting corpses.
"A locked door?" Zecora pondered, just noticing it. "Ponies, cover me!" she commanded as she typed away at the coded lock. "I'll get us out of here in one, two, three!" And just like that, she opened the door.
"Of course!" celebrated Twilight. Privately to Fluttershy, she said, "Why do I forget she can do that?"
"Probably because there's other things on your mind - wahaa!" Fluttershy squealed as she blasted a beasty that got real close. "Y'know, like that!"
Moving on, Twilight ordered, "Everypony, through the door!"
One by one, the troops hopped through, Fluttershy going last and hurling one final grenade. She turned away before witnessing its results, and as soon as she was through the door, Zecora was slamming it shut and locking it. The Flood could be heard on the other side, loud and scary.
As Zecora, Applejack and Colgate worked on getting into the ceiling, Fluttershy stared through the observation window at what must be cryo one. It was completely untouched; all the cryo pods looking as neat as soldiers... except one. One pod contained a Pony. A big Pony with a pale coat... and a missing head.
Looking at her Spartan armour that had been salvaged from a decapitated super soldier - missing its helmet, Fluttershy made the connection, and stared at Spartan 117 in a ghoulish trance...
BANG! The Flood beat at both doors to the observation theatre, snapping her out of it.
She was made jump by a ceiling panel that clanged down right next to her. "Waa!"
"Quickly, y'all!" Applejack called, boosting the soldiers into the overhead opening.
"You last, Colgate!" declared Zecora, putting a hoof on her shoulder. "Seal us in before it's too late!"
An infernal shriek thundered from behind the doors, pasting a mortified look on Colgate's face.
When she didn't answer, Applejack bawled, "Colgate! Do you understand?!"
Uneasily, the Unicorn saluted, "Y-yes, mam!"
"WROOAAARR!" the Flood roared, cracking a door, their talons busting through.
"Fluttershy, yer up!" bellowed the sarge having just flung Zecora and Aloe into the ceiling.
The pink maned Pegasus took one last glance at the headless super soldier that should've been doing everything she'd been doing, wondering if things would've turned out better were he still alive, and jumped onto Applejack's back. Like a catapult, AJ sent her through the hole, where she was pulled up by Zecora.
It was cramped, narrow and dark in the overhead vent. So compact, they couldn't even stand.
Without somepony to give her a boost, Applejack pounced high off the deck. Her rodeo training came in handy as she was able to cling to the edge and hoist herself up, with assistance from Fluttershy.
Colgate however, wasn't a rodeo Pony. She was in fact the Autumn's dentist, and she jumped up and down, up and down, trying to reach the hole and the hooves reaching out to grab her.
"C'mon, Colgate, jump!"
"Jump, Colgate!"
"You can do it!"
Colgate was sweating, teeth gnashed. The Flood smashed a gap into one of the doors, and a hideous Elite gradually scraped through, howling in pain.
With all her strength, the blue Unicorn was able to leap into the clutches of her teammates, and they pulled her up fast. The reason Colgate had to be last was so she could magic the ceiling panel back in place, and she did so, very hurriedly. She panted, exhausted, just cheated death.
"Well done, Colgate."
However, one combat form had seen them, and if one knew, they all knew, and the panelling jumped under the equines' hooves as the Flood pounded at the ceiling.
"Uh oh! Quick!"
Scurrying on, the squad were lead a long way by Zecora, directly over the Flood's heads, to a charred hole.
First, the Zebra dropped down, her hooves ringing the steel deck, MA5B scanning ahead. The Flood were there, but they had their backs turned, still pushing their way into the observation theatre. She signalled the others to come down.
Fluttershy saw the remains of a striped barrel in a corner, and remembered seeing it crash through the ceiling and crush an Elite. It had been something Pinkie had predicted with her Pinkie sense, and as she looked up, she saw that the hole went all the way through to a higher floor.
Silent, the squad tip-hooved along, into a terribly battered section of corridor.
The maintenance access way came to Fluttershy's memory, and she whispered, "Follow me," as she took point and lead the way.
One of the monsters in the ravenous crowd must've had the hearing of a bat as it flinched to the little Mare's words, spotting the group sneaking by. And of course if one knew, they all knew.
Giving up, Twilight moaned, "Oh for crying out loud!" as the group galloped to the maintenance access way, the Flood hounding after them.
In her eagerness to escape, Fluttershy found herself entering the dark and spooky shaft first. She wanted to get out and let somepony else take point. Somepony not afraid. Somepony willing. But the rest of the Ponies were just as zealous as she was, and she felt somepony bump into her from behind, trying to get in after her.
"Come on, Fluttershy! Get movin'!"
Letting out a feeble groan of regret, the shy one crawled deeper into the pitch blackness, grunting as she put strain on her fracture.
With the flashlight turned on on her shotgun, Fluttershy scrambled ahead, keeping her eyes peeled, her ears pricked up. AJ was right behind her, followed by Colgate, Aloe, and Zecora on rear.
"Ok, just keep going," Twilight whispered and proceeded to give Fluttershy directions through the maze of tunnels.
An infernal screech flew up and down the shaft, stopping Fluttershy's heart. Petrified, she halted and buried her head in her hooves, hyperventilating again.
"Don't worry, Fluttershy. The way ahead is clear," reassured Twilight in a calming tone.
Swallowing her nerves, the young Pegasus shuffled on.
After many twists and turns, Twilight suddenly blared, "Enemy contacts! In front and behind!"
The fear overwhelmed Fluttershy, and she began to whimper with dread, getting quieter. "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no-ho-ho-hoo," sniff.
"Be ready for them, Fluttershy," sang the AI. "It's up to you to take care of the ones in front." Into the coms, she ordered, "Zecora, you be ready for the ones at the back."
Shivering in the suspense, Fluttershy waited as something came banging up from around an intersection. When the source of the noise appeared, she screeched and closed her eyes, tearing the creature a new one.
She opened her eyes, and found that the creature had been a little lost Grunt, donning the new black armour. She had been expecting worse, and as usual with the Covenant, she felt guilty for taking the poor guy's life.
Whatever was at the back of the shaft didn't sound like Covenant. All that could be heard was gross slithering and Zecora grunting as she booted them away. When an agonised scream came from the Zebra, and a horrified scream came from Aloe who was right next to her, Fluttershy had a decent idea of what was going on.
"Uh-oh. Zecora!" Applejack called back. "Zecora!"
Just as Twilight yelled, "Somepony save her!" Aloe wailed;
"Move! Get out of the way! What are you doing?! Move!"
Colgate stuttered, "B-but Z-zecora!"
The pink one wasn't having any of it. "Are you crazy?! Mooove!" She shunted into Colgate, pushing her into Applejack, and Applejack into Fluttershy.
Even when the train got moving, Colgate continued to stall, "It's not too late! She's still-"
"-Aruurghuraa-AAAARR-rurrgh!" came Zecora's howl from behind Aloe, along with a wave of warm Zebra blood.
"Ok, now it's too late."
"Move, move, mooove!"
Fluttershy and Applejack had scampered ahead, and were now waiting in a darkened, closed off section of corridor. The light was provided from both Mares' flashlights and a crackling fire.
Applejack stuck her head into the maintenance access way, her voice echoing, "Colgate! Aloe! Come on!"
A Flood on Covenant on Sentinel conflict could be heard nearby, and the unmistakable sound of Hunters put a stricken look on Fluttershy's face.
When Colgate and Aloe finally regrouped, Applejack slammed the access way shut.
"Might not wanna let your guard down yet, Applejack," Twilight advised as something else came clanging noisily up to the hatch.
The farm Pony bent her knees, shotgun pointed at the access way. Everypony else did likewise, and when the panels were smashed off and Zecora greeted them with a shriek that no Zebra could make, and her head twisted upside-down with a snap, they opened fire.
Four shotgun blasts and a plasma bolt. There was no way the contaminated Zebra could live through that. Nor the wall surrounding the vent which took a considerable amount of damage.
Curled up in a ball, Aloe whimpered, "Oh my gosh - oh my gosh - oh my gosh - oh my gosh - oh my gosh-"
Without sympathy, Colgate glowered down at the spa Pony and snarled, "You could've saved her!"
"When she was infected?! How could I?!" Aloe outraged.
Applejack walked away from the commotion to spy through a crack in the sealed blast door. She could witness the fight between the Covenant, Flood and Sentinels without being seen. There was still the possibility of being heard though.
Aloe and Colgate continued their argument.
"When one of those things landed on Zecora, you just sat and watched! You just sat there and watched that... that thing take her over! I saw it all!"
"But-"
"-All you had to do... was something! Anything!"
"It was infecting her!"
"While it was on her, before it got inside her, you had plenty of time to save her! If you'd've just got off your butt and done something, Zecora would still be with us!"
Aloe winced and brought a hoof to her bandaged midsection. Those bandages were there because she herself once had an infection form latch onto her, even penetrating her flesh. She'd been saved by her twin, the late Lotus. If she'd been saved, surely Zecora could've been saved too, right?
Sitting before the row, Fluttershy's eyes darted back and forth between the two Mares. She didn't know what to make of it all. She knew where Colgate was coming from, but could sympathise with Aloe. Aloe had just been scared. Real scared. Fluttershy had been scared too, and she still was.
She checked on Applejack who was still spectating the three way fray on the other side of the blast door. A crack of light shone through the door, helping the fire and the flashlights illuminate the dim section of closed off corridor they were all in. The light outside flickered many colours. Green, blue, pink; muzzle flashes from Covenant weapons.
"The Lieutenant Commander is gone," Colgate uttered. "Without the Captain, she was in charge. Who's in charge now, huh? Hayseed Turnip Truck? We might as well sit here and let the Flood win already."
Her attention caught, AJ turned and said, "You speakin' bad words about ma cousin, Private?" Of course she had to say "Private;" emphasise the chain of command.
"Don't lie to yourself, honest Applejack. You know he's an idiot."
"I know he's a Lieutenant, n' he wouldn't'a got to where he is today if he couldn't handle things."
Applejack had said those very words to Twilight, and it confused Fluttershy. Who was this "Hayseed Turnip Truck," and why didn't anypony have any confidence in him?
After giving the dentist an intense stare, Applejack turned back to the blast door and watched the battle, thinking about things.
Crying caught Fluttershy's attention, and she looked back at Aloe and Colgate to find that the former had been reduced to tears. Colgate turned her nose up, her expression harsh, but after listening to Aloe's sobs for a little longer, she soon warmed up and sighed. Sympathetically, she placed a hoof gently on Aloe's back.
"There there, Aloe. I'm sorry."
"No... You're right... I'm useless!" Aloe wailed back depressingly.
"Noo, you're not useless, don't say that." In a turn of events, Colgate actually nuzzled up to Aloe comfortingly. "Just... forget about it, ok. It's not your fault."
Aloe peered up at Colgate, tracks running down her grimy pink face. "But it is my fault! I didn't save Zecora. She was our leader."
"It's the Flood's fault, ok," Twilight eventually stamped. "The Flood are what made Zecora what she is now; not you."
As per usual, the AI was correct, and the survivors stared longingly at the remains of Zecora and her new additions that hung out of the access way. Gross.
Turning away from the fight scene, Applejack made her way over, almost tripping over a fallen, uninfected stealth Elite.
The section of corridor made a good spot to get a breather, drink some water, and lament for the fallen Zebra. The fight beyond was quite distracting though. The hissing Sentinels were drowned out by the shouting Covenant, and the shouting Covenant were drowned out by the shrieking Flood. Explosions came courtesy of the Covenant and their Hunters, and debris came filtering in through the crack in the blast door.
"Everypony be quiet," instructed Twilight. "We're in a good place right now. We should just wait 'til things die down in the corridor. Then we can use the maintenance access ways to gain access to it. The engine room isn't far now."
Aloe shook her head. "I don't wanna."
Both Applejack and Colgate face-hoofed.
"Oh Aloe, not this again."
"See! "Not this again!" You think I'm a liability!" she accused, pointing at the orange Mare.
AJ sighed, "No pony said that."
Getting all worked up, Aloe began to twitch, and spittle flew from her lips. "You don't have to! I can see it! You all think you'd be better off without me! I got our squad killed!"
"You didn't get our squad killed, sugar cube."
"I'm talking about the swamp!"
AJ fell silent.
"When we found the Flood, I closed the door, leaving the hack box on the other side, trapping us in. If we had that hack box, we all could've escaped. Even Rarity."
Attempting to cool Aloe down again, Fluttershy denied, "We wouldn't be better off without you, Aloe."
"Actually, we would," grunted Applejack, grimacing at the twitchy Earth Pony.
"Applejack!"
Dismissing Fluttershy with a wave, AJ glowered at Aloe. "Don't lie to yourself, Fluttershy. There is no denyin' that Aloe is slowin' us down. We had to drag her to the cryo bay, and now we're wastin' time arguin' with her here."
Fluttershy grew angry. "So what?! We just leave her?!"
Applejack shook her head. "No, no, no, we don't just leave her. We give her a choice. Either she comes with us, or she stays here while we complete the mission. It's her call."
Remembering her time in the swamp and the Forerunner facility where she'd discovered the Flood, Fluttershy interrogated, "Is that what you did with Bon Bon?"
A surprised whinny came from the orange Mare. "How'd you know about Bon Bon?"
"I met her, remember."
Fluttershy hated arguing, especially with her friends. Applejack was notorious for being honest. A useful trait to have in the military, and being truthful was indeed the right thing to do. Aloe was a liability, but walking on without her simply. Felt. Wrong.
As Fluttershy and Applejack argued back and forth, Aloe was left to sit and behold the rift she'd created between the two friends. She frowned and looked at her shotgun. Her big, powerful, insta-kill shotgun.
Fluttershy's voice was quiet and considerate. "Applejack, I appreciate your honesty, but Aloe is a part of this team."
Applejack's voice was harsh and stubborn. "Well she better pull her weight!"
"Come on, Applejack. You don't really want to leave her behind, do you?"
"Of course not, but it aint about what I want, it's about what needs to be done. We need to get to the engine room, and Aloe's stallin' us."
"Well if we have to drag her kicking and screaming, we should."
"Drag her kicking and screaming;" ha. Fluttershy giggled internally at that. She wasn't one for forcing Ponies to do what they didn't want to do, but she knew that sometimes, she just had to be cruel to be kind.
AJ went quiet, thinking. "... Uh... well, uh...
Joining in, Twilight quizzed, "Applejack, what if Fluttershy were the one stalling us? What if it was one of our other friends curled up on the floor? What if it was a member of your family?"
A sad expression formed on AJ's face as she looked at Fluttershy's broken foreleg that shivered off the ground. She'd lost all the friends Fluttershy had lost, plus her brother, Big Mac. Surely she'd care enough to not leave them behind no matter what, were they still alive, right?
Applejack held her brown cowboy hat close to her chest; something she often did when feeling apologetic.
"... I guess yer right... both o' you... I'm sorry."
"We're not the ones you should be apologising to," Twilight informed.
"Right." She turned to face Aloe. "Aloe-"
The pink Mare held her shotgun to her chin, sweat and tears pouring down her face. Her eyes were wide and veined, shimmering with suspense.
"Aloe!" everypony and AI cried, lunging for her.
BOOM! Aloe's face was blown completely off, exposing the remains of her brain in the back of her skull. Blood and scraps of flesh showered the troops as Aloe's sitting corpse flopped over backwards. The warm red fluid continued to leak out of her head, covering an old stain of blue Grunt blood.
Applejack and Colgate gasped, whereas Fluttershy full on screamed, and a Flood bellow replied to her. A Hunter bellow replied to that, along with an explosion.
Chest heaving, Fluttershy hunkered down and buried her face in her hooves and mane. "Oh my... Oh my gosh, I can't... I ca... I c-ca... I can't do this!"
The other two were speechless, jaw-dropped.
Eventually, Applejack rotated to watch Fluttershy, scrooched on the deck crying. Something hit her heart, and her lower lip trembled. Colgate's lower lip trembled too, and the Unicorn slumped to her haunches, stifling and sniffling.
"Oh my goodness," Twilight started emptily. "She just... she just... I can't believe it."
"That's what Lyra did!" squeaked Fluttershy. She lifted her head to face Applejack and stabbed, "Remember Lyra?!"
Lyra had been in AJ's squad when she went to search for that "Forerunner art," and Fluttershy had witnessed her leave existence in a similar fashion to Aloe.
Not knowing what to do or say, Applejack reached out meaningfully, stopped herself, and turned to walk away. She sat herself down by the blast door, not watching the fight on the other side, just sitting and hanging her head in shame. She joined Fluttershy and Colgate in the waterworks club.
With the thundering ambience of Covenant on Flood on Sentinel warfare, the three surviving Ponies sat separate from each other in the shadows, and wept.
*****
Closing in on the Filly of Autumn, Pinkie Pie and her Flood buddies braced themselves. The Grunt bodies had been converted to parasite spewing biomass, blocking off access to the Spirit's port troop bay. The Elite pilot had been infected, getting the combat forms' numbers up to three. Not a lot, but there were plenty of infection forms to go around.
Now, the one that was once a Jackal was piloting, and Pinkie and the Elite stood strong, knees bent, tentacles flapping in the turbulence.
The monster that controlled Pinkie intended to join a whole infestation on the UPSC ship, and it hurt Pinkie's heart to see what the Halcyon class Cruiser had become. Out of the busted starboard troop bay, she could see the vessel's battered and bruised fuselage, sporting damage from Covenant weapons and the final crash. She was perilously close to plummeting off a gigantic precipice, just teetering over the edge.
Another thing that hurt her heart, was the infection inside her, which had literally moved her heart aside to make room for itself. She didn't need that heart though. The thick fluid in her veins felt like sewage, and the parasite was the one pumping the stuff. Gosh, she felt so sick right now.
Coming up close, two of the Autumn's lifeboat air-locks came into view, and the twitching Jackal at the transport's controls flew straight into them. The wall between the air-locks did a good job of demolishing the Spirit's central cock-pit, along with the pilot. However, thanks to the odd, forked shape of the craft, the two fuselages were swallowed whole by the air-locks, and the long, purple boxes scraped into the Autumn with orange sparks and blue flames.
Out of one troop bay, the ex-elite sprinted away as if nothing had happened, as if he already knew where to go and what to do, leaving Pinkie behind. Yep, the fluffy pink victim hadn't survived the impact, much to her fortune, and her mangled form laid still in what looked like a giant purple coffin.
Unfortunately, the other purple coffin puked out a horde of infection forms, and one of them stopped to inspect her body. Greedy, it replaced the old, destroyed infection form within and burrowed inside, stretched its tendrils around her body and made itself at home.
Back from the dead, Pinkie convulsed, her senses and thoughts rushing back. It hurt. It really hurt. It hurt so much, she screamed, but it came out as a bone chilling shriek. She'd eaten Grunt earlier, and some of the blue blood spat from her chapped lips.
Now that she had landed, she was dragged along by the monster, following the infection forms through the labyrinth. She didn't know why she'd been taken here, or why the Covenant had been trying to get here in the first place, but either way, it couldn't be good.