> Halo: Twilight of a Spartan
>  by dalek117
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



The huge monolithic superstructure before Twilight Sparkle seemed to emit a sense of majesty, causing her to unknowingly shiver in awe, her mouth wide open as she studied the ruin. The trapezoidal shape of the structure was unlike anything she had ever seen, or read about, with its silver-grey metal base, along with streaks of bright blue running across the surface of it, with four appendages thrust upwards in a shape reminiscent of a griffon's claw. The top was hidden from view by a large cloud, further emphasising the height of the superstructure. The fact that it was built into the rockface of the cavern only seemed to increase the thought of the structure being odd in terms of equestrian architecture.

It took all of her effort to glance away from the sight before her eyes so she could excitedly clap her hooves together and looked to her friends. Before she could start ranting about the significance of this structure for Equestrian archaeology, Twilight noticed that the group before her all shared the same gaze she had prior.

Rainbow Dash eyes were the widest she had ever seen them, even more so than when she met Daring Doo for the first time. Applejack's mouth was as wide as Twilight's was before, though somehow, she had it in a more dignified manner. Rarity's eyes glittered at the sight of the monolith, her wide smile expression portraying her lust for the architects of the sight. Fluttershy was for once completely calm, staring forward intently without fear. Pinkie Pie was, well Pinkie, unable to be still for a single second, leaping around the small group in excessive energy and excitement, screaming her head off out of sheer surprise. Spike also had his jaw hanging low, his back arched forward as if his head became too heavy for his body to handle upright.

A small gust of wind flew into Twilight, informing her of three new arrivals to the group. Princess Celestia's long, wide wings were spread out as she glided down to place herself in front of Twilight, her former student. Following her was Princess Luna, Celestia's sister, and Princess Cadance, sister in law to Twilight. Celestia's face had a level of caution showing, highlighting the intrigue of the situation.

“Princess Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No, I haven’t”, Celestia stated softly, low enough that only the small group with her could hear. ‘And that’s what worries me’, she thought to herself, as she looked around to the surrounding environment.

They were in a vast canyon at the edge of the Griffon Empire, undiscovered until recently by a joint team of Equestrian and Griffonian geologists who accidently stumbled through a veil of magic that cloaked the canyon through a shield of invisibility. The vast site of ancient, unknown structures before them immediately caused them to contact all authorities on the planet, alerting Equestria to the find. While flying over just before, Celestia determined the canyon to be roughly thirty times the size of Canterlot, an unimaginable figure for many of the ponies living in Equestria.

Within the canyon, several unique superstructures stood high and mighty, though visibly aged, surrounded by smaller, yet similar structures that still towered over the average pony noble mansion in terms of length. Most of them had a similar material as the main base, though one or two were made of slightly eroded ancient stone.

Celestia had been alive for a very long time, yet she had never seen anything like this before. That begged the question: Who built this, and why? That’s what they were here to find out. A combined expedition from all across the planet, with representatives and archaeologists from Equestria, the Griffons, Thorax’s changeling hive, the zebra’s, the hippogriffs and the Minotaurs, has been gathered here, with Celestia and the others in the small group of alicorns and the bearers of the elements as consultants and supervisors.

Celestia, contemplating the potential answers, didn’t notice Twilight, with a gleeful look on her face, spread her wings and soar across the sky to the tip of the Trapezoidal structure, with a notepad and pencil floating in her magical grasp. However, this broke the remaining ponies out of their initial shock to attempt to follow Twilight.

Rainbow caught up to Twilight easily, as she was the better flyer out of the two, with Spike close behind, slowly flying along with the wings he developed only a year ago. Fluttershy also took to the skies yet hung close to the ground in hopes of finding any animals that live in the canyon on the structure. That left Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie to find a path that led to the top.

As Twilight and Rainbow reached the top, the cloud split in two, revealing a large platform leading to a huge door the height of the Throne Room at Canterlot. The surface of the platform was covered in lines and symbols that appeared to flow in the direction towards the door.

“This is SO Awesome”, Rainbow blurted out, her face full of excitement. “I can see this now as a potential story of Daring Doo. If only we invited her, it would have been crazy. With both our awesomeness…”

Twilight would have rolled her eyes at Rainbow’s boasting, but she was too engrossed in scribbling down detailed descriptions of the structure, so unaware of everything that she failed to notice a tiny blue light appear on the frame of the door.



The ever watchful gaze of the presence was intrigued by the sight it beheld. Two young, female ponies have come before the ancient installation in search for knowledge. A feeling of amusement emerged from within. Did they believe that they will find anything of value without consequence, the presence questioned.

As four more ponies arrived, along with a small dragon, the presence noted the differences between each one, identifying the purple one as an alicorn, the blue one with a rainbow coloured mane and the yellow one as Pegasi, the white one as a unicorn and the orange and pink ones as regular ponies. All of them emitted the presence of magic, though varying from each individual.

The presence’s attention quickly focused on the purple alicorn, noticing how she was scribbling down whatever she can, in extreme detail. Remarkable, how the minds of these ponies’ work, especially that one.

Using the recording systems of the superstructure the presence was inhabiting at the moment, it began to monitor the conversation that had begun between the 7 individuals, easily identifying the names of each of them, though its attention was still prioritising the one named ‘Twilight’, analysing her. A quick mental scan went unnoticed by the ponies, as the presence determined which one would be chosen, culminating in Twilight being picked, though the ones named ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Applejack’ were also prime candidates.

A sense of anticipation overcame the presence. It was time to set events in motion.

Using its control over the internal architecture of the superstructure’s mechanical and technological components, the presence began to manipulate the superstructure and the environment of the site to suits its needs, preparing for the task ahead.

During the manipulation, the presence overheard the ponies talking about “getting through the door”, especially Twilight, who wanted to “get a closer look at the potential magic sources that lie here.”

Indeed, she shall get a very close look and even a demonstration at the power of the ruin.



“Maybe we should just wait for the other princesses before considering opening that door”, Applejack said, her cautious nature emerging slightly. “We don’t know what’s behind it, or even what this whole building is for.”

“I agree with Applejack”, Rarity concurred, studying the worn out nature of the platform and wall. “Though I would have liked a word with the designer of this place. It needs a bit more of a smooth touch and some artistic drabs in my honest opinion.”

Twilight shook her head at Rarity’s comment, until the door lit up and a large blue transparent symbol appeared, hovering just off the surface of the door. It was a ring, with four lines running through it, the middle two lines went straight through the middle from bottom to top, while the other two cuts to the sides.

As if summoned by the symbol, sections of the wall and platform lit up in a light blue colour, dazzling the seven friends temporarily as the lights quickly went brighter, then dimmed significantly. Rainbow, after she recovered, immediately flew to the edge of the platform, looking down at the main body of the superstructure. She was greeted by the sight of more lights emerging across the body, and parts of it extending out of the main surface, creating a rough body instead of the smoothness evident before. A quiet hum greeted all the expedition members, though they could not pinpoint where it was coming from.

Rainbow quickly realised that the three princesses they left behind, along with several Pegasi and Griffons, were racing to the top of the superstructure. When they arrived, it was clear that they were giving the seven friends accusatory looks.

“What”, Celestia forced out of her gritted teeth, “did you do?!”

“We…don’t know”, Spike replied, looking around to the others, each of whom had surprised and confused looks on their faces.

A loud grinding noise was heard from behind, causing everyone to turn around and witness the massive door slowly rise up. To everyone’s astonishment, the door revealed a beautiful, sleek and shiny interior, almost causing Rarity to faint out of sheer pleasure.

While the exterior may have been a bit rusted, the trapezoidal corridor before the group was clean, bright and looked brand new. Nothing was broken, the colour pallet had changed from steel blue to a bluish-green tinge on a steel surface. The floor was lit up by lit up lines flowing through it, while the walls had large braces that connected to the ceiling. The same symbol as before was everywhere along the braces, though cut into the surface of the material.

In awe, and forgetting their initial argument, the now enlarged group began to walk in, passing through the floating symbol after realising it was not a physical object. However, after the last pony had entered, no one noticed the symbol flicker, and was replaced for a second by a smaller hologram, green in colour, which was also a ring, yet thick on the edges and in the middle hovered a hexagon with three stumps on the bottom three sides. By the time the door closed behind them, the original symbol returned.

At the end of the corridor was an identical door, though it did not have a holographic symbol before it. Spike, who was ahead of the group, cautiously walked up to the door, looking for any means of opening it. Near the left side of the door, as he approached, a blue object appeared floating in front of Spike, who jumped back in surprise. Though the object was transparent, when Spike decided to move his hand through to check if it was just an illusion, his hand encountered a semisolid piece of light, pressing it forward. A large hiss was heard, as the door split into four and slid out of site, revealing a sight that eclipsed what the group has seen before.

The cavernous room before them was vast, as if it was the inside of a volcano. In the middle was an elevated circular platform that had steps connecting it to the ground. Spires formed a perimeter a few metres away, creating a fence that was not connected. The walls were smooth yet inscribed on them were blinding symbols and hieroglyphics that were unrecognisable. The true stunner was the holographic diagram of Eques that floated in the middle of the air, high above the centre of the platform.

In awe, the group spread out, each individual closely analysing or appreciating a portion of the room. Twilight and Spike went to the centre first, climbing the stair until they reached the platform. On it, they noticed a holographic console, similar to the one Spike activated at the door, though this one was much larger, and one section of it had a different colour, red.

Twilight suddenly felt a strong desire that directed her to the console, her hooves slowly approaching it while she felt faint, as if she was in a trance. Spike, following her, noticed that her hoof was outstretched as she neared the red section. Spike recognised the section as a button, though he was unsure as to what it does.

“Twilight?” he asked, concerned at what she was doing.

“I don’t think you should…” Spike began until Twilight’s hoof connected with the button.

What everyone noticed first was the sudden noise that overwhelmed their eardrums. The large hum was everywhere, distracting the group until the spires started to extend upwards.

Twilight shook her head, as if everything became clear again. She looked in horror first at her hooves, then the console, which had lit up.

Suddenly, a small circle appeared around Twilight, creating a forcefield that threw Spike off the platform. All of the unicorns, along with Celestia, Luna and Cadance attempted to use their magic to break the circle, but to no avail.

The holographic planet morphed into a map of what looked like a giant ring, then zoomed out until focusing on a small object that was unrecognisable. As the hologram settled down, three objects emerged from the ceiling, each of them a thin, cylindrical like tube, with appendages.

As the tubes appeared, Twilight felt herself being lifted off the ground by an invisible force, that soon appeared as a small forcefield. She, along with the others, attempted to break the field, but she was still floating towards the tubes, which were now facing her.

Three bright lights flickered on, from the tubes, and suddenly the room was filled with a flash, blinding all in the room.

As the vision returned to Celestia and the others, they noticed that the room had quickly returned to its previous state, though with a horrendous exemption.

Twilight Sparkle, the princess of friendship, was gone.
> Arrival on the Pillar of Autumn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Her head filled with pain, a disoriented Twilight opened her eyes slowly. As a groan exited her mouth, her vision began to return, though it was mostly blurry. The first thing she noticed was the harsh, bright light that bore down upon her.

“I’m not ready to wake up yet…”, she murmured, her mind not yet woken up totally.

She reclosed her eyes and rolled over to her side from her back to a more comfortable position, though she was met with a cool metallic surface. Come to think of it, she was feeling that before, and not the comforting texture of her bed and sheets.

As she processed that realisation, her memory abruptly returned, causing her to jolt upwards, sitting on her flank, violently shaking all over.

“What did I just do!”, she shouted, pressing her hooves to her head, her mane becoming unkempt in the process. “Celestia is going to KILL me for touching anything!”

Gradually, Twilight began to take notice of the environment she was in. It was a large darkened room, with metal surfaces everywhere, and an overheard compartment, connected to a platform that spread across the perimeter of the room. On her level, and in the centre, were tubes that had a frozen over glass window that she couldn’t see through at a distance. A few industrial cylinders were situated near the back of the room. In front of Twilight, below the cabin was two doors, with a red light on them.

To each side of the four tubes in the centre were a partially entrenched square stand, one had a cross with dots in front, the other had a machine with two prongs over the top.

She began to walk slowly around the room, taking in all of the details.

‘Where am I?’, she though to herself, ‘and how do I get back home.’

It was at this point that she began to fully realise how much trouble she was in. ‘I may never see anypony back home ever again’, she thought as tears began to stream out of her eyes, her ears flopping downwards, her head bowing in despair. “I’m sorry, everypony.”

She crawled up in the corner and sobbed like she never had before, her mind occupied with remembering all of her friends and family back in Equestria.

She was shook out of her depressed state by the sudden light that shined in front of her, causing her to cover her eyes with her hoof out of instinct. That hoof was then grabbed, and thrown to the side, causing Twilight to look into a shiny yellow visor on a green helmet of an armoured bipedal creature.



A few minutes before…

Master Chief Petty Officer John 117 was having a vivid nightmare, placed in a courtyard facing off against an unknown hostile. He was protecting the mother/Halsey/Cortana individual behind him, though he wondered for a brief second what he was doing there. He shook off the thought and began to search the yard for a weapon.

He found a MA5B Assault Rifle on the ground nearby. He sprinted to it, grabbed it and to his horror, could not pick it up. His arms and body were that of a six year old, and the presence of the hostile closed in, ready to kill him where he stands…

The Master Chief opened his eyes, as a voice boomed through his ears.

“Chief, Chief! Can you hear me?”, the voice of Cortana boomed through his helmet speakers. As the Master Chief’s vision returned back to normal, he noticed that the Cryo chamber was dark, with no lights on.

“Cortana, what’s the situation?”, he asked.

“We’re not sure”, Cortana replied, “an energy spike appeared in the cryo bay, and the entire section went dark, much like an EMP.”

“Getting your vitals online now, sir”, a new voice emerged from the comm. The Chief moved his head to look at the main control station, and with his augmented vision, could make out the outline of two humans through the darkened room and the now tinted window.

“If the power is down, how are they operating my suit commands?” the Chief asked, curious, as his HUD began to come to life slowly.

“We had to reroute some power away from the other sections of the ship”, Cortana answered. “The Captain made it a priority to get you woken, in case this is from a Covenant saboteur. It was my recommendation as well.”

The Chief nodded, accepting her explanation. As the last part of the HUD turned on, the Cryo tube door opened, allowing the Chief the chance to exit the pod. Before he could, Cortana took the opportunity to brief the Chief further.

“We believe whatever to have caused the spike to still be in the bay with you” – the Chief’s eyes narrowed at this – “so right now, don’t try to attract any attention to yourself until you’ve gained some intel on what is going on down there.”

“The two of us up here can’t see anything, so we can only offer any assistance once something happens without warning”, the voice from before offered.

“Understood”, the Chief acknowledged, slowly creeping out of the pod, making sure that his boots didn't make a sound as he dropped down to the floor. Though the room was still dark, Chief refused to turn on his helmet flashlights, in order to not attract any attention to himself.

Peculiarly, he swore that he was hearing the sounds of someone crying. Believing it to be the aftereffects of a cryo-induced dream, the Chief shook his head, but paused when he heard the sobbing continue.

“I’m hearing something cry, I believe”, the Chief reported to Cortana.

“Crying?”, Cortana questioned.

“Yes”, Chief replied, looking around the front of the room, “coming from the rear. I’ll go investigate.”

“Be careful”, Cortana said.

As quietly as a Mark V Mjolnir suit can be, Chief crouched and walked around the cryo pod, and saw the blurry outline of something lying on the floor in the corner of the room. It was definitely the source of the crying. Strangely, the Chief could make out words being spoken such as “Pie”, “Dash” or “Spike”, puzzling him.

‘Is this thing speaking English?’, the Chief wondered, his suspicion being aroused. There was the possibility of the creature being part of the Covenant, but the voices sounded like a female, and the only Covenant females he knows of where Jackals, and the voice did not have the tone of a jackal. Still, it could be a new species not seen before.

‘Only one way to find out’, he grimly thought.

He strode towards the creature, stealth abandoned, then stopped when his eyes got a glimpse of the equine shape of the creature.

It was a lavender pony, with wings folded up, its front hooves covering its face as the chief barely heard the dripping sound of tears hitting the floor. A tiny horn was visible through its dark purple mane. It somehow also looked smoother than a regular pony/horse would.

After a brief period of questioning his eyes and sanity, the Chief decided to go the direct method. In a split second, he turned on his flashlight, with the immediate result of a cry of surprise and the instinct movement of the hooves to cover the face.

He covered the distance between them in less time, grabbing the hoof closest to him, and brought it out of the way, revealing a surprised, fearful and tearful expression on an admittedly adorable face. The abnormally large eyes grew even larger, the pupils shrinking, as she, the Chief assumed it was a she, focused on the Chief, clearly petrified from fear

Pinning the pony to the ground, though in a soft way to avoid harming her, the Chief then contacted Cortana to update her.

“I have located and neutralised the intruder”, he reported, “though it did not undertake any hostile actions.”

“Did you identify it?”

“Yes, it’s a female pony.”

There was a brief moment of silence on the other side of the comm. During the pause, the power in the room began to slowly come back in certain areas, though where the Chief and the pony were was still in the dark.

“Chief, I didn’t know you had it in you to attempt a joke in this manner”, Cortana finally replied, believing it to be a prank.

“It’s not”, the Chief deadpanned, stunning the AI.

It was at this point the lights went back up around Chief, and he got a better view of the pony, who was still petrified of him, and caught in his grasp.

The doors opened and a fireteam of five marines entered the cryo bay, all armed with MA5B Assault Rifles. They all approached the Chief until they caught sight of the pony, their mouths collectively dropping out of shock.

“Is it just me, or is that a purple pony?”, one asked in a bemused tone.



As the words left the creature’s mouth, the clear, understandable words shook Twilight out of her petrified state. Her inquisitive nature began to emerge out of the fear. It was at this point that she noticed that the aliens were exactly like her friends from Canterlot High in the alternate dimension, but their skin colour was mainly between really pale pink to dark brown.

“Um, excuse me?”, Twilight said, silencing the discussion between the creatures in forest camouflage armour and the helmets that covered their entire head except the face. The larger creature in the green armour who had pinned her did not visibly react, though she couldn’t tell if it was alive at all.

“Who are you, where am I, and how are you speaking perfect Equestrian?”

The creatures looked among one other.

“Now I’m hearing her talk”, another groaned. “Can anyone else hear her talk?”

“Enough!”, a third one spoke, his armour slightly altered compared to the majority. He, Twilight assumed it was a male, turned towards Twilight.

“To be honest, we were going to ask you the former and latter questions”, he politely commented to her. “Though we speak English, not this so-called Equestrian.”

He then turned away from her and put his hand to the side of his helmet.

“Bridge, this is fireteam Echo. We have located the intruder”, he said apparently to no one.

“This is Captain Keyes, can you confirm the Chief’s report?”, a voice appeared out of nowhere, though it was distorted slightly.

“Affirmative, it is a purple pony, though it has wings, a horn and can talk English...”

“I’m lavender, not purple”, Twilight interrupted, annoyed at the lack of distinction. She was about to lecture about the differences, but one of the creatures aimed at her with his unknown weapon, prompting her to shut her mouth.

The armoured creature motioned with his hand, and the weapon was lowered. But two of the creatures strode cautiously to either side of her, as if prepared to defend against her. Twilight began to wonder why these creatures were so hostile to her. Her inquisitive nature threatened to break out again, but she was worried at how they might react.

“Interesting”, the voice returned, though Twilight finally pinpointed to be coming from a device on the side of the helmet of the creature that spoke before. “Bring the…pony to the medical bay. I’ll have Cortana set up some instruments so we can get some answers, Sergeant. Be on constant alert, we don’t know if she is a Covenant spy.”

‘Covenant?’, Twilight wondered, ‘what are they talking about, and do they think I’m somehow related to it.’
 
“Understood”, the creature replied.

“Master Chief”, the Voice returned, though it was much louder and seemed to come from everywhere, “escort our ‘guest’ along with fireteam Echo.”

“And in one piece, please. We don’t want to cause a diplomatic incident if she isn’t part of the Covenant”, a female voice rang out, causing a snicker from one of the creatures, who was then scolded. The male voice returned. “Don’t take any chances with it. If the pony takes any hostile action, eliminate it.”

The armoured creature nodded, and in a surprising move, spoke out.

“Understood.”

Within seconds, the two creatures on either side of her grabbed her and dragged her off the floor. The armoured creature, apparently called the Master Chief, or just the Chief, as Twilight gathered from the comments made by the other creatures, grabbed one of the weapons from the hands of a creature, and held it in a way that showed some ease, but could at any moment use it without hesitation. Out of all the creatures, that one frightened her the most, and was perceived as the most dangerous.

The small group then motioned for her to follow them, which she did, reluctantly. They went through the closest door, which slid open as they approached, startling Twilight.

“Don’t you have doors where you come from?”, one creature asked after seeing her reaction, with another one of the creatures snickering at this.

“Not ones that open by themselves”, she replied, causing the group to look at one other as they walked through into a closed in corridor that had a conduit at the side that connected to another corridor. “At least, not without magic.”

They all stopped in their tracks, turning towards Twilight, who was suddenly embarrassed at the attention directed at her.

“Did you say, Magic?”, one stuttered, “as in proper magic?”

“Of course”, Twilight replied, bewildered. “You don’t have magic?”

“Hell no! Just our brains, science and technology.”

“How do we know she actually knows magic, and isn’t baiting us.” Another creature remarked.

Twilight’s horn lit up, causing an immediate raising of weapons, but was followed by looks of shock and bewilderment as a purple aura appeared around a small rag on the floor, and began levitating in the air. Twilight noted to her amusement that a few mouths dropped open.

These creatures were remarkably similar to ponies in terms of expressions on their faces, with their facial features being used the same way as ponies, and their body language as well, though in a bipedal form. In an instant, the creatures started shouting enthusiastically about their thoughts on the display of magic, attracting attention from other creatures that were not in armour and were dressed in a light grey uniform, and had no helmet. If Twilight wasn’t so terrified of their diet being carnivorous and involving ponies as the main course.

“I…don’t believe it!”

“You’re telling me.”

“Wait till the other marines see this!”

“Is that a pony?!”

The only creature that didn’t react was the Master Chief, who stood silently for a moment before nudging Twilight, motioning her to follow him. As they left, the armoured creatures followed suit. She noticed that all of the other creatures had placed their hands at an object on their thighs, making her uncomfortable and worried

“So”, Twilight began, unable to resist the temptation for more information, “what is your species called, and where am I exactly?”

“You’re onboard the Pillar of Autumn, a halcyon class cruiser of the UNSC Navy, and we are called the human race, though preferably humans or humanity”, one of the creatures, or humans as she should call them, replied. Twilight noticed that it wasn't the same human that was talking to the voice beforehand, as that one looked infuriated at the human who just spoke. "Don't say anything more to the potential threat!", he growled out

“Humans”, Twilight repeated, ignoring the sudden outburts, “but you’re a myth!”

“So are unicorns”, one of the other humans retorted, causing Twilight to frown.

“Actually, I’m an Alicorn, but I was a unicorn.”

Another round of doubletake ensured, with the human throwing up his arms in surrender. “I’m not even going to try to understand that.”

"Keep moving", the infuriated human spoke out. As they began to walk again, he stopped in front of Twilight. "And you, keep quiet." She gulped at this.

After a few minutes of walking through different corridors, stairs and rooms, they finally reached the medical bay. In it lay a few beds, with many of them occupied by humans with a variety of injuries ranging from basic to life-threatening, with a variety of devices and monitors linked up to both the bed and the walls. Some beds even had a shiny material covering the occupant of the bed, with the monitors emitting a low pitched beep and displayed a single straight line.

The group approached the pedestal in the middle of the room. Her escorts, except for the Master Chief, stepped away from her, motioning her to approach the pedestal. Twilight gulped, and cautiously trotted towards it.

As she approached closer, a small figure of a naked translucent human female appeared in a flash on the pedestal, causing Twilight to shriek in surprise and jump back, inciting a few grins and laughs from the various humans, though many were still in shock from seeing a pony move freely.

“Don’t scare somepony like that!”, Twilight shouted, with the effect of the figure chuckling to herself. As she did this, Twilight notices that most of her body were inscribed with moving text that was barely visible to the eye. “And what in Celestia are you?”

“Well, to answer your question, I am an Artificial Intelligence, designated CTN 0452-9, or Cortana, which I prefer”, Cortana replied.

“Artificial Intelligence? What does that mean? Are you a being created from technology?”, Twilight began to bombard Cortana with questions about her nature. Cortana only raised her hand to signify silence, then chose to respond.

“I’ll answer your questions, but only after I ask you some questions of my own and prove that you are not a threat to this ship or humanity. If you fail, well, there are a lot of armed soldiers in here, ready to pump your body full of lead.”

Twilight gulped but nodded her head. “I...agree to your terms.”

“Alright then, lets begin with a simple question: Who are you and what is your species’ name?” Cortana asked.

“My name is Twilight Sparkle, the princess of friendship. I come from Equestria, a country on the planet of Eques. I am an alicorn, a subspecies of pony.” Very soon, Twilight entered lecture mode, retelling Equestrian history, and pony biology, much to the delight of Cortana, who began comparing human physiology with her. To everyone’s amazement, Twilight magically precured a notepad and pen from a nearby bed stand, and was scribbling down everything she could in earnest.

After half an hour of nonstop comparing notes, they were finally interrupted by the Master Chief, who grew slightly impatient at the discussion, and at the potential risk Cortana was taking at providing information about humanity, when he stepped forward towards the pedestal. Twilight, who had learned a lot about how similar humans were to ponies, was slightly perplexed at what the Chief is, and his connection to humanity. She also noticed Cortana’s face somehow light up when she focused on the Chief.

“Did you have a nice rest in?” she asked playfully.

“No thanks to you”, the Chief responded in a gruff tone of voice, surprising Twilight, who had begun to think he was an anti-social mute.

Cortana smiled. “So you did miss me.” She then turned to Twilight. “I believe you have already met the Master Chief, though I am sorry it was…unpleasant for you.”

Twilight looked slightly guilty. “I believe it was my fault, though I still don’t know how I even was able to arrive here.”

“How so?”, Cortana asked.

“I was part of an archaeological team investigating some newfound ancient ruins on Equess that matched no known civilisations, and it somehow activated and sent me here.”

“Oh”, was the only response Cortana could give before Twilight felt a strange sensation that nearly made her empty her stomach. It passed quickly, but a quick look around, and the smell of puking, proved her suspicion that the humans felt it too, though they reacted in an expectant manner.

“What just happened?” Twilight asked Cortana, who looked distracted. But Cortana disappeared in a flash and a hiss, leaving Twilight to turn to the human closest to her: the Master Chief.



The Chief noticed the alicorn to turn towards him and had an expectant look on her face. He deducted that she must be wondering what sensation she felt, and why.

“That was us exciting Slipspace”, he said to her, resulting in a puzzled expression. “It’s a means of travelling faster than light from different star systems.” Her expression cleared up slightly, though she had a glitter in her eyes as she contemplated the possibilities of FTL travel.

“Ponies haven’t even reached our moon yet!” Twilight exclaimed, then flushed without warning. “Well… except for Luna when she was Nightmare Moon…”

The Chief was partially confused at what she was talking about, but then considered how confused she would be about everything that is going on, especially since Cortana seemingly thought that Twilight was not part of the Covenant. However, when she was distracting Twilight through conversation, Captain Keyes contacted the Chief directly and ordered him to keep an eye on her in case of anything. However, the Chief’s instincts told him that she was not a threat, yet.

It was at this point that the ship shook, causing many to lose their balance. Chief recognised the danger even before the alarms began to howl, and the crew and marines ran out to their stations. Twilight, as she straightened up onto her hooves after falling, had a very confused look on her face.

Cortana chose to return at that point to the pedestal, immediately catching the Chief’s attention.

“I’ve got some good news, and some bad news”, Cortana stated. “Well, actually, it’s just bad news.”

“Covenant”, the Chief stated, his blood boiling, causing Twilight to look confused and Cortana to nod.

“They’ve followed us from Reach to wherever here is. But that’s not all. We’ve encountered something new…a planet size ring shape artificial planet to be exact.”

The Chief cocked his head in confusion. Cortana raised her hand, and a holographic image of the Ring appeared in front of the Chief and Twilight. Twilight’s jaw dropped down to the furthest extent it could go. The Chief, however, stood impassive, though his thoughts were imagining what potential link the structure might have with the Covenant.

“The Covenant have already found us, and have surprisingly launched boarding craft instead of just blowing us all into atoms with plasma.”

“Good”, the Chief said, “that means we have a chance.”

“Indeed”, Cortana affirmed. “The Captain wants you on the bridge ASAP” - the Chief began to move away - “with Twilight here”

The Chief paused, wondering why the Captain would want a potential threat on the bridge before a battle, but nodded. Twilight looked nervous with what she just heard.
“Excuse me”, she asked the Chief as Cortana disappeared again, “what are you talking about when you say ‘Covenant’? And these ‘boarding craft’, are they dangerous?”

The Chief ignored her question, beckoning her to follow him. Together, they left the medical bay and started fast walking to the bridge, with Twilight struggling to match the Chief’s speed and follow him at the same time.

As they went past a corridor, crewmembers and marines alike were fortifying their positions, setting up barricades and arming themselves. As the pair turned the corner into another corridor, the Chief stopped by a weapon rack, picked up a M6D magnum and stocked up on ammo for both his rifle and newly acquired pistol. Twilight looked on with a growing sense of worry, as she noticed that the weapons had a similarity to the crossbows used by the royal guard and gryphons back in Equestria.

The entire ship shook once again, though the Chief could hear a collision sound in the distance. He grimaced at the closeness of the sound’s origin. To complement his fear, the alarms started to blare, and Cortana’s voice echoed across the corridor.

“Warning, boarders have breached on the ports and starboard sides. All available forces, engage and defend all critical locations.”

“What’s going on?”, Twilight demanded to know, just as they passed through more corridors before arriving at a battle site.
> Confrontation on the Pillar of Autumn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



In the corridor, the pair witnessed three crewmembers firing their pistols against an unseen foe, before one was hit multiple times in the face and chest by green plasma bolts, burning her fatally, and filling the air with ozone and the smell of burnt flesh.

Twilight screamed in horror at the sight of the crewmember’s body falling to the ground as Chief closed the distance to the remaining crew, and finally had visual contact with the enemy.

It was only a small group of Covenant: Five grunts, small, simian like creatures with methane rigs, four of them wearing orange-trimmed armour, while the other one was wearing red-trimmed armour, signifying it’s rank as a major, stood up front in standard Covenant tactics. All five of them were armed with plasma pistols. The Chief noticed that three more grunts lay on the ground, phosphorescent blue blood splattered on the deck around their bullet riddled bodies.

The Chief shouldered his rifle and pulled the trigger just as the red grunt started to turn to bring its gun to bear on the chief. A trio of 7.62mm armour piercing rounds smashed into the grunt, killing it with the third round as it penetrated the thick skull. The Chief expertly sprayed a dozen more rounds at the other grunts, killing all but one, which managed to shoot off a plasma bolt at the Chief. The grunt paused and stared in a fearful manner as the bolt collided with the Chief’s shields and did nothing. It remained this way until the Chief leapt forward and ripped off the methane mask.

As the grunt lay flailing on the ground as it slowly suffocated, the Chief checked the ammo counter of the rifle, with only 42 rounds remaining. He then turned around and looked at the small group of onlookers behind him. The surviving naval crew offered complements while Twilight had a horrified look on her face, not noticing the shadow approaching from behind.

The Chief tackled Twilight on the ground, barely avoiding the blue plasma bolt that impacted the space where she occupied. He rolled onto his knees and looked at the new adversary.

It was a Covenant Elite, a minor as indicated by the blue armour, aiming a plasma rifle right at the Chief. The mandibles opened up with a loud roar as the elite opened fire, charging straight at the Chief, who managed to pull a petrified Twilight away and fire a continuous burst at the Elite, the rounds smashing into the Elite’s shields.

When the rifle’s ammo indicator dropped to 0, the Elite’s shields gave out, exposing it temporarily. Knowing the time that reloading would take, the Chief opted for smashing the butt of his rifle into the face of the Elite with enough force to break the spine and skull, killing it instantly.

After looking around for any hostiles, the Chief hit the release on his rifle, allowed the empty magazine to fall, and shoved a new magazine into its place, resetting the ammo counter on both the rifle and his HUD. He then turned and walked to a still petrified Twilight, who’s wide eyes and heavy breathing indicated a sense of shock and horror.

‘She must have never seen blood on this scale, much less brutal killings’, the Chief realised as his eyes focused on how Twilight was staring at the blood-soaked deck. He was not without sympathy for her, but he had an objective to complete.

Grabbing her midsection, he lifted her up unto his shoulder, and began to continue heading for the Bridge. Due to the weight restraints on him, he decided to sling his Assault Rifle and drew his sidearm, holding it in one hand. This offered him enough protection to take out the trio of grunts that ambushed him in the adjacent corridor.



All of Twilight’s willpower was dedicated at keeping all of her stomach contents from pouring out from her mouth. Her shallow breaths and wide, distant eyes were symptoms of the trauma her mind was going through after almost dying from an alien, and seeing all of those different aliens kill or be killed, it was horrific for her.

She barely noticed the ongoing fights around her, isolating herself inside her mind to escape the horror of the reality she now resided in. Never had she seen any creature be killed before, not even in the battle with the Changelings at Canterlot, where she used her magic to stun the changelings attacking her friends and herself.

Not only had she seen a human be burned by what Twilight could only describe as some form of harvested plasma, but the creature now carrying her had killed even more other aliens. That doesn’t even begin to cover the fact that one of the other aliens had tried to KILL her, without asking questions. Even if she found the humans a bit brutal with what she saw, at least they had the decency to wait to see if she was a threat. Those ‘brutes’, as Rarity would label them, were bloodthirsty.

‘Why did they attack me?’ Twilight questioned to herself. ‘In fact, why are they attacking the humans?’ Twilight’s inquisitive nature once again reared its head out from the depths of Twilight’s fear and horror. ‘Are these aliens the Covenant that the humans were talking about?’

Whatever they are called, they obviously weren’t interested in making any new friends. Killing anything in your path never helps to prove your case to anypony.

It was at this point that Twilight became invested with the battle going on around her as the Chief almost collided with one of the aliens with the four hinged mandibles that had tried to kill her before. Twilight had little time to react as the Chief dropped her on to the ground and began firing his weapon, a small firearm that was more advanced than the Equestrian Crossbows, at the alien, with the shots colliding with what Twilight perceived as a form of shielding, though how it was not generated by magic was beyond her current comprehension.

The alien snarled, and dodged two of the shots, firing its own plasma weapon at the Chief, with his (Twilight assumed the Chief was a male) own shields flaring after being hit by the plasma. Twilight, though she had only just met the Chief, felt a sense of horror as he was forced to throw away his pistol as it ran out of shots and was about to grab his larger firearm as the alien lunged forward and knocked him to the ground.

She screamed at seeing him fall, attracting the attention of the alien, who then swiftly twisted on its feet and shot her in the wing.

Screaming as searing pain swept all across Twilight’s body, she fell on the ground, clutching her now burnt wing, her mind too clouded with pain to notice the bloody hole that cut through her wing. Tears running down her fur, Twilight looked on in agony as the boots of the alien strode over to her body.

It took much of her energy to turn her head to face the alien, who was now once again aiming its weapon at her, though now directly in line with her head. The next plasma blast would kill her.

Rage then boiled all across Twilight’s mind, body and soul. ‘I…WILL NOT DIE!!’ she screamed inside her head, all of her magic now directed at the alien standing over her. Her horn glowed with large amounts of magical energy, confusing the alien until she released the magic at the alien in a large, directed blast.

The alien had no time to react as the magical bolt blew through its shields, blowing up the head, scattering flesh, blood and brain matter in a wide area of effect, and sending the body flying across the room.

Twilight stared as the headless body landed, shocked by her own actions, not noticing how blue blood now covered her. ‘Did I just…kill something?’ She got up unto her hooves, but then collapsed again in both pain and shock from her injuries and actions, breathing frantically, and began to sob.

She then noticed a shadow on the floor coming towards her. Her horn lit, she turned around to face the new threat and came face to face with the Chief, who had gotten up and recovered from being knocked to the ground. From how the Chief now pointed his rifle instinctively at her now hinted at him seeing what had just occurred.

However, he quickly lowered the weapon and did something so unexpected. He took a single look at her injured wing, and pulled out an object that looked more like a fire extinguisher, though miniaturised and had the word ‘Biofoam’ written on it. He lowered it to just above her wing, and a soft, foamy substance emerged from a tube, filling the hole.

Though the initial sensation was a sharp pain, Twilight soon felt relief, and noticed the Chief motioning for a nearby human, who was carrying a small pack with a red cross painted on it. The pack was passed to the Chief, who opened it and drew out some bandages, which were then carefully wrapped around the wing and hole, with Twilight whimpering from the pain.

“Thank you”, Twilight said, after the Chief was done and had stood up. The Chief nodded in response, pivoted on his feet to face away from Twilight and raised his weapon. The human, one of the armoured ones, did the same, though not before helping Twilight up on her hooves.

The human raised his hand to his helmet, tilted his head as if listening to something, then motioned to the Chief.

“The captain wants you on the bridge ASAP. Better follow me”, he said, rushing off, with the Chief close behind, leaving Twilight to run, despite the pain, in order to catch up.

The trio arrived in a large room, with multiple tables and chairs, all arranged similar to a cafeteria from one of the royal barracks she visited her brother at. All throughout the room were humans, both the ones in the grey overalls and the armoured ones, either standing and alert, or wounded and resting. It was a depressing sight, though the Chief and the human with her were walking through the crowd without reactions, as if they were used to it.

They quickly left the cafeteria and soon arrived at an opening to a smaller room that was covered from sight by a centre wall. The human stopped in front of them and gestured to the opening. “Captain Keyes is waiting for you, sir.”

The pair entered a room where multiple humans sat in front of screens and futuristic devices, another sign of humanities advancement. As Twilight followed the Chief through the almost quiet, yet tense area, she was taken by surprise at the sight before her.

A set of windows revealed the dark, star-filled view of space. In the distance was a giant planet, with the ring construct floating in orbit. From the sizes of the two objects, Twilight deduced that the planet was bigger than Equis by quite a large margin. In amazement, Twilight stood silently, contemplating how she was the first pony to ever by past their solar system.

It was a while before she noticed the Chief looking at her, as if waiting on her. Her cheeks burning, she walked forward to a console where another human stood.

This one had a slightly different uniform to the rest of the unarmoured humans she had seen. He also had a grey mane on the top of his head and seemed to be older than a lot of the other humans she had seen, as indicated by the amount of wrinkles on his face. He was facing the screen on the console, smoking a pipe that he held in his hands.

The Chief approached the grey haired man and spoke two words: “Captain Keyes.”

Keyes turned around, lowered the pipe and shook the Chief’s hand.

“Good to see you Master Chief”, he said in a warm tone, as if meeting on a Sunday afternoon for tea. Keyes then turned to face Twilight.

“I see you brought our unintentional stowaway”, Keyes stated, then stepped towards Twilight and raised his hand. Twilight raised her hoof as well, allowing Keyes to shake it, eliciting a small smile on Keyes’ face.

“I am Jacob Keyes, Captain and commanding officer of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn”, he introduced himself. “Welcome aboard, though I wish it was in better circumstances, Miss...”

“Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and former student of Princess Celestia”, Twilight finished, formally introducing herself, already warming up to Keyes, due to his politeness and manners.

“An honour to meet you, princess”, Keyes said, taking a quick look at her appearance before his eyes noticed the bandages on her wing. “Though, correct me if I’m wrong, your highness, but Cortana never told me about your wound.”

Twilight immediately froze at this, mental images of the alien catching her breath, making her heart beat faster. Keyes noticed the change and was about to change the topic before the Chief began to speak.

“We encountered Covenant boarders on our path”, Chief explained to Keyes. “An Elite blindsided me and temporarily incapacitated me, but Twilight somehow managed to attract its attention, and attacked her, injuring her.”

“I hope you gave the Elite a proper response.” Keyes growled, his eyes narrowing.

“Negative, sir. Miss Sparkle blasted his head off in retaliation with energy generated from her horn.” Keyes raised his eyebrows at this.

“I’m truly sorry about everything, Princess”, Keyes apologised to Twilight. “The Covenant don’t care about collateral damage or harming anyone who gets in their way.”

“Excuse me for my lack of understanding, but what is this Covenant? And why are those aliens trying to kill you and now me?”

“The Covenant is a religious alliance of varying alien species, encompassing the different aliens that have attacked you during your brief time here.” Keyes explained. “They believe that humanity is an affront to their holy ideals and for the last three decades have been systematically wiping out all of humanity in a genocidal campaign.”

Twilight gasped at this revelation. It was worse than she could ever have thought. Humanity weren’t fighting for any territorial gains like other warlike civilisations, they were fighting for their own existence. Tears began to swell in her eyes.

“We’re doing our damned hardest to fight off the Covenant, and we can hold them on ground engagements, but the Covenant are too technologically superior, and have been using that advantage to destroy us, planet by planet.” Keyes gestured around him. “In fact, this ship and the crew only just escaped the destruction of the second most important location for humanity. We hoped we had outrun our pursuers, but they followed us here, with their faster ships.”

Keyes turned his attention to the Chief. “Things aren’t looking so good”, he said. “Cortana did her best, but we never really had a chance.”

It was at this moment that Cortana popped up from a pedestal in front of the console.

“A dozen Covenant superior battleships against a single Halcyon-class Cruiser. With those odds, I’m content with three” - she turned her head slightly, as if distracted by something - “make that four kills.”

A loud explosion rocked the bridge, causing everyone to stagger and attempt to grab on to something to keep themselves standing. Twilight had zero luck and fell to the floor.

“Report!” Keyes shouted.

“It must have been one of their boarding parties!” Cortana responded. “I’d guess an antimatter charge.”

“Ma’am!” One of the crewmembers behind the console, just in front of the huge window, shouted. “Fire control to the main cannon is offline!”

Cortana turned to face Keyes, her face now grave and serious. “Captain, the cannon was my last remaining offensive option!”

Keyes’ face went grim, but still had determination.

“Alright then” he said gruffly, “I’m initiating Cole Protocol, Article 2.” Twilight was apprehensive, wondering what he meant until he continued. “We’re abandoning the Autumn. That means you too Cortana and Miss Sparkle.”

“While you do what”, Cortana protested while Twilight stared in surprise, “go down with the ship?”

“In a matter of speaking”, Keyes replied. “The object we found - I’m going to try and land the Autumn on it.”

Cortana shook her head. “With all due respect...this war has enough dead heroes.”

Keyes’ eyes locked on to Cortana’s. “I appreciate your concern, Cortana, but it’s not up to me. Protocol is clear. Destruction or capture of a shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable, that means you’re leaving this ship. Lock in a selection of emergency landing zones, upload them to my neural link and then sort yourself for a hard transfer.”

“Aye aye, sir”, Cortana reluctantly replied, disappearing from the pedestal.

Keyes turned to Twilight. “And since you are theoretically the only ambassador from a friendly alien race, you’re evacuating too. If the Covenant get their hands on you, you’ll wish you were dead.” Twilight paled at this, but still nodded in affirmation. “I personally believe that it would be the right thing to do is to get you back to your people and out of this war.”

“...which is where you come in, Chief”, Keyes continued as he turned back to the Chief. “Get Cortana and Miss Sparkle off this ship. Keep them safe from the enemy. If they capture them, especially Cortana, they’ll learn everything. Force deployment, weapons research, magic.” He paused, then added: “Earth.”

The Chief nodded at this. “I understand.” Twilight took a quick look at her new protector, finding him mysterious and distant, yet a gut feeling was telling her that he was the best person she could depend on.

Keyes glanced at Cortana as she reappeared. “The Autumn will continue evasive manoeuvres until you initiate a landing sequence”, Cortana reported, “Not that you listen, but I’d suggest letting my subroutines handle the final approach.”

“Excellent work, Cortana. Are you ready?”

Cortana looked around the bridge one last time, a look of sadness on her face. She then sighed. “Yank me.”

Keyes turned to the pedestal, touched a series of controls on a small console and watched as Cortana disappeared into the pedestal. He then removed a data chip from the pedestal and offered it to the Chief. At the same time, a human in the grey overalls came over, with a small headset and eyepiece. Keyes grabbed it and fitted it on Twilight’s head, having the eyepiece in front of Twilight’s left eye.

“Good luck, Master Chief.” He finally said after he finished. Then turning to Twilight, he straightened up and raised his hand to his forehead in a salute. “Princess, be safe.”
> Escape from the Pillar of Autumn (last revised 18/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



The Chief accepted the chip and reached back to slot the device at the back of his neck. Meanwhile, Twilight was amazed at the details that popped up on the eyepiece, with the names of the humans which she could see tag them, and details about the devices they carried. When she looked at Keyes, the screen put an outline around him, with the tag: “Keyes, Jacob, Captain, UNSC Navy” She turned to face the Chief, and was awarded with “Spartan 117, Master Chief Petty Officer, UNSC Navy”

The Master Chief saluted and began to leave the bridge, motioning for Twilight to follow him. Then, much to her surprise, Cortana’s voice came out from directly in her ears, where one of the wires of the screen was connected to.

“Hi again, sorry to scare you. Just wanted to catch you up on some important details that will be essential for you.”

“How are you talking to me when you’re not here?” Twilight asked, confused. “And can you actually hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you. The headset you’re wearing has its own radio, so we can talk to any other UNSC personnel within range. Let’s keep talking while we move out. The Chief will clear the path ahead.”

Twilight walked on, moving out of the command deck, disturbed by the louder sounds of fighting.

“Now, the screen displays a Heads Up Display, or HUD for short”, Cortana explained. “It allows you to identify anything that we have information on in our databanks. It also has the benefits of providing an IFF tag, that is Identification Friend or Foe, which will mark you as a friendly to UNSC personnel…”

“UNSC?”

“The United Nations Space Command, the military wing of the United Earth Govenment, humanities main political body. As I was saying, the IFF will mark you as friendly, meaning you won’t get shot at by any UNSC forces, unless they pull the trigger by accident of course.”

“That’s encouraging”, Twilight mumbled.

“However, first things first, you’ll need to learn how to operate a weapon.”

“A weapon?!” Twilight stopped in her tracks. “I can’t use a weapon. That’s against everything I was taught by…”

“I understand that, but wouldn’t you rather you survive to get back to your home?”

Twilight fell silent at that, but nodded. “Yes.”

“Good, then we’ll start with the basics. Most of our weapons are guns, imagine them as crossbows that don’t have to reload after every shot, and uses explosives to shoot out of a barrel. Each weapon model has its own unique amount of rounds that will need to be refilled after using them all up.”

“Your HUD will identify any weapon you see.” Twilight nodded at this, as she entered a corridor that she had entered previously, horrified to find it now littered with bodies, both human and the other aliens. At the end of the Corridor was the Master Chief, who aimed his smaller weapon at an unseen target, and fired three times. After each shot, Twilight heard the scream of one of the smaller aliens, and a thump as a body fell to the ground.

With bile threatening to overcome her, Twilight trotted over to the Chief cautiously, pearing on either side of the corridor. She saw the three bodies of the aliens on the ground, their heads now decorated with their blood and the hole in their foreheads. It was a tremendous test of will that she did not puke at that very moment, though she knew she could not hold it off forever.

She noticed the Chief looking down at her, though she could not tell his emotions from his helmet. She breathed out and nodded at him, signaling to him that she was ready. Then, she heard Cortana’s voice again, though it was directed at the Chief. “Those Marines could use some help, Chief! Do what you do best.”

They entered the cafeteria again, though it was now a battlefield, with the humans fighting off the numerous Covenant forces. Twilight instinctively ducked behind the Chief, though she did keep an eye on the Covenant aliens. As she looked at each alien, a small tag of the species’ name came up on the eyepiece, with the smaller aliens with the methane pack called ‘Grunts’ and the larger, shielded aliens titled ‘Elites’. Twilight then surmised that these names were the official nicknames of the species, not what they call themselves.

The Chief charged the closest Elite, firing what the HUD identified as a MA5B IWCS or an Assault Rifle, shredding its shields and a final round cut through the chest plate, into a vital organ. The Elite slammed into the deck and died as the Chief moved on into mowing down the remaining Grunts. His appearance seemed to rally the humans, who cheered at his kill, and rushed out of their cover to help mop up the Covenant forces.

Twilight could not help but be amazed and horrified at the chaos that was ensuring in front of her. After a couple of minutes of a brutal firefight, the humans finally drove off or killed the Covenant in the Cafeteria. Immediately after, the Chief moved onwards, with Twilight following close behind.

The pair ran into a trio of humans fighting an Elite. This time however, the humans and the alien were surprised to see the Elite’s weapon be surrounded by a purple aura, and flew out of the Elite’s grasp, allowing the humans to easily kill it. The Chief looked back at Twilight, who held the weapon up to her eyepiece, pretending not to notice the death she had just caused.

A trio of grunts appeared to the side, firing a volley of plasma shots at the alicorn, who had to flee to cover behind a metal plate. She spotted a small human gun on the ground and instinctively reached out with her hoof to pick it up, and was surprised to see that she held it in her hooves without any of the human ‘fingers’ keeping it in place.

“That’s...new”, she stated out loud, attracting the attention of the Grunts. She yelped as another volley of plasma fire flew towards her. She covered her face as parts of the metal shield sizzled and melted slightly in certain areas.

The humans weren’t standing still while she was being attacked. The Chief had become occupied with another Elite and squad of Grunts from an exit hatch. He and the other humans were finishing off that group while she was forced to deal with her trio of Grunts.

She grimaced as she looked at her weapon, with it being identified as a M6D Magnum by her eyepiece. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she then got out of cover, aimed the front of the pistol at a grunt, and used her magic to pull the trigger, just like how she saw the Chief do with his hands. A single shot rang out, the recoil of the shot causing her aim to be ruined, and the bullet fly into the shoulder of the Grunt. Ignoring the voice in her head screaming about what Celestia and all of her other friends would think, Twilight, compensating for the recoil, fired again, killing the Grunt through a headshot.

The fallen Grunt’s companions growled in anguished and opened fire with more zeal, but the plasma bolts impacted on a magical shield that Twilight constructed. While the remaining pair starred with their wide eyes, Twilight deconstructed the shield and fired another two shots at one of them, eventually killing it. The last grunt was killed by the Chief, who had snuck up behind Twilight, startling her with the blast sound from his own magnum.

She turned around as the Chief strode to her. Cortana’s voice came on the radio. “You learn fast, for someone who just arrived.”

Twilight shrugged, both sheepish and horrified at the truth of her statement.

“Let’s move out”, the Chief said, his voice also coming out of the radio, “we have an objective to reach, and the Covenant are slowly but surely over running our forces.”

“Right”, Cortana said. “There should be an airlock close by. If there is still an escape pod, then our job will be done. For now.”

With that statement, the trio, along with the armoured humans, who Cortana then described to Twilight as ‘Marines’, trekking along with them to the airlock, though Twilight wondered what it was and why it was called that. It was at this point that the ship shook from an impact.

“What the hell?” one of the marines said. “Did something just hit us?”

“Move it! Back to the other airlock!” the other marine exclaimed. The humans started to quicken their pace, with a sense of dread emerging within Twilight.

As they approached it, Twilight noticed that it was a set of doors, one of which was guarded by two humans. The doors then unexpectedly exploded, sending the closest humans flying, and Covenant soldiers emerged from the door. A firefight soon broke out, with the humans coming out on top.

The Chief went through the door, along with Twilight, who found a jarring change in architecture. Instead of the grey, white and metal setting she had been in before, this ‘room’ was purple and more organic in nature. Much of the lighting and visual effects were similar to that on the Covenant weapons.

“They’re using our lifeboats airlocks to attach their boarding craft”, Cortana exclaimed over the radio. “We go out and they come in! Clever Bastards…”

The trio soon left the marines and the airlock behind, and traversed more corridors and rooms, many of which had to be fought over from the Covenant. They soon ran into a group of Covenant, this time led by a black clad Elite. This one directly targeted the Chief with a passion, going so far as to overwhelm the shields of the Chief.

“Keep your head down!” Twilight heard Cortana shout as she herself dealt with the grunts near the Elite. “There’s two of us in here now, remember!”

Confused at this statement, she watched as the Chief finally broke down the Elite’s shields and smashed the butt of his rifle into the face of the Elite, causing it to fall to the floor with a loud ‘clunk’.



The Chief quickly reloaded his rifle and moved on through a hatch, with Twilight following close behind. He was impressed with her tenacity, but worried that her mental state was in a more unstable manner now that she had killed a living creature. From what Cortana had gotten out of her, Twilight was barely coping with everything. Now that it was his mission to protect both her and Cortana, this would become a liability.

He may have to actually teach her the basics of surviving and killing another living being in order for the odds of her surviving to increase significantly. This irked him somehow, until he finally connected what he was thinking of doing to what Doctor Halsey did to him and his fellow brothers and sisters in the spartan program. Twilight was like a child to all of this. He would be no different to Halsey, though he had never held what she did to him against her. It is because of her that he is the soldier he is now.

His thoughts were interrupted by Twilight, who had a expectant look on her face.

“What did Cortana mean when she said that ‘there’s two of us in here’?” she asked.

Chief paused for a brief period, trying to find a simplistic manner to explain everything, when Cortana answered for him.

“Did you notice how the Captain gave the Chief a chip before we left the bridge?” Twilight nodded. “Well, that chip is like a container where I am inside. It’s a house, and since the Chief inserted into his neural link, I am inside the Chief’s mind for a lack of a better term. We now both share the same body, and the same fate.”

The Chief noticed the shocked look on Twilight’s face as the meaning of Cortana’s words became clear in her head.

“If he … gets hurt…” Twilight stammered out. “You also get hurt?”

“Yes”, Cortana replied. “However, rather than dealing with a very heavy mental burden right now, why don’t we reach a lifeboat and escape the ship?”

With that in the air, the Chief moved forward, and into another firefight. This time, there were five Grunts and two Elites, one of which was clad in red, a major. Deciding to focus on the major, the Chief expertly aimed a trio of bursts at the Elite, taking out it’s shields, swapped to the magnum, and put a single shot through the head, killing it instantly. Meanwhile, Twilight had disappeared in a flash of purple light, and reappeared behind the remaining Elite, announcing her presence by bucking with her two rear legs, and kicking it a far distance away, taking out the shields. The Elite had no chance to get up as a marine strode forward and sprayed a burst of bullets into the chest. The grunts were mopped up fairly easily as they began to individually flee in terror.

‘She’s got quite a big punch’, the Chief thought. ‘She could be even stronger than me, in armour.’

These small firefights would increasingly come about as the pair moved out to find an escape pod. They soon arrived at a large, open room with a staircase leading to a higher deck. Once again, it was a battlefield, and the Chief and Twilight were forced to divert their efforts at helping the marines and crew repel the Covenant troops.

Many of the marines faces here were those he knew or were familiar with. Thus, the Chief was able to easily coordinate the counter attack against the Covenant. It took only a moment for the initial Covenant forces to be wiped out before reinforcements arrived. A third species was with them this time: avian like birds, called Jackals, that carried hand held shields. Twilight immediately looked to the Chief for answers.

“Jackals”, he growled out, flanking one of them and killing it with a single burst of his rifle. “Protected at the front by their shields and are very fast and accurate. Go for either their weapon arm or the sides.”

Twilight nodded at this, and teleported to the other Jackal side’s, blasting it with her magic. The Jackal screeched as it fell, then died.

With the Covenant forces in the room eliminated, the pair moved on upstairs to reach another airlock, though all of the escape pods had already launched. With their options now limited, the Chief had no choice but to lead Twilight through a series of maintenance corridors that led to another airlock.

However, the corridor ended early, and they emerged near the observation centre of the Cryo bay that they Chief was in. Making his way quickly to the door of the centre, he found it open, with the sides melted by plasma. Dreading what he'll find through the door, he walked through and saw the dead bodies of the two techs who were stationed here, their bodies mangled by plasma fire.

His blood boiling, the Chief barely noticed Twilight's horrified reaction to the bodies as he approached the huge window that beheld the actual bay, with the three Elites in it near his open Cryo tube. They soon spotted him and attempted to kill him, though their plasma bolts could not burn through the reinforced screen.

Now ignoring the Elites, the Chief turned to Twilight, who had gone off to the side and emptied the contents of her stomach out on the floor. Going up to her, he knelt beside her and asked "Are you good?"

Twilight looked at him with tear filled eyes and nodded, though the Chief could tell that she was not fine at all. He put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner.

"You can't do anything for those who have fallen", he calmly told her. "You can only keep on going and finish the fight. You'll make it out of this and find your way home, but for now, it is the time to move on, not to mourn. That comes later."

Twilight started to cry slightly, but wiped her eyes and nodded. "Thank you" she whispered, though the Chief could hear her clearly.

The Chief was about to reply, until he heard the roar of an Elite nearby. Raising his rifle, he motioned for Twilight to follow him and together, they exited the room and saw the Elite standing at the end of the corridor. It soon saw them and started to charge them until a nearby section of the wall exploded, sending the burnt body flying.

Undeterred, the pair moved on, finding another set of maintenance corridors, though this time it was patrolled by a pair of Grunts, which the Chief quickly dealt with them before they could give out their location. They swiftly exited the corridor near another airlock, though it was being contested by the Covenant.

"Hurry Chief, the lifepods are launching!" Cortana urged on.

With this, both the Chief and Twilight broke into a sprint, but the Chief felt a bolt of plasma collide into his back, forcing him to stop and turn around. His assailant was a Grunt, with his plasma pistol glowing with charged energy. The Chief ended its life with a short burst, but was soon grabbed by a trio of Grunts.

The situation would have been laughable at best, but then he felt their hands reaching towards the bottom of his helmet and started pulling at it. The Bastards were trying to take off his helmet, so they could put in the plasma grenade a fourth grunt had just activated. He reacted with a simple shake, throwing the grunts holding him down off of him before grabbing his rifle and firing at the grunt armed with the grenade, whose eyes widened with fear as it seemed to realise that it’s plan just fell through, a single burst ending its life. He fired at the other grunts with more anger than usual, an anger that quickly faded once the deed was done.

He ran to the lifeboat, where Twilight was waiting for him. One unfortunate marine tripped on his way in, with the Chief picking him up and throwing him in the lifeboat. After both he and Twilight entered, the doors of the lifeboat shut and the Chief turned to face the pilot. "Punch it."

The pilot replied and the Lifeboat shot out into space. Twilight was having trouble trying to get into one of the available seats, so the Chief assisted her and strapped her in. As he did this, Cortana's voice came directly to Chief and Twilight.

"I managed to slice into the Covenant battle network for a brief period, and found some interesting data about our destination. The Covenant view it as a religious object in their beliefs, and call it 'Halo'."

They were interrupted by the Lifeboat being passed by a burning Pillar of Autumn as it entered Halo's atmosphere before they did. While Cortana commented on "the Captain manually piloting" the Chief turned to face Twilight, who was looking at the human cruiser through the front viewport with a open mouth and a stunned look.

"Was that the ship we were just on?" she asked. The Chief nodded and grabbed the overhead railing as the Lifeboat entered the atmosphere itself.

"Hang on tight", he told Twilight, who was obviously startled by the fiery exterior of the lifeboat.
> Arrival on Halo (last revised 18/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Twilight sat unsteadily in the seat, her equine form not suited for being positioned this way on a human seat. Her back ached and her adrenaline was starting to fade away, leaving her tired and worn out. It didn't help that she was also thinking about how many aliens she had just killed in the last hour. Granted, they were trying to kill her and her human protectors, but she wondered what Princess Celestia would think of her if she was able to return back to Equestria.

Again and again, the sight of the headless Elite would flash before her, causing her to always gasp in fright and horror. Talking about that Elite, she looked down at her wounded wing. She tried to move it so she could get a better view of it, but the searing pain overcame her so she left it be.

'What have I gotten myself into?', she asked herself in her mind. 'Not only have I encountered four new alien species never seen before by a pony, but they're locked in a brutal war that I've been swept into. I've killed to protect myself, my wing has been hurt badly by plasma so I can't fly at the moment, and now I have to ignore all of the potential knowledge I could get from most of these aliens in favour of safety'

She took a quick glance at the Master Chief, who was still holding on to the rails on the ceiling. It was still a mystery to her why the Chief was larger than most other humans she had seen on the Pillar of Autumn, and why did he have different armour compared to them. In fact, his armour's function was more similar to that of the Covenant Elites. She would have thought he was the equivalent of an Alicorn, but he obviously took orders from the smaller humans. So, that begged the question: what was he?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a large boom and the lifeboat shuddering and moving all about. It was as if something had just collided with the lifeboat.

"I can't control it!" the pilot shouted, extremely frightened. "Brace for Impact!!"

Twilight looked ahead, seeing the ground coming up really fast to them, and poured much of her magic into a shield barrier surrounding all of the occupants of the lifeboat. It took a lot of her remaining energy, but she managed to achieve her goal just as the lifeboat collided with the ground.

Flung into the air for a moment, the lifeboat then skidded across the lavish, green landscape before halting just before a cliff face. Crew and Marines were thrown of their seats and the Chief slammed into the ceiling, but fortunately, due to Twilight's shield, everyone on board was only shook up or had bruises.

All except for Twilight, who almost fainted in her seat. The crash had broken the straps, so she began to fall to the ground as her vision started to blacken out, only to be caught by the Chief.

"Easy there", he said as he carried her out of the lifeboat. She felt herself be lowered gently onto the ground, muddy from the lifeboat's impact.

"I...I'll be fine...in a bit", she managed to get out as she closed her eyes for a moment. "Too much magic with a lot a fatigue ends badly for many."

"I could tell" Cortana spoke out through the radio. "From the sensors on the lifeboat and Chief's armour, when you made that magic shield, your life signs and energy fluctuated significantly, as if it was being drained."

Twilight's eyes shot open at the last word. She struggled to her hooves, though the Chief and a nearby marine helped her up. Her mind buzzed at what she had just heard.

"Drained?! That's...that can't happen. Why would it..." she stopped as realization dawned. "I'm not on Equiss anymore, so my magic must be affected in someway, drawing energy from my own life source to power powerful spells."

"So using magic is now killing you." Cortana stated flatly.

"Only if I'm very tired and haven't had a good rest or regained some energy from food and water" Twilight corrected. "Which I am right now. I'll be fine. If it didn't kill me when I did the spell, it won't now."

She began to take a look around where she was, and gasped. It was beautiful! Trees, hills, mountains and meadows were everywhere where the eye could see, with large cliff faces and rocks placed randomly around the place in a manner that felt...natural. A light flashed in the distance, flowing upwards into the sky. In the sky, Twilight could see the inner part of the ring swoop upwards to complete itself.

"What is this place?" a marine asked as he too looked at the wonderful sight.

"I would love to stay and find out", Cortana began, with a hint of urgency in her voice. "but the crash triggered a lot of Covenant radio traffic and it's my guess that the welcome wagon is on it's way."

Twilight was shook out of her amazement, and looked to the Chief for guidance.

"Grab any weapons, ammo and supplies you can carry", he ordered to the assembled survivors.

"Warning", Cortana spoke again, the urgency now alarm, "I've detected multiple Covenant dropships on approach." This caused everyone to look around, trying to spot the dropships first.

"I recommend moving into those hills. The Covenant will know that everyone would have survived the crash from the lack of bodies, so its best that we get a head start on them, and fast."

"Acknowledged", Twilight heard the Chief say over their private comm channel.

The group began to move out across a narrow bridge that was metal and felt quite familiar to Twilight in terms of the architecture, though her head was still not all there and recovering from her magic spell.

When they passed the bridge and started to make their way up the hills, they saw a fork-shaped ship fly over them and hover near the crashed lifeboat. A pair of smaller ships, that announced their presence a mile away, flew to circle around the fork-shaped ship, which Twilight's eyepiece labelled as a Type 25 troop carrier, or Spirit. The smaller ships were called Banshees. From the sides of the Spirit, doors opened, revealing a squad of Grunts and an Elite.

It wasn't long before the Banshees had spotted the small group of humans, and had started to initiate an attack run, throwing out a massive volley of plasma fire, causing an unfortunate marine to be almost disintegrated from the amount of plasma fire he took. Fortunately, the human's Assault rifles were powerful enough to damage the flying craft and the Chief used up an entire magazine before Twilight watched one of the Banshees explode. She herself used telekinesis on the remaining Banshee, throwing it at the squad of Covenant, both destroying the Banshee and killing the Covenant troops.

With the immediate threat over, the remaining group continued their walk over the hill, running into another group of Covenant. Twilight noticed how the humans dealt with the Covenant forces, with the Chief focusing almost exclusively on the Elites, while the rest deal with the Grunts and Jackals that accompany them. A wise move, considering how resilient the Chief is compared to the other humans.

Twilight decided to not do anything this time, due to her exhausting herself more with her telekinesis beforehand. Though Twilight didn't say anything about this, Cortana seemed to read her mind. "Keep yourself safe and get your strength back. You've done more than enough for now."

It was over in a moment. The Covenant squad was wiped out, and the group went down a small drop with rocks creating some large stepping stones. It was when they finally past the rocks when they heard the familiar sound of gunfire in the distance. Twilight both took hope and dread from this, due to it meaning that there were other survivors off the Pillar of Autumn, but they were being attacked and potentially killed.

The Chief obviously agreed, as he started to rush forward, rifle at the ready.

They turned a corner and found a large, U-shaped structure with a platform near the bottom, that had lit off a bright light pulse, which raced into the sky. The pulse was just like the light Twilight had seen before, so it must have come from the structure. She also saw the Covenant dropship landing and deploying troops to combat the defending marines there.

Twilight was about to follow the humans in to help their fellow comrades when she finally recognised the architecture of the structure and the bridge beforehand.

It was the same as the ruins on Equiss.

Dumbstruck by this revelation, she didn't notice the jackal sneak up on her or the purple shard that flew towards her. All she got was the pain caused by the impact of the weapon, causing her to fall to the ground, the shard sticking out of her flank.

Forcing herself to move, she turned around and saw with tear filled eyes the Jackal get shot several times by the Chief as he, along with a dark skinned human, came to her aid.

Unable to contain the pain, and her self restrained, Twilight started to wail on and shout.

"For Buck's sake..." was all she could let out before the shard exploded, sending her blood and pieces of her flesh everywhere.

The Pain! The Pain! That was all she could think about as she rolled on the floor, screaming louder than she ever had, until she fell unconscious from the pain.



"Twilight's in trouble!" Cortana shouted in his ear as he finished off the last Elite in the area. By then, he had found out the leader of the human survivors at the structure was none other than Staff Sergeant Avery Jr Johnson, an old comrade and friend of his. They had just arranged to call for an evac when Cortana just interrupted him.

The Chief spun around, saw Twilight fall, and ran to her, firing his pistol at the jackal as he ran, with Johnson following close behind.

They reached her just as the purple needler shard imbedded in her flank exploded. Both humans instinctively raised their hands to protect their eyes, though both stopped after less than a second, and arrived at Twilight's still screaming form.

"Medic!" Johnson shouted out

Fortunately, the wound was not fatal, or that severe. Blood was flowing freely, and the Chief could see a lot of her muscle tissue. However, he knew from seeing other soldiers getting ripped apart by multiple needles about how painful and dangerous one could be. Twilight must be in hell.

'That was the second time she was hurt while I was supposed to protect her', he thought to himself, silently cursing outloud. 'What kind of a guardian am I?'

Fortunately she would recover, but as the medic said as he brought a med pack and patched her up, the flesh at her flank would be scarred for a good, long while.

The Chief, Johnson, the medic and another of Johnson's marines, a man called Jenkins, carried her up to the structure. There they placed her softly and the medic used some bio foam on her.

"The...same...architecture...", he heard Twilight moan softly in her unconscious state.

'The same architecture?' he thought as another Covenant dropship entered view. 'What could she mean by that...' He then remembered an earlier conversation between Twilight and Cortana on the Autumn that he had overheard before the ship was boarded.

'So, these structures, and Halo,  were made by the same race that built the ruins on Twilight's planet. If that's so, then why didn't she teleport onto the ring itself, instead of on the Autumn?'


A good question, a question for later, after he gets Twilight out of here. But to do that, he'll have to deal with the Covenant.

A grim need for revenge tried to come out of him, but he repressed it. Yes, the Covenant had not only hurt Twilight, but the countless human lives lost to them, as well as the lives of his fellow brothers and sisters in the Spartan program needed to be avenged, but not by unguided sense of vengeance. He would need to be calm and smart to deal the greatest amount of damage to the Covenant and complete his objective.

With that, he walked away from Twilight, his rifle at the ready, on the way to kill the Covenant forces that had just left their dropship.

After the Covenant forces had finally left the humans alone, Chief and Cortana were soon contacted by a welcome voice.

"This is Pelican Echo 419. Can any UNSC forces here me?"

"Echo 419, this is Charlie Company. We'll need extraction out of this mess."

"Copy that. Additional Warthog on route as well."

As Cortana continued the conversation with Echo 419, the Chief made his way back to Twilight, whose breathing had steadied, and seemed less pale then before. He looked at the medic, who was shaking his head.

"This pony is amazing", he stated, "not even twenty minutes after, and she's already starting to heal. She'll still have a scar afterwards, but the main flesh and muscle will repair itself." As he said this, the Chief could already see small parts of the wound repairing itself in a speedy manner.  "In fact, I won't be surprised if she wakes up soon."

With the Pelican flying close by, the Chief looked up, and saw three fiery streaks in the sky, indicating more lifeboats landing close by. If he had seen them, then the Covenant would have too, so they would need to be found and the survivors extracted before they are killed by the Covenant.

Cortana realised this too, so she asked Echo 419 to drop off her warthog for the Chief so he can find the lifeboats. However, first he'll have to get Twilight on the Pelican for evac to...

"Cortana, where is the Pelican going after all of the marines and Twilight are on board?"

"To Alpha Base. Major Silva's Helljumpers had taken a secure and fortified butte from the Covenant, and is now serving as the UNSC's main headquarters on Halo. They have set up an adequate medical facility there as well, so it would be best for Twilight to go there. She can't stay out here in the open just yet, though she will have to."

The Chief accepted this. Though he didn't have any time to meet the commander of the Autumn's ODST contingent, his record was quite clear of any red flags, except for a specific date did jump to mind as it was the date he came out of surgery for his augments. What Silva had to do with it, he had no idea so far. However, communications from him and his staff had shown Silva's hostility to the Spartans, so the Chief wasn't all that friendly with him.

As the Pelican swooped in and landed, Chief slowly walked up to the bay of the dropship, carefully holding an unconscious Twilight. Johnson was walking next to him, simultaneously smoking on a cigarette that he brought along with him, and holding his MA5B, all the while putting out a casual stance, though his eyes showed the cautiousness and experience of the aged sergeant, darting across his surroundings in order to find any threat that may be lurking.

"Get going Chief", Johnson said as the both of them finally reached the dropship, with the Chief strapping Twilight in. "I'll look after her for you until you return." He put his hand on the chief's shoulder. "She'll be fine."

The Chief nodded at this, accepting Johnson's word. "I'll be at the base shortly, after I bring home some marines."

"Glad to hear it." Johnson said, shaking the Chief's hand before they parted ways. The Chief stepped off the lowered dropship bay doors and made his way to the parked warthog with a gunner waiting for him on the machine gun, while Johnson closed the doors after all of the survivors were on, and the Pelican flew off into the distance.
> Alpha Base
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Twilight slowly opened her eyes only to find herself on a bed of sorts, with wires and monitors attached all across her body, especially her flank. Her vision still blurry and her mind still dazed, she struggled to take off one of the wires when a hand stopped her.

"Please don't do that, not yet at least", an unfamiliar voice was heard. She tried to locate the origin, but she still couldn't see anything.

"Your still in the early stages of consciousness after such a vicious wound, and an even more remarkable healing process, so I'm sure that you'll be quite tired and dizzy." The voice seemed to become distant. "Go back to sleep. I'll wake you up in an hour."

Twilight didn't hear most of what the voice said, as her eyes started to close once more. All that she heard before she went under was a new voice, that sounded more deep and menacing.

"Yes...sleep well, for you still have much to do, and experience."



Twilight woke up once again, though she remembered nothing of the time when she woke up beforehand. However, she felt very refreshed and somehow safe. Until she remembered what happened to her flank.

Panicking, her eyes went to her flank, with her trying to move in a certain way so she could see what happened to her. Surprisingly, all that was visually there was just a large scar. However, when her hoof touched the fur around the scar, it hurt like hell, emphasising the flesh still being raw from her wound.

She looked around at her surroundings, and found herself to be inside a large tent, with a few beds and equipment similar to that on the Pillar of Autumn. There were a few humans on the beds,  though like on the Autumn, some of the beds had the occupants fully covered with a sheet.

'So, this must be like a makeshift hospital', she thought to herself.

It was at this moment that another human walked through the entry flaps of the tent. It was a female, and was dressed in another unique set of armour that was darker in tone, and had more armour pieces on it, though not as much as the Chief had. She had her 'hair' cut short on the sides and flat on the top, and her face was quite balanced with green eyes, full lips and a slightly flattened muzzle...nose, not a muzzle.

The female strode over to her bed.

"How are you feeling?" she asked Twilight.

"Like a timberwolf trampled all over my head and flank", Twilight groaned out, rubbing her face.

"Well, you did take a needle to your ass, so I'm very surprised that's the most your feeling." If Twilight wasn't so drowsy, she would have been appalled at the use of swearing. Instead, she was once more inquisitive.

"A Needle?", she asked.

"A small, needle projectile used by the Covenant in their Needlers", the human explained. "Each shard homes in on any heat signatures, making them hard to evade, and also highly explosive. If you thought your wound was bad with just one needle, two or three hits on an unarmoured human would have caused the human to be ripped apart by the explosion."

"Oh, great" Twilight spat out, "another thing to worry about. Don't the Covenant have anything better to do than kill or design weapons to kill?"

"Well, we do know that they are very religious, so they probably worship something, such as this ring where we are on now."

"Have they always been this...zealous?", Twilight asked.

"Yes, Considering how they decreed three decades ago that our extinction was 'the will of the gods'" the human said, a hint of anger and hate entering her voice.

Twilight shrunk back a tiny bit into her bed. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault." the human put forward her hand. "First Lieutenant Melissa Mckay", she announced herself .

Smiling, Twilight put her own hoof out to shake McKay's hand. "Princess Twilight Sparkle"

"I heard about how you managed to fight off the Covenant pretty well on the Autumn", McKay noted, then added "for an alien race that is quite pacifistic."

Twilight paled at the mention of fighting, but managed to ignore her disgust for it. "How do you know about my..."

"Cortana briefed us on what you've told her about your species aversion to fighting and killing." McKay's face became sympathetic. "I'm sorry you had to get involved like that."

Twilight shook her head. "It's my fault", she said, "at my home planet, I did something stupid by activating an ancient ruin and was teleported onto the Autumn as a result."

It was then that she remembered what she had discovered beforehand.

"The same builders", she stated out loud, much to McKay's confusion. "This ring, and the ruins on my home planet that teleported me here have the same architecture, which means whoever built the ruins built this ring!"

McKay's eyebrows went up, the only sign of her being surprised, before she put her hand up to her ear, listening to something. After a moment, she nodded and looked back at Twilight.

"Are you feeling well enough to be able to come with me?"

Twilight considered her answer, and the state of her body, for while she was still in a small amount of pain, she could theoretically move about. After a moment of hesitation, she nodded. Siting upright at the bed's edge, she planted her hooves on the floor, and walked sluggishly up to McKay.

The pair exited the tent, revealing an open space filled with humans running about and hastily assembled portable buildings and equipment, both human and Covenant, which the humans must have captured. There were also some bodies on the ground, which groups of humans were picking up and taking out of sight. Debris and burnt sections of nature and structures were everywhere.

McKay led Twilight to a much smaller tent than the medical one she was in before. Outside the flaps were two guards, in a similar uniform to McKay. As they approached, the guards saluted McKay, but gave Twilight a semi hostile glare. Noticing Twilight's discomfort with them, McKay gave the guards her own glare, causing them to look away in guilt.

"Don't mind them", she said, gesturing for Twilight to enter first. "They've never met a friendly Alien before. That, and they're drop happy."

"What do you mean?", Twilight asked, stopping before the flap.

"Well, they and I are part of an Elite Special Forces branch of the UNSC Marine Corps, the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, or ODST for short. That stare they were giving you, every other person who isn't an ODST gets that as well from some ODSTs."

"Oh", was all Twilight could say. 'These humans are quite fascinating.', she thought to herself. 'I wish both of our species could get to know each other in a more peaceful way and environment.' She straightened up and walked through the flaps.

Inside was a human male sitting on a scavenged chair behind a similarly acquired desk. Twilight noticed that this man had some 'fur' around his mouth and chin. His hair was grey, and his face had some wrinkles on it.

"Welcome", he said, sitting upright as he saw Twilight enter. "I'm Major Antonio Silva, commander of the Autumn's contingent of ODSTs. I see you met my second in command, Lieutenant McKay."

"Princess Twilight Sparkle." Twilight lost count of how many times she had said her name, or how many times she probably will have to say it.

"So I've heard", Silva stood up and walked over to her. "Captain Keyes managed to give me a very brief update on you before the Autumn crashed and his subsequent capture."

"Well I didn't say that much anyway and … Wait, Did you say Capture?!"

Ignoring her outburst, Silva continued on.

"That being said, let's get to the reason why you're here," he said with a darker tone, rising from behind the desk and approaching her. Suddenly feeling intimidated by the human in front of her, Twilight unconsciously took a step back. The human studied Twilight in silence for a few uncomfortable moments before speaking again. "I'll be honest with you, princess. I don't like you. Even if Cortana is vouching for you, I still believe that your very presences here poses a threat not just to us, but to humanity as a whole," he bluntly declared. "You're an unknown factor in an already precarious situation. If it wasn't for the help you've provided us so far, I would have personally removed the risk that you represent the moment you stepped in our base."

Twilight gulped at his open hostility, briefly glancing at the pistol holstered at his hip. So far, Silva was the only human to outright threaten her. She suddenly wished for the Master Chief to be here with her. Even though her friends back in Equestria would be more comforting for her, the Chief was still a human and may be able to reason with any human who distrusted her. But, how did she know he didn't have secret orders to kill her if she did something bad. Even worse, he could be...

Agh, this complicated thought process was too much to handle. Better if she just ignored it and focused back at what was at hand. She composed herself and stared right back at Silva, ignoring the growing sense of anger within her.

"I only just met humanity through an accident." She explained to Silva. "Why would I cause harm to your species? Not only I empathise with you, but I personally find you quite fascinating."

"I don't know", he admitted, "Fear of the unknown? Jealousy over our achievements? There's a number of possibilities. For all I know, you may end up embracing the Covenant mentality."

"Or maybe I'm being truthful and you're letting your paranoia cloud your judgement," Twilight pointed out, honestly offended by his insinuations.

"Maybe," he was forced to admit. "But paranoia is what helped my people surviving all these years." The major leaned against his desk and crossed his arms. "You want to prove you're not a threat to humanity?" Twilight nodded. "Fine. Then help us fight off this ring, so we all can return back to our civilizations."

"Wh...What?!" Twilight stepped back, appalled by Silva's request. And from the looks of things, so was McKay.

"Are you suggesting that I continue to kill in order to show that I'm..."

"Yes", Silva said in a serious tone. Then his face became softer. "Look, I don't want you to fight every battle on the ring, though your magic does make you an extremely valuable warrior on the field. And, I would like you to be with a taskforce, whose mission I think you may accept."

Twilight's eyes narrowed at this. "How do you know what I may like, since you're asserting that I should kill for you?", she said in a dark tone.

Silva did not even blink. "Because, I know how nicely Captain Keyes treated you when you arrived, and since you call yourself the 'Princess of Friendship', I assumed you would want to help us rescue him from the Covenant."

Twilight hesitated once again, thoughts flying through her brain. After a pause, she looked Silva in the eyes.

"Do I have a choice?", she said, both bitter and reluctant.

"Sir, she's too innocent for combat.", McKay inserted herself into the conversation before any word could exit Silva's mouth. "From the Chief's report, she doesn't have the mental state to handle..."

"I know, I was there when he said it", Silva interrupted calmly. "But we are trapped on an unknown structure in space, with the Covenant owning much of it. Our commanding officer has been captured, most likely being tortured as we speak for information. We are cut off from the rest of human space, and since Reach has been glassed, there is very little of our space still intact. I'm very desperate for any advantage over the Covenant, and this pony is it. So I'm willing to send her out into battle so we can ALL live." His voice raised only slightly for the last sentence, but it drove the point home.

"That being said", he started, turning back to Twilight. "I won't send you off to war unprepared, or unguarded. I'm assigning the Master Chief to you as a protector, but where he goes, you go. Is that clear?"

Twilight calmed down slightly at the news of the Chief helping her. Out of all the humans, she seemed to trust him the most. Though she was hurt several times already, he had ensured that she would survive and recover.

But, it was more likely that he would be sent to the most dangerous areas on the ring, with the Covenant in greater numbers than other places. Still, a gut feeling told her that it would be all right. But she found it interesting that Silva's tone became almost scolding when he announced the Chief. She wondered why.

"Ok", she said, much to Silva's joy and McKay's guilt. "I'll help get Captain Keyes."

"Great", Silva said, rubbing his hands together. "I'll get the Chief and some marines to train you for combat, and to survive."



"Oh, sweet Celestia…" was all Twilight managed to get out before she fell to the ground, every bone, muscle and organ in her body sore from hours of constant training. Her fur was drenched in sweat and her mane was covering her eyes. Her hooves and chest were also bruised in concentrated area, though her Alicorn metabolism would ensure that they would disappear after an hour or two.

In front of her stood the Chief and the human known as Sergeant Johnson. The three of them were in an almost completely open area with Johnson's squad of marines scattered throughout it, having watched the three with intense attention.

The past three hours started with a simple lesson by the Chief and Johnson, teaching Twilight about the basics of combat, both close-quarters and ranged, hoof to hoof and firearm. It was also very enlightening to see two marines do a sparring match between each other: How they used every advantage against the other. Her newly acquired notebook had a large number of pages filled with details and calculations from the sparring match.

Then, Johnson called Twilight up, not to receit what she had seen, but to do a trial fight against none other than the Chief. And the rules were that Twilight would have to be the aggressive one and the Chief would have to retaliate. To put what happened in a simple way: Twilight had her flank kicked.

Within a drawn circle, Twilight's goal was to knock the Chief onto the ground, or push him out of the circle. The Chief's goal was to remain in the circle until a timer finishes. Within half an hour, they had done eight rounds, only one of which Twilight won because she used her magic to push the Chief out by surprise. Otherwise, it ended with her always failing due to the Chief's fast reflexes and his own training, managing to easily overpower her through tactics and knocking her out of the ring.

Other than seriously draining her energy, the exercise was a wake up call at the importance of learning close quarters combat. So Twilight was not surprised when they decided to get her to try out some fighting with a combat knife one of the marines produced. What did surprise her was the corpse of a dead grunt they had brought out for her to use it on.

"Why in Celestia's name are you bringing that here?!", she shouted, appalled at the thought of it all.

"Well", Johnson started, "we don't have a practice dummy with us, so we have to improvise with what we have. Secondly, it would be best to learn where to strike on an opponent. This way, you will have more visual information on how to kill an opponent, and which spot to aim for on each enemy."

He noticed Twilight's disgusted expression and went for a softer tone. "Look, I'm not happy about it either. Personally, I wouldn't even have you fight for us. However, I can't change that, but I can change the chance of you surviving, and I'm making sure that it is as high as it can be."

He walked up to Twilight, bringing along the knife which she was going to use. He opened up his hand, allowing Twilight to envelope the knife with her magic and take it out of his grip.

"If that means having to use a dead body as a dummy, then so be it." Johnson took out a small white tube put it in his mouth, raised a small metal box and, with the box, lit the tip of the tube. Twilight realised it was like a miniaturised smoking pipe that the nobles in Canterlot would frequently use. "I would rather do that than give the Covenant the satisfaction of turning me into a corpse."

Twilight looked away for a second, then looked back at him, a guilty look on her face. "I...would too, I guess", she muttered, the truth of that statement causing her heart to feel heavy from the guilt of it.

'What will everyone back in Equestria think of my choices here?' she thought to herself as Johnson stepped away and propped the corpse up.

"Now", he started, attracting Twilight's attention, "the best way to take out a Grunt...actually, most aliens within the Covenant, is to aim for the head with a gun. With a knife however...", -he pointed to a spot in the front of the neck-, "it's best to dig deep at this spot. That would fatally wound it, though it may still live for a moment or two."

"Or..." Johnson highlighted the mask on the grunts head, "just rip this mask off with your hand...hoof I mean, or your magic. Grunts aren't your typical alien in the respect that they breath methane gas instead of oxygen. So, remove the mask, they suffocate." Twilight paled at this, but nodded, remembering an encounter with a Grunt on the Pillar of Autumn where the Master Chief had actually done that.

After Johnson finished explaining the weakpoints, he had Twilight practice knifing the corpse in certain spots so she would get used to it. Then, Johnson brought out a few different firearms, some she had seen before, others were seen for the first time. One was a very, very long rifle with a curved box on the top. Another was in similar size to the MA5B, but had a pump on the front and lacked its bulkiness. The last one was much bigger than the rest, made up of two large tubes, with the firing mechanisms in the middle.

"Now, these are the some of the pride of the Corps", Johnson said in a proud tone. "Some of these you've most likely seen before but I'll go through a quick description of each."

He grabbed the pistol she had used on the Autumn. "This is the M6D magnum. Semi-Automatic Pistol, meaning that when you pull this trigger, it fires a shot. It only has 12 rounds in each magazine before you have to reload, like this." he gave a quick demonstration, then got Twilight to try it. "It also has a magnification scope that links with the HUD on an eyepiece or helmet. This means you can use it at range against enemies a fair distance away."

Next, he pulled up the weapon the Chief and the other marines used the most.

"This is the MA5B Individual Combat Weapon System. We call it the Assault Rifle. It is the backbone of UNSC infantry weapons, though this is just one model of Assault Rifle that we have operating. Unfortunately, the Autumn was only stocked up on this. It has a magazine capacity of 60 rounds, all of which is armour piercing, meaning this can damage vehicles. It has an automatic fire-rate, so when you pull the trigger, it keeps on firing as long as you hold down the trigger. It is best for close-quarters combat, so it doesn't do range as well as the magnum due to the bullets going wide after a certain distance."

After that, he went to the first new weapon, the long, thin one.

"This is the SRS99C-S2-AM Sniper Rifle, a four-round, gas-operated, long range rifle. Perfect for taking out enemy commanders with a single shot to the head. Has a much higher range and a better scope than the magnum."

"Next is the M90 shotgun, a close quarters combat weapon. Though it has considerable range, it excels when the enemy is almost upon you. This can help you out if someone gets the jump on you and is about to skewer you with an energy sword."

"And this, is the SPNKR Rocket launcher, one of the deadliest weapons ever designed. It is for extreme ranges only, as it is an explosive weapon. In each of the two tubes is a rocket, a much larger form of bullet, that when it collides with something, it explodes. Don't use it up close, or you'll be blown up by it. Great for large enemies and vehicles."

"Now", Johnson said, turning back towards Twilight. "I want you to grab these weapons, one at a time, and do a couple of laps around this area holding them. This is so you can handle the weight of these weapons in combat without them weighing you down. Now go!"

This was what Twilight had been doing for the past hout. That and actually trying out most of the weapons that were in front of her. While she had been practicing, she noticed that the Chief stood to the side, watching her intently, until she would make a mistake, helping her correct it. Out of all the humans there, it was with him and Johnson that she felt more at ease with, so she was more accepting of his feedback.

Then she once again had to duel the Chief, though this time she was allowed to use a pistol with dud rounds in it, so she could practice shooting a moving target. The Chief would have to avoid getting hit and take her down. Unfortunately, a medical scan of her body had come into Johnson's hands, which identified her bone structure as "strong as a Spartan's". This made Johnson give permission to the Chief to use substantial force.

The result of this was constant beat downs by the Chief on Twilight for the initial few duels. The Chief was unnaturally fast, though not nearly as fast as Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie when there was a party without her. He always managed to dodge her shots and close in to knock her to the ground.

After those though, before the Chief could knock her down on the eighth fight, she bucked him a fair distance away, surprising everyone there, including herself. Scared she may have hurt him badly, she was running up to him, her mouth spewing out apologies, when the Chief simply stood up, not even hurt, as his shields had taken the brunt of the blow. He shrugged it off and simply told her to do another duel. 

As they completed more and more fights, Twilight was able to finally land a few shots on the Chief, and match his strength in certain scenarios. Though he didn't appear to be tiring as nearly as fast as her.

After she panted for a moment, another marine ran up to the Chief. They spoke a few words, before the marine ran off.

Twilight was shaken out of her recollection of the last three hours by the Chief offering his hand to her. She accepted it, and let him pull her off of the ground. As Twilight looked at the sky, she noticed it was sunset.

"It's time", the Chief said before handing her an AR and a headset with an eyepiece. She took them with her magic, fitting the headset over her, and saw the Chief collected another AR, and a sniper rifle.

From the distance, Silva and McKay walked up to them, with another squad of marines.

"We have received intel that Captain Keyes is being held on a Covenant CCS Battlecruiser, the Truth and Reconciliation", Silva told the two and the marines. "Now, since the ship has landed for repairs, its time to go out and rescue him."
> Infiltrating the Truth and Reconciliation (last revised 18/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Twilight looked out of the bay doors of the Pelican Dropship as they flew over the Mesa. She was strapped on one of the many seats in the Pelican, each of them taken by a heavily armed Marine. The Chief stood at the edge of the bay itself, His left arm holding a hand rail from the ceiling, while the other hand held his Sniper Rifle. Cortana was also present, inside the Chief's helmet.

Before they left Alpha Base, one of the Marines had a pouch and weapon strap custom made for her, allowing her to carry ammunition for the MA5B on her back, and the pistol hanging from the strap on the side. However, she was mainly planning on using magic for the mission, as she felt she hasn't mastered firearms yet. If she had to use them, she would, but she decided that she would act as a support for the Chief and the Marines.

Together, they, along with the group of marines led by Sergeant Parker, were to infiltrate the Covenant Warship, the Truth and Reconciliation, and rescue Captain Keyes. First though, they had to pass through the defended valley beneath the warship so they can enter through what the humans called 'the grav lift'.

A mix of feelings including determination, anxiety, horror and guilt all clashed inside of Twilight for what she was about to do. It was one thing to kill another living creature in self-defence, no matter how horrible it is to kill something. But this will be different. This time she would be on the offensive, trying to kill others in order to achieve a mission. But she had to, if she was to gain the trust of some of the humans in command.

However, most of the humans had been quite friendly to her, and were appalled when Silva forced her to join the assault. Some had even objected to it, though to no avail. Humans apparently have a strict structure of command, unlike Equestria.

After Captain Keyes has been rescued, though, the humans would be commanded by someone a lot more friendlier to her, so maybe she might be able to avoid being sent to war. She doubted this, as the humans may need her help to survive the ring world.

She was shaken back into reality by Sergeant Parker, who stood up and eyed the group. "All right boys and girls...and pony....lock and load." he said through the team frequency on the radio. "Our Captain has been taken by the Covenant and shut away in a purple tin can, and we're here to take him back. Remember, the Master Chief takes point, so follow him and his instructions. We also have a extra terrestrial guest with us, so make sure you have her back."

Parker turned to the Chief, and gave him a thumbs up, which the Chief offered the same gesture in return. Somehow, this brightened Twilight's mood, having seen humans react in a more...accepting manner to each other.

"Thirty seconds to dirt!", the pilot of the Pelican announced over the interior radio. "Make sure you get the Old Man back, and leave those bastards dead on the floor."

As the Pelican swooped down and hovered a hoof above the grassy surface, Twilight was amazed at the engineering and flight achievements of human technology as demonstrated by the Pelican, being able to hold its weight off of the ground, and fly in the sky. All of the marines unstrapped themselves and stood up, ready to embark out of the dropship.

Parker yelled "Go, Go, Go!" and all the marines, the Chief and Twilight leapt out of the dropship, landing on the smooth grass and dust. Twilight noticed that it was really dark. It was in the middle of the night, and barely any light other than that coming from the strange work lights littered around the place. Though her eyepiece had night vision, she cast a minor, simple spell allowing her to see well in the night.

After depositing the marines, the Pelican closed the doors, and flew off into the distance. Soon after, the Chief crept along a rocky footpath to the right, with Twilight following close behind. It soon rose to a two-meter high embarkment, with clusters of rock providing plenty of places to hide behind.

"Warning", Cortana said on the comm freq, "Covenant Stationary Guns are guarding that pass. I recommend using that sniper rifle to take out the gunners." What she was talking about was a deep pit that was several meters ahead of the footpath. It was filled with Grunts, Jackals and Elites, with two purple, hovering seats which had a weapon attached to them set up on converging line of sights. Both of the seats had a grunt sitting in them.

The Chief found a patch of cover next to a large stone, and motioned for Twilight to move to the next rock. She complied, and waited as the Chief raised his rifle. After a moment of nothing but waiting for any sign of attacked, Twilight turned back to the Chief, and witnessed him practicing moving his rifle to aim from one of the armed seats to the other as fast as he could.

After several attempts at this, the Chief pulled the trigger and the Rifle kicked against his shoulder as a loud bark was heard. The Grunt in the first Shade had his head blown off, sending blood everywhere. As the body fell out, the sniper rifle had already fired another shot, killing the Grunt in the second Shade.

However, the bark from the rifle was so loud, it immediately alerted the Covenant forces, who began firing at the Chief, but fortunately they hadn't noticed Twilight yet. That would change as Twilight used her magic to throw an Elite into the air, and smashed him into the ground, breaking every bone in his body, killing it instantly.

A second Elite turned to see what had happened to his comrade, when his head exploded from a sniper shot. Though the results was disgusting, Twilight was amazed how the sniper managed to break through the Elite's shields and cut through the body only when aimed at the head because she witnessed a third Elite moving just enough to avoid getting hit in the head, but still having his shields go down from the sniper rifle. The kinetic force must be extreme on that weapon.

Unfortunately, the Chief had to reload his sniper before he could fire again, and the remaining Covenant forces attempted to take advantage of this, but were flanked by the marines, who had waited until the Covenant were preoccupied to join the fight. Within a minute, every Covenant lay on the ground dead, and the extraction team moved on through the pass.

The pass gave way to a slope, with the left being the edge of a cliff. A trio of Jackals were squatting there, waiting for the humans to come, but were unaware of Twilight, who teleported behind them and used her magic to throw them off the edge. She looked towards the Chief, who had snuck up to her.

They arrived at a semi-open area, where there was a path to the left that was covered by a rocky landscape and an elevated footpath, and a gap through the middle, revealing the middle of the area. It was also filled with Covenant forces. The Chief motioned for the group to halt, as he moved down the left path.

Twilight decided to sneak behind cover, and take a peek at the Covenant forces. There were three Elites in three different sections of the area, the middle one having red armour and carrying a dark purple rifle, with green lights on it, unlike the usual blue plasma rifle the other Elites carried. Similarly, in the distance was a Jackal without a handheld shield, but had an eyepiece and carried a long rifle that was different from the Elite's one, with a large hole in the middle of it, and a glowing light flowing through the middle of it. Scattered around the three Elites were numerous Grunts and a few Jackals.

One of the Grunts that was near where the Chief had gone was suddenly hit by the back of Chief's rifle, the body falling to the ground without alerting any of the other Covenant forces. The Chief then leapt out of cover and fired a single shot at the Jackal with the rifle, shooting it in the head. As the bark of the rifle echoed through the open space, the Marines and Twilight, who telekinetically carried an Assault Rifle, opened fire at the surprised Aliens, mowing down the Grunts and Jackals.

One of the humans threw a metal ball at the feet of a Jackal and two Grunts. After a brief pause, the ball exploded, sending the burnt and shredded body parts of the Aliens across the area.

While the Grunts and Jackals were disorganised, the Elites rallied and ran towards the Marines, the two blue ones firing their plasma rifles, while the red one focused on the Chief, firing accurate shots with his purple rifle that were green and thin instead of the usual bolt shape of plasma. Twilight held the trigger of her Rifle at the nearest blue Elite, using up most of the ammo in the mag before it fell to the ground. So, to help the Chief, she enveloped him in a magical force field before the red Elite could take down his shield.

Enraged, the Elite now focused on Twilight, firing at her in a methodical manner. She raised a shield in front of her, but the impacts seemed to be continuously degrading her shields, as if it was radiated. but the shots ceased as the Chief vaulted behind the Elite, grabbed its head, and twisted it with a loud crack.

The last Elite was quickly finished off, and the team was on the move, going down a path away from the open area, that lead to an enclosed arch and eventually, after twenty minutes and a few Covenant patrols, arrived at another large open area, where at the centre of a steep dip in the ground of rock and glass lay a large metal disk. Purple light seemed to shimmer and float up to the belly of the Covenant Warship just above them.

On the edges of the dip were three Shade turrets, and a garrison of Covenant troops. As soon as the extraction team entered view, the Covenant troops started to pour down fire at them.

"That's our way in", the Chief shouted, pointing at the Gravity lift. "We need to deal with these forces beforehand so we can land some reinforcements", Cortana added in.

"That's going to be a problem!", Twilight shouted as she blasted a nearby Elite with her magic. "What about those Turrets?"

"I'll deal with them", the Chief growled out, then aimed at the nearest Shade with his sniper rifle, killing the gunner. He then rushed up and vaulted into the now vacant seat. Twilight couldn't help but feel a sense of irony as the Chief used the Covenant's own turret against them, sending purple-white energy first at the other shade turrets, then at the Covenant Troops. Within seconds, they were cut down.

Twilight and the Marines were about to rush forward when one of the Marines yelled "Look at that! There's more of them!" as a dozen figures floated down from the Warship through the gravity lift and landed on the disk. Two of them were Aliens that Twilight had never seen before.

They were huge, mostly covered in steel-blue armour, their wormy, orange skin only exposed in two points: the neck and the back. On their left arm was  large, handheld shield that allowed them to provide cover for most of their body when they crouched, which they did a lot. Their right arm had a new weapon, with green bulbs and three small claw like appendages on the sides of the front. Their backs had six spikes attached, all of which seemed to become erect at the sight of the humans. While the regular Covenant forces spread out, the two new aliens roared in unison, a sound that felt like a town shouting than two individuals.

Whatever they were, the Marines became temporarily spooked, but opened fire anyways. While many of the Covenant Troops fell to the human onslaught, the new Aliens, which Twilights eyepiece gave the title of "Hunters", simply raised their shield, causing the bullets to ricochet off of them. Their weapons glowed green until they fired at the marines, making a 'whoop' sound. The green blasts hit two Marines, causing them to literally melt.

One of the Hunters jumped off of the disk, and charged straight at Twilight. Though they looked bulky in nature, the Hunters were remarkably swift. A Marine made an attempt to distract the Hunter, but he was simply crushed by the shield when the Hunter swung at him. She teleported several feet away in order to avoid getting hit by it, but heard one of the Hunters weapons discharge, saw the blast flying towards her face, and teleported once again out of fear.

She flashed into existence on the other side of the dip, and aimed a beam of magic at the Hunter, who turned around in the nick of time and blocked it with its shield. However, the beam did manage to burn it significantly, so Twilight poured as much power into another beam, and unleashed it in a much grander scale than the previous one in terms of raw power.

The Hunter attempted to just block the beam again, but the beam began to melt its armoured shield, much to everyone's, including Twilight's, amazement. The only thing that prevented her from totally destroying the shield was the blast from the Hunters weapon that came flying at her, making her use up her magic to teleport away.

Once again, she appeared in a flash at another area of the dip, though this time she had to contend with the Elite that was there, trying to kill a wounded Marine. Because she had used up a considerable amount of magic and won't be able to use any for a brief period of time, she bucked him so hard, he flew over the edge of the cliff. She turned around to deal with the Hunter, only to find the Hunter right in front of her, in the process of swinging its shield at her.

She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the impact, but it never came. Instead, she heard a groan, then a loud thump. She opened her eyes and found the Hunter dead on the ground, with the Chief standing behind it, his Sniper rifle being lowered.



As soon as the Hunters arrived from the Gravity lift, the Chief felt his blood run cold. He had faced them many times before, which meant that he knew how deadly they could be. With their Fuel-Rod Cannons, their metal shields and their ability to leap into motion within a heartbeat, the two Hunters could very well kill the entire extraction team.

So the Chief began the motion of swivelling the turret round to fire at the Hunters, when the closest Hunter fired first. The Shade took a direct hit, flinging him to the ground as the momentum of the impact flung the Shade off of the edge.

His shield display flashing red, causing an alarm to shriek at his ears. He grabbed the nearest weapon to him, his fallen Sniper Rifle, and raised it, only to find an Elite in front of him. The Hunter was distracted by a Marine, who was using cover to protect himself, popping out at opportune moments to shoot the Hunter, only to slip back before the Hunter even spotted him, a smart move. However, the Chief still had to deal with this Elite.

The Chief fired a single round at the Elite, breaking his shields down, and followed up with the back of the Rifle being smashed unto its face. The Elite was knocked back by this, his face broken and bruised, but still alive. That is, until the Chief fired another round through his chest, puncturing his major organs, killing him.

After a brief pause, letting his Shields recharge, the Chief spotted Twilight duelling the second Hunter. He witnessed her teleportation after her super beam, pinpointed her new location, and saw the Hunter charge after her. Realizing the danger she was in, his eyes looked at the top left of his HUD, and saw dismal news. He only had one bullet left in his Sniper Rifle.

With this in mind, he charged after the Hunter, and, before it started to bring its shield up to smash Twilight, aimed through the 2.5x Scope at the exposed part of the Hunter's back, seeing all of the worms that made up the Hunter's body.

Certain he had the right mark, he pulled the trigger and watched with satisfaction as the Sniper bullet penetrated the exposed worms, and ricocheted off of the inside of the armour, killing more and more of the worms, until the Hunter died.

Discarding his rifle, and ignoring Twilight's gratified expression, the Chief spotted a fallen Assault Rifle next to him, just as the first Hunter roared out a cry of anguish as it witnessed the death of its bond brother. The Chief lunged at the Assault Rifle, narrowly avoiding being shot by the Hunter as it solely focused on him now, trying to avenge its brother's death.

He brought his AR up to bare, and fired a short burst to enrage the Hunter further in a successful attempt at causing the Hunter to charge at him. He sidestepped the oncoming Juggernaut and managed to dodge the enormous shield by a few centimeters. He aimed for the unprotected area of the back once again, emptying the Rifle's magazine into the back. Killing it with the last bullet.

As the Hunter fell to the ground, the Chief fed a fresh magazine into the MA5B, scanned the area for enemies, and called out "All clear."

Twilight trotted up to him, her body shacking from adrenaline rush and shock. Her head was looking side to side at a fast rate, as if she expected an attack to come up out of nowhere. However, the Chief had no enemy indicators on his motion tracker, and the remaining marines were calling in all clears. The Gravity Lift was free for use, and Cortana used this opportunity to call in Echo 419 for reinforcements.

He looked down at Twilight, and though no words exited his lips, she understood his unspoken question. "I'll... be fine", she said, looking right back at him, forcing a positive expression to her face. "We've made it."

"This was the easy part", he said, much to her obvious dismay. "Now for the hard part."

"He's right", Parker said, walking up to the pair after having scolded some of his troops for keeping their eyes off of looking for any signs of trouble. "This was only a small guard force. There will be a lot more of the bastards up there, though we do have some advantages."

"Like what?", Twilight asked.

"The tenacity and skill of my marines here", Parker pointed at his squad, "you with your powerful magic that could melt Hunter armour, and not to mention the Chief here, the last god damn Spartan alive. Hell, I believe he could achieve this mission by himself."

The Chief felt his gut go heavy at the mentioning of him being the last Spartan, though he understood that Parker didn't mean that in the bad way. His brothers and sisters were all dead now, and all he could do was continue on fighting without them, even though many of the soldiers on this ring, including Silva, considered him to be a freak.

Twilight looked at the Chief with a surprised expression on her face and opened her mouth when Echo 419 arrived in her Pelican. After she unloaded a group of fresh Marines, he waved them over to join the Extraction team, and walked up onto the lift pad, joined by Twilight and the other Marines.

"Looks like we made it", a Marine said just as an invisible hand plucked him off the surface to pull him up to the Ship. Parker was next, remarking in a sarcastic tone about them being the lucky ones before rising up.

Twilight gave a yelp of surprise as she was lifted off of the ground,her hooves temporarily waving in the air as she struggled to control her anxiety from it, and was pulled up like the others. Cortana took this moment to comment about her plan. "I can home in on to the Captain's Neural Interface once we're in the ship, and will use that to lead us to him, though he will most likely be placed in the ship's brig, or at the very least near it.

"Glad to hear it", he dryly remarked in reply, before he felt the beam pull him up towards the Ship. Within moments, every Marine, Pony and Spartan was flying towards the Ship. The Chief tightened his Grip on his Rifle. Things were about to get hectic.
> Into the Belly of the Beast (last revised 18/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



The Chief felt himself lurch as the Gravity lift hung him in the air for a brief moment before crashing down on the deck of the Truth and Reconciliation's lift bay. Twilight, Parker and half of the Marines had already arrived just before him, and more were still coming up. Twilight was obviously enjoying the sight of the Covenant Architecture, with their tapered rectangular boxes that were the equivalent of gear crates being stacked all around the high compartment, two of which were open, with Needlers being exposed, waiting to be picked up, as well as the high ceiling that had lights, the large and small doors on all of the sides of the bay.

Once the entirety of the extraction team had arrived, the Marines spread out across the bay, looking for any Covenant that could be hiding, waiting to strike. The Chief also went towards one of the high metal doors on the perimeter. Twilight simply stood in the middle, unsure of what to do.

"There's no Covenant here", one of the Marines whispered as Parker finally gave the all clear signal, "so where the hell are they?"

The Chief approached the portal, just as the red light in the middle turned green, having been unlocked, before the portal opened. There stood an Elite in brown coloured armour, whose expression shifted from boredom to shock. The Elite, which the Spartan recognised as a Stealth Elite, tried to activate his active camoflage to escape, but the Chief grabbed its head just as it turned invisible, shoved it into the wall and brought the butt of his rifle down at the exposed neck, snapping it, killing the elite. As the corpse slid down, the Chief hoped that the noise wasn’t enough for any Covenant to hear and-

Three set of doors flashed open on the other sides of the bay, revealing a swarm of Covenant Troops, who then began to rush out to kill the Humans.

A second Marine glared at the first Marine who had spoken the fateful line, even as he dove behind a crate for cover. “ ‘No Covenant,’ " he mocked the embarrassed troop, who was forced to duck to avoid getting hit. “You just had to open your mouth, didn’t you, asshole?”

A firefight quickly erupted in the compartment, with the Chief targeting the Elites, leaving the Jackals and Grunts for the Marines to handle. The first Elite he encountered was a major, and was thus prepared for a direct assault, so the Chief simply ignited and threw a captured plasma grenade at him. It attached to the Elite's chest, and the Elite speedily tried to remove his chest armour, but was too slow and was vaporised in the explosion. He emptied a full mag of AR ammo into a second Elite, who was a bullet sponge until the final bullet entered his skull.

As he fed a new clip into his Rifle, a third Elite had a hole blown right through its chest by Twilight, using her magic like a cannon. As a Jackal tried to rush her, she simply threw him to the other side of the compartment with her magic, and crushed him with a Covenant Crate. The Chief was impressed by her skill with her magic.

After the covenant troops had been killed, one of the large doors opened up, revealing a trio of Jackals. They opened fire at the Marines, but Twilight blocked their shots with a magical barrier, allowing one Marine to throw a grenade at their feet, the ensuring explosion sending the mangled bodies flying.

The team exited the Compartment through the now open doors, only to be blocked by another large door at the end of a large, but short corridor.

"Doors locked, sir", a Marine said after attempting to slice through the controls, "I can't bypass it. We can't go through here."

"There are a series of side passages through the small doors back they way we came", Cortana said over the Com. "We can use them to go around."

"Why bother?", Twilight said, much to everyone's surprise. "I can teleport us all to the other side of that door", she explained to the group.

"Can you handle this many at once?", Cortana asked, concerned.

"I believe so", she stated, only her eyes betraying her worry. "It's worth a shot."

"I say we do it", Parker said, looking to the Chief for confirmation. He weighed the risks and benefits, and decided to go for it. He looked at Twilight. "All right", he said, "but if you begin to struggle to control it, or you run out of stamina, abort at that instance, and I'll simply go around and open the door from the other side."

"Got it", Twilight replied, half distracted as she started to draw on her reserves for this magic feat. "Everypony, stay close!", she said, concentrating on the spell. The team nudged together, watching as Twilight's horn began to glow a very bright and intense pink.

Then, simply a blinding flash, and they were in another entirely different compartment. The Chief immediately felt the urge to empty the contents of his stomach, but his willpower quickly silenced the urge. Many Marines, however, weren't so lucky. Within seconds, the floor was covered in puke. The Chief, thankful that his helmet partially filtered the smell away, turned around to the rest of the compartment, and found himself staring at a dozen shocked Covenant Troops, their eyes glued to the ensuring scene as if they couldn't believe their eyes.

The Chief, however, took the initiative, throwing a grenade at the feet of the still shocked enemy. This threw them out of their trance, but it was too late. The grenade exploded, killing all but one Grunt, who was then dispatched by the Chief.

He turned back to the team, and found most of them had recovered, but Twilight fell to the metal floor, her fur pale and her body shaking.

"Well, that's something I'm never doing again for a while", she commented in a tired voice, before standing up on her still shaking hooves. "At least not with this many at once."

"Can you continue on?" Parker asked, just before a door opened up, revealing more Covenant Troops.

"Yes", Twilight stated in a firm voice, but then added, "though I won't be able to use many of my usual spells until I recuperate some energy." She was obviously still able to use telekinesis, as evidenced by her use of her now unslung Assault Rifle, firing at the Covenant Troops.

Within seconds, the Covenant Troops had been eliminated and the team was forced to move on through a series of small passages, where Covenant Forces lay in ambush. It was only due to the shimmers in the air that the Chief was able to spot the Stealth Elites waiting for the team to approach at the corner of one of the corridors.

While the Stealth Elites were dangerous with the element of surprise, and their ability to blend in with their surroundings using active camo, their only weaknesses was the fact that the glowing lights from their weapon's emitters were still visible, and they lacked energy shielding. With this in mind, the Chief noticed that both Elites were armed with plasma rifles, so he slung his rifle, pulled out a M6D he had acquired from one of the fallen Marines, zoomed in on their heads, and fired three shots. The first Elite went down with the first shot, but the second Elite dodged the bullet meant for him, and managed to get out a burst of plasma fire before the Chief took him down.

After they finished traversing the corridors, they entered a large hangar, where all hell broke loose.



Twilight ducked as a charged plasma bolt flew over her head. She turned around, saw the Jackal that had shot at her, and returned the favour with a burst of Assault Rifle ammo. It almost sickened her that she would resort to using a firearm this soon after she had decided not to, but her encounter with the Hunters, and her constant use of magic, had made it clear that she would need to fight with them in order for her to survive, as the Covenant wasn't going to single her out for living.

She fired a long burst at an Elite, only hitting it with half of the shots she had fired, due to the inaccuracy of the Assault Rifle from certain ranges, and her lack of skill with using the weapon. This would be a problem she would need to fix. The Elite snarled at her, firing his weapon at her. She leapt to the side, dodging the plasma shots, and telekinetically threw a crate at him, hitting it with enough force to knock out its shields. She then fired the remaining bullets in the magazine into the chest of the Elite, finally killing it.

Twilight looked around at the battle being waged around her, spotting that Covenant reinforcements were flooding into the hangar through several open doorways, some of them appearing on the platforms above their heads. Blood was being spilt everywhere, bullets were either ricocheting from walls or being embedded into flesh, plasma pretty much burned everything it touched and, the most frightening, purple needles were flying in the air, homing in on any target they could find. Wounded marines groaned as their comrades tried to find cover for them, while similarly hurt grunts screamed as they were used as living shields for their partially alright superiors and other grunts.

"We need a way out of this bay now", she heard the Master Chief say from the Com, "or there won't be anyone left to complete the mission." His worried tone did not go unnoticed by Twilight.

Then, Twilight's heart wrenched as she heard a bloodcurdling roar from the right. She turned and saw Sergeant Parker taking on a Hunter alone. He discarded his rifle as it ran out of ammo, and tried to grab his pistol before the Hunter leapt forward and used its shield to shred through his armour.

Twilight looked on with both horror and anger. She reloaded her rifle and began firing at the Hunter. So did the Chief. Together, they attacked the Hunter from two points, with the Chief distracting the Hunter, while Twilight came in from behind, and tried to put in numerous rounds from the side. The Hunter was too quick, and managed to swivel enough so her shots landed on its armoured back sections.

Then, when Twilight saw the Hunter position itself to leap out at her, a single shot was heard from behind it, and the Hunter stumbled forward, groaning, before collapsing to the floor, with two or three worms suddenly popping out, disgusting Twilight. Twilight looked at the Chief, but saw him look back at her, shrugging. Then, a cough was heard and Sergeant Parker limped towards the pair, only pausing at the corpse of the Hunter to spit on it. His free hand was pressed against the open wounds on his side, where blood flowed down onto the floor, painting the metal in a crimson colour.

Twilight ran up to Parker, allowing him to lean on her as a surviving Marine came up and patched up the wound. The Chief, who had taken a covering position, gave the sergeant a quick nod. "Not bad for a Marine. Thanks."

Parker gave a quick laugh at this, taking his weight off of Twilight as he walked up to a fallen Assault Rifle and picked it up, feeding a fresh magazine into it. He grinned. "Any time, swabbie." He then looked at Twilight. "You too, princess. Thanks."

The Chief also turned to face her and spoke out. "You're not bad yourself, Princess. Good work out there."

Twilight felt her cheeks burn from the congratulations, but was quickly distracted as Cortana's voice came up over the Com. "Got it!", she proclaimed as one of the large doors opened up. "Everyone should move through the door now. I can't guarantee that it won't lock when it closes."

With this in mind, Twilight and the surviving Marines followed the Chief as he led them into another corridor, that had no Covenant in it. They went up onto the upper level in the Shuttle bay, and encountered more enemies, with thankfully no Hunters about. However, there was one of those Jackals with the strange rifles that she had seen outside. Though it was on the other side of the bay, it still managed to hit one of the Marines in the head with a single, precise shot. The team was forced to take cover as the Jackal sniper kept them stuck in a certain area, with a dozen Grunts, Jackals and Elites making their way to finish off the extraction team.

Twilight peeped out of cover for a split second before pulling her head back as fast as possible, with the shot from the Jackal ripping through the spot in the air where her head was originally. But then, she heard three shots from a M6D, saw the Jackal fall of the edge, and looked at the smoking barrel of Chief's pistol. He then threw a grenade at the oncoming Covenant group. The explosion took out the majority of the enemies, leaving the survivors to be wiped out by the humans.

The team moved out once again, crossing to the other side of the upper level, and entered another set of corridors. After engaging another squad of Covenant Troops, which were easily dispatched, Twilight noticed that she only had three magazines of ammo left in her pouch, meaning she would have to conserve her ammo and make her shots count.

They entered another compartment, this time with a platform hovering in the air, connected to the floor by a ramp. On either side of the platform was a trench. On the Platform stood a golden clad Elite, who seemed to be in charge of everything. On the ground floor were a dozen Grunts and Jackals, along with an Elite Major and Minor. The team literally stopped in their tracks at the sight of the Golden Elite, though Twilight didn't know why.

"Shit!", a Marine said, as one of the Grunts spotted the team, attracting the attention of the Covenant troops, including the Golden Elite, who grabbed an object on his thigh and activated it, forming a glowing sword with two blades. "Zealot!"

The Zealot jumped down from the Platform, and plunged its sword into the chest of an unfortunate marine. In a swift movement, he rolled out of the way of an oncoming grenade and sliced another Marine's head off. While the Zealot caused havoc, distracting the entirety of the extraction team with its massacre, the other Covenant Troops rallied, taking advantage of the massacre, focusing fire on a single target, killing the poor Marine.

"Twilight!", the Chief shouted as he focused purely on the Zealot. "Take out those Elites!"

"On it!", Twilight shouted back, as she telekinetically picked up one of the frag grenades a dead Marine had been carrying and threw it at the Elites' feet. However, there was no explosion.

"You have to activate it, with the button!", Parker shouted over the automatic fire of his Assault Rifle, seeing Twilight's mistake.

Twilight nodded, then telekinetically pressed the button on the grenade. After four seconds, the Elites, having no clue about what she did, blew up, along with the Jackals and Grunts next to them.

Twilight couldn't help but grin at her achievement, which seriously horrified her. 'Am I becoming a killer?' she thought to herself before she was thrown to the ground by the Zealot ramming into her.

She landed on her back, and became winded after the Zealots armoured foot jammed into her belly with a lot of force, pinning her to the ground. She looked up, and saw the sword in its grasp about to lodge itself in her chest. She focused as much magic as she could into her horn to use as a single blast, but dispersed it when the Zealot's shields were taken down by the Chief, causing it to stumble off of Twilight, who tripped it with her telekinesis, allowing the Chief to fire a burst at the head of the fallen Zealot, killing it.

Twilight got up to her hooves with the help of the Chief and Parker. On the door on the other side, more Covenant Troops entered the compartment. Without a word, Twilight and the Chief charged the enemy, firing as they ran.

"This looks like the ship's command centre", Cortana commented after the last Covenant Troop was eliminated. "The Captain's transponder's signal is strong. He must be close."

The Chief looked around the command centre and then turned towards Twilight and Parker. "Hold your men here", he told Parker. "I'll be back soon-with the Captain." Twilight began to walk towards him, but he shook his head. "You too, Princess."

Both Twilight and Parker began to protest, but then Parker stopped, and nodded. "Just don't tell Silva", he said.

Twilight continued on though. "What if you need backup?", she said, envisioning the Chief alone, surrounded by Covenant Elites, about to rip him apart and...'Wow, that was violent', she thought, 'why would I even think like that?'

"I'll be back", the Chief said, interrupting Twilight's self reflection. "I promise."

Somehow, those two words managed to stay Twilight's hooves as the Chief ran through the door that the Covenant had come out of just a moment before. Twilight didn't know why but she felt in her gut that his promises were, somehow, powerful.

Parker turned towards Twilight, his face sweaty and pale from the pain from his wounds. "If there's any human who would come back, it would be him", he said to comfort her.

She nodded, but then remembered something that he had said earlier. "Sergeant?", she asked him "what did you mean about him being 'the last Spartan'? And what is a Spartan?"

Parker's expression darkened as he considered how to answer her.

"A Spartan is...well, a super soldier", he started to say to an intrigued Twilight "who in their past has been genetically augmented to function better than a normal human, and has a very fast reaction time, and state of the art armour, Mjolnir armour to be exact. There has always only been a small group of them, but the creation of the Spartans has been classified, though there are some nasty rumours about them."

Twilight was about to inquire further about these rumours when one of the many doors opened, and two stealth Elites, with the same swords as the Zealot, rushed out, only the slight shimmer in the air revealing their camouflaged forms. However, Parker, who was a veteran, spotted them with his experienced eyes and shouted out. He aimed at the wrist hand of one of the Elites, fired a single, short burst that revealed the body temporarily, and finished it off with a burst to the Chest.

Twilight simply threw one of the corpses on the ground at the second Elite, causing the camouflage to fail temporarily when the corpse hit it, allowing Twilight to kill it with the last bullets in her rifle. Twilight, seeing that she had no more spare ammo magazines in her pouch, decided to discard her now useless Assault Rifle, and unclipped her pistol.

It was at this moment that the Chief returned, with a battered and bruised Captain Keyes and three other rescued Marines. Keyes' face actually looked surprised at the sight of Twilight with her pistol in her magical grip. The extraction team gathered around the Chief and Keyes.

"I'm surprised that you joined the rescue op, princess", Keyes stated directly to Twilight, "though I am grateful for everything." He nodded with a faint smile on his face. "Thanks!"

Twilight smiled at this, though her cheeks flushed from the gratitude, but then faltered at the reason why she was actually here. "I didn't have a choice", she said, to his surprise. "Major Silva forced me to come to prove that I'm not a threat to humanity."

Keyes' eyes narrowed at this. "Is that so?", he stated, glancing at the Marines, some of which couldn't face him out of shame. "Well, I'll deal with this matter later", he said, looking back at Twilight with an apologetic face, "but we have another issue to deal with first."

He then looked around at the group assembled before him. "While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I heard then talking about the ringworld, and its destructive capabilities."

A lot of Marines, including Twilight either stared in disbelief or gasped as a result. "What kind of destru…" Twilight started before being interrupted by Cortana.

"One moment sir", she said over Chief's speakers, "I'm accessing the Covenant battlenet." After a few seconds, she continued on. "If I'm interpreting the data correctly, the Covenant believe that Halo is some kind of religious weapon, one that begins the process of something called 'the Great Journey'. They believe that Halo would sweep away all those who are unworthy, and ascend the Covenant into Godhood."

Keyes nodded thoughtfully at this revelation. "The aliens who interrogated me kept saying that whoever controlled Halo controlled the universe."

"Now I see", Cortana added "I intercepted a number of messages about the Covenant searching for a control room. I thought they were looking for the bridge of a ship I damaged with the Autumn during the skirmish above the ring-but they must be looking for Halo's control room."

"Wait", Twilight interrupted, drawing stares from Keyes and the Chief. "So, if the Covenant gain control of Halo, does that mean that...", she paused as she struggled to bring the words out, "that they can kill anything that they want, or conquer the universe? Anywhere?"

"That's what they believe" Cortana answered in a sombre tone, "and if I understand what you are getting at, then yes, your home planet will most likely be in danger, now that the Covenant know you exist."

"That right", Keyes continued in a grave tone, "If the Covenant gain control of Halo, they'll use it against both of our people. And if they're right, the power that they'll gain would be the equivalent of Godhood."

He turned towards Chief. "Chief, Cortana, I have a new mission for you. We need to beat the Covenant to Halo's control room."

"I'll help too!" the words left Twilight's mouth before she could even think. The outburst attracted stares from everyone present.

"Are you sure about this, princess?" Keyes said, "This will be dangerous, and you will run the risk of losing your life on this. I can't ask you to help us with this."

"I know", Twilight said, trying to formulate her thoughts, "but as Cortana stated beforehand, Halo, in the hands of the Covenant, threaten everything, including Equis. Not only do I have a duty to get back there, but, as a princess of Equestria, I have a higher duty to protect it from any kind of danger. If that means having to...lose my life in order to save my friends and subjects, then so be it."

"With all due respect", the Chief interrupted the both of them, "but it might be best to finish this mission before we start considering the next one."

"Good point, Chief", Keyes said. "Marines! Move out."

Just as Keyes had said this, the extraction team were ambushed by a swarm of grunts coming in from every door. However, they were easily dealt with, and the group moved on, though Twilight only kept half her attention on the situation at hand. She was still thinking about what she was about to agree to, and how there was no going back.

She was still thinking about that when an Elite jumped in front of her, armed with a weapon that had the purple shards that almost destroyed her flank earlier. She stumbled back as memories of her wound, and the pain from it, flashed before her eyes, her breath and heartrate increasing.

The Elite fired a volley of needles at her, but thankfully she had put up a shield, causing the needles to shatter when they collided with the shield. Her anger flared. How dare this alien use that brutal weapon against her. In a fit of rage, she blasted it with a large magical bolt, burning through its shields and creating a huge hole in its chest.

Shocked at her actions, she put her hooves to her mouth as the Elite's corpse collapsed to the floor.

'Did I...just do that?' she asked herself, 'and why was I thinking those thoughts? It was horrible!'

"Twilight?", the Chief's voice came from behind her. She turned around and saw the Chief standing beside Keyes, who had a concerned look on his face. It was at this moment that she realised he was holding a captured needler in his hands.

She unconsciously took a step back as soon her eyes caught sight of it. Though Keyes was puzzled by this, the Chief made the connection.

"Sir, I think it would be best if you take this instead of that", he said, grabbing a fallen pistol from beside the corpse of a fallen Marine. Keyes, his eyes showing understanding, accepted the trade, and walked to help Parker with another Marine. Twilight looked up to the Chief, her pulse returning to normal. "Thank you", she whispered to him.

He nodded, and they continued on, fighting their way back to the hangar. When they reached a small compartment, Cortana's voice came over the Com, though not directed at any member of the Group. "Cortana to Echo 419...We have the captain and need extraction on the double."

"Negative Cortana! I have a flock of Banshees on my tail...and I can't seem to shake them. You'll be better off finding your own ride." The instantaneous reply seemed to echo across the room, though only the humans and Twilight could hear it on their radios. Cortana then directly spoke to Keyes about Air support being cut off, but Twilight couldn't help thinking about if Rainbow Dash was here, she would be able to outfly any Banshee.

A Marine cracked and started screaming about them "all about to die!", but Keyes was having none of it. "Stow your bellyaching Marine. Chief, if you could get me to one of those dropships, I can fly us out of here."

"Yes Captain", Cortana replied, "There's a Covenant ship docked below."

"Then what are we waiting for", Twilight said, much to everyone's grim amusement.

They soon reached the troop bay, but it was heavily defended. Elites, Jackals and Grunts all were present at trying to kill the humans before they could escape. Twilight was going through clip after clip due to the number of enemies present. Even the Chief had run out of ammo in his rifle, having to pull out his pistol.

"If we're going", he called out, "we need to go now."

Twilight did a quick teleport behind an Elite, who was guarding a holographic set of controls. She threw him off the edge of the platform. She then noticed that the controls were in front of the floating dropship, which was connected to a clamp on the ceiling.

"Cortana!", she cried out, "do I need to press this to unlock the ship?"

"Yes! Great job", Cortana replied.

Twilight pressed the big marker on the controls, and the Dropship disconnected from the clamp. It then hovered towards her, opening its bay doors. Keyes, when he saw this, cried out, "Everyone mount up!", leading the Marines through the open bay doors and went in through the hatch for the pilot. Twilight entered next, then followed by the Chief, who waited until everyone else had gone on board.

As Cortana and Keyes argued over who will drive the dropship, one Marine called out a warning: "Captain! Hunters!"

Twilight's eyes widened at this, and she peered out of the viewpoint that the Chief was next to. Sure enough, there was a pair of Hunters on the loading platform, charging straight for the ship. Twilight's heart began to race as she saw the weapons on the hunter start to glow green.

"Hang on!" Keyes said over the ship's internal radio. Twilight braced herself as she felt the ship move backwards and the two prongs of the ship rammed into the Hunters. Though they were heavily armoured, even Hunters could not stand up to the heavy weight and kinetic force of the dropship.

As the dropship flew out of the hangar bay and into the open air outside the Truth and Reconciliation, Twilight collapsed to the floor with a thud, exhausted physically, mentally and magically from the entire mission. Twisting around, she saw the Chief leaning back against the metal wall. It wasn't all that surprising, given that he had done a lot more than the rest of the team combined today, but it was still interesting to see him actually look tired with his body language.

He noticed her looking at him, and gave her a tired thumbs up. She smiled, and nodded back at him before closing her eyes and letting sleep overcome her.
> Meanwhile, in Equestria
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Two days. Two days since Twilight Sparkle went missing. This statement echoed through Celestia's mind as she walked through the ancient halls of the archaeological site for the thousandth time that day. As she strode through it, hundreds of ponies and gryphons were attempting to search for any signs of what might have happened to Twilight.

She exited the structure through the large doors that slowly creaked open. Outside stood Luna, waiting for Celestia's arrival. She walked up to Celestia with a grim expression on her face.

"Any luck?", Celestia asked, though she already knew the answer.

Luna shook her head, her eyes sorrowful, "Neigh, dear sister. The structures to the north are clear."

"Same in the East", Celestia commented, trodding over to the ramp that dips to the surface. "Nothing, not even of any clues as to what happened. It's like everything went back to sleep after she..." Tears threatened to burst out, but Celestia held them in. To any normal pony, she would seemed only slightly at unease, but Luna knew her better than anypony else, so it was obvious how Celestia was feeling.

"Twilight is a most resourceful and resilient pony", she said in a quiet voice so only Celestia could hear it, "if she is in fact gone to another place, she will make her way back."

Celestia took in a deep breath and relaxed slightly. "I know, Lulu", she said, "but I still have a feeling that she won't. What if she wasn't teleported like we believe, and she may have been disintegrated and..."

"Stop!", Luna said fiercely, halting Celestia's tangent. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't let these thoughts plague your mind at this point of time. We both know that if Twilight died, we would have felt it."

It was at this point that an archaeologist ran up to them. "Princess Celestia! We have..."

Before he could finish, Celestia spun on the spot so fast she was like a blur, her face lighting up in a flash. "Have you found Twilight?!" She shouted in a hopeful, almost hysterical tone of voice. She rushed up close to an uncomfortable distance to the archaeologist, who started to sweat profusely.

"No, princess, I'm sorry." Celestia's face fell instantly at this. "But we have encountered something unexpected."

"What, pray I ask thee?" Luna asked in an attempt to distract Celestia from her own thoughts.

"We were investigating the structures in the west", the archaeologist began, "just only fifteen minutes ago, when one of our search teams found themselves unable to enter a certain building, one of the larger ones that appear in the centre of a group of structures across the entire site. Apparently, the structure could generate a forcefield at the entrance portals of the structure. When the team called us over, they had noticed that the structure began to glow a hazard red in certain areas."

"We attempted to teleport in using magic, but with no effect. It was as if something was blocking us. So, then we tried to take down the shield. One unicorn directed a small magical blast at one of the forcefields at an entrance, but it only rebounded and hit him instead."

Luna and Celestia looked at each other with a concerned expression. "Do you know what triggered this event?" Celestia asked after a short pause.

The archaeologist shook his head. "No, but maybe one of the ponies in the search team might."

"Then we should get down there as soon as possible", Luna stated in a serious tone.



"Spikey-Wikey! Where are you?"

For one of the rare times in his life, Spike decided to ignore Rarity's voice. He had locked himself in his and Twilight's room, far away from that accursed site, so he could be by himself, with only his thoughts to accompany him. Though this was the only reclusive spot that he could go to be alone, the memories of Twilight in the room, with her bed, the pictures on the mirror and her crown left on her bedside table, seemed to torment him with every passing second.

Spike's mind went back to the very moment that Twilight disappeared. The sense of helplessness had never been so prevalent as he watched Twilight disappear in a flash of light, only just recovering from being thrown off that platform. For a moment, no pony spoke or moved a muscle as their minds processed what had just occurred. Until Spike started to cry, then gradually began to wail, shouting Twilight's name.

As he sat on the ground, sobbing, he felt somepony's hooves hug around him. He opened his teary eyes, and saw Cadance, who was similarly in tears, look at him with a distraught expression. He pulled her close and hugged her tight.

As the two of them cried on each other's shoulders, they were joined by all of the others: Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, whose mane and expression had fallen into an almost depressed state.

Ever since then, none of them had even remotely been in a happy state of mind. Pinkie Pie has stopped smiling for the last two days, Rainbow Dash lies in her own room in Cloudsdale, secretly crying when no pony is watching, Applejack is working nonstop at the farm with no break, with the others having similar signs.

The fact is that Celestia had called everypony she could over to Equestria to help find Twilight: Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, Discord and even Sunset Shimmer, who is normally at Canterlot High in that other world. Sunset had done a search in her new home, but to no avail, so she had returned to Equestria to help her former teacher.

With this in mind, Spike could not help but feel a little guilty for secluding himself from the others, but he couldn't help it. He needed to be by himself. Twilight was his first friend, and more of a mother than any other pony or creature he has ever known.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when somepony knocked at the door. "Spike!", a familiar voice called out, "I know you're in there!"

"E...Ember!?", Spike replied, then covered his face as the door was kicked open, revealing three figures: Rarity, Ember and Smolder.

"Oops", Ember said, her face flushing with embarrassment as she looked at the remains of the door, "I guess I got carried away...again." Smolder burst out laughing at this, until a stern look from both Ember and Rarity shut her up.

"Spike", Rarity said, turning to face Spike, "Why are you hiding in your room, being away from everypony else? You haven't left the castle ever since you came back."

"I...just needed some time alone", he replied. "I still can't get over the fact that...that...", he started to feel the tears swell up in his eyes once again, "she's gone." With that last word, he burst out crying. He threw himself onto the covers of Twilight's bed, sobbing. The others looked on in a similarly distraught manner, though they all knew that his pain and loss would be greater than all of theirs combined, even Rarity's.

Rarity walked up to Spike's sobbing form, planting a hoof on his shoulder. His head rose off of the Bed and looked at her with red brimmed eyes. Though she herself was almost on her knees through sadness and misery, she had kept her composure, for once, and put on a comforting expression for Spike.

"Twilight's not gone", she said in a comforting tone, "she's still around here, somewhere. Remember, Princess Celestia and Luna would know if she's gone from us forever. And, this is Twilight of all ponies we are talking about. She'll find a way back to us and it'll be like nothing has changed. We'll all still be friends."

"I guess so", Spike said, wiping his eyes. "But I...I still worry so much for her."

"Spike", it was Ember's turn to talk, "If there is a pony that I can say is more than capable of doing anything that is possible, it is Twilight. Remember, she has managed to traverse through time and different dimensions, not to mention she is the element of magic, and an Alicorn."

"And", Smolder added in, "She's our Principal, so she wouldn't even consider...err" she paused, thinking about what to say before noticing the glares from the others. She shrugged in an apologetic way, though she was secretly fearful of what Ember may make her do afterwards.

"Twilight will be fine", Rarity said after a pause, turning back to Spike, "so why don't come with us and we can all await her inevitable return together?"

Spike considered this for a moment before nodding. With a smile on her face, Rarity led Spike and the others out of the room into the corridor, where it felt empty without Twilight's constant lectures about magic, Equestrian history and friendship, making all of them feel a bit down.



"Sister, what do you make of it?" Luna asked as she studied the forcefield in detail.

They had arrived only a moment ago, in front of the nearest structure in the West. Apparently in the short time it took for them to fly over here, more of the structures entered what appeared to be a lock-down, with the forcefields acting as barriers. It was as if the structures knew they were coming to investigate.

"I don't know. I don't know anything that's going on", Celestia replied in an almost depressed tone. And Luna could sympathise with Celestia on that. Twilight was her first friend since her redemption, and was there for her always. It was a stab to her will that she could do almost nothing to help find Twilight and bring her back, but alas, that was how things are.

Or how things were. 'Maybe these structures may hold the key to finding her', she thought to herself as she studied the shield in the doorway of the structure, with its blue, transparent texture.

"It's just as they said", Celestia commented, her horn glowing bright gold, breaking Luna out of her thoughts. "I can't teleport either myself or anything to the other side of the shield. It's as if something is actively blocking our magic."

"Which begs the question", Luna started to say, before a huge flash of light was emitted from the top of the structure, blinding every pony that was present there temporarily. As it died down, Luna felt her gut wrench as yellow circles began to encircle her until there was another flash, and she found herself outside the entire site, along with everypony else.

Luna felt her anger start to rise, as she realised what had just happened. "That was no magic!", she snarled out loud. "Indeed", Celestia agreed in a much calmer tone, though her eyes displayed her annoyance at the situation. "Something managed to just teleport not just one pony, but every living creature that was studying and searching those ruins, out of it completely at once."

"Well, now I feel insulted!", a voice spoke out from behind them. Luna turned around, and found, much to her simultaneous joy and annoyance, Discord standing behind them with his mismatched body and face in an almost comedicly angry expression and stance. "Some ancient ruin managed to do what I spent eons attempting to do. Well, it can go stick itself in its..."

"Why are you here?", Celestia interrupted, "Shouldn't you be checking the other side of the world?"

"For your information, I have been", he stated in a pouting manner, then turned serious, which seemed to scare Luna. "I've searched over there fifteen times, and there's nothing. So, I decided to do some digging in the Chaos realm, and guess what? Nothing there too." Discord not only looked annoyed, but also hurt. Though he wasn't as close to Twilight as most others are, he still considered her a friend, and his pride must have taken a considerable hit with him not being able to find her.

"So, I had to pull in some favours..."-"Favours?"-"Yes, Celestia, favours, with beings beyond your understanding. As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted, I called in some favours and managed to get some information about where she may be."

"You know where Twilight is?!" the joy in Celestia's voice was plain for everypony to hear. Discord, however, seemed to cringe at her almost excited attitude.

"Not exactly", he said, rubbing his head in an almost embarrassed way. "I have a rough idea of what region she is in. Here's the bad news: She's on the other side of the galaxy, and there is no way for us to reach her and bring her back."

On hearing this, Celestia simply collapsed, beginning to cry at the news, her guilt and sadness all culminating and flowing out of her. Luna, however horrified she was at the news, gave Discord an accusatory gaze.

"Why wouldn't we be able to bring her back", she spat out, much to Discord's discomfort.

"Two things,"he put forward "one: she is on the other side of the galaxy, and it would take more than Equestrian Magic to bring her back. And two, which is the most important fact: She has become involved in something beyond all of us, where she now holds the fate of Equis in her hooves. And before you even open your mouth Luna, I got this information from some very powerful, but isolated deities."

Luna thought over what he had just said, pondering how she should respond. Finally, she looked back at him, only a single tear betraying the feelings she was feeling for her lost friend.

"So, she is stuck there, forever?" she asked, her voice breaking.

Discord shook his head. "No", he said, "If she survives whatever that side of the Galaxy holds for her, there is a way for her to come back, though it will take time."

Discord then looked at the sight of the ruin. "Now, in the meanwhile, we'll have to deal with whatever this mystery is. And I have the feeling whatever it is; we won't solve this mystery over a short period of time."
> The Silent Cartographer (last revised 18/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Once again, Twilight was strapped in to one of the many seats inside the Pelican Dropship as it flew over the glittering sea. It had been only a few hours since Twilight had fallen asleep when she had left the Truth and Reconciliation with the Chief and Captain Keyes, but once again, she was back in the fight.

She looked around the bay as the doors started to open, sending in rays of the morning light. As always, the Chief was sitting closest to the door, armed with an Assault Rifle and pistol. There were also several Marines sitting in here, looking out to the beautiful waterscape.

Currently, they were flying over to an isolated island on the Halo ring, where a strategic location called the Cartographer, where a map of Halo is located, or so Cortana claims. She managed to hack into the Covenant Battle Network and found this vital location that the Covenant had been looking for. So, now, it was up to the Chief, along with Twilight and the Marines, to capture the Cartographer and find Halo's Control Room before the Covenant do.

"We're approaching the LZ", Foehammer's voice spoke out from the Com, causing Twilight to wince at the volume of it, "It's going to be hot!" The Beach came into view, with it being defended by numerous Covenant Soldiers, but thankfully no Shade turrets. "Get ready to come out swinging!"

The Chief stood up, next to the open hatch, as the Dropship descended onto the sandy ground. "Touchdown!" Foehammer's voice came through again, though this time it led to the reaction of everyone unstrapping themselves and leaping out of the Dropship. Twilight opted to teleport off the ship, appearing next to the Chief as he landed on the soft sand.

He paused for a quick survey of the landscape before raising his rifle and proceeding to fire upon an unfortunate Elite, who quickly fell under the weight of his bullets. Similarly, Twilight unslung her own rifle and fired a short burst at the closest Grunt, killing it on the fifth shot.

'I'm getting the hang of this now', she thought to herself as she noticed that she was being a bit more accurate with her shots and less "spray and pray" as Johnson told her when she had returned to Alpha Base. With that in mind, after getting another hour of sleep, she decided to do a bit of practice with using firearms before she left on this mission.

Her mind quickly returned to the present when a plasma bolt flew over her head. Snarling both at the Jackal who shot at her, and at herself for being easily distracted, she fired a much longer burst at the Jackal. Most of the bullets collided with it's handheld shield, but one inaccurate bullet managed to scrap its weapon arm, causing it to open up and become vulnerable to Twilight, who dispatched it with ease after that error.

Within ten minutes, the Covenant Forces were wiped out, and this segment of the beach was secured. As the Marines spread out across the area next to a large construct that protruded out of a large cliff, and connected with the beachside, Twilight couldn't help but enter her own thoughts once again, going over what had happened after they arrived back at Alpha base.

After half an hour of sleeping on the floor of the Covenant Dropship, she was woken up by the Chief as the bay doors opened. Though she wanted to just fall back to sleep, she was forced to go with the Chief for a debriefing with Silva in his office, while Parker and Keyes tagged along.

The debriefing, thankfully, didn't take long, with Keyes assuming overall command of all human forces at Alpha Base without any objection from Silva. They did discuss about what to do about the potential of the Covenant discovering the means to control Halo in order to wipe out the human race. It was here that Twilight reaffirmed to Keyes her willingness to help the humans stop the Covenant from using Halo against them. Though he morally disagreed with this, he accepted her choice and assigned her with the Chief, due to her magical abilities and so he can help her out of dangerous situations.

After both the Chief and her left to grab some sleep before going out and finding the control room, Twilight noticed that Keyes and Silva began to have an argument in the distance, though it looked quite civilised and lax. She knew that it was about her going on the mission to rescue Keyes, but she was too tired to care.

"Echo 419 inbound." Foehammer's cheerful voice came over the comm again, shaking Twilight out of her recollections once more. "Did someone order a Warthog?"

Twilight looked up and saw the pelican swoop over, with a strange kind of carriage like object hanging on the back. As the Pelican lowered to the ground, floating just above it, the carriage like object, which her eyepiece labelled as a M12 Warthog, detached and landed on the sand, its wheels sinking only a few centimetres into the ground. She noticed that it had a large turret on the back of it, with two seats in the front.

The Chief caught the attention of Twilight, directing her towards the right hand seat. As he leapt in to the left seat, she teleported on to her designated seat, went into a sitting position, and found the glass window on the front, along with the interior of the Warthog, fascinated her. The Chief waited until a Marine had jumped on to the Turret on the back before pressing a peddle hard, and driving the Warthog forward, with a surprised Twilight screaming at the speed of the vehicle.

'Wow, these humans and their technology are amazing', she thought to herself after getting herself back together. She laughed as the vehicle's speed caused the wind to send her mane flying in the air.

Her joyous ride was interrupted when they encountered a small troupe of Covenant. The Marine on the turret swivelled in the direction of two Jackals, and opened fire. The turret fired rounds much faster than the Assault Rifle, overwhelming the 
Jackals easily. The Marine continued to fire the turret at a bunch of Grunts, without lifting his fingers off of the trigger, causing the sand to erupt whenever a bullet hit the sand.

It took barely a minute to mop up the rest of the Covenant troupe, with the Chief easily dodging the Covenant shots with the Warthog's speed and his driving experience. They moved on, driving up a steep path where, in the distance to the left, was an open area, where a structure protruded out of a cliff face. Around it were Covenant troops, and a single Covenant Dropship, which flew off just as it came into view.

"There! In the Cliff face!", Cortana spoke out over the Comm, "I'll bet the Silent Cartographer is somewhere inside that facility."

"How are we going to get around them?" Twilight asked the Chief as he stopped the Warthog out of view of the Covenant Defenders. To her surprise, his answer was to get of the vehicle and eased his way up to a fallen log. Twilight saw him pull out his pistol and, after a moment of aiming, opened fire at unseen targets. Twilight could make out the yell, then gurgle of an Elite, and the sounds of five bodies collapsing onto the ground, before the Chief returned and jumped back in to the Warthog.

"Check your weapons", he advised to both Twilight and the gunner, both of whom listened intently "We have some clean up to do up ahead."

Twilight raised an eyebrow at what the Chief said, not understanding the connotations behind his words. The gunner, however, did. "Roger that", he said grimly. "It looks like we have KP duty again."

“What do you mean by “Clean up duty”?” Twilight asked, though she was beginning to see what they were planning on doing in her head. Her suspicion was confirmed by the roar of the Warthog as the Chief reversed, then sped towards the structure. The Gunner opened fire at the Covenant troops outside, forcing the survivors of the assault to run inside the structure, the grunts screaming as they clearly didn’t expect to be attacked like this.

The Chief drove towards the structure, with Twilight noticing how it had three entrances large enough for the warthog to enter. So it was with no surprise that the warthog soon entered the structure and entered a hallway that seemed to go further into the cliff. With some expert driving from the Chief, Twilight found herself firing inside the hallway while still seated in the warthog, her weapon fire being drowned out by the gunner and his machine gun, cutting down elites, jackals and grunts with ease.

As the last troop was killed, the Chief and Twilight jumped out of the vehicle, and made their way through a series of ramps and dark hallways before arrived at a small chamber below, where several aliens stood guard before a small porthole with a single Elite Zealot inside.

As soon as the Zealot spotted the pair, it instantly growled out some orders and the other aliens began to shoot at Twilight and the Chief. While the Chief focused fire on the two Elites that were in the chamber, Twilight decided to use her magic to throw the three grunts into the ceiling with such force that their necks broke from the impact.

"Don't let them lock the doors!" Cortana warned, just as the Zealot shut the doors of the portal, locking them out from the interior of the Cartographer. With the Chief finishing off the remaining Covenant, Twilight decided to do a quick teleport past the door and behind the smug Zealot, but was horrified to find out that the metal of the structure somehow wasn't letting her go past it, making her appear right before the door. With a yelp of surprise, she hit the thick frame of the door from the motion of moving forward.

"Interesting", Cortana spoke out in a semi-hushed, yet begrudgingly impressed tone of voice, "I underestimated the Covenant's understanding of Halo's security systems." She continued on in a much firmer voice. "They've locked the doors, and we don't have the firepower to break through them."

"Can you teleport us past the doors?", the Chief asked as the last Elite fell to the ground, before turning to face Twilight, seeing her get up off the ground, rubbing her snout.

"I already tried that", she said in a very annoyed tone. "I don't know how, but the makeup of this metal, or something else, is stopping me from teleporting past it!" She then thought of something for a second. "Hold on", she told the Chief before teleporting up the ramp, then outside, surprising the Marine on the turret. 'Interesting', she thought as she appeared back with the Chief.

"It appears that I can teleport anywhere where the metal isn't totally blocking the path, such as the entrance to this facility." The Chief nodded at this as he followed what she was getting to. "If this door was open, you would be able to teleport to the other side", he said.

"Yes! Now, if it'll only open!", she stated angrily, attempting to blast the door with her magic to no avail. She did succeed in startling the Zealot, with it taking a few steps backwards, as seen by Twilight and the Chief through the small window on the door.

"Let's get back to the surface", the Chief said, much to Twilight's agreement. As they made their way back to the surface, Cortana was having a conversation with Captain Keyes over the radio. Though she attempted to listen in, Twilight was still musing over how the metal alloy's structure could block her magic. Due to this, she only paid full attention to the last part of the conversation, when Keyes gave them their new orders: "Use any means necessary to force your way into the facility and find Halo's Control Centre. Failure is not an option."

"Understood", the Chief replied to Keyes, then spoke directly to Twilight over his external speakers "If the front door is locked - then go around back. There must be another facility where the security systems are held."

Twilight nodded in agreement at this, and thus the both of them jumped back into the warthog, and drove off, back towards the initial landing site.



After driving around the island for a solid three minutes, the Chief spotted the facility, though it was sticking out of the cliff face, ten levels above them.

"There's the facility", he heard Cortana say "though it appears we will have to find another way up."

"If only my wing wasn't hurt", the Chief turned to face Twilight in the seat next to him as she looked at her bandaged wing with both sorrow and anger "then I could fly up there."

"What about teleporting us up there?" Cortana asked.

Twilight hesitated, then looked up and gasped, her face turning pale. "Look out!", was all the Chief heard from her before the Warthog was hit by a fuel rod cannon and went flying into the air, flinging its three occupants out to land on the beach.

As Twilight and the Marine struggled to get to their feet, the Chief unslung his Assault rifle, and turned to look up at the facility, only to find a pair of hunters standing up there, their fuel rod cannons charging up to fire another volley. It was times like this that the Chief wished that he had a SPNKR Rocket Launcher at hand.

While he had his pistol with a scope, he was too far away to take advantage of any of the Hunter's exposed sections. Thus, his shots, unless through lucky aim, would be ineffective against the Hunters. The only viable course for fighting them was to get them out of the high ground, which would be very difficult.

With this in mind, the Chief made a run for the fallen Warthog, dodging the Hunter's cannon blasts as they focused solely on him. When he reached the Warthog, it was only then that he realised that it was upside down. Using his augmented strength, he grabbed the side of the Warthog and, with as much strength as he could muster, threw the warthog in the air at an angle where it landed the right way up.

He jumped onto the Turret at the back, and fired continuously at the Hunters. Within seconds, one of the Hunters was killed, enraging the other. It leapt off the cliff face with a roar in a fit of rage, landing with a heavy thud on the soft ground, sending sand flying into the air, temporarily obscuring the Chief's view of it.

It charged out of the newly made sandstorm, charging its main cannon, but was soon distracted by Twilight and the Marine, who had recovered their bearings and opened fire. The Hunter turned to block their attacks, leaving an opening in its back for the Chief to exploit. A volley of turret fire and the Hunter fell to the ground, dead.

The Chief took a sigh of relief after he rotated the turret around 360 degrees to find any other potential Covenant waiting in ambush, and found none. He got off the turret and slid back into the drivers seat, honking at Twilight and the Marine to attract their attention.

He waited until they were both back in the Warthog before restarting the engine, and driving off. "Thanks for the warning", he told Twilight as he drove, not noticing her blushing at his thanks.

It only took a moment before Cortana spoke again. "It looks like there is a path that leads to the interior of the island." The Chief pushed on the brakes, turned his head and saw the open path, and the Covenant squad that was guarding it. The gunner opened fire as soon as he saw them, putting out fire on the ravine ahead.

"How come your always quiet whenever there are Covenant around, but you tell us about all of these locations?" Twilight asked Cortana as both her and the Chief got out of the Warthog. The Chief smiled at the question, due to him just thinking about asking a very similar question.

"Because I don't want the two of you to feel unnecessary", Cortana replied easily, "and yes, I was expecting that question from either one of you two. Besides, given the fact that the Chief's motion sensors are telling him that there are at least five Covenant soldiers lying in wait further up the ravine, its logical to assume that there are even more beyond them. Does that make you feel better."

"No", he admitted, doing a final check on his weapons to ensure that they were both fully loaded. Twilight was still considerably pale, so she must still be in shock from the Hunter attack. He placed his hand on her shoulder to reassure her. "Are you alright?" He asked softly to just Twilight. She looked up at his visor and gave him a small smile, though he could tell it was a grim one. "I will be", she replied.

The Chief was about to make another comment when the five Covenant grew impatient and ran out to kill them. The Chief threw a single frag grenade at their feet, killing three of the four Grunts and the single Elite Major. Twilight finished off the last Grunt with a single burst from her Assault Rifle.

Reminded about the dangers ahead, the pair decided to press onwards towards the facility, fighting through waves of Covenant. By the time they reached the main entrance to the security facility, a large trail of bodies had been created, at the expense of much of the Chief's ammo supply.

Before entering the facility, the Chief took a step back, and rotated himself so he could view the circular structure that dominated a small depression that he had past by. He didn't know why, but it gave the impression of a trap door. Shrugging off his thoughts on the matter after noticing Twilight looking at him with a curious expression, he led the way into the facility.

Feeding a fresh magazine into his Assault Rifle, he slipped through the dark, shadowy door and entered the darkened space. While his biochemically altered eyes quickly adjusted, Twilight's horn glowed pink for a second, and then her eyes flashed green. The Chief assumed that she must have used magic to make her eyes see in the dark.

They came up to a ramp that led to the next level below, and saw the alien cargo modules when he reached the bottom of the ramp. He recognised the layout of the room as a perfect setup for an ambush. He stopped, then backed into the closest wall. Twilight stood at the top of the ramp, oblivious to the hidden nature of the room, looked frightened at the Chief as she noticed how he saw something she missed.

A light switched on, allowing the Spartan to see better the room, and that there was an alcove in front of him. "Be Careful", he said to Twilight over the Comm "This feels like a trap..."

The Hunter chose the moment he had finished speaking to leap out of the shadows and attack the Chief, too close to use the Fuel Rod Cannon, but perfect distance for the Hunter to attempt to smash the Chief into a bloody mess with its shield arm. However, the Chief reacted quickly, turning around and retreating backwards while firing his rifle. The maneuver worked, slowing down the Hunter enough to put some distance between himself and the spot where the Hunter hit with his shield.

The second Hunter, and other Covenant, rushed out to meet the Chief head on, though they had not noticed Twilight, for which the Chief was thankful as a blast of magic shot out from the ramp into the unprotected back of the second Hunter. It fell with a crash, and Twilight kicked the nearest Grunt in the head, killing it instantly.

Meanwhile, the Chief was forced to reload and the Hunter took advantage of it, leaping forward until it let out a shriek and fell to the ground, dead. A single Grunt stood behind the Hunter, his face and eyes wide with horror and fear at the pistol that had just fired in his hand.

'Bit of friendly fire there', the Chief thought to himself as he finished reloading and shot the stunned Grunt. There was a pause as he stood still, waiting for the next attack that never came. His hand began to twitch from having his nerves on edge.

Twilight walked up to him, on edge as well. "That...could have been worse", she said in a whispered tone from shock.

The Chief nodded in agreement.

"Nice job, Chief, Twilight", Cortana said "Head through the cargo modules. The security centre lies beyond."

After following Cortana’s directions to the letter, the pair entered a long hall and soon found themselves inside a compact room where a holo panel floated at the centre. It was similar to the one that the Chief had encountered in his quest to rescue survivors from the Autumn just after landing on the ring. Half listening to Cortana, he followed his instinct and pressed his hand against the controls. Immediately after, the facility seemed to vibrate and certain sections of the panel switched off.

"Did we do it?" Twilight asked sceptically. "Yes!" Cortana replied "That should now open the door that leads into the main shaft. Now all we have to do is find the Silent Cartographer and the map to the control room."

"Right", the Chief replied in a semi sarcastic tone, "that and avoid capture in unknown territory." He heard Twilight attempt and fail to stifle a giggle at his tone.

"Well, then. Do you have a plan", Cortana asked in response, her voice in a cheeky tone.

"Yes", he replied "Kill any Covenant that get in the way."

He looked at Twilight to see her reaction to his statement, and unsurprisingly, found her head tilted down slightly, her ears drooped and eyes downcast. He knew that she still hated killing, though she had been doing it for the mission, and would still do it. It was both a blessing and a curse: She would hate herself for it, but she wouldn't become a monster that loves to kill.

They moved back into the hall where a new voice came over the radio. "Mayday! Mayday! Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Repeat, we are taking fire and losing altitude." The urgency and desperation was clear, though underneath it was a tone of resignation to his fate, yet still trying to avoid it.

"Understood", Cortana replied, "We are on our way."

She then switched to a private channel for the Chief's ears only: "I don't think they're going to make it."

"I know", he agreed, numb to the pain of some good person dying as they speak, with nothing that he could do to prevent it.

The pair arrived back into the room that they had just cleared out, assuming that it was still clear, only to be proven wrong by the couple of Stealth Elites awaiting them. A throaty roar announced their presence just before plasma fire began to spit at the Chief, splashing against his shields. He aimed for the space just beside the glowing floating light, fired a burst and was awarded with the scream of the Elite.

Twilight, in the meanwhile, had to deal with the second Elite, who stopped firing and slunk back into the shadows, waiting for a good opportunity. The Chief looked past her, saw the shimmer in the air, and fired a single burst, and was awarded with the Elite rematerializing, attempting to grab the contents of its guts before dying.

As he reloaded, the Chief cursed to himself as he pondered the stupidity of walking into the once cleared room too quickly, a mistake he would not make again, not with Twilight and Cortana watching him. The knowledge of them being there, though in the case of Cortana seeing his perspective via his sensors, made his mistakes more embarrassing.

The Chief couldn't help but smile at the thought of him wanting the approval of both an AI and a pony. With Twilight, he found her to be more like a student of his, learning the skills of survival from him. Cortana, on the other hand, was like a part of him, and literally inside his mind.

The pair made their way back up the out of the facility, and into the bright sunlight, which felt better than being in a shadowy area that could be a potential deathtrap. As he approached the slope below, moving slowly as to avoid falling to his death from the height alone, Cortana cautioned him about Bravo 22's compliment of Heavy Weapons, and sure enough, he found himself looking down at the wreckage of the Pelican.

The burnt frame of the dropship had several chunks missing, as well as a Warthog on its side, with weapons and bodies scattered everywhere. Around it and the large rock that it crashed into, a mix of Jackals and Grunts patrolled the area. On the top of the rock stood a single Jackal with a particle beam rifle.

It was only the bright light from the sight of the Jackal's rifle that prompted the Chief to leap backwards, surprising Twilight, just before a particle beam shot through the air where his head had been.

"Sniper! Take cover, now!" Cortana urged to the both of them as them hid behind a rock. The Chief slung his Assault Rifle and drew out his sidearm. 'How am I going to be able to get out of cover to use this to kill that sniper if he has a very fast reaction time?' he pondered to himself, before an idea stuck him

"Twilight, could you pass me that small stone over there?", the Chief asked, pointing to the object. Twilight obliged, her magical aura enveloping the stone, and brought it into the Chief's open hand. He grasped it and after a second of thinking, threw it over the side of the rock, moving to the opposite side at the same time.

As the stone flew in the air, it was hit by an accurate shot by the Jackal, distracting it for a split second, long enough for the Chief to move out of cover and fire a single round at the sniper. While it narrowly missed the Jackal, the shot was enough to startle it, allowing the Chief to take a second, more accurate shot at the sniper, killing it.

Satisfied with the death of the sniper, the Chief had to now deal with the alert Covenant Patrol on the beach, who were taking pot shots at him from extreme range. His pistol had more range than theirs and was able to kill a few of them with accurate shots. He was soon joined by Twilight, who used her own pistol to shoot at the Covenant.

After the Covenant had been killed, they decided to traverse down the slope to investigate the wreckage of Bravo 22. It was a short walk, but it felt heavy as they approached the bodies, some of which featured plasma burns, confirming that the Covenant had executed some of the survivors from the crash. The Chief's blood boiled at this, while Twilight showed only horror. She looked at the Chief in a naïve hope for him to refute what she was seeing, but he couldn't.

"The Covenant mean to wipe us out", he said to her over the external speakers "and have meant to for the past three decades. This is a regular thing they do to ensure they achieve that goal, though on a much larger scale."

He ignored Twilight's expression of realisation as he committed the unenviable task of scrounging ammo and supplies from the corpses and the wreckage. He discarded his pistol in favour of a M41 Rocket Launcher, with as many rockets as he could store on the outside of his armour as spares.

He passed by a med pack, which reminded him of something he had forgotten. "How's your wing?" he asked over the comm to Twilight, surprising her for a moment before she composed herself and replied. "I still have the hole through my wing, but its re-growing quickly. However, I will still need at least a few days before I can fly again." There was a tinge of sadness in her voice when she spoke. He looked over at her, and saw her staring at her extended wing.

'She must really wish it could heal faster', he thought to himself as he walked over to the Warthog, and flipped it back upright. Climbing behind the wheel, he honked at Twilight, startling her. After she teleported into the seat beside him, he drove back towards the LZ where the Marines had been left to hold.



Twilight looked out at the beautiful waterscape as she pondered what she had just heard. Humans that were fortunate enough to survive a crash, only to be killed by the Covenant as some sort of reward. And this was only a small example of similar behaviour by the Covenant, by the words of the Chief.

She could still hardly believe that the Covenant was this merciless, though each second that passes seems to contribute to proving her wrong. Back in Equestria, no one species was considered evil. Certain individuals maybe, such as Tirek, Chrysallis and her former student, Cosy Glow, but outside of Equestria, it seemed the norm that most species were meant to be killing each other. She knew that she had not seen anything from the Covenant perspective on things, but she honestly didn't want to. They had proven from their actions that they were evil.

But still, had the humans committed similar acts? Maybe. In fact, wasn't that what they had been doing all this time? Killing anything that was Covenant. 'Yes', she thought, 'but the Covenant did start this war, and the humans are only trying to survive against a ruthless enemy.'

She then frowned at a certain thought in her head. 'If the Covenant attacked Equestria without provocation, would I commit the same actions as any of the humans here?' It didn't even take her a second to answer yes to herself.

They arrived back at the beachhead where the Marines were holding up at, and from the extra Covenant corpses that were laying about, there must have been at least one skirmish since their departure. She looked around and saw the Warthog they had left behind, along with the Marine that was the gunner. 'He must have driven back here after we left' she realised.

As if on que, another Marine, this one female, jumped onto the turret. "Glad to see you guys", she said, "It was getting boring here without you guys."

Looking at the body of a dead Elite, Twilight muttered "I doubt that" as they drove off back to the Cartographer.

Following the same path they had drove on initially, they arrived outside the facility, only to find a pair of Hunters waiting for them.

'Oh, for Celestia's sake' Twilight thought to herself, her heart racing, as she spotted the Hunters. Unfortunately, none of them noticed the cannon blast that hit the Warthog, throwing them off the edge of the platform. It was during the time when all three of the occupants were thrown out of the warthog that Twilight was seriously considering if she was suffering from Deja vu.

She managed to teleport on her feet, while the humans crashed down onto their sides. To her horror though, one of the Hunters dropped down from the structure, landed firmly on its feet, and marched forward.

The Marine jumped to her feet and threw a grenade at the Hunter, only to stop and stare as the Hunter was not harmed by it. She tried to back away, firing her assault rifle, but the Hunter leaped towards her, slicing his shield right through her midsection, cutting her in half. It then stomped on the fallen upper body, crushing the head and neck.

Twilight was filled with rage, and screamed out. How dare this alien kill someone in such a brutal way. She pawed at the ground, sneering, about to send a magic blast at the Hunter, when the Hunter suddenly exploded into pieces of metal, flesh and worms. Lots of worms.

She turned around and saw the kneeling Chief, with the Rocket Launcher in hand, aimed at the spot where the Hunter was. One of the tubes had smoke coming from the rear, while the other had nothing. The tubes spun 180 degrees, and the Chief lowered the launcher, walking up to Twilight, and the dead Marine.

'I could have done something to prevent her death' she thought to herself as she too walked up to the corpse, or what was left of it. 'She would be still alive if I hadn't hesitated or was fast enough.' She felt a heavy weight come upon her heart and soul.

He stood there for a good minute, and Twilight could understand why. It was most likely that the same thoughts that she was having. Of guilt, and of what could have been. It was at this moment that Twilight felt a closer connection with humanity, especially with the Chief. The shared pain that they felt for a single loss was almost, enduring.

In the distance, she heard the howl of anguish from the other Hunter that still awaited them.

"That wasn't your fault", Cortana said gently to the both of them. "right now, we still have to deal with another Hunter up on the platform, so be careful."

The Chief looked up at the platform, and placed the rocket launcher on his back, while pulling out his assault rifle. Twilight began to follow him, as he made his way up the slope leading up to the platform, killing the small groups of Grunts that were guarding it.

They had to be careful though, because the Hunter was shooting his fuel rod cannon in rapid succession, as if it was trying to kill them by the sheer weight of its barrage, and the shots were hitting a bit too close for comfort. With this in mind, Twilight erected a large forcefield around the two of them, protecting them against a quite accurate shot, though it broke the shield.

Twilight felt the impact on her magic, and almost collapsed as the Shield did around them. However, the Chief dragged her out of harms way, and made his way up, firing his Rocket Launcher at the Hunter's head, with a direct hit as the head was blown straight off.

As the Hunter's body collapsed in a mess of blood and worms, Twilight struggled to get back on her wobbly hooves. That forcefield, along with it shattering, had taken up much of her strength, leaving her quite exhausted.

"Note to self", she said in an almost hysterical voice "don't use magical shields when Hunters are involved. It uses up a lot of my energy."

"Maybe not too often", the Chief told her, as he held out his hand, which she accepted, and used it to pull her up on her hooves. "It did save our lives just then."

Twilight couldn't help but smirk at that. She was already regaining her strength just from doing nothing but stand there, so she held her hoof up. "Give me a minute here." The Chief complied and after waiting, they continued on back into the facility and into the hall where they were previously held back.

This time, the door was open, and the Zealot nowhere in sight. Warily, the Chief entered first, turning to the right and walked right to the edge of a shaft. Twilight gasped as she saw how far the shaft went, which was to say endless. At the edge of a platform, the Chief kicked a small object down into the shaft, waited a moment, then walked away.

Meanwhile, Twilight was studying the engraved metal that was everywhere. It was almost as if the metal was not just metal, but a metal-stone hybrid, as evidenced by the patterns in the metal and how parts of it were chipped from age. 'If metal could be chipped, how old is it?', was the question inside her mind. Oh, how badly did she want to just grab a notepad and write all the detailed examinations of the metal on it.

However, this was not the time, nor the place for it, as she heard the very distant sounds of Grunts. She looked at the Chief, who had raised his rifle because he had also heard the noise. They moved onwards, through a room with two levels, and a small object that looked more like an altar. Inside were sleeping Grunts, and a single Elite, who had its back towards them.

Twilight went to raise her rifle, but stopped when the Chief put his hand on her. He moved up to behind the Elite, slowly while crouched, until he was only a millimetre distance. He then stood straight, grabbed the neck of the Elite, and twisted it round in a swift movement, breaking it with a striking 'snap'. He lowered the body down to the floor gently, not to wake up the grunts, then proceeded to kill them while they slept in a stealthy manner.

Twilight watched it with a combination of horror and, much to her chagrin, intrigue. However, watching him complete his unenviable task, she did not notice a door on the upper level open. A pair of Jackals walked through, and cried out as they saw the Chief and Twilight, waking up the remaining Grunts, who jumped up with a sense of fury and started to fire their pistols and needlers at the intruders.

"Oh, fuck", Twilight swore properly for the first time as she ducked around the altar to avoid the tracking shots of a needler. Just seeing that weapon almost sends her into a petrified state, but she resisted that urge and hid to not get hit. She jumped out of cover with her rifle ready, and sent the three Grunts who were using needlers a gift of bullets, killing them within seconds.

She looked around, and saw the Chief kill the Jackals with ease, but it was too late. Already, she could hear Covenant reinforcements heading their way.

"What do we do?" she asked the Chief, as he quickly reloaded his rifle. "We continue on", he said in a stoic tone, which then hardened as he added "killing any Covenant that get in our way." He then exited through a door that Cortana pointed out to him, setting out to meet the Covenant without waiting for them, with Twilight finding herself once again following him.

They continued on, making their way further and further down into the facility, fighting wave after wave of Covenant through corridors and huge rooms that felt like they were tombs, before arriving at the entrance to a large room. They took a quick break, as Cortana decided to speak out her observations.

"Someone is tracking our progress", she said to the both of them "keeping all of the Covenant inside informed of our position."

"No kidding", the Chief replied dryly. "If this keeps up the way its going, we won't be able to finish the mission without running out of ammo."

"Agreed", Twilight spoke out after taking a few breaths, "I've only got two more clips of ammo for my rifle, and just three mags for my pistol."

"The Cartographer is nearby", Cortana assured them, "but be careful, as the Covenant will most likely have it well defended."

With that in mind, they entered the large room, and found a pair of hunters waiting for them. Twilight was lucky enough to have a pillar nearby, allowing her to duck behind it for cover from a cannon blast. The Chief however, wasn't so lucky. His shield took a full blast to the chest, causing his entire body to flare with golden energy. Fortunately, it wasn't enough to stop the Chief from killing one of the Hunters with a rocket.

Twilight teleported out of cover to catch the remaining Hunter by surprise, but was herself surprised, and horrified when the Hunter leapt forward, and swung his shield arm across the Chief, part of it tearing both through his weakened shields and some of his shoulder joint. The Chief managed to get free and spun backwards before landing on his knees, allowing Twilight to get a good look at his gaping wound, and the blood rushing down his armour from it. As the Hunter moved in to finish him off, the Chief rolled to the side, and grabbed his fallen assault rifle.

Twilight shook herself out of simply watching the Chief almost get killed, and, without thinking, charged the Hunter. She sprinted up to it, and rammed it in the back, using her horn to pierce the exposed section of the flesh. The Hunter roared in pain, and was flung a few feet by the sheer momentum of Twilight through her alicorn strength.

It was still alive though, landing firmly on its feet, and spun around, shacking Twilight off and tried to slice her in half with its shield. She managed to avoid the shield, but the Hunter decided to do something different, and kicked her in the gut, this time sending her flying.

She landed on the ground with an 'oof' and, groaning, looked up to see the Hunter charging towards her. She raised a shield around her prone form, but was quickly relieved when the Hunter exploded. She twisted around, and saw the Chief standing there, reloading the rocket launcher. His wounded shoulder made his arm look a little limp, but he was obviously still able to use it.

Twilight saw movement in her peripheral vision, and the reflection of a trio of jackals in the Chief's visor. His reaction: Blow them up with a single rocket, sending blood and guts everywhere. A bit excessive, but given the Chief's physical state, Twilight ignored it.

After waiting a moment to see if any more Covenant would show up, Twilight got back up onto her hooves, and walked up to the Chief, who had his back to a corner. Though he gave no visible signs of distress, Twilight's eyepiece showed his badly elevated vitals. Honestly, she couldn't blame him. She was also in a similar state of shock, staying close to the Chief in case there was another ambush.

She heard a deep breath over the comm, and looked up at the Chief relaxing a little. "All right", he said "It's time to complete this mission."

He grabbed what Twilight perceived as a medical kit out of his equipment pouch, opened it up, and proceeded to perform first aid on himself. After a few minutes, he was ready to move on, though not before checking Twilight to see if she needed any first aid herself, which she did. Apparently, the kick from the Hunter had cut a large scratch on her side, so the Chief applied some dressing to it.

They moved on after the Chief put away the medpack. Going down a ramp, they entered another large room, filled to the brim with Covenant. Thankfully, there were no Hunters in the room, allowing Twilight to sigh in relief. She was getting real sick of fighting Hunters.

After fighting through the room, leaving the Covenant dead, a radio conversation came up. "Foehammer to ground team: You've got two Covenant Dropships coming fast." Twilight recognised the next voice as the leader of the Marines at the beach "Okay people, we got company coming. Engage enemy forces on sight."

"It'll be easier to hold them off from inside the structure", Cortana suggested "Can you get inside?"

"Negative! They're closing in too fast. We'll keep 'em busy for as long as we can." Twilight's eyes widened at this. Even she could tell the finality in the Marine's voice. He was expecting that he was going to die, yet he was going to keep on fighting.

"Give them hell, Marine", Cortana said grimly, breaking the connection to the others. "We'll all be in a tight spot if we don't get out of here before enemy reinforcements arrive."

"Roger that", the Chief replied while Twilight simply nodded in affirmation, much of her mind still at the humans above who are dying at this very moment for them.

They continued to move further and further into the facility, encountering Covenant Troops in almost every room, until they reached a long hall, where five Elites awaited them. One of these was a Major, the others were Minors. However, the Major was armed with one of the purple rifles she had seen during the raid on the Truth and Reconciliation, which the Chief had called it a 'Covenant Carbine', which had much greater range than the usual plasma rifles and needlers the other Elites were armed with.

Upon seeing the rocket launcher attached on the Chief's back, the Major barked out an order, and the Elites split up to avoid them all being killed by a single rocket. Seeing an opportunity, Twilight teleported behind the Major, but the Major suddenly did a sweeping kick, impacting on her head. She landed on the ground, feeling blood in her mouth for the first time.

Twilight felt her anger rise up as she wiped some blood off of her face with her hoof. She focused all of her magical energy into her horn, and fired it at the Major. It snarled, and leapt to the side, enough so that the blast didn't kill it, only take out its shield. It shot a couple of rounds at Twilight with its carbine, causing her to dodge the blasts, distracting her enough so its shields could recharge.

Annoyed at how her efforts were wasted, Twilight tried a different approach. She created a sword with her magic, and attempted to slice the now surprised Elite. It took a step back before grinning and pulling out an energy sword. Twilight felt a pang of fear as the Elite sliced the air and charged at her.

Her magical sword clashed with the energy sword, causing sparks to fly. The Elite twisted his sword, causing Twilight to lose her balance from trying to compensate, shattered her sword and went in for the kill. She leapt to the side, narrowly missing being impaled, the scorching plasma's heat being felt by her fur.

The Major turned around, and grabbed her hoof, pinning her to the floor. 'Why am I always being pinned to the ground?' she thought to herself as she used her magic to hold the sword arm of the Elite in the air, preventing it from stabbing her.

The Major snarled until it shields flared as plasma bolts hit it in the back. It turned around like it was about to punish somepony for friendly fire, but paused as it saw the Chief armed with a captured plasma rifle. The Chief shredded the shields of the Elite before finishing it off with a bolt to the head.

As Twilight got back up, she noticed the four bodies behind the Chief. "Thanks", she said "I hope that's the last time you see me on the ground with somepony holding me..."she paused as she realised what she was saying, the heat rising in her cheeks. Fortunately, the Chief didn't seem to quite get what she was saying, and nodded. "No problem", he replied. "Hopefully, we're close to the Cartographer. I don't like having to use Covenant weapons."

"Don't worry", Cortana spoke out. "The Cartographer should be in the next room, and the Covenant Battlenet shows that the nearest enemies are the reinforcements flying in."

With this in mind, they entered the room, and found a holo panel, which the Chief pressed, and a glowing wire-framed map of the ring appeared.

"Analysing. Halo's Control Centre is"- Cortana highlighted a section of the map for Twilight's eyepiece - "there. Interesting. It looks like some sort of shrine."

"What kind of shrine?" Twilight asked. "Maybe to the builders of this Ring?" the Chief suggested as Cortana opened a comm channel. "Cortana to Captain Keyes."

There was a moments silence until Foehammer's voice came over the comm. "The Captain has dropped out of contact, Cortana. His ship may be out of range or may be having equipment problems."

"Keep trying", Cortana replied, "Let me know when you re-establish contact. And then tell him that the Master Chief, Twilight and I have determined the location of the Control Centre."

The Chief raised his plasma rifle and looked to Twilight. "It's time to go."

"Wait", she said, an idea forming in her head, "instead of us walking through all of those rooms and halls, I could teleport us as far as I can until there is a door closing off the space. We open the door when we arrive there, then teleport again, repeating this method until we reach the top."

"Can you do it without tiring yourself out too much?", he asked in a concerned tone of voice.

"Yes", she said firmly. "Then do it", he ordered. They disappeared in a flash of pink light, then reappeared a few levels up. Twilight felt a little dizzy, but continued on.

After a few points of opening doors, then teleporting once again, the pair finally reached the entrance of the facility, only to find a Covenant Dropship, and the Zealot from earlier, waiting for them. The bay doors opened, revealing a pair of stealth Elites, who turned invisible before they even reached the ground.

Twilight looked for any sign of them, saw the blue light from a plasma rifle, then used her magic to send the Elite flying off the edge of the platform. The second Stealth Elite was quickly finished off by the Chief, who moved on to dealing with the Zealot. She then turned to face the Dropship, with its forward cannon firing directly at them. She decided to send a huge magical blast at the right bay, which blew up, sending the Dropship spinning out of control before crashing and exploding on the sand of the beach.

The Zealot proved much harder to deal with, as it kept on dodging many of the Chief's bolts and repeatedly tried to stab him with an energy sword. Twilight telekinetically lifted a sharp piece of debris from the crashed dropship, and sent it into the Zealot. It pierced through the skull, sending brain matter everywhere.

A Pelican Dropship flew towards them, the bay doors opening, allowing the Chief and Twilight to jump aboard. Not paying any attention to the conversation between Foehammer and Cortana, Twilight looked at the Chief, who replaced his plasma rifle with an assault rifle with full ammo and spare clips. He noticed her looking at him and gave her a quick nod.

"Great job out there", he said to her as she went and sat next to him. She smiled as he took a seat, his demeanor like that of Applejack after a days work on the farm.

She suddenly felt weary, and homesick. Tears began to flow down her face as her mind turned back to Equestria and her friends. As she started to cry, she felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked to her side at the Chief, whose hand gave her a comforting presence.

"We'll get you back home", he said to her, making her realise that her feelings were quite obvious to anyone.

She was about to comment on about the odds of making it back to Equestria, when she saw that the Pelican was flying through a portal that led to an underground tunnel. The Chief looked outside as well. "Cortana must be at it again, making us do things so unexpected that the Covenant won't see it coming."

"Chief", she said, her eyes now sore from crying. "May I ask you something?"

He paused for a moment, then nodded. Twilight continued on "Do you have any friends, or family?"

He looked away from her for a moment, a sense of pain and loss rolling from him. It was at least two minutes before he looked at her again. "I had a family once, with many of my brothers and sisters. Now, they're all gone, leaving me alone to defend Humanity."

Twilight choked up at this. While her loss was substantial, at least she knew they were alive. The Chief's family, dead. That is horrible. She was almost afraid to ask her next question. Almost.

"And what of friends?" she said in a quiet voice. "Are they still alive?"

"Some are", he said, looking directly at her. She could feel his eyes looking straight at hers, though she could not see a thing through his visor. "I have Cortana, and you, don't I?"

Once again, Twilight choked, but not from sadness. 'The Chief considers me...a friend.' she though to herself, feeling a sense of hope come over her. 'I have a friend now in this hostile world. Somepony I can count on.'

Maybe, just maybe, could she live through this adventure, with a true friend by her side: The Master Chief.
> Assault on the Control Room (last revised 18/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



"When you killed those Hunters, why did worms come out of their bodies?"

Chief arched an eyebrow at Twilight's question, though she couldn't see it from inside his helmet. A weird question, though given that they had faced at least eight Hunters on the mission to find the Cartographer, it was easy enough to understand why she would ask it.

"Because they are the worms", he couldn't help but smile at her shocked, then disbelieving expression. "In fact, both of the Hunters in a pair are made up of a whole colony of the worms, whom are sentient creatures. We still don't know how, or why, they can combine into larger forms, but they are one of the strongest and most dangerous species in the Covenant. In fact, they actually can inhabit and power much larger objects, like scarabs."

"Scarabs, you mean the insect?", Twilight asked, torn between being bewildered and inquisitive, her eye twitching slightly. "How dangerous could an insect be?"

"You don't want to know", the Chief said in a serious tone, remembering events in the past where scarabs had levelled entire cities by themselves on countless worlds. "And I hope you will never encounter one."

The conversation was interrupted as Foehammer's voice came over the radio while the bay doors opened, revealing a platform where Grunts were running to a large door to escape the Pelican. "This is as far as I can go!"

"Roger that", Cortana said, "We can find our own way to the Control Centre from here." With this being said, the Chief and Twilight got up from their seats and slid down from the bay doors onto the metallic platform. Near the door stood two unmanned Shade Turrets.

"Good luck, Foehammer out!" was all they heard before Foehammer flew back down the tunnel, leaving them alone.

Chief took a quick look around, saw the light on the door flash green, and ran to the nearest Shade turret, jumping in and twisted it around, facing the now opened door, and the two Elites that stood in the doorway. He hosed them down with constant plasma fire. In his peripheral vision, he saw Twilight appear in the other Shade turret, and began experimenting with how to operate it.

"Cortana, do you mind giving Twilight a hand with that Shade?", he asked as the Elites finally died, and a half dozen Grunts took their place. Her response a moment later was Twilight's directed plasma blasts joining his own at killing the remaining Grunts.

After waiting for a moment to see if there were any reinforcements coming, the Chief got off of the Shade, raised his rifle and walked through the large door. It opened, revealing a short corridor, with an arrow imbedded on the floor. Suspicious, he looked back at Twilight, who stood behind him.

"Stay vigilant", he warned. Twilight nodded, and together, they walked through the corridor, and into a large circular room, with the centre surrounded on most sides by another wall. Throughout the room were Covenant Troops, who looked bored out of their minds. However, they got the last bit of excitement in their lives as the Chief threw a grenade into the largest group.

Waiting a moment after the explosion and seeing the remaining Covenant troops scatter in both shock and fear, the Chief moved in, killing any Covenant that survived. After the last Grunt fell to the floor, both he and Twilight moved on through the next door.

What was behind the door was almost an exact repeat of the corridor and room they were just in. For a second, the Chief thought that he was having deja vu. As the room was cleared out, Cortana couldn't help but make a quick comment.

"The Covenant presence here is stronger than I anticipated", she said "they must have the entire region covered!"

"Then that's good news and bad news", the Chief remarked. Upon seeing Twilight's confused face, he added in "bad news that the Covenant are here in force, but it shows us that the Control Centre must be nearby or in the area."

"Well, that is if you think in an optimistic manner", Twilight noted. "And I mean in a very, very optimistic way."

They made their way through the second room, and out into a large bridge in the middle of the cold open air. Once again, the Chief was glad that he had his MJOLNIR armour on, which kept his temperature in an almost perfect setting with its Hydrostatic Gel Layer. Unfortunately, Twilight didn’t have anything and thus the Chief could hear her quietly curse as he looked at the beams of light that seemed to replace suspension cables on the bridge, similar to how the ringworld was full of areas that used light as solid matter.

On each side of the door were two unoccupied Shade turrets, with the supposed gunners sleeping next to it. The Chief acted quickly to silently neutralize them before they could wake up. They died without making a single sound. With their rear now covered, the Chief peered over the edge of the barrier, and spotted multiple enemies scattered throughout the bridge.

He noticed that there were multiple ramps leading to a level beneath them, so he was about to sneak down there to avoid most of the Covenant when a flaming Pelican flew past the bridge, smoke billowing from the port engines. Immediately, all of the Covenant on the bridge, some of which were asleep, all jumped up and started firing at the Pelican as Chief overheard a radio conversation between the occupants of the Pelican and Cortana.

"This is Fireteam Zulu, requesting immediate assistance from any UNSC forces. Does anyone copy? Over."

"Cortana to fireteam Zulu. I read you. Hold position, we're on our way."

'So much for the element of surprise', he thought to himself as one of the Elites on the bridge noticed that the shade turrets did not fire on the Pelican and was striding over to investigate. Deciding on pre-emptively attacking, the Chief jumped into the nearest Shade turret, and sent a volley of plasma bolts to the Elite, killing it within a few shots. He moved on to mowing down the nearest group of Grunts.

'Where is Twilight?' he wondered after noticing her absence, only to be answered by a single Elite, who ran out to face him, being kicked off the edge of the bridge. Twilight's purple mane was blown to the side by a gust of wind, making her seen by several Covenant Troops, who were now alert to the prospect of a teleporting enemy, and took precautions against her, such as making sure their backs were almost touching each other.

The Chief smiled. While the Covenant tried to compensate for Twilight's magical ability, they had made it easier for him to kill them, being so close together in a large bunch. As Twilight teleported back to the Chief, he racked up kill after kill of Covenant

"Nice job confusing them", he told her as he finally stopped firing the Shade turret after the surviving Covenant fled back behind cover on the other side of the bridge. She blushed, but tried to look away. The Chief only shook his head. 'Is this how ponies react to compliments?' he wondered to himself. Then again, he might have seen other humans blush like that at similar comments.

He jumped out of the Shade turret, and started to make his way through the Bridge, with Twilight following suit. The surviving Covenant decided that their best tactic was to attack the pair all at once, and came running out of their hiding spots, plasma weapons firing as they ran. They were quickly stopped by Twilight's shield, and the Chief's accurate fire from his assault rifle.

As the last Covenant soldier dropped to the ground, dead, the doors at the other side of the bridge opened up, and the sounds of boots running across the metal surface echoed across the icy wind of the canyon on which the bridge connected. Worried at how he could not see what had come out of the door, due to the barrier blocking his view, the Chief held up his hand, motioning for Twilight to hang back, while he cautiously walked forward, weapon raised with his eyes focusing both on what was in front of him, and the red blips on his motion tracker.

His caution was soon rewarded as an Elite Zealot vaulted over the barrier, attempting to skewer the Chief with its energy sword. The Chief jumped back, narrowly avoiding the tip of the sword, before kicking the Elite in the chest as it tried to move closer. He opened fire at the Zealot, hitting it with a full volley of automatic fire from his rifle. The Zealot took it all without a single flinch, pulling out a plasma rifle with its non sword arm, and fired back at the Chief, whittling his shields down to a fraction of its max strength.

Twilight, seeing how close the Chief was to having his shields taken down, ran from behind him, flanking the Zealot and blasting it with a beam of magic. The Zealot, from the force of the magical blast alone, was thrown off the edge of the bridge.

"That was slightly anti-climatic", Cortana commented to the Chief, who reloaded after dealing with a group of retreating Grunts. "I almost expected you to stab him with his own sword."

The Chief ignored the remark and moved on through the door, onto a small lift. He waited for Twilight to join him on the cramped platform before pressing his hand against the holo console. He felt his gut lurch as the lift came down quite fast. Within a few seconds, they had gone down the equivalent of maybe twenty stories on an apartment building.

After passing through an empty corridor, they exited out into the snow filled canyon, where a group of Marines, most likely Fireteam Zulu, were taking cover near a group of thin trees, near the wreckage of their Pelican and an overturned Warthog. On the other side of the area were multiple squads of Covenant, along with two Shade Turret and, much to the Chief's chagrin, a Wraith Mortar Tank.

The Chief heard Twilight gasp in both horror and awe as they witnessed the Wraith fire a single plasma mortar at the entrenched Marines, its arc carrying it high in the air before descending downwards and colliding with the ground, melting snow, sending broken shards of some trees flying everywhere and vaporising the body of an unfortunate Marine. Fortunately, the majority of the Marines scattered out of the blast zone, but into the fire of the nearest Shade Turret.

Using the magnification on his pistol, the Chief got a clean headshot on the Grunt manning the Shade Turret, and cleared out some of the Covenant before the Wraith fired a mortar at his location.

"Twilight, move!", he shouted, sprinting towards the overturned Warthog, with Twilight following close behind, her eyes peeled to the mortar as it flew in the sky and exploded at the place she was previously at. They reached the Warthog, and the Chief proceeded to quickly flip it over to the right side. The Chief also noticed a Rocket Launcher lying nearby and quickly swept it up with his free hand, before stowing it on his back. They jumped in, with a Marine, who had seen them coming, jumped on to the gunner placement.

"Good to see you, Chief", the Marine shouted "And your pet pony."

"Excuse me!", Twilight shouted back, as the Warthog drove off. "I am not a Pet!"

"I would remind you, Twilight, that there is a Wraith about to blow us up!", Cortana shouted over the comm channel as the Wraith turned to face them.

Swearing his head off, the Marine started to fire at the Wraith head on, but the tank was protected by both an Infantry screen, and its thick armour. The Covenant Troops were taking pot shots at the exposed occupants of the Warthog while the Chief attempted to drive into the dead zone around the Wraith, where it could not risk firing a mortar without destroying itself. This was going along marginally well, until a Ghost decided to turn up, firing on the Warthog as it hovered over to them. The Chief heard Twilight scream as plasma bolts impacted on the armoured plates of the Warthog near her.

Sliding the Warthog around the Ghost, while running over a pair of Grunts, the Chief gave the Gunner an opportunity to fire round after round into the exposed body of the Elite driver, eventually killing it. As the Ghost powered down, collapsing onto the snowy environment.

"Twilight, could you use your magic to deal with those Troops surrounding the Wraith?", he asked as he drove the Warthog to the side, avoiding being hit by a mortar.



"I can try!" Twilight shouted over the howling wind and the sound of plasma fire. She pocked her head out of the safety of the Warthog and looked at her opponents. There was only a single Elite, a pair of Jackals and a troupe of Grunts left, still enough of them to pose a serious threat if ignored as the Chief focused on the Wraith.

She telekinetically lifted the Elite into the air, and threw it right into the path of an oncoming mortar, which vaporised him with the impact mid-air, though the Mortar continued on without any effect on it. She then focused on the Jackals, who stared with wide eyes at what had happened to their leader. They suffered a more merciful fate: a large blast of magic that obliterated them. The Grunts simply looked at one other, and fled, clearing the area around the Wraith.

Twilight popped her head back into safety, as the Chief drove the Warthog into a close position with the Wraith, the Gunner firing rapidly at the purple monstrosity, though the rounds pinged off of the front armour. Then, Twilight saw the Wraith coming towards them for apparently no reason, until she heard the Gunner shout "It's trying to ram us."

She felt the Warthog brake, causing her to lurch forward, using her magic to stop herself from slamming into the dashboard. She looked up, through the windscreen, and saw that the Warthog had barley avoided getting hit by the Wraith, due to the Chief driving backwards to the side. Twilight also noticed that the rear of the Wraith was now exposed, and that it had significantly less armour than the front.

Both of the other occupants of the Warthog saw this opportunity, and the Gunner quickly opened fire. After a short while, the Wraith exploded, sending debris everywhere. The Marines across the area cheered at the sight, with Twilight joining in, unable to help herself. The only one who remained silent was the Chief, as he drove back to the entrenched Fireteam Zulu.

"Thanks for the assist, Chief", the Sergeant said "That Wraith would have blasted us into atoms."

"No problem", the Chief said.

"Why was your pelican flying nearby, may I ask?" Cortana spoke out over the Chief's external Comm.

"Major Silva requested us to investigate the area, and to provide support for you if you needed it." The sergeant gave a brief, ironic laugh. "Turns out we needed the support instead."

"Well, with humanity's luck so far, I'm not particularly surprised at that turn of events." Cortana said in a joking manner. "But we're happy to have any help we can."

"Glad to hear it", the Sergeant said, before turning around to look at a Marine in the far distance, who was watching the far reaches of the canyon for any more enemies. "What's the situation back there", he shouted over the mike.

"Everything at ground level looks clear, sarge", the Marine began, his voice being heard through Twilight's radio as he was too far away to hear him. "but I keep on seeing something, or a group of somethings in the air with my peripheral vision. I'm not sure the area is cleeeeeaaaaa!"

This was all Twilight heard before a huge bug with wings ambushed the Marine from behind, picked him up with two of its appendages, flew up above the tree tops, and dropped him, leaving him to be impaled at the top of one of the many trees. The insect like creature then flew towards the large group, with many other insects joining it mid-flight.

"Shit!", the Sergeant said as he, along with all the other Marines, raised his Assault rifle and opened fire on the incoming insects. "We got Drones incoming!"

The Chief jumped out, with Twilight following suit. The Gunner remained on the turret, firing at the 'Drones' with automatic fire. Twilight herself aimed at a Drone, and opened fire with a short burst, only to find the insect alien dodging most of her bullets.

Annoyed, she used her magic to hold the bug in mid-air, as she fired another burst at it. This time, all of the bullets hit it and the last one punctured the thick armoured exoskeleton, killing it. Even as it started its swift descent to the ground, it was replaced by two more Drones. These were armed with plasma pistols, and opened fire on the alicorn.

She teleported a few metres back as she avoided being burnt by plasma. She raised a shield around herself, allowing a few shots to hit the shield, before teleporting away, slamming them into the ground with extreme force.

She then fired a blast of magic at another Drone, sending it shrieking into the nearest tree, which was a fair distance away. She didn't see it get impaled by a branch as she turned around, and ducked to avoid getting grabbed by a flying Drone. She threw it away from her, and couldn't stop herself feeling some satisfaction as she watched it land near the Chief, who proceeded to stomp on its face with his armoured boot.

After another three minutes of fighting, the last Drone finally fell to the ground, dead. However, out of the twelve Marines that were present when Twilight and the Chief had dealt with the Wraith, only seven were still alive. Twilight, her adrenaline fading after the firefight, started to feel tears run down her face as she looked down at the body of the dead Sergeant at her hooves. The stench of burnt flesh rose up from his face, or what was left of it, causing Twilight to both cough and feel nauseas. She walked away, failing to keep her eyes off of the corpse littered on the ground.

In the end, she found herself next to the Chief, who was reloading his Assault Rifle. She looked up at him, to see if he had any visible reaction to what has happened, but she could find nothing from his helmet, hiding his face away. She wondered what his face even looked like, or even his skin. The only thing she knew for real is that his blood was crimson, just like the other humans.

'Maybe it doesn't effect him like it does to me?' she wondered, but then shook her head, 'no, when that Marine at the Cartographer died from that Hunter, he looked hurt. But why doesn't he show it?'

Downcast, she looked down at his hand, and saw it in a very tight grip, reminding her of how Spike would curl up his claws into a fist when he was angry or determined. 'Maybe he does show it...', she realised, that thought somehow giving her comfort that her protector was not an emotionless monster.

She was so lost in thought that she did not notice the Chief looking down at her, not until she heard his voice speak out. "Twilight?" A single word that caught her attention.

He knelt before her, and simply asked "Are you alright?" Twilight blinked, unsure if she was hearing the same thing over and over again.

"No", she replied honestly, "but I can keep on going." the Chief seemed to hesitate before standing up, and nodding. The two of them looked to the far side of the canyon, jumped into the Warthog, where the Gunner was still on, and drove off.

They continued on until a deep drop-off prevented the group from driving any further with the Warthog. So they all had to hop off, and trek through the snow. While the Chief and the Marine had armour on, and warm clothes, Twilight had none of that, and was now beginning to feel the cold begin to creep in throughout her whole exposed body.

She gritted her now chattering teeth as she fought back, using magic to warm herself, though it wouldn't last long. The spell that she had cast was only temporary, and thus she would need a new source of warmth. She could already feel her fur start to become tense from Goosebumps.

Fortunately, she felt something made of wool land on her back. She looked back and found a dark green scarf on her back. She looked at the Chief, whose hand was once again going back to his rifle. "Thanks", she said, telekinetically wrapping the scarf around her neck. The warmth of it instantly made a difference. "Where did you get this from?"

The Chief seemed to hesitate to say something, but in the end, it was Cortana who spoke out. "From one of the dead Marines back at the crashed Pelican." Twilight felt the warmth suddenly flee her body, and horror seep in. "Why?" she asked in a whispered voice.

"Because he wouldn't be needing it anymore", The Chief said, in a deadpan voice. As Twilight looked back at him in horror, Cortana butted in once again to explain things. "Twilight, this war has been going on for three decades now. In that time, when we are behind enemy lines, we had learnt to scavenge what we could from whatever source, no matter where from. Often, this was the difference between life and death."

"So don't think of the scarf as the last possession of a dead person", the Chief spoke again, "but as something that person would rather give out to someone still alive, to help them live on."

Twilight pondered that, and found her horror fading. They were both right. She decided to ignore where the scarf came from, and focus on how it is helping her keep warm.

"May I enquire on how that scarf is keeping you warm in this environment?" Cortana asked in a curious tone of voice.

"Well...", Twilight's face transformed into what her close friends would call one of her trademark lecture grins, "Pony metabolism is..."

They were interrupted by the sound of plasma bolts being fired in their direction. Twilight raised a shield around herself and the Chief, and found the both of them surrounded by a squad of Covenant. The Chief raised his rifle in preparation to fight, with Twilight following suit. However, Cortana, in a semi-pleased tone, spoke out over the comm.

"Chief, up ahead, past those trees, is a scorpion. If you and Twilight can make it past this squad, we'll have enough firepower to deal with anything in this region, minus a Scarab."

"Roger that", the Chief said, who then turned to Twilight. She was confused about what they were talking about, so she looked past the Covenant outside her shield, in the direction that Cortana gave, and saw a metallic, human vehicle that was bigger than the Warthog. It had what looked like a huge gun on the top, and four of what appeared to be protected, elongated wheels.

"Get ready to make a run for the Scorpion", the Chief said as Twilight's shield started to crack under the pressure of having to handle so many plasma bolts colliding with it. Twilight nodded, sweat starting to drip down from sheer concentration and effort put into maintaining the shield.

"Now!" the Chief shouted as the Shield finally gave way and shattered. Twilight, though exhausted, teleported directly in front of the Scorpion. She jumped behind it, taking cover, then collapsed from magical exhaustion. She felt the impact of snow on her face as the Chief's boots hit the ground near her.

Opening her eyes, her blurry eyesight could barely make out the Chief and the Marine firing their Assault Rifles next to her. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, allowing her magical energy to slowly restore itself to an acceptable level.

"Twilight?" Cortana asked through the comm as she noticed Twilight doing nothing.

"Just...recuperating", Twilight muttered, still weak. "My magic reserve is low. I'll be fine in a moment."

"Maybe you could have waited for a better time?" The Marine said as he put down a Jackal with a burst from his rifle.

"Hey, that shield I used to protect us took a lot of effort and energy to sustain", she said, too worn out to even make an annoyed tone.



"Private, move Twilight behind those trees and stay with her", the Chief ordered.

"Yes, sir", the Marine replied, grabbing Twilight with both of his arms, put her on his shoulder, much to her chagrin, and ran to the nearest thick tree. Meanwhile, the Chief vaulted up onto the Scorpion, jumped into the open drivers seat, closed the hatch and activated the Tank's engine.

As the sound rumbled throughout the area, the Covenant Troops became petrified as the Scorpion's turret started to swivel in their direction. The Chief smiled as he pressed down the trigger in the cockpit, and blew up an Elite and five Grunts, sending melted snow, burnt dirt and blood flying into the air. He proceeded to mop up the remaining Covenant with the machine gun attached to the turret, since this Scorpion was a M808B model.

The firing stopped after a brief moment, the machine gun bullets and main cannon of the Scorpion easily destroying the nearby Covenant Troops. The Chief used the instruments of the Scorpion to spot the Marine and Twilight, who seemed to be in better shape now, walking towards the Tank, with the Marine jumping onto one of the treads, while Twilight looked around in shock at the carnage the tank had wrought.

"Did this thing just do what I think it did?", she asked over the radio, as she couldn't see the Chief.

"Yes, it did", Cortana answered for him as he opened the hatch, getting up slightly to allow Twilight to spot his helmet within the vehicle. Her expression of confusion faded, and she jumped up and stood next to the hatch, looking down at the Chief with intrigue.

"How can you even sit in there?", she asked "It's so cramped..."

"Its big enough for one person, even of my size", the Chief said, sitting himself back inside to drive the Scorpion. He noticed Twilight sitting right next to the hatch, though she was not obscuring his vision through the tinted windows.

The Scorpion tank slowly rumbled forward, its heavy weight preventing any fast movement from the tank. As they continued on the wide canyon, a pair of ghosts came out of the woodwork, bearing down on the Tank. The plasma bolts that the Ghosts shot out of their frontal cannons did little to damage the Tank, with the Chief simply swivelling the turret around to face the nearest Ghost, and fired a single round at where the Ghost was heading, hitting and destroying it with a huge explosion.

The second Ghost turned around and tried to flee, but the Marine sitting on the side pulled out a rocket launcher, and fired it at the Ghost, destroying it. The Tank rumbled on, as it ignored the burnt wreckage, travelling through the canyon, and the large path that seemed to lead somewhere.

After twenty minutes of travelling through the canyon, killing Covenant whenever they could, the group in the Scorpion found an entrance to a large tunnel, similar to the smaller one that the Chief had found when he was searching for the scattered Marines in the crash area. The large, metal walls were visible from the sensors inside the Scorpion. Though it was a fair distance away, the path towards it was clear, except for three obstacles: A single Wraith tank, and two Banshees, their purple metallic body and wings glittering in the sky, flying towards the Tank.

The Chief immediately pressed the brakes, put the engine in reverse, and drove backwards, in an attempt to gain distance and time between the oncoming Banshees. It was fortunate that he did so, as two Fuel rod shots impacted and exploded on the snow where the Tank once stood. The Banshees let loose a volley of plasma bolts, but the Chief mainly ignored the plasma hitting the tank for now, aiming the cannon at the Banshee to his left.

As the Banshees veered away, the Chief fired at the left Banshee, blowing it up. He was already aiming for the second one as the hull of the Banshee, and the corpse of the Elite pilot, fell to the ground. However, He saw Twilight stand up, and her horn light up, with the Banshee soon being enveloped in a pink glow. It was then thrown against the Cliff face, exploding as it collided.

That left the Wraith to deal with, as it fired mortar after mortar at the Tank. Thankfully, they were far away from it that the Chief could easily move the Scorpion out of the impact zones of all of the mortars. The Chief aimed and fired a shot from the Scorpion at the Wraith, saw it be impacted, but still keep on throwing our Mortars. As the Scorpion's cannon reloaded, the Wraith moved forward with a boost from its rear engines, coming closer in order to ensure its shots hit the Scorpion.

The Chief could make out the damaged armour plates in the front, and knew that one more shot could destroy it. He aimed again, and counted down the seconds until the cannon had reloaded.

Five.

The Wraith fired another Mortar, aimed at the Scorpion. The Chief once again moved past it, but only by a metre.

Four.

In order to try to destroy the Wraith, the Marine fired a rocket from his launcher.

Three.

The Wraith dodged the fast, but still slower than the cannon shot, rocket. It flew past before impacting on the metal ceiling of the tunnel.

Two.

The Wraith fired once again, as it grew closer to the Tank. The Mortar arched in the sky, heading right for the Scorpion. At this range, the Chief couldn't dodge it with the speed of the Tank.

One.

Twilight decided to act now, after resting for twenty minutes. She created a shield around the Scorpion, which the Mortar impacted on, shattering it in the process.

Zero.

The Chief fires point blank into the broken armour of the Wraith. The shot penetrated into the drivers cabin, and exploded. The Wraith erupted in a brief explosion of heat and light and the broken hull crashed into the snowy ground.

"Is everyone all right?" the Chief asked over the comm. His question was answered with acknowledgements from an AI, a Pony and a Marine.

"Good" he muttered to himself as he started to drive the Scorpion forward once more, this time into the large tunnel in front of them.



Twilight shivered as she entered the cold, windy outside space once again, the Chief standing right behind her. He gripped his newly acquired sniper rifle with ease as he used the magnification sights to study their new location.

It had been at least an hour since they entered the tunnel with the Scorpion tank. It took them ten minutes to reach a metal cavern. There was a large bridge to cross, but it was heavily fortified by the Covenant. The group blasted through it all, and made it to a door that was damaged, opening only enough for a Hunter to fit through. Sure enough, they had to leave the Tank behind, before walking through another tunnel, and into the catacombs of the Ring. Within there, they were ambushed by Hunters, who targeted the weakest out of the group; the Marine. He died to a single blast before they could even react.

She still remember hearing him scream as he melted in front of her. After that, all she felt for a while was rage. Even with the Hunters lying dead from the Chief's hands, she still went on a rampage, massacring any Covenant she could find for at least a quarter of an hour. She was so distracted by her rage that she had forgotten all about the mission, and it was only the intervention by the Chief and Cortana that she finally cooled down enough to continue on.

Now here they are, on the natural bridge above a large natural valley, where the pyramid that housed the Control Centre stood tall to the side, it's rusted, yet majestic metal surface still glittering with the sunlight and snow falling onto it. Twilight would have stared in wonder at the pyramid if it wasn't for the fact that she had just noticed the empty Banshees lying on the Bridge, as well as the Elites who stood nearby them.

"Analysing", Cortana commented as the Chief and Twilight got into another firefight, "This must be the control room. Subtle. The entrance to the Control room must be on the top of that pyramid."

"Just like the room which teleported me onto the Autumn", Twilight realised, half concentrating on what Cortana was saying as she reloaded her Assault Rifle after killing an Elite Minor. The remaining two Elites decided to jump into the open Banshees, close the cowling, and fly off into the sky.

"Damn", the Chief said as he saw them fly up, "That was our ride straight to the top."

"We can still reach there, right?" Twilight asked, a feeling of worry starting to form within her stomach.

"Yes, we can", Cortana said, "but not without having to deal with the Covenant forces spread across the Pyramid."

"Alright then", the Chief said, sending a single sniper shot at an Elite on the Pyramid, killing it with a headshot, "Lets move on. The sooner we take them out, the sooner we can get what we are looking for before more enemy reinforcements arrive."

With that in mind, the pair moved onwards to the other side of the rock bridge, fighting through a pack of Grunts and Jackals. There they found a portal to the interior of the cliff face, and the elevator that took them to the ground level. As they arrived, they took advantage of the quick respite to reload their weapons, and take note of their ammo.

Twilight noticed that she only had two spare magazines left for her rifle. Her pistol ammo had all but been expended fighting through the catacombs of the previous area. She heard the click of a rifle's receiver clicking into place, and knew that it was the Chief loading in his last clip of ammo for his rifle. She telekinetically grabbed one of her clips and hovered it in front of the Chief, who graciously accepted it, clipping it to his ammo belt.

"Thanks", he said, "just make sure that you don't run out of ammo yourself."

"I only got my full mag in my rifle, and this spare left", Twilight commented to the Chief. The Chief hung his head in thought for a brief moment, before kneeling down and grabbing one of the plasma pistols that littered the floor. He handed it to her, butt first.

"Take this as something to use in case that ammo runs out quickly", he said to her. She took it from his open hand, held it in front of her as she studied the mechanisms of the pistol, and clipped it to her side. She was not familiar with the Covenant weapons, and thus hoped she wouldn't have to use it.

They walked out once again into the snowy landscape, where a squad of Covenant awaited them. Putting up a shield around them, Twilight snarled as an arrogant Elite rushed inside her shield, as she crafted it to allow other allies, like the Chief to go through it, with it only stopping plasma, and didn't account for the Elites to take advantage of it.

Fortunately, the Chief was there and tackled the Elite to the ground, as another Elite ran forward to join its comrade. This time, Twilight turned a portion of the Shield into solid form, cutting the Elite in half as it stood right at the edge, where the purple light was present throughout half its body. She heard both the crunch of the front half of the Elite peeling forward, and the knife being imbedded into the throat of the first Elite.

She released the Shield as the Grunts and Jackals began to run away. She would have shot them with her rifle, if it wasn't for the fact that a pair of Hunters and the pair of Banshees from before began to attack the Chief and her. The Banshees swooped down to make a firing run on her, while the Hunters decided to focus on the Chief, all of them firing their fuel rod cannons.

Twilight teleported a few meters away from where she was standing before, but was forced to shield herself as the Banshees turned around and began firing their plasma cannons at her. With her shield quickly becoming cracked on every angle, Twilight created a solid block out of magic, its translucent, purple form indicating its nature, and sent it flying into the nearest Banshee as the Shield shattered, with such force and momentum that the Banshee could not evade in time.

The second Banshee rolled to the right, its engines screeching out at her ears as it passed overhead with speed that could rival Rainbow Dash, when she was not attempting a sonic rainboom. Twilight's eyes tracked as it flew in the air, widening as it turned around and fired another green bolt of explosive energy at her. She ran forward as fast as she could to avoid getting hit, while simultaneously dodging the plasma bolts sent her way. It also didn't help that Covenant Troops from the upper levels of the Pyramid were traversing their way down, firing at her from a distance, with a Jackal sniper almost shooting her in the head.

'Though those Covenant Troops are a real danger, I'll have to deal with that Banshee first, then help the Chief with the Hunters', she thought to herself as she ran. 'Or I could do both...'

Stopping in her tracks, much to the surprise of the Covenant, she stared down the Banshee that was heading her way before lighting up her horn. The Elite pilot, though she couldn't see it, bared its mandibles, expecting an easy kill, before he felt his Banshee jolt from an unknown force, and looked at its monitor only to see the side of the Pyramid coming closer and closer. It had no time to react as Twilight threw the Banshee right at a group of Covenant on the Pyramid, especially where the sniper was.

Twilight turned back to the base of the Pyramid, looking for the Chief, when she saw him dodge an oncoming Shield swipe by a Hunter. She quickly noticed the dead body of the second Hunter near where they were fighting, just as the Chief leapt onto the back of the Hunter, primed a grenade, thrust it into the mass of worms on the back and jumped off. Three seconds later, the Hunter exploded in a mass of blood and worms.

She ran up to him as he loaded in his last mag for his rifle. His armour had a new burn mark on the Chest. A Hunter or Elite must have gotten a lucky shot when his Shields went down.

"Are you alright with that?" Twilight asked, pointing at the burn mark.

"Yeah", he replied, slinging his Assault Rifle for his Sniper rifle, "it's only on the paintjob, nothing else."

He raised his sniper and fired a single shot, with the yell of an Elite, and the flop of a dead body, heard in the distance. He looked back at her and nodded, which she returned. As they began to walk on the path up to the top of the pyramid, Cortana couldn't help but add "I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking", which sent Twilight into the giggles.

There were Covenant waiting for them on the way up, but Twilight managed to throw them off the edge in an effort to conserve ammo. The Chief only grunted at this, the only sign of him being impressed.

They finally made it to the top, where a couple of abandoned Shade turrets awaited them. A large door stood before them, its metal surface being decorated by engraved lines in a v-shaped pattern. A single green light emanated from a thin, cylinder shaped slit in the middle of the door. On the side was a holographic panel, waiting to be pressed.

"What do we do now?" Twilight asked as she surveyed the area, struggling to keep her excitement from the ancient wonder that this pyramid could provide for everypony back in Equestria.

"Simple", the Chief replied, looking at the furthest Shade turret. "I need you to get on that turret, and aim it at the door", he said as he pointed to the Shade. Twilight complied, teleporting beside it. "Now", he continued as she hopped on, "as soon as I activate this switch, you teleport me to the other turret. Understood?"

"Got it", she replied, but he already started walking towards the switch. His hand hovered over it as he twisted his head to look directly at her, and nodded. He pressed the button, and Twilight used her magic to make him disappear in a flash, and reappear at the other Shade.

The door slowly opened, but when it did, it revealed a single Elite Zealot with a small cohort of Grunts. The Zealot leapt to cover behind an energy shield as Twilight and the Chief hosed down the Grunts with plasma bolts. The Zealot simply stood and watched, not even blinking at the sight of the Grunts dying, unprotected. Somehow, this infuriated Twilight, who jumped off of the Shade when it was clear that it couldn't get past the shield.

The Zealot watched her approach, its eye flicking from both her and the Chief, who had gotten off as well. A flash of blue light near the Zealot's hand, and the swoosh sound, announced the activation of an energy sword. Twilight's eyes widened as the Zealot leapt to the side towards her, and charged. Both her and the Chief fired their rifles at it, but the Zealot was a veteran and was fast. It kicked her rifle out of her magical grasp, and tried to skewer her, until the Chief pulled out his sniper and shot it point blank in the Chest.

The Zealot stumbled as its shields went down, allowing Twilight to pull out her captured plasma pistol, and shoot it at the Zealot's chest. It was remarkably swift, and powerful, with only a few shots needed to melt the armour, and skin of the Zealot before it finally died.

"Scanning", Cortana said as Twilight followed the Chief down a large, hangar like space before stopping in front of another set of doors and pressing the switch. "Covenant forces in the area have been eliminated. Nicely done, you two. Let's move on to Halo's Control Centre!"

They entered a vast room, where the actual walls were shaped like a sphere, except the top and bottom led to a hole that seemed to go on forever. The door led straight onto a large platform, its only connection to anything being the path to the door. Twilight could actually look down through the transparent glass/steel but then immediately regretted it, seeing as she could only see an endless abyss. What caught her eye next was the huge hologram of Halo slowly rotating around a circular walkway in the middle of the area. At the start of the circular walkway was a longer holographic panel than the ones Twilight had seen previously.

Twilight couldn't help herself. She gave a loud yelp of excitement, clapping her hooves together, much to the amusement of the Chief, who simply shaked his head as he walked towards a large panel at the edge of the walkway.

"This is it...Halo's Control Centre", Cortana commented as the Chief reached the panel. "That terminal, try there." The Chief complied with her instructions, placing his hand on one of the many symbols on the panel.

Cortana's avatar suddenly appeared over the panel, her face alight with pleasure as her colour shifted from blue to red, then back again.

"Are you alright?" the Chief asked, with Twilight noticing his voice carried both surprise and concern. She wouldn't lie that she didn't feel the same way, especially with Cortana's next comment of being "Never Better". She drifted off to fantasizing about what she could learn about the Halo ring from here, when The Chief's voice sliced right through her distracted mind. "Let's stay focused. Halo. How do we use it against the Covenant?"

"Or at least disable it, and render it harmless" Twilight added, with the Chief nodding in agreement.

Cortana suddenly frowned with disdain. "This ring isn't a cudgel, you barbarians, it's something else. Something much more important. The Covenant were right, this ring-" She paused as she clutched her head with one arm, trying to sort out the information being processed. "Forerunner", she muttered in a puzzled voice, Cortana's facial expression complimenting it. "Give me a moment to access..."

Twilight walked up to the Chief and whispered so only he could hear. "Is there something wrong with her?", she asked, with the Chief only shrugging slightly. "I don't know", he admitted "but I don't like what's going on with her anyway."

The two of them soon realised that Cortana had started speaking again. "Yes, the Forerunners built this place, what they called a fortress world, in order to-" Her eyes widened in alarm at something "No, that can't be... Oh, those Covenant fools, they must have known, there must have been signs."

Whatever it was that Cortana was referring to, Twilight couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding, and dread start to overcome her, along with confusion, which is what the Chief must have been feeling as he tried to talk some reason into Cortana.

"Slow down. Your losing me", he said, but then took a step back as suddenly Cortana gasped in horror. "The Covenant found something", she said "buried in this ring, something horrible."

"Something buried?" Twilight asked, but was ignored by Cortana.

"Captain - we got to stop the Captain. The weapons cache he's looking for, it's not really - we can't let him get inside."

"I don't understand." Both Twilight and the Chief said this simultaneously without realising it.

"There's no time!", Cortana practically shouted at them in an urgent tone of voice. "I have to remain here. Get out, find Keyes, stop him. Before it's too late!"

Twilight and the Chief looked at one other, and both decided to trust Cortana's words and ran out of the Control Centre, with Twilight wondering with fear, what Cortana was speaking about.

'Looks like I'll find out soon enough', she thought to herself as she heard the Chief radio for pickup.
> The Flood - Part 1 (last revised 19/03/2020)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Twilight resisted the urge to squeal in disgust as she pulled her hoof out of the oily-looking substance, even though she was standing in it. If she was being honest to herself, she wouldn't mind it if it wasn't for the oily substance almost reaching her belly even though she was standing upright on all four hooves. She was in the middle of a dark and murky swamp, where the trees were massive and had glowing green bulbs all across them, creating an almost spooky atmosphere.

'Why couldn't it be in the snow, like where we were before?' she complained to herself in her mind as she heard a splash of something hitting the liquid and felt some of it splatter onto her side. She turned around and saw the Chief standing in the substance beside her now—though the muck only went up to his calf—sending ripples across a small area. As the Chief looked back at the hovering Pelican from which they had arrived from, Twilight couldn't help but pout to him.

"Be sure to bring us some towels", the Chief said to Foehammer before looking at Twilight and adding "Scratch that. Just bring Twilight all of the towels that you can find."

Twilight started to feel both annoyed and embarrassed at the Chief's joke, when she heard the pilot laugh over the comm. The two of them watched as the Pelican lifted even further from the ground, and swooped off into the foggy air, avoiding the dense tree tops.

"How come you get to be mostly dry?" Twilight complained to the Chief, pointing to him. "I stand here, my legs almost completely submerged and you just stand there with your tall body with barely anything getting wet, especially with your metal suit!"

The Chief's only visible sign of his amusement at her comment was his head shaking and the chuckle coming from his voice. "Maybe you should have packed some armour", he jested.

"Well, we don't have full body armour like you have back in Equestria", Twilight remarked to him. 

"Yeah, you told me about that on the flight here, along with everything else." Twilight couldn't help but blush with a tingle of guilt at his words.

Due to the distance between the Control Centre and wherever here is, Twilight decided to pass the time with the Chief by telling him all about Equestria. She freely admitted that she went overboard with what she had said, going into full lecture mode on him. He did listen, and offered comments about the differences in human history, especially the military and war.

It was actually interesting with the Chief knowing a lot about human warfare, but not really anything else except for basic knowledge that Foehammer had also talked about over the comm with them. His knowledge must be specialised from his super-soldier training.

The Chief became quiet after his quip. Twilight looked back at him to see if anything was wrong. When she saw nothing wrong, she decided to ask him. "Why are you quiet?"

"I'm making friends with the environment", he replied, much to Twilight's confusion. Her thoughts must have been obvious, because the Chief began to explain what he meant. "By listening to the constant patter of this rain, feeling the humid air and seeing all of the details and shapes that are natural to this environment, I will know what belongs and what doesn't. And that could make all the difference between surviving and dying."

"Oh, I get it", Twilight said, realization emerging in her mind "You're attuning yourself to the environment."

"Definitely", the Chief said, then paused and muttered under his breath "Chief Mendez told me that." With that, he looked up and walked to a slight rise. Twilight waited a few seconds, looking concerned at what her friend had said and the sad, melancholy tone he used, before joining him.

The sight at the top of the rise was disconcerting; a wrecked Pelican lay only a few dozen metres from where Foehammer had dropped them off, yet the fog and the surrounded foliage was so thick that getting real close to the crash site was the only way that somepony could see it. The left wing had snapped off and the outline of a pair of bodies was barely visible.

Twilight and the Chief looked at one other, saw the grim, but determined look in both their eyes, and walked forward to investigate. As they came closer, the bodies became quite visible, their uniforms being that of a pilot. No other bodies were around, as Twilight discovered, while the Chief searched inside the Pelican for any intel, but instead found a shotgun lying around.

"Found anything?" Twilight heard the Chief asked as he stepped out the hatch.

"Nothing", she replied "no more bodies other than the two we've already found."

"The weapon stock was also mainly empty, except for this shotgun", he gripped the pump of the shotgun. "The onboard Computer was also fried from the crash."

Twilight was surprised at how little the Chief was able to find. "What do you think happened?"

"Most likely the Pelican crashed after deploying its passengers", the Chief deduced, looking around where he stood. Twilight trotted up to him.

"Do you think the Covenant did it?" she asked.

Just as she said that, an explosion sounded off in the distance. Following that, Twilight could hear the voices of Grunts and Jackals approaching quickly.

"We're about to find out", the Chief stated, raising his Assault Rifle, as he put the shotgun on his back.

The Covenant finally came into view, though it was only a small group: a half-dozen Grunts and Jackals. The weirdest thing was that they looked like they were fleeing from something behind them. However as soon as they spotted the human and pony, they raised their weapons and began to fire.

Twilight and the Chief returned fire with their rifles, with fresh ammo, courtesy of Foehammer. The Covenant were easily killed and the pair decided to follow the path where the Covenant had come from. They didn't notice the shadow that came out of the water after they had left, scuttling off with one of the fresh bodies.

Twilight looked down on the now dry ground as they had come out of the swamp water just before the wreckage. She saw a trail of bootprints from some humans, most likely Keyes and his entourage of Marines. Across the path were multiple lights, small ones that seemed portable.

After a minute of travelling down the path, following the footsteps, she saw another crash site up ahead. As the two of them approached on foot, Twilight was surprised to see that it was a Covenant Dropship, with both of the bows down in the swamp muck, the bay doors appearing ripped open by the crash. Mysteriously, there were no bodies lying around.

"Can you tell anything about what might have occurred here?" Twilight asked the Chief as he approached the dropship. He didn't respond as he walked around to the other side and stopped once he looked into the bay.

"Over here", he said, motioning for Twilight to join him. She teleported next to him, looked up and became shocked at what she saw: a single stain of blood in the shape of an Elite's hand, smeared across the inner wall of the bay. There were also some plasma damage, and bullet holes.

"What happened?" Twilight asked, her voice subdued.

"I don't know", the Chief replied, "but we should move on. If I've gotten anything from what we've seen, the Captain is most likely in trouble."

With that in mind, they left the unsettling scene, and continued on the path. As the dropship soon past out of view, Twilight spotted increasing amounts of cargo containers scattered around. It reminded her of the way archaeologist sites were set up, meaning that the Covenant were either bringing stuff in, or taking them away.

After a minute of passing container after container, Twilight became even more unsettled as there should have been Covenant around here, judging from those containers, a lot of them. Even worse was that she felt like there was something watching her from behind but whenever she looked around, she couldn't see anything, only fog and swamp.

"Motion Tracker hasn't picked up anything yet", The Chief remarked, "but I feel like something is watching us."

"That makes two of us", Twilight said, drily.

With their eyes and ears now on the lookout for anything that may give up the nature of the thing watching them, the pair continued up the path until they reached a fallen tree trunk.

"Damn", the Chief said as they stopped in front of it, "I had friendly tags for a brief second on the motion sensor."

Twilight saw a blur in her peripheral vision, turned around, and saw something move past the end of the trunk. It was sized like a human, or an Elite, she couldn't tell which though from the split second she saw it. From the way the Chief raised his rifle instinctively, he saw something too.

"Did you see what that was?" he asked but Twilight shook her head.

"I saw something but it was too quick for me to make out what it was."

Their conversation was interrupted by the sounds of multiple Assault rifles firing in the distance. They rushed forward, onto the trunk, making their way to the other side and the hill that awaited them. Once they reached the top, they were just in time to witness an explosion at the entrance to a large installation, with Grunts and Jackals running away in fear from the explosion, towards the swamp. There was no sign of any human who may have been wielding the rifles they heard.

Ignoring the fleeing Covenant, the duo walked up to the entrance of the squat and arachnid installation. Remarkably, the metal entrance was undamaged by the explosion but there was nothing left to show what, or who, caused the explosion. Indeed, the entrance, despite the earlier commotion, seemed...lifeless.

It was as if the interior of the installation was an entirely different and separate world from the swamp outside, the only connection being the Covenant crates at the edge of the room. The wide octagonal hole in the middle of the room had a huge pillar at each corner. As the two approached the hole, looking for any way to go further into the installation, they were surprised to see a ramp rise up from the hole and stop at the tip, like it was waiting for them to come.

Twilight was starting to feel really uneasy about the entire mission, and from the way the Chief's hand was slightly gripping his rifle too tight, Twilight could tell he was too.

They stepped onto the lift, eyes looking side to side for any sign of a trap or Captain Keyes. The Chief pressed his hand against the holographic console near one of the pillars that they had just noticed. The lift began to descend at a reasonable speed, going further down into the Installation.

They reached a lower level, where a small group of Grunts and Jackals were standing in front of a hatch, their backs towards the lift. As a reward for their stupidity, the Chief threw a grenade at their feet, and watched them all get blown up.

"Well, that was quick", Twilight remarked as she stepped off the lift. "Too quick", the Chief commented in a low voice. "With this many Covenant in one area, there's one thing missing."

"What?" Twilight asked, though the answer came to her as soon as the words came out of her mouth. "Where are the Elites?"

"And that", the Chief started to say as he approached the hatch, "is the question of this mission."

The hatch automatically opened when he was in front of it, revealing a surprised Jackal. The Chief broke its neck, while Twilight levitated the body into the room to avoid making noise.

With their presence still a surprise to any more Covenant, the two moved through the Hatch and found themselves in a large, wide room, with them being on a platform, with the floor below having a group of seven Covenant Grunts standing around almost aimlessly.

Twilight pulled out a grenade from her pouch, primed it and threw it at the Covenant. All seven exploded with a large bang. The pair waited a moment, but no enemy reinforcements came through any of the hatches spread around the room. Something was not right.

The Chief walked up to the edge of the platform, where a console stood, activated it, and stood back when a transparent, blue thin light bridge flickered on, connected the platform to another platform on the other side of the room.

The Chief looked back at Twilight, his golden visor revealing nothing about what he was thinking. "Which way do you think we should go?" he asked her, much to her surprise. "Through that hatch on the other platform, or down to the ground floor of the room?"

'Both ways are equally viable', Twilight thought to herself, placing her hoof under her chin as she pondered what to do. 'We could split up but I have a feeling that we shouldn't.'

She looked forward, then down, trying to make up her mind. Before she could decide, one of the hatches on the floor level opened up and a Grunt came running out, screaming.

It was not a scream of anger, or vengeance, like Twilight would have expected but one of terror and horror. The Grunt was terrified of something as evidented by it turning around and facing the now closed hatch, plasma pistol pointed out in a trembling grip. After waiting a moment, the Grunt finally looked around the room, until it saw the remains of the group Twilight had killed just before.

Twilight and the Chief pulled out their rifles, waiting for the Grunt to spot them and attack but it never did. Instead, it shrieked in horror, pointed its own pistol to its head and fired. It was Twilight's turn to involuntary scream as the Grunt's dead body fell to the floor, while the Chief lowered his rifle slowly as if in shock.



'What the hell is going on here?', the Chief thought to himself as his mind still processed the Grunt suicide.

He looked around to see if there was any traps laying in wait, before jumping down to the ground floor, approaching cautiously to the hatch where the Grunt came from. Unfortunately, the lights on it were red and it would not open as the Chief approached. Somehow, it became locked.

"Damn", the Chief said as he looked around for another way from the ground floor, and found another hatch.

"It might be worth checking out that hatch first in case...", he stopped as he noticed Twilight had her hoof to her mouth, eyes still wide, looking at the Grunt. "Twilight?"

Hearing her name seemed to shake her out of her horror. She teleported down next to him, obviously trying not to look at the corpse next to her.

"Do they normally do that?" The Chief could barely hear her voice. He shook his head.

"Not like that", he answered truthfully. "Usually, they come running at me, holding grenades in their hands, trying to blow me up, along with themselves. They fail."

He looked over at the body. "Even then, that is because they're fanatical, the most zealous of the bunch and wish to be sent on their 'great journey' as soon as they could. But this...this was something else. Something terrorised that son of a bitch so much that he killed himself."

He turned back to Twilight. "This means we need to find the Captain and get out of here, ASAP."

He saw her nod, before continuing on to the hatch. Thankfully, it had green lights on it, which meant that it was unlocked. It opened up, revealing an empty corridor that went around a square area, with locked doors on the sides, until they reached the end of the corridor, where an open hatch awaited them.

Past it, was a large, open room, with a large, glass container in the middle, which was shattered on one side. There was a platform walkway above a full head of the Chief. In the distance, standing in front of another hatch, were three Jackals, unaware of the new occupants of the room.

The Chief was about to approach them, when he heard something drip onto his armour. He looked at his shoulder, and found a green-yellow, slimy fluid start to slide down to the ground from his shoulder plate. Another drop splashed onto him, causing the Chief to take a step to the left to avoid getting dripped on again. Normally he wouldn't mind it but he didn't know what the substance was and his gut told him that it was not something to ignore. He also noticed that the substance seemed to be dripping from the ceiling and the broken glass, which had a slight green tinge to it.

Deciding to shove his growing sense of unease to the side, he threw a grenade at the Jackals' feet, and watched them get blown into chunks of meat. Another door opened to the side and a couple more Jackals ran into the room. The Chief pulled out his pistol and fired to shots, each impacting the Jackals in the head.

After waiting a moment to see if any more Covenant would decide to show up, the Chief attached his pistol to his thigh armour and walked over to Twilight, who was studying the fluid, with both great interest and unease evident on her face.

"I don't believe it..." he heard her say. Inside his armour, the Chief raised an eyebrow at her now shocked expression.

"What is it? Have you seen that substance before?" he asked, kneeling next to her, while keeping one eye on his motion tracker.

"No..." she started to say in a hybrid tone of her usual lecture tone and her hysterical tone, "but there's an element to it that was familiar, so I tried to use magic to identify it..."

"You can do that?" The Chief interrupted, for once stumped on how that was possible. He did now believe in magic, if only due to Twilight's abilities with it, and he has seen a lot of things that he would have originally thought impossible, but his mind seemed to hit the limit with her being able to use magic to identify things. What he has seen from Twilight beforehand seemed to show Magic as more of a physical manipulation of...whatever she does.

"Yes, though only a very, very small selection of compounds and elements are able to be identified by magic", Twilight explained. "Or, it can identify traces of magic."

The Chief began to understand what she was saying. "It finds magic in other objects, like this fluid."

"Yes!", she said, with her tone being that of a proud teacher for a split second as she looked at the Chief with approval, before her face fell and she looked back at the growing puddle of fluid on the ground. "Except, it didn't just find traces of magic in this. It found pure Mana!"

"Pure Mana?"

"Pure Mana", Twilight reaffirmed, but then opened her mouth after a short second, in which the Chief believed that she realised that he didn't know what Mana was.

"Mana is the source of our magic", Twilight began to explain. "Imagine it as background radiation, that is generated both from my Planet, and from within my body."

"Within your body?" The Chief asked.

"Yes. An organ in our bodies that we have not been able to identify, seems to produce small quantities of mana that allows us to harvest it and transform it into magic to use, usually with different methods for the three tribes of pony. Pegasus uses their wings to convert mana into magic to help them fly better. Earth Ponies uses their hooves to convert mana to increase their strength and dexterity. Unicorns..."

"Use their horns to convert mana into the magic I've seen you use", the Chief finished for her, understanding at least partially what she was explaining.

"Yes!", her excited voice rang out across the empty room. "But the mana that we create and/or harvest from our Planet is not entirely pure. It has some sort of...almost contamination in a certain area, which connects to every single species that uses magic, like it changes for them. It is easy to spot, because it is always in the same area of the genetic structure."

Twilight pointed at the fluid. "This, however, does not have that contamination anywhere. It is the full thing. Something no pony has seen before, ever. We only theorised about it, but found no proof of it."

The Chief processed this information for a brief moment. "So this is the most concentrated form of mana that you have ever seen before then? Does that change something with magic, or not?"

Twilight paused for a moment, scratching her chin with her hoof. "I don't know", she admitted. "We've only hypothesised about its existence, not what it does. This is an entirely new thing for me. Oh, how I would love to study this back in my Lab on Equis!"

The Chief couldn't help but give a low chuckle at her enthusiastic and excited attitude, and was internally happy that she was for once not becoming depressed whenever she started to think about her home in any way. He made a mental note to get her to do any inquisitive activities whenever she became sad, after they had gotten off of this ringworld, of course.

He came back to his senses when he heard Twilight ask about him having anything for her to take a sample of the fluid. He simply shook his head.

"Sorry Twilight. I'm only equipped with any of those tools if I'm on a recon mission—and that is only when ONI gives me those tools."

Twilight sighed in disappointment, then reared her head up in intrigue. "Who's Oni?" she asked.

The Chief paused, struggling to decide whether or not to tell her about ONI. In the end, he decided to let out a few words about them. "Not who. What. The Office of Naval Intelligence is the main branch of the UNSC that focuses on intelligence gathering, counter-insurgency and subterfuge. They're highly secretive and answer only to HIGHCOM, the top brass of the UNSC. They also run a variety of secret programs."

Twilight was silent for a split second. "Like the Spartan Program?"

The Chief stiffened at this, which Twilight spotted, causing her to rush to explain herself.

"Some of the Marines and ODST back at Alpha Base told me about it. They said that there was no definite understanding of the Spartans except you are the only known successful program of augmenting humans to fight. Other than that, I was told that there are some nasty rumours. Nothing else, I pinkie promise."

The Chief relaxed somewhat, releasing a breath that he never realised he held. To change the topic, he recalled the last two words she said and asked "What do you mean by 'Pinkie Promise'?"

Twilight's face broke into a wide smile, before she stood up, and began to chant. "Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!" As she sang this, she made a series of movements that the Chief could tell where used in line with the chant. After finishing, she couldn't help but chuckle at his obvious confusion.

"Its a thing my friends and I have with each other." she explained.

The Chief was about to make further comments about it, when something in the very distance moved, only seen by his peripheral vision. He spun around, shotgun raised but there was nothing there.

"Chief?" Twilight asked in a shaken tone. 'She must have seen something too' he realised 'which means that whatever that was, its real'

He lowered the shotgun slightly but in a way that he could raise it in a split second. "I think we should move." he said to her. Though he wasn't even facing her, he could tell that she nodded and trotted up to him, her own rifle held in her magical grip.

Together, they went through the door that the Jackals were guarding before they were killed and found another two way corridor, this time one of the doors on the side was open. Wrenched open, to be exact, revealing a small room with a light in the middle. Nothing else.

The Chief took a look from the hatch but couldn't go into the small room, due to the broken hatch and thus ignored the room, though his unease from before had returned and was growing with each passing second. As he passed a corner, he saw that the wall had been stained—no, painted—with Covenant blood. The Chief felt his face begin to pale even more than usual. He looked at Twilight, who covered her mouth at the sight.

They entered another large room, though this time there were no live enemies anywhere to be seen. There were plenty of bodies however, to say the least. He barely registered Twilight's scream of horror as he looked on at the sight before him.

The corpses of Grunts and Jackals seemed to litter the floor. From a distance, the Chief could tell that some of them had been killed by Plasma fire, while others had been killed by bullets, which the Chief couldn't help but take a small sip of comfort from that fact. On the side was a single Elite body, the first he had seen in the entire area, a large chunk of its chest gone, revealing the organs and guts inside.

Far more horrifying for the Chief though, were the two Marines in the corner, their bodies burnt from Plasma. He walked up to them and noticed that their dog tags had been taken, which meant that they had died fighting the Covenant, and that there were potentially more marines still out there, including Captain Keyes.

He turned around, knowing that Twilight would still be in shock and was rewarded with the sight of her puking in the corner that had no bodies. Honestly, he couldn't blame her. Even now, the stench from the corpses was coming through his Helmet filters, still powerful enough to cause him to gag occasionally. Twilight was getting the full brunt of it.

He was about to walk up to her, when he noticed something different on the Elite's body. He knelt before it, ignoring the sense of disgust and spotted a familiar fluid dripping from its armour. The Chief's eyes widened slightly at this and took a step back.

He looked around at all the bodies and found that only a few had some of the fluid on them. Now, he knew that something was very, very wrong about this entire place.

"Twilight!" he called her over and sure enough, she came trotting over, her face very pale. Her eyes widened just like his did when she saw the fluid.

"Wh...wha" she stammered out, unable to think clearly.

The Chief took a single look at her, noticed how sick she seemed to be and decided on a course of action. "Let's go", he said, motioning for them to move to the next hatch. "We can't stay here."

She nodded in agreement and once again they were traversing through the installation, passing room onto room, with some of them having corpses in them, until they came across another large room, where the Chief heard a magnum discharge, and a bullet hit his shield.

He swung his weapon around, but stopped when he saw a single, live Marine sitting with his back to a series of Covenant Containers, pistol held in a trembling hand, his face contorted in fear. He fired another shot at the Chief.

"Stay back!", the Marine shouted, "Stay Back! You aren't turning me into one of those things!"

As Twilight ducked behind cover, the Chief lowered his weapon, and raised a hand, palm outwards as a sign of peace. "Put the weapon down, Marine", he said calmly, "we're on the same side."

Unfortunately, the Marine appeared too crazed to listen and he pressed his back further into the container. "Get away from me! Don't touch me, you freak! I'll die first!"

Once again, the Marine fired another shot and the Chief felt the 12.7mm round impact on his shields. 'This is taking too long', he thought to himself before grabbing the Marine's pistol out of his hand, and knocked the Marine back to the ground as he tried to stand up, with his armoured foot, gently, but firmly.

With the Marine now harmless to him, the Chief asked softly "Now, where is Captain Keyes and the rest of your unit?"

"Find your own hiding place", the Marine screamed in reply, his facial expression becoming fierce, like that of a rapid dog who is cornered. "The monsters are everywhere! God", the Marines face transformed into one of horror and overwhelming fear. "I can still hear them! Just leave me alone!"

"What monsters? The Covenant?" Twilight asked, appearing next to the Chief. Unsurprisingly, the Marine appeared even more agitated at her arrival.

"No! Not the Covenant. Them!"

Seeing that the Marine was beyond reason for him to be able to tell him anything, the Chief lifted his foot off of the Marine, allowing him to get back onto his feet, back against the wall.

"The surface is back that way", the Chief told the Marine, pointing towards the door behind him. "I suggest that you reload this weapon, quit wasting ammo, and head topside." he offered the pistol to the Marine, who looked at it with trepidation. "Once you get there, hunker down and wait for help. There'll be a dust off later."

The Marine accepted the weapon but curled into a fetal ball on the ground, continuing to both whimper and blather on. The Chief could only look on with pity at the state of the Marine's mind. He doubted that even an extensive psychological therapy program could pull this man back to sanity. He considered committing a mercy kill, but decided against it.

He looked over at Twilight, whose face was that of pity. "Will he be all right?" she whispered to him. The Chief could only shake his head. "I don't know", he admitted, "But if his mental state is anything to go by, we need to find the Captain, and the other Marines, ASAP."

He was about to move on, when the Marine said a few names in his wimperings, two of which were horrifyingly familiar: "Johnson, Keyes"

The Chief felt his gut clench up at those names. He didn't check whose squad the Captain had taken with him but now that it was confirmed to be Johnson's squad; his friend's squad, then it was now even more personal than it was before to find the missing squad before a horrible fate befoul them.

Twilight's face indicated that she had the same thoughts as he did.

They moved on, to the next few rooms, until they arrived at the top of a ramp, where a dead marine lay in a pool of blood, his stomach ripped out, exposing the matter inside. Now his instincts were screaming out to him that something was wrong, urging him to run away. He shoved them out of the way, sensing the eyrie silence in the air. They were close to something was what his gut was also saying but he didn't know what.

With Twilight behind him, trying to avoid stepping on the corpse, he descended down the ramp, where there was a single hatch, with an UNSC Spoofer on the side. The Chief's hand hovering over the spoofer's button, hesitating for a second before pressing the button on it. No sooner after he had pressed the button that he felt his pulse quicken after the body of a Marine fell right towards him when the hatch opened.

He caught the body before it impacted the ground, barely hearing Twilight's muffled screaming. He raised his MA5B with his right hand as he did a quick check the room beyond in as little time as possible. Seeing that it looked empty, he spun on his heel, watching for anything that may be behind them but saw Twilight was already on it, even though she was trembling from fright.

"Something's watching us", she said as she backed away from the ramp towards him, with him doing the same, heading into the room. "I feel it, though I can't see anything."

"Same here", the Chief replied. After the both of them had backed through the open hatch, the Chief finally lowered the body onto the ground, recognizing the face as one of the Marines in Johnson's squad. As he knelt to do this, his boot hit some empty bullet shell casings. As his hands left the Marine's body, he stood up and looked down to examine the shells, only to notice that the entire floor was nearly carpeted by thousands of shells. Even worse, human blood seemed to paint the floor in certain sections.

In the middle of it all was a single, Marine helmet. The Chief looked at Twilight, who looked back at him, the worry and fear evident on her face. He saw her eyes survey the room.

"I don't like this, at all", she said to him, with him agreeing with every word.

"I know, I don't either", he said as he walked towards the helmet, before kneeling and picking it up. He looked at the back of it and saw the word 'Jenkins' stencilled across the side. He shook his head in resignation. Jenkins was most likely dead now, though from what was still to be determined. He noticed that the Vid cam was still attached to the other side and the memory chip along with it.

"What are you doing with that?" Twilight asked him as he removed the chip from the camera.

"A typical UNSC combat team carries on their helmet a video camera", the Chief started to explain as he examined the outside of the chip for any signs of damage "so that after a mission, they could use it as evidence in a briefing, feed data to the officers in ONI or in this case..." he lifted the chip to the back of his helmet, "provide investigators with information regarding their deaths."

He inserted the Chip in and started to watch the footage.



Twilight looked around the room as the Chief reviewed the footage. In fact, she was watching it with one eye as well, using her eyepiece to see what the Chief was watching through a private visual channel Cortana had set up for them. Normally, she would be ecstatic over seeing moving images that played out using technology but at this time, she couldn't.

She stopped what she was doing when she saw the ominous images of the squad standing over a dead Elite, that had its insides scrambled, with her fear and horror growing by each second she watched the video, until she saw them appear in front of the hatch they had just entered. She wanted to throw the eyepiece off to stop watching the video and run away from this place but she couldn't, as she watched one of the Marines say something about a "...bad feeling."

The quality of the video was horrible in both visual and sound but it was good enough for her to hear the radio transmission come in through the helmet of the marine she was hearing from, the odd, rustling noises from the ceiling, a hatch giving way and see the mass of hundreds of what looked like fleshy balls with tentacles on the front swarm across to the squad with Captain Keyes and Johnson.

It was at that point that the screaming and yelling started, causing her to instinctively cover her ears from the noise, while hearing Keyes say that they were "surrounded", Johnson shouting orders for the Marines to "Let them have it", automatic fire drowning out most of the other noises, seeing the Marine whose body they had just found run away, Keyes yelling "get back here, marine!" before being overwhelmed, until the picture jerked as if something hit the Marine from behind, and the video cut out.

She heard a small but sharp noise and turned around to see the Chief toss the Chip to the side, his fist clenching in either anger, fear or horror or even a combination of the three. She herself was feeling mostly fear and horror from that clip, with her pulse starting to race from adrenaline, her fur straightening out from Goosebumps.

"We need to get out of here, now!" the Chief said, his voice starting to raise a little bit. "Couldn't agree with you more!", Twilight replied, already running towards the hatch. Except it didn't open when they neared it. In fact, it now had red lights, meaning it was locked. She lit up her horn and tried to blast down the hatch, to no effect. The Chief tried to grip the gap between the parts of the Hatch and rip it open, to no avail as well.

It was then that they heard the banging on another hatch to the side. Twilight turned around and saw the hatch break open. Out from the darkness spewed out one, then five, twenty, fifty of the fleshy balls she saw from the video that attacked Keyes and Johnson, racing towards them with tremendous speed on what looked like tentacles for legs.

Instinctively, both Twilight and the Chief opened fire at the creatures with their Assault Rifles, the bullets easily puncturing the flesh of the creatures, causing them to pop, creating ripple effects in the swarm as more and more creatures popped from the explosions of their fellows, but even more came dribbling out of the hatch, rolling across the floor, wall and ceiling towards the pair, before throwing themselves forward.

Twilight erected a shield around the two of them but, much to her horror, whenever one of the creatures touched her shield, instead of popping straight away, the creature glowed with green light, revealing only to Twilight that the Creatures were draining the magic from her shield, before popping and releasing not only the magic that it had stolen, but also pure mana, that seemed to cause even more damage to her shield, causing it to crack at an alarming rate due to the constant bombardment by the creatures.

The Chief, seeing the amount of damage the creatures were causing to the shield, ran out and fired at the creatures before they could reach the shield, giving Twilight a brief pause as the creatures turned their attention to the Chief, vaulting themselves at him, and popping when they collided with his energy shield, with much less power than they had with Twilight's magical shield surprisingly.

Finally, it appeared that they had finally cleared out the room, when two more hatches broke open, and out spawned even more creatures, all of them eager to throw themselves at either the human or the pony.

Twilight found that being aggressive with her Assault Rifle was a better strategy than waiting for them to attack with the shield, so she opened fire, much of her usual qualms against killing remarkably silent, for some reason. However, she was going through her mag quickly and was forced to reload just as a trio of creatures took their chance and leapt at her.

She dodged them but they agilely danced around and tried again. This time, Twilight noticed that their colour was just like that of the fluid. Experimenting, she fired only at a single creature and found that when they popped, they sent out small amounts of the fluid flying. However, she made herself even more vulnerable as a creature blindsided her and landed on her back. 

It was then that her cutie mark lit up and Twilight found herself surrounded by a very transparent shield, not unlike that of the Chief's energy shield. She felt more energised than ever before, and suddenly more powerful. The room flashed with light as Twilight levitated into the air and blinded everything, including herself, the Chief and the creatures, who all stood still at her action. The creature on her back began to deflate as a gas like thing flew from it towards Twilight's horn, until it was nothing and Twilight closed her eyes as she felt something awaken within her.

She felt herself land on the floor with a high velocity but she seemed to absorb the impact. She opened her eyes and saw that her 'shield' remained intact and was repelling the once more aggressive creatures. She also felt more magic flowing through her like never before.

'What just happened?' she thought to herself as she looked all across her body and found that the bandages across her wing had been vaporised, revealing her newly healed and complete wing.

She cried in delight as she moved her wing around and found that it was as good as new. She was about to call out to the Chief, when she saw that he was being assaulted by a dozen creatures. Snarling, she flew over to him, knocking the creatures away, popping them with the sheer force of her collision with them.

"You can fly now?!" the Chief shouted over the sound of his rifle firing. "And what did you just do?!"

"I don't know", she replied, firing her rifle while sending magical blasts at the creatures simultaneously. She stopped as realization dawned on her. "One of the creatures landed on my back and something within me—most likely an Alicorn defence method—awakened and drained the pure mana from that creature, causing my magical levels to increase to a whole new level and my body to heal!"

"So, is that why you have that shield now", the Chief noted as a creature launched itself at Twilight and popped on her shield. She felt a little, tiny bit of her new magic get drained after that.

"Yes, but I think I can only get hit so much before I'm completely drained of magic and die from either those creatures or from magic loss—since they are still draining my magic", Twilight reasoned. "I may have more magic now but I'm still limited like before and I don't know how to reproduce what I did with that creature."

"Do they have pure mana in them?" the Chief asked as he too began to notice the fluid coming from the creatures when they popped. "Yes", Twilight replied, "And that is why I'm still vulnerable from their attacks. And we still don't know why they are attacking us."

"I don't want to find out!" The Chief said as his shields lit up in golden energy as creature after creature collided with it. "Damn, these buggers are dwindling my shields pretty fast."

Twilight was about to make a further comment when the hatch through which they arrived burst open and out came more creatures, with three newcomers. Twilight had no time to even look at them before one of them leapt right at her, a roar emitting from it. She used her wings to fly into the air, dodging the oncoming attack, before using a magical blast to hit the new creature. It took the blast right in what looked like the chest, knocking it down to the ground.

Twilight flew down to get a closer look at the newcomer and gasped in horror as she recognised the mutated form of what was once a Covenant Elite. The skin of the Elite looked deformed, and decayed. The bones and left arm of the Elite appeared to have been forcibly lengthened and transformed into a tentacle like appendage, with the remnants of what the arm was still visible in certain parts. The Chest seemed to have been taken over by a huge tumour, with tentacles similar to that of the ball like creatures, coming out of the huge mass in the middle. What was perhaps the most terrifying detail was that the head appeared to have been pushed out of its normal spot and hung limply like a broken, unneeded limb, from the side.

It all painted a picture like that from a horror story that she would sometimes read when she was bored back in Equestria, except a lot more horrifying and gory, from the way that the Elite had been changed and the fluid pouring out of it. Thinking that the mutated Elite was dead, she looked around and saw that the Chief was firing his shotgun at one of the other mutated Elites, breaking off one of its limbs, before the 'dead' Elite below her suddenly reached out and wrapped its tentacle arm around her throat, like a whip.

Screaming, or more realistically making a 'hurk' noise due to the tentacle squeezing her from around her neck, from surprise, she tried to fly up into the air to escape its grasp but it held on, making her struggle to keep herself in the air from the weight of the mutated Elite, even as it actively either swiped at her with its less deformed arm or using its now defunct head to try to bite her.

Even though she was protected by her new shield, she could feel the tentacle wrapped around her neck continuously drain her magic from the shield, making her more and more weary as she subconsciously fed magic into the shield to keep it intact. On top of that, the blows that the other arm made, when it did manage to hit her, consumed more of her magic. Whatever had happened to the Elite, it now had Mana flowing through it.

Twilight lit up her horn and used telekinesis to bring her rifle up to where she was, point it at the centre of the Mutated Elite, and opened fire. The Elite seemed to absorb most of the shots, before finally giving out a loud gurgle, letting go, and falling to the ground.

She took in a deep breath as the tentacle had squeezed enough around her neck to almost stop her from breathing. Then she flew up to the Chief, and fired her rifle at a Mutated Elite behind him, before it could hit him with its tentacle, while he was fighting another one.

"Thanks", he said, as he looked back to what Twilight fired at, after he put down the thing he was fighting beforehand. He then raised his own rifle, and fired at a couple of the ball creatures before they could finish their leap onto Twilight. She jumped from the sudden popping noise behind her, turned around, and saw the remains of the creatures fall to the floor.

"Thanks", she said, as the Chief reloaded his shotgun. "No problem. Let's get out of this room, before more of those things arrive." They ran through the hatch, and up the ramp, only to find more of the mutated Elites waiting for them, wandering around aimlessly, surrounded by more of the fleshy balls. That changed as soon as one of the smaller creatures spotted them. Once again, Twilight was forced to fire her rifle instead of using magic to prevent more of it being drained, aiming at the ball creatures, while the Chief dealt with the mutated Elites, who seemed to break apart under the force from his shotgun.

They passed into a new room, where they stood on a platform, with a light bridge that appeared broken, while on the ground floor, Covenant Jackals and Grunts were making a last stand against a swarm of mutated Elites and the ball creatures. The pair stood and watched the battle unfolded, waiting for the combatants to wipe each other out, before finishing off the survivors with a grenade, and moved on to the next room.

Another Mutated Elite dropped from the ceiling, slamming into the Chief, who staggered back and began to wrestle with it, even as another tried to get close to Twilight. She threw a nearby container at it, sending it flying into an oncoming mass of the small creatures, popping them all. She turned around, immediately seeing one of the creature's hand rupture as tentacles burst through the wrist, breaking bone and flesh. She could only watch as the new tentacle whipped out at the Chief, hurling him to the floor.

Without thinking, she sent a magical blast at it, knocking it back a few meters. However, the hostile seemed to absorb more magic than damage than she would have liked. So, she opened fire with her rifle, and watched it get cut in half. The Chief stood up and kicked it, before firing two shots into it.

He looked at Twilight. "Damn thing should stay dead this time", he growled out.

"One of the ones in that first encounter played dead with me before trying to choke me to death", she said, with the Chief nodding as he looked at the body.

"They seemed to be able to reanimate themselves on occasion", he deduced, "which may not be a surprise, since they seem to be already dead."

With that thought over their heads, the pair of pony and human continued their journey to escape this vile place, fighting through increasing amounts of those mutated hostiles and the small creatures before they arrived back at a lift. The Chief and Twilight ran to the lift, activated it and waited for them to go upwards, except they didn't. In fact, they descended at a remarkable speed, until they landed at a lower level, inside which more hostiles awaited them. After fighting through the ambushing hostiles, they moved out into the next room.

It was here that Twilight saw a sight that she would never, ever want to see again. A single creature stood in the middle of the room, wildly moving towards them. What stopped her and the Chief from firing their weapons, was the fact that it was a mutated human. In fact, they both recognised the face of what was once one of Sergeants Johnson's men.

The Chief lowered his shotgun. "Mendoza", he shouted, trying to reason with potentially the humanity still within the once Marine, "come on, let's get you out of here. I know they did something to you, but the medics can fix it."

However, that humanity was long gone as Mendoza leapt at the two of them, swinging its tentacle at them, aiming for Twilight's head.
> The Flood - Part 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Twilight teleported away from the spot she was standing, just before the thing that was Mendoza slammed into that spot. Seeing its prey get away, it switched to face the Chief, using its tentacle arm to strike him with superhuman strength, almost knocking him off his feet.

With her friend now in danger, Twilight leapt into the air, flying around while firing her rifle at the same time, distracting the reanimated Marine enough for the Chief to aim his shotgun and fire two rounds point-blank. What proceeded next was both intriguing and disgusting.

As the Corpse came apart, Twilight saw how the innards of the Marine had become occupied by a deflated, spherical creature, mainly located in the Chest, with its tentacles having been extended and spread into all parts of Mendoza's body. The blood of Mendoza's, originally crimson like ordinary human blood, had been converted into the fluid she had seen before, the one that contained the pure Mana. This sight, for her, answered one of her more recent questions during this mission: What did those spherical creatures do? Obviously, they infect their victims and turn them into a...Combat Form.

The Chief fired a third shotgun blast at the Infection Form, destroying it completely, along with most of Mendoza's body, except for the head, which showed an expression of unimaginable pain, despite the blank stare from the eyes. Twilight realized that killing Mendoza might have been kindness, since they were putting him out of his misery, if he was still alive in there.

The two of them just stood there, their minds processing what they had just seen. Not only were the Captain and Johnson's squad most likely all dead, but they have been turned into those creatures, a fate that Twilight believed was worse than death.

Twilight heard a noise, looked at the Chief, and found him feeding shells into his shotgun, one of, if not, the most lethal weapon Twilight had ever seen that could be used in close quarters combat. He looked back at her.

"You may want to reload any weapons you've used", he said as he pumped a round into the chamber, "These things seem to take a lot of firepower before they go down, the first time at least." He grumbled out the last words

"Not only firepower, but my magic", Twilight stated, attracting a look from the Chief. She began to explain, "Whatever those...parasites have done to their victims, they have converted their blood to that of the fluid we have seen before. Which means that all of the infected have Pure Mana coursing through their mutated bodies, allowing them to drain my magic."

"So, your magic is useless against them?" the Chief asked, concern evident in his voice.

"To a degree", Twilight admitted. "I can at least push them back, or damage them physically with my magic, but they absorb it at the same time, so it cancels out. With all honesty, it will be best if I use firearms against these things, until I find a way to resist their magic sucking powers."

“Agreed. They may also use your magic to make themselves stronger if they drain enough of it” the Chief reasoned to her, just as a hatch was ripped open, and more Combat Forms and the Infectors rushed at them. "They already are strong enough as it is!"

Twilight leapt into the air, hovering so that the Combat Forms wouldn't be able to touch her, a hope that would be crushed as two of the Combat Forms leapt up at her, their augmented strength allowing them to reach her height from a single jump. She had to dive to the floor to avoid getting hit by the tentacle arms.

As the momentum of the Combat Forms' jump carried them to the other side of the room, Twilight turned around, and shot them in the back with her rifle, causing them to flop onto the floor when they landed. One, however, got back up, and ran at her, limbs clawing out to get her.

She began to retreat backwards, firing her rifle as she went, to avoid the mutated Elite, but it was gaining on her. It didn't help that the Infection Forms were swarming out towards her. When they came uncomfortably close to her, Twilight teleported a dozen meters away, almost bumping into the Chief as he blew a Combat Form, and three Infection Forms, apart with a single shotgun blast, though there were many more attacking him, more than Twilight's.

The two of them instinctively moved to cover each other's back, aiming their rifles at enemies on all sides. That was the only pause they had before the swarm of both infected and infectors alike came at them with fearless ferocity. The room was filled with the sound of fire, screaming and death.

Twilight ducked to avoid being swiped by a Combat Form before using her hind legs to kick it, subsequently breaking it apart from her alicorn strength. She winced as that single millisecond of contact was still enough for the Infected to steal some of her magic. She fired her rifle at a dozen Infection Forms, popping them before sending a Covenant Crate at a couple of Combat Forms rushing at the Chief.

Similarly, he threw a grenade to the side, and the bodies of three Combat Forms who had almost snuck up on her were flung into the air, already breaking apart from the explosion. She couldn't help but feel satisfied that these things were dying at such a fast pace. Whatever they were, Twilight must not let them reach Equestria, by any means, due to at least how horrifying they are.

She then heard a rifle fire, and a round impacted on her newly formed mana shield. She turned around, about to scold the Chief for friendly fire, when she felt more rounds impact on her, and the Chief's shields flare from being hit as well. The Culprit soon emerged from the shadows, an Infected Human, holding an Assault Rifle with a single hand, a feat that only the Chief had accomplished, or so Twilight had seen. It continued to fire at the Chief, who fired back at the Combat Form. The Combat Form had its arm shot off first before finally succumbing to the Chief's volley of bullets, only for it to be replaced by more Combat Forms armed with a variety of weapons, both human and Covenant alike.

Twilight felt her blood begin to run cold as she found herself not only dodging rushing Combat Forms and Infection Forms, but also the Combat Forms that stood away, firing at her with their weapons. She continuously flew into the air, zigzagging side to side, up and down, in order to avoid getting hit.

However, the Chief couldn't fly so he was forced to be constantly moving, backing away while firing his weapon, the horde herding him back. Fortunately, despite the number of enemies he had to face, the Chief seemingly sent out an unyielding volley of bullets as he alternated between his shotgun, firing until it ran out of ammo, before switching to his assault rifle, only reloading when Twilight flew past, using her telekinesis to lift him up, much to his surprise.

They landed at the other end of the room, but not before Twilight saw the Chief throw a captured plasma grenade at a combat form, blowing up the creatures nearby with a plasma explosion, all but vaporizing them. There were only a handful of enemies remaining after that in the room, that were soon taken out by the Chief and Twilight. After the last of the infected fell to the ground, gurgling until the last second, the room was finally empty, with only the sounds of Twilight's rapid intakes of breath and the click of a rifle.

Twilight sat down on the floor, her mind processing everything she had witnessed the past hour. The horror of what she had to deal with was now starting to sink in to its fullest degree inside of her mind, causing her body to feel cold from fear. Tears began to stream down her face as she contemplated for the first time, whether or not she was destined to become one of those...things. She was afraid, like she had been so many times in her life but this was different.

This enemy wasn't like anything she had ever faced. Even the Covenant seemed to pale by comparison in terms of sheer danger and terror. What these things do to their victims was unforgivable and irredeemable. And Twilight had a feeling that what she had seen was only the tip of the iceberg.

She heard the clank of metal hitting metal, looked to her side and found the Chief sitting next to her, though he was not relaxed like she was, most likely alert so they wouldn't be caught blindsided. Once again, it was hard to look at his visor and see any emotion from it but this time concern seemed to emanate from it. Twilight couldn't blame him; she didn't know how scared, no terrified, and horrified she looked from the outside.

And like any friend, he came, saw and now swiftly began to attempt to help her. If she wasn't overwhelmed by everything, she as the princess of friendship would feel proud of him.



The Chief gave a sigh of weariness as he sat down next to Twilight, though his eyes were alert, periodically checking the motion sensor, and his ears were waiting for any audible sound of an attack by those infected, which he labelled Combat Forms, and the Infection Forms, as he called the squishy creatures. They were, without a doubt, the most dangerous lifeform he had ever encountered, even considering many of the Covenant species were extremely deadly and scary, Hunters being the prime example.

That said, he felt an almost unnatural amount of fear inside him, a fear that seemed to wish to petrify him. He fought back, of course, managing to hold it at bay, but Twilight seemed to be feeling the full brunt of fear from these things. He knew that she was extremely afraid of the Covenant, so she would be even worse with this enemy, whatever it is.

He looked at Twilight's shivering body, hearing her chattering teeth from fear. This was worse than he thought. He had seen a few cases of Marines exhibiting the same symptoms, before shooting themselves in the head, during a very traumatic battle. Best thing to do was to talk to her.

"Twilight", he said in a successful effort to attract her attention. She looked back at him, her expression relaxing slightly at the sight of him, but still filled with fear. Good start, but more work is needed.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm in a nightmare, except that a nightmare would be a slight comfort compared to this." The Chief heard Twilight's voice crack multiple times. "And I've had experiences with very bad nightmares before."

"We all have", the Chief said, with Twilight turning to face him, confused. "No matter what you try to do, war never ceases to put you in scenarios that you wish you would never be in.", the Chief explained, "most of which scar you for life, whether in your waking hours, or when you sleep. The ghosts of the past never leave you alone, especially at night. But you have to keep on going, not only for yourself, but for those you left behind."

Twilight looked away for a moment, considering his words, before asking: "Who do you..." The Chief saw her mouth move, but knew she couldn't bring herself to finish the question. But he answered it anyways.

"My brother and best friend, Sam. The first time I faced the Covenant, he gave his life to complete the mission. I messed up and he died as a result."

Twilight's ears drooped and a combination of sorrow, pain and sympathy entered her voice. "I'm so sorry."

"I see him most nights when I sleep, and now the rest of my brothers and sisters. But they would want me to keep on going, and not stay consumed by their deaths. And that is all we can do. Move on, remembering them, but not be held back by it in a negative way."

He looked back at Twilight and saw her tear-filled eyes become serious as she asked one question: "Are we going to make it out of here alive?"

The Chief felt his mouth open, but no words come out as he pondered how to answer her. As he hesitated, Twilight became more and more sullen, and hope began to die in her eyes. He wanted to say that they will, but he knew that he couldn't say that here, not as a lie. So he decided to tell the truth.

"I don't know" he admitted to her, but quickly added to prevent her from losing hope quickly, "but all we can do is try our best, and kill as many of those bastards as we can. Maybe, if these things haven't spread outside this facility, if we can't make it out, we'll do our damn hardest to ensure they can't either."

Her ears drooped at hearing this, and Twilight looked away. The Chief worried that he may have said the wrong thing and was about to apologise when Twilight looked back at him, hope restored in her eyes, as well as a new sense of determination and acceptance.

"If it comes to that", Twilight said, with Chief nodding in agreement before standing up and unslinging his rifle.

"Let's move out", he suggested, "and find a way out of here."

They didn't have to look as a previously locked door was broken down and a trio of combat forms, along with two dozen infection forms, rushed through. They were far away enough though to give the Chief enough time to pull out a grenade, work out the distance and how fast the enemy was traveling. He threw it to the ground, just in front of the approaching swarm, counted three seconds, and saw them all go up in a loud bang, ripping their decomposing bodies apart with disgusting results.

Ignoring the massive pool of gore and body parts, the Chief led the way through the hatch, entering another large room, this time with Combat Forms on the platform above them, armed with whatever weapons they could scavenge. As soon as the Chief stepped through the hatch and walked a meter, they attacked him all at once, half of them staying on the platform, firing at him, while the rest decided to charge him. It was a very stressful scenario as his shields decreased at an alarming rate.

Twilight, thankfully, only had to deal with a single Combat Form, which she ripped apart with broken glass on the floor. Thus, the Chief didn't have to worry about her being in danger just yet. But he had to focus on the immediate threat instead, and pulled his full attention to the Combat Form trying to club him with a plasma rifle. He dodged to the side, and blew the Combat Form in half with a single shot. He then smashed the butt of the firearm into the next Combat Form, only knocking it back slightly before he shot that one too.

The third Combat Form was knocked back by a magical blast from Twilight, who covered her mouth at her mistake, even as the Combat Form stood back up, its mana blood glowing slightly.

"Oops", was all the Chief heard before that Combat Form, along with the remaining combat forms on the platform, finally took down his shields, and bullets impacted on his armour. He shot one of the combat forms off of the platform, amputating its weapon arm off, before the combat form on the ground swung its tentacle at him, knocking him to the ground.

He was on his back when the Combat Form leapt at him. The Chief kicked the combat form back before grabbing his knife and plunged it into the chest, where the Chief hypothesised that the Infection Form may reside, and indicated by the tentacles coming out from the fleshy mass. He scored, and the Infection Form popped, ripping apart the combat form with the force from the pop. It had the unfortunate consequence of covering half of his visor with fluid, making him vulnerable for a trio of Infection Forms to launch themselves at him from his now blinded side.

Fortunately, the Chief's shields chose that time to recharge, barely stopping the Infection Forms from latching onto his armour. He wiped off the gunky fluid and looked back, only to find Twilight struggling on the floor, with a combat form on top of her, with its tentacle arm wrapped around her throat. Its other had grabbed her hoof, pinning her to the ground as it drained her magic.

The Chief threw his knife at the Combat Form's tentacle, distracting it enough for the Chief to grab his fallen shotgun and blast the top half of its body. The now dead enemy fell off of Twilight, who grumbled as she stood back up on all fours.

"Why I am always on the ground!? And on my back!?"

The Chief simply stared at the carnage that they had wrought, thinking at how this room nearly became their deathbed, as he wiped his visor clean with his gauntlet. Only because of how sudden these things were, and how they could appear out of nowhere.

"That was too close", he stated as he picked up his Assault Rifle.

Twilight didn't hear him as she continued to complain.

"Come on. Can't I, at least between the two of us, be the one on top for once..." Twilight's voice trailed off. The Chief looked back to see if anything was wrong, only to find her face beetroot red. Within his helmet, he arched an eyebrow.

"Is everything all right?" he asked, and saw her begin to laugh in an embarrassed manner.

"Yep, hehehe...everything's fine", she stated in a stammered voice. "Nothing to hear here, especially not of bad form words that if Celestia ever caught me saying in public to somepony, especially you, she'll kill me", she whispered, as if not wishing him to hear it.

"You know I can hear you when you whisper, right?" he stated, causing her face to turn an even darker shade of her. "And why would someone kill you over saying what?"

"You're kidding, right?" she stated.

The Chief shook his head. They were getting distracted too easily. Especially over something he didn't even know.

"Let's get going. Those things will have more coming to kill us." This statement immediately sobered up Twilight.

The pair ran into another room, where they heard the sounds of gunfire seemed to echo from a neighbouring room. The Chief, in a brief moment of weakness, let his hope rise and ran to the door where the gunfire was loudest, opening it with his approach.

'Come on', he thought as he traversed another corridor, with Twilight right behind him, her face determined. 'Please let there be Marines still alive.'

He was forced to slid to a halt as a door in the corridor's side wall burst open, spawning out two dozen Infection Forms. He punched one with enough force that it popped five others from its own explosion. He destroyed the others with a single burst from his Assault rifle but they had succeeded in distracting him for a few seconds, which could be the difference between life and death in battle. He hoped that he was wrong as he continued down the corridor.

That hope swiftly transformed into despair and defeat as he exited through the hatch, and witnessed a lone Marine getting impaled by the tentacle arm of a Combat Form. Now seething in both anger and hatred, the Chief ran at the clustered group of monsters and tackled one to the ground, using it as a shield when another combat form tried to shoot him with a plasma rifle, killing the one he held. He threw it to the side and, with the shotgun in one hand, fired a single round at extreme proximity to the combat form, the impact shattering the combat form in half.

His motion sensor warned him of an attack from behind, to which he reacted with a step to the side, lowering himself as he twisted around, pumped a shell into the firing chamber and fired again, knocking back three combat forms at once, while pooping even more infection forms.

Twilight flew in the air, firing her rifle and a captured plasma pistol at the combat forms which had not engaged the Chief. Within a minute, the fight was over, with two very angry individuals triumphant over the forces of hell.

The Chief looked down at the body of the newly slain Marine, and found that there were two other Marines laying there as well, all of them mutilated by either weapon fire or physical damage. His anger dilated itself, swiftly turning into sorrow as he stared at the young face of a man who had died fighting an enemy that was worse than the Covenant.

He knelt down before each Marine, closing their eyes before ripping off their dog tags, placing them in his belt. They didn't deserve to be forgotten in this hellpit. He looked at Twilight, who looked at him with sorrow and pity.

"I'm sorry", she said to him as she slowly walked up to him.

"They didn't deserve to die to this enemy", he said to her. He heard the crackling of a fire, saw it with his peripheral vision and knew what he had to do.

"And they don't deserve to have their bodies tainted by those infection forms either." He gently grabbed one of the bodies, carried it on his shoulder up to the fire at the end of the room, confirmed that it was adequately intense and large, and carefully placed the body into the flames. Even as the body began to burn, he was already on the way back to collect the next Marine.

However, he found the body enveloped in pink and lifted off the ground. The Chief looked at Twilight as she magically carried the body to the fire. He was about to comment on how she should respectfully lower the body, when he saw the blip on his sensor, a blip that was fast and heading his way. He swivelled on the spot, raising his shotgun when he spotted an Infection Form attach itself to the last Marine corpse. From there, he could only look in horror at the sight that before him.

The Infection form wrapped its tentacles around the neck of the corpse, while bringing out what looked like pincers and imbedded them in the chest, digging into the flesh within a matter of seconds. Then, the infection form began to deflate at a rapid pace and get sucked into the holes made by the pincers. Then, the corpse started screaming, even though it was dead and began to spasm, rolling side to side, its limbs thrashing out as a tumour began to form at a near instantaneous rate where the infection form disappeared at. The tumour grew out, encompassing most of the upper body as blood was sent spitting out of wounds and the mouth, though it was quickly turning into the green fluid and flesh burst like in a intense heat. From the centre of the tumour emerged the front tentacles of the Infection form. The neck elongated and stretched out, while tentacles burst out of the left arm in a very gruesome manner, bones cracking. The skin turned into a sickly yellow/green and most features became heavily deformed. The screams morphed into growls as the corpse rose to its feet, turned to the horrified pair of the Chief and Twilight. It roared at them, the normal voice and tone of a human replaced by an bloodcurdling, demonic cry.

The newly formed Combat Form leapt right at the stunned Spartan, knocking both of them to the ground. The Chief grunted as his armoured head hit the floor, felt a tentacle wrap around his throat and was thrown to the side, a few meters away. He still had his shotgun in his hand, but felt a stab of fear when the Combat Form picked up a fallen shotgun for its own use and pointed it right at the Chief. His instincts driving him, the Chief rolled leftwards, narrowly avoiding the majority of the damage from the shotgun, though his Shields took a heavy toll from what he couldn't dodge. A M90 Shotgun at this range had enough firepower to both break through energy shields of an Elite and kill it with one shot.

Just as the Combat Form raised its tentacle hand to pump the shotgun, it was enveloped in a pink aura and flew out of its grasp, ripping the hand off of the arm. The Combat Form growled as Twilight levitated the shotgun in front of her and aimed it at the combat form. That did not deter it as it simply rushed at her, startling her enough for her aim to lower, leading her to simply blow its legs off as she pulled the trigger.

The Combat Form wasn't done yet, using its remaining limbs to rapidly crawl across the floor, much faster than both the Chief and Twilight thought possible, before the Chief, finally back on his feet, fired a single round at the chest, finally silencing it.



'What the fuck! What the fuck!' Twilight repeated over and over in her head as she processed everything she just saw. 'What the fuck did that thing do?!'

She knew the answer of course, but her hyperventilating state did not even consider that as she internally swore her flank off. Then she did something quite un-princess-like, but something that she has done quite often during this mission, and puked where she stood, all the while crying as she did.

After emptying her stomach of all of its bacteria, since she had emptied it of all food matter last time, Twilight wobbled to the Chief as he simply stood over the body of the corpse, every body part still.

All except for his hands, which were trembling with what Twilight reasoned to be a mixture of both fear and anger. Then she heard from the personal radio channel they had a whispered sentence that, despite being quiet, was filled with to the brim with emotion: "I'm going to kill every single one of them for this."

Twilight, still unwell from her expulsion, decided to divert the Chief's attention away from the corpse of the newly formed and destroyed Combat Form.

"Do you know how to reload this thing?" she said to him with a forced sheepish grin on her face, despite how bad she felt on the inside, waving the shotgun in her magical grip in front of her. Even though she used it as a distraction, Twilight was legitimately curious on how to reload the shotgun.

The Chief didn't react at all, still staring down.

Twilight's smile fell. "Are you alright?" she asked cautiously.

His head finally turned towards her.

"No", he answered. "Are you?"

Twilight shook her head.

"No, I'm not", she answered back. "These things are like the stuff that nightmares have nightmares about."

The Chief was silent for a moment, before speaking once more in a subdued tone.

"I had a nightmare", he started to say, much to Twilight's interest, "just before you arrived on the Autumn, of me facing off against an unknown, but terrifying foe that was covered in shadows. It seems I found what was hiding in those shadows."

Twilight gulped at this, but decided to press on.

"If you're afraid of dying from this enemy, I can promise you that you're the least likely to get killed by these things", she said in an attempt to cheer him up, but he only shook his head.

"That's not what I'm afraid of", he stated. "In the nightmare, I wasn't alone. In fact, I was defending someone...important, well, trying to. I had the body of a six year old and thus I was powerless to do anything."

He turned to fully face her. "That's my fear", he said. "Others being harmed because I couldn't do anything to prevent harm coming to them. And I have faced it too many times."

Twilight stared in surprise as he seemed to slightly sag under the pressure. For a moment, she didn't see any alien that was terrified or brave. Instead, all she saw was somepony who was tired and weary. But then he straightened and recovered.

"Lets move out", he said, raising his shotgun. "We shouldn't dwell on anything right now. Save that for later."

Twilight nodded in agreement and slung her shotgun onto her back, grabbing a fallen Assault rifle on the ground.

"You're still going to teach me how to use the shotgun", she stated as a means of breaking the sombre mood.

The Chief simply cocked his head slightly to the side at this statement. Twilight felt that maybe he didn't recognise it as the jab it was when he simply said, "didn't Johnson teach you that back at Alpha base?"

Her face started to heat up as she realised not only was he right, but that he was laughing slightly.

"Oh", was all she could manage in an attempt to save face.

They quickly walked to the nearest hatch, eyes alert for any movement. It opened with a hiss, revealing a dozen infection forms waiting for them. Even as Twilight screamed in surprise, the pod shaped creatures leapt at the pair, only to be blown away by a single shotgun blast from the Chief.

"Well, I can safely say, I'm grateful that if they're close to one other, they can pop each other", Twilight commented as they passed through the hatch. The corridor they entered was empty, except for the bodies of half a dozen Combat Forms littered around. Twilight felt a sense of relief as she noticed that all of the bodies were killed with bullets from human weapons, and that there was no blood from any human staining the room.

After finding another hatch, the pair expected to enter another large room like the ones they had traversed through beforehand, but found, much to their delight, that it was instead a room with a lift. The bad news: It was full of Combat Forms and Infection Forms. As if they could sense the pair before they even entered the room, all of the creatures were rushing towards the hatch as it opened, intent on killing and claiming the human and the alicorn.

Twilight was definitely opposed to this, fighting with her rifle and magic, which she used to fling objects at the Combat Forms, knocking them back if they were killed from the impacts. The Chief was like a timberwolf in the middle of a flock of sheep, ripping through his foes with his weapons like they were made out of paper. Within a minute, the room had been cleared, and the pair was free to step on the lift.

The Chief lifted his hand to activate the lift as Twilight prayed to Celestia with all of her might. 'Please make this thing send us up', she repeated in her head, remembering how the last lift sent them downwards, towards more of these things.

Her prayers were answered and the lift moved upwards at a fast pace. The pair reloaded their weapons, expecting another firefight with the enemy when they arrived at an entrance of the installation, only to find a squad of living, uninfected Marines waiting for them. Not only that, but she heard Foehammer's voice over the radio. Twilight couldn't help herself when she jumped up in pleasure, hugging the Chief in the middle of him speaking to Foehammer, much to his discomfort.

"We've made it!" she shouted, finally releasing the Chief from her hug so she could dance about She had never felt more relieved and delighted in her life to be out of an ancient place.

"Thank God you're here", one of the Marines said to the Chief in a frightened tone, his body practically shivering from fear. "We've been lost out here for hours. After we lost contact with the rest of the mission, we...we headed for the RV point and these...these things...these things ambushed us. We gotta get out of here!"

"That's command thinking", the Chief responded in an instant, "Let's move out!"

"There's a large tower a few hundred meters from your current position", Foehammer spoke out, hearing the conversation, "Find a way above the fog and foliage canopy and I can move in to pick you up."

Hearing this, Twilight finished getting out all of her relieved energy and all together, the group entered outside back into the swamp. Oh, how good it felt to be in the middle of the muck instead of dealing with those creatures inside.

'I hope that's the last time I ever see them' she thought to herself, letting her guard down after a minute of strolling through the muck, just before an Infection Form leapt out of the fog and latched itself onto a Marine, knocking him down and the both of them vanishing into the fog.

They couldn't see what was happening, but Twilight could paint a horrible picture in her mind from all the screaming and the sounds of bone and flesh breaking. The screams turned into growls and the Marine, now a Combat Form, jumped out of the fog. It was then that Twilight decided that there was nothing more scary than encountering this enemy in a foggy, dark swamp.

The Combat Form was quickly put down by the combined fire, but already Twilight could see the outline of Infection Forms and Combat forms running through the fog. Whatever this enemy was, it definitely is not contained within the facility like she hoped it was.

Despite all of their efforts, the enemy was too numerous, too quick and one by one, the group of survivors dwindled as its members were either killed outright or taken in the thick fog and were infected, their screams haunting the others.

Just as hope was lost, the survivors only numbering five, Twilight saw something emerging from the treeline. It was a cylindrical metal contraption, with two appendages and a red light at the front, hovering in the air before swooping down to approach them. More soon joined it and the sky was quickly filled with them.

A Marine raised his rifle at one of them, shouting "Contacts!" before the Chief stopped him, saying "Wait! Let's see what they do first."

Twilight, expecting the worst, cheered as the metal machines shot out burning beams of energy at the Combat Forms, burning them to the point that the bodies were unrecognisable within seconds. The survivors quickly saw the enemy get sliced by the machines, then watched as even more Combat Forms came out of the mist.

The Chief and Twilight continued to run, firing their weapons at any Combat or Infection Form that got too close to them or their teammates but there were too many of them, even with support from the robots. As the tower entered view, it was only the two of them left. they jumped onto a conduit of sorts that was higher up, preparing to make a final stand before Foehammer showed up, when suddenly Twilight heard something start humming from behind them, just as a flash of yellow light reflected off of the shiny metal that they were standing on.

She spun around and found herself face to face with another type of robot, this time one that was similarly shaped like a sphere. It had a similar texture to the tower and the other robots they say before, but it had a single eye that shone brightly, the 'iris' switching back and forth between looking at her and the Chief. Like the other robots, it had no legs, but unlike them it had no appendages and was simply hovering in front of them. It turned to look directly at the Chief.

"Greetings", It spoke in a friendly tone, though it had no mouth and its voiced sounded similar to that from someponies voice over a radio. "I am the Monitor of Installation 04. I am Three-Four-Three Guilty Spark."

Spark flew closer to the Chief's face, without the care in the world for personal space.

"Someone has released the Flood! My function is to prevent it from leaving this Installation. But I require your assistance." Spark finally turned to face her. "And you as well. Come. This way!"

Spark had spoken way to fast without pause to allow Twilight to process what he was saying, so she opened her mouth to ask a thousand questions before she felt the familiar feeling of teleportation, her sight was filled with yellow light and she was transported away, at the same time as the Chief, with Spark teleporting a second later.
> The Only Library Twilight Hates
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Twilight could feel her insides flip upside down after arriving in an extremely large hall, only lit up by dim blue lights scattered across the floor and walls. The Chief materialised next to her, appearing in the middle of a set of yellow lights shaped as rings. Both of them staggered from the transportation they were unwillingly put under. Despite her experience with teleportation spells, she still felt sick from this experience as it was a non-magical means.

The spherical robot, 343 Guilty Spark if she remembered correctly what it called itself, appeared behind her, humming as he flew to the Chief's side. The Chief's reaction: empty half a magazine of his Assault rifle on Spark, with no effect other than a verbal response.

"That was unnecessary, Reclaimer", it spoke in an bemused and condescending manner, its business like tone still present, "I suggest that you conserve your ammunition for the effort ahead."

"What task ahead?" Twilight asked, attracting the attention of Spark.

"Ah, I see that the equine is fully sentient." It hovered near her, its eyes intently looking over her entire body with too much enthusiasm for Twilight's liking. "How wonderful! I am most pleasantly excited for the opportunity to study a creature such as yourself that can manipulate Neural Physics."

Then, tilting its body forward as if to mimic the emotion of disappointment, it moved slightly backwards.

"Alas, that must come later, for we have a momentous journey ahead of us, with a much more higher priority than the possibility of..."

"Hold on there, pal", the Chief interrupted, evidently annoyed. "Where are we and what task ahead?"

"The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood." Spark replied.

'The Flood', Twilight repeated in her head. 'So that's what those things we fought are called. And what is Neural Physics? Does he mean magic?'

She was brought back to reality as she noticed that Spark continued to speak.

"Their survival as a race was dependent on it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce."

Twilight felt her anger rise at the mentioning of him being glad as the Chief spoke out once again, his voice louder than normal. "'Survived'? 'Reproduce'? What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded.

Spark ignored him, flying off ahead. "We must collect the index."

"Its rude to leave somepony's questions answered!", Twilight shouted at the robot, following it with the Chief. "And who in Tartarus are you anyway?"

"And what's your function?" the Chief added in.

"I am 343 Guilty Spark. I am the Monitor, or more precise, a self-repairing artificial intelligence charged with maintaining and operating this facility." Twilight could already feel her curious side reawakening with a passion, her excitement rising until the Monitor added, "But you are the Reclaimer-so you know that already."

It was blatantly obvious that he was talking to the Chief. Twilight walked over to the Chief, totally confused about what was going on.

"Are you ever called 'Reclaimer' by other humans?" she whispered to him. He shook his head.

"No, and the Covenant don't either", he whispered back before raising his voice again. "So, refresh my memory", he told Spark, playing along. "How long has it been since you were left in charge?"

"Exactly 101,217 local years", the Monitor replied in a cheerful manner despite the implications of his statement, "many of which were quite boring. But not anymore, now that you have arrived, along with the equine! Oh, how I am going to enjoy the next few days! Hee, hee, hee."

Twilight was taken aback, not only by the giggle from the machine, but also because of the fact that the Monitor was over 90,000 years older than Celestia and Luna! A certain fact popped into Twilight's mind, one that Cortana and other humans had told her: Machines don't need to rest like organics. This means that the Monitor would have been alert and active for the entirety of the period he was in charge. Not even Celestia could endure 1,000 years without sleep. She would go insane. And from the way the Monitor giggled randomly, he probably is insane.

"Um, excuse me?", Twilight spoke out, interrupting the Monitor's chattering about "effecting repairs to substation nine". "You didn't answer where we are and what did you..."

"Why, we are in the Library of Installation 04, where all of the archived information, research facilities and most importantly, the index, is located."

"L...L...Li...Library", Twilight's eye began to twitch uncontrollably. "Th...This is a LIBRARY!"

"Why of course." Spark replied, oblivious to Twilight's deteriorating mental state.

"Then...", she took a deep breath before shouting at the top of her lungs, her entire face in a hyperventilating expression. "WHERE ARE ALL THE BOOKS! YOU CAN'T HAVE A LIBRARY WITHOUT BOOKS!" She started to pant uncontrollably, much to the Chief's concern. "HOW WILL YOU GET ALL THE KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT BOOKS!"

Whatever the Monitor was going to say as a reply and Twilight's tantrum was interrupted by a horrifyingly familiar growling sound. Twilight immediately stiffened in fear.

"Oh, no", she said, hoping for a miracle that what she heard was just her imagination. "Please, sweet Celestia, not them!"

Her fears were realised as she turned around and saw an entire horde of Flood approaching them. The all too familiar scenario began to play out, with Combat forms rushing forward, either unarmed or armed with a firearm and Infection Forms following them or in some cases were in front. Twilight also noticed that there were passageways high up within the walls where the Flood were emerging from, quickly surrounding the group of three. Then, Twilight saw something new move through the Flood horde.

It had the height of a human, but was severely misshapen, the flesh being stretched constantly at different points and in motion, as if multiple things were moving underneath the skin. It had two stubby tentacles on its sides, and was shuffling quite quickly towards her. Soon, more emerged from the shadows.

Fortunately, Twilight still had her Assault Rifle and fired a dozen rounds at the new Flood Creature, only to look on in both shock and horror as is it exploded, spewing out dozens of Infection Forms. She couldn't help but be reminded of bacteria using an infected cell as a carrier to continue its infection of the rest of an organism. Carrier forms, a fitting description.

She was forced to mop up the Infection Forms as the Chief finished off the rest of the Flood Carrier Forms first after discovering that their explosions took out other Flood in close proximity. Thus a strategy developed around this: deal with the Carrier Forms first, then mop up the surviving Flood afterwards if possible. It was over in what felt like forever, but Twilight knew that it would have been a few minutes at most.

Ignoring the stench of rotting flesh, she made her way up to the Chief, who stood there, feeding shells into his shotgun while looking right at the monitor, the glare obvious even with a helmet on.

Then, in a very infuriating manner, the Monitor simply stated to the both of them "There's no time to dawdle! We have work to do."

"Work!?" Twilight shouted. "We were doing all the work killing these Flood and you have the nerve to hover there and..." but the Monitor had already flown ahead, leaving her stewing in her anger. She was about to grab it with her telekinesis when the Chief put his hand in front of her, shaking his head. She relented and watched as the Chief tried a different approach.

"What work do we have to do?" he asked, only a trace of the anger he was feeling verbally present in his tone. The Monitor gave a hum of delight and twisted in mid-air to face the Chief.

"To retrieve the Index", the Monitor stated, "which is contained within an energy field above us. I only require you to help me retrieve it, as you are a reclaimer, but the equine may follow as well."

Twilight scoffed at that, mumbling under her breath.

That is, until a Combat Form jumped down from an alcove and landed on top of Twilight, quickly wrapping its tentacle arm around her neck, knocking her to the ground while draining her magic. She tried to roll around in an attempt to use her momentum to get the Combat Form off, but was too heavy.

She heard the groaning and growling of more Flood as the Chief tried to help her, but was stopped by a new horde of Flood that leapt out of the shadows. She saw the shadow of the free arm of the Combat Form grow, indicating a strike, but stopped and lowered, like it decided that it was content to just drain her magic.

Then, out of nowhere, the Combat Form was hit with a bright beam, simultaneously knocking it back and burning it to a crisp. Twilight got onto her feet, and found her saviour, one of the floating machines from the swamp, hovering above her. It turned around and began attacking more Flood forms, as more robots arrived. Twilight couldn't help but cheer in joy as Flood after Flood was burnt down.

"These Sentinels will assist you and your Equine pet", the Monitor stated to the Chief, with Twilight too distracted watching the carnage to hear his term for her

It wasn't all one sided however, as Twilight soon found out when she witnessed a Combat Form leap into the air, slashed its tentacle across the body of a Sentinel, damaging it enough for it to crash to the ground and explode. There was also the fact that more Flood were coming.

She turned to comment to the Chief, but was stopped by an explosion going off in front of him.



The Chief groaned as he hit the Floor, sent back by the explosion. He got back onto his feet, tracked the origin of the explosion and witnessed the horror of a Flood Combat Form in the distance holding a Fucking Rocket Launcher. It held it one hand, displaying tremendous physical strength.

The Chief raised his Assault Rifle and fired an accurate burst at the arm of the Combat Form, cutting it off with the bullets. Despite the Combat Form now disarmed, more Combat Forms started to arrive, some of them armed with more Rocket Launchers.

"Shit", the Chief groaned out, the Combat Forms too far away to be accurately hit with an Assault Rifle or shotgun, but he was well within range of being shot by a rocket. He noticed a flash of light, saw the incoming rocket and leapt to the side, clambering to his feet as the rocket collided with the ground where he was, the area of the explosion depleting his shields.

All he could do was throw his last Grenade far into the air, hoping that it would fall at their feet and was rewarded with the sight of exploding bodies in the distance. However, one of the Combat Forms had shot one last rocket before it died.

The Chief ran to the side, out of the range of the explosion and ducked as a Combat Form swung its tentacle at him. He pressed down the trigger of his rifle, spewing out bullet after bullet right into the chest of the Combat Form, literally tearing it apart from the force of the bullets at that range. Even as the Combat Form fell apart, the pieces still falling to the ground, the Chief was already aiming at another target, this time a Carrier Form that was trying to sneak up to Twilight from behind, causing it to explode a fair distance away from her and finished off the dozen Infection Forms that emerged from the misty explosion.

He heard a blast from behind him, turned around and saw a Combat Form fall from being blasted by one of the machines flying in the air, a Sentinel if he heard the Monitor correctly. He nodded in thanks, but it had already flown off, attacking another Combat Form, with many more Sentinels joining it. The Chief couldn't help but feel relieved that at least something on this Ring wasn't trying to kill him or Twilight.

Not yet anyways.

The Flood was soon dealt with from the combined efforts of the Chief, Twilight and the Sentinels. The Chief reloaded his Assault Rifle, noticing that he had used up most of his ammo for both weapons, proceeding to scavenge from the corpses of the fallen Combat Forms as they had captured UNSC weapons and gear with them. He acquired seven magazines of ammo for his Rifle, fifteen shells for his shotgun and five grenades, two of which were plasma grenades. He handed one of the mags to Twilight, which she accepted.

The Monitor flew further down in front of them, before flying into a small, corridor to the side. The Chief followed, blasting a Combat Form apart, since it was in the way. There seemed to be no end of the Flood horde and they appeared to have the ability of appearing out of nowhere. At least the Covenant had realistic means of transporting to different areas, with dropships or gravity lifts. For the hundredth time in the last hour, the Chief desperately wanted to fight the Covenant again.

They arrived at a large, circular platform that had a half dozen Carrier Forms waiting for them. Since the Carrier Forms could only rush towards them, it was easy for the Chief and Twilight to kill by themselves, as the Sentinels stayed back in the other area, much to the Chief's annoyance. The Monitor led them to another doorway to the side, and into another large area similar to the first one. Unfortunately, they were quickly swarmed by the Flood, in what would become a repetitive process that would last for a significant period of time.

After dealing with the Flood in the immediate area, the Chief and Twilight quickly ran after the Monitor, who had paused a significant distance away from where the two of them had fought. However, as soon as they approached, it turned and continued to fly away, leading them into another ambush.

'Is this thing intentionally trying to kill us?' the Chief thought to himself as he fed a new magazine into his Assault Rifle before smashing it into a charging Combat Form, only stunning it. 'Or is the Monitor just that insane, or oblivious, that he leads us to these areas where the Flood are?'

He finished off the Combat Form, began to walk away, saw the red blip on his motion sensor, pivoted on the spot, shot the resurrected Combat Form, waited a moment to see if it was going to rise up again and walked away, firing at another Combat Form.

Twilight was also in the middle of fighting several Flood at once, mainly infection forms who leapt out at her with the intention of draining her magic. The Chief recalled what the Monitor had said about Twilight, especially what it meant about 'Neural Physics'.

'That must be what his creators call magic', the Chief deduced quickly before bringing his focus back to the fight occurring in the present.

After the last Flood Form was at last killed, the Chief returned to the subject from before. 'So, that is why their structures are magic proof. They were defending against the Flood, though in what capacity? From what I have seen so far, the Flood haven't used magic in any way. Maybe this is just the beginning of what the Flood are capable of.'

They arrived at a huge door, which looked like something out of a fortification, except ten times bigger. Whoever built this Ring World, they definitely didn't play around with small things.

"The security doors are locked automatically", the Monitor stated. "I will go access the override to open them." It then flew off through a small opening, with the Chief hearing as it grew further away its giggles.

"You are a pain in the ass", the Chief muttered to himself, just before a blip appeared on his motion sensor, followed by more.

"We got company", he informed Twilight, just as a Combat Form ran past the corner, spotted them and led a new swarm towards them. Within seconds, another firefight had broken out, with the Chief and Twilight having to put their backs to the door because they were pushed back by the amount of Flood.

After the last Flood form fell, the portal opened, with the Monitor appearing.

"I am a genius", it said before facing the weary Chief and Twilight. "Please follow closely. This portal is the first of ten!"

The Chief  heard Twilight groan at this statement, even as he heard the screams and growls of more Flood coming their way. Deciding that it would be better to leave the area so they can complete the Task that the Monitor said they needed to do, so he moved on.

However, he couldn't help but say "More doors, I can hardly wait."

What surprised him was that Twilight said the same thing, at the same time. They looked at each other with bemused faces, though she couldn't see his.



Twilight dropped down to the floor, panting as her tired legs gave way. She looked over and saw that the Chief wasn't in a better position either, with his legs trembling from fatigue. They were surrounded by dead Flood forms on all sides and still the Flood could be heard in the distance, relentless in their need to kill any living thing.

The two of them had followed the Monitor through eight other huge doors, separated amongst three different stories within the library. Within every second of time spent within the library, they have been hounded by the Flood, who just keep on coming out of nowhere. It doesn't help that the Sentinels, who Twilight thought were going to help them, kept on leaving in certain areas just before the Flood attacked. The Monitor blamed this on the 'sentinel backup computers being corrupted' but Twilight was having a hard time buying it.

Another thing going wrong was that she was down to her last mag of ammo for her rifle, for the fifth time in the last hour. The Chief's ammo supply was in a similar way to hers, though he ended up having to get rid of the shotgun because he ran out of shells. Instead, he has a plasma rifle, which is the most effective Covenant weapon to use against the Flood as Twilight has noticed, comparing how both the Chief and her have experimented with different weapon combos to find the best way to survive.

It was undoubtedly the Shotgun with an Assault Rifle, but unfortunately they couldn't use that combo at the moment.

"This..." Twilight panted out, "is the worst...thing that I...have ever done..."

"Tell me about it", the Chief responded as he too collapsed on the floor for a breather. "There's no stop to the onslaught, and rarely any opportunity to reload without an Infection Form or Combat Form trying to knock you down when you're distracted." His fist clenched tightly as Twilight watched.

She turned to look up at Spark floating above them as he began to speak in an admonishing tone.

"Reclaimer, you should not rest at this time. Even as we speak, the Flood spreads across the installation. If we want to contain this outbreak, we must retrieve the index now."

"Then why not teleport us there?" Twilight asked, getting annoyed at the machine.

"That would be against all procedures", the Monitor replied. "And there is a barrier that prevents any kind of transportation through the teleportation grid and neural physics. It can only go offline if the index is removed. This is to stop the Flood from ever getting the index."

"So far, it hasn't worked", the Chief noted as he looked at Spark.

"I admit, the infestation has progressed faster than estimates would place. It would appear that the conflict across the entire installation is granting the Flood access to vast quantities of biomass. I hope that it is not too late."

"Too late for what?" the Chief asked, his tone serious.

But the Monitor just flew away, leaving them there to ponder what they just heard.

"What could he mean?", Twilight asked.

"I don't know", the Chief replied, "and I don't want to find out."

He stood up and looked around. Then he looked straight at her.

"We should move. Despite everything, he's right. We need to get to the Index as fast as we can."

Twilight sighed.

"I know", she said as she stood up as well, "I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth, but I HATE THIS LIBRARY!" she screamed out the last part in anger directed both at the situation and at herself.

They moved on to the next door, but found, much to their surprise and horror, the corpse of a dead Marine, barely recognisable. The Chief walked up to it, and knelt before it, all the while searching for something on the body before pulling out a set of dog tags.

The Monitor flew next to Twilight as she strode next to the Chief, who was now standing as a sign of respect for the fallen.

"Ah, the other Reclaimer. His combat skin proved even less suitable than yours."

Twilight looked at Spark with a sense of disgust at the way he nonchalantly spoke about the dead Marine, but the Chief simply looked over his shoulder.

"What do you mean?"

"Is this a test, Reclaimer?" the puzzled tone seemed genuine, "I found him wandering through a structure on the other side of the ring and brought him to the same point where the two of you started."

"You mean you put this poor soul through the same torture you put us through!" Now Twilight was having a hard time keeping her anger in check. She could already feel her mane start to steam from anger.

But it soon quickly fell as she heard the Chief start to speak, but not to her or the Monitor.

"I didn't know you, Sarge, but I sure as hell wish I had. You must have been one hardass son of a bitch."

Twilight's head lowered as a sign of respect before raising her hoof to the Chief's hand, which he squeezed lightly as a sign of gratitude and acceptance.

They stood there for a minute more before they had to move on.

Thankfully, they only had one more portal to go through before they reached an open area, where a platform stood in the middle, suspended in mid air on top of a circular chasm, only connected to the main structure by a single bridge. In the middle was a beam of light, with Twilight spotting a green object in the light.

"I guess that's where it is", was all she could say before the Flood came from all angles, armed with all manners of weapons and objects, from crossbars and drills to Rocket Launchers and snipers. To get to the platform where the Index was, both the pony and the human had to fight through wave after wave of Flood that kept on coming, making their way step by step as fast as they could, but being slowed down considerably.

It was after fifteen minutes of constant fighting that they finally reached the platform and a massive wave of Sentinels, along with two massive machines with shields on the front and rocket launchers on the side emerging from the chasm to fight the Flood. Then the platform made a hollow sound as it moved downwards a long way before finally stopping.

"Are you kidding me?" Twilight said, frustrated. "We went all those stories up and then this thing takes us all the way down again?!" The Chief nodded in agreement.

The Index, an artefact shaped like the letter T and had glowing lime green lines engraved all along it, fully materialised out of the light and the Monitor flew beside them.

"You may now retrieve the Index, Reclaimer", Spark stated to the Chief before turning to Twilight. "Not you, I'm afraid. Protocol dictates that only a Reclaimer can remove the Index from its location."

The Index popped out of its shell as the shell rotated and spun downwards. The Chief took hold of the device and pulled it out. Both Twilight and the Chief began to examine the Index before a grey beam lanced out of Spark and pulled the Index out of the Chief's grasp and into a storage chamber within the Monitor's body.

"What the hell are you doing?" the Chief demanded with Twilight lighting up her horn in response to the action.

"As you know, Reclaimer, protocol requires that I take possession of the Index for transportation." The monitor swooped and dived in front of them. "Your biological forms render the both of you vulnerable to infection and from witnessing your clashes with the parasite, Equine, the Flood can drain you of your neural physics pool. The Index must not fall into the hands of the Flood before we reach the Control Room and activate the Installation."

"The Flood is spreading! We must hurry."

Twilight felt a familiar feeling, then realised last minute that she was being transported away like before and soon her vision was filled with gold light before blanking out.

She came too back in the Control Room of the Ring, though it was quiet and Cortana didn't seem to be anywhere in the console. The Chief seemed to notice too as he stopped and looked around. The Monitor recognised the Chief's worries as notable and asked as it hovered over his head "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing", was the response the Chief gave, and the Monitor happily accepted it.

"Splendid. Shall we?"

They made their way forward to the console, which was still inactive and bare of Cortana.

'Why isn't she showing herself?' Twilight wondered to herself.

"My role in this particular endeavour has come to an end", Spark said as it hovered above the control panel in a supercilious tone, "Protocol does not allow units from my classification to perform a task as important as the reunification of the Index with the Core."

"That final step is reserved for you, Reclaimer", it said as he then zipped to hover at the Chief's side, in between him and Twilight.

"Why do you keep on calling me that?" the Chief asked, but Spark kept silent.

Twilight watched as the Chief accepted the Index that the Monitor was giving him and insert it into a slot in the panel and waited. The console only shivered and groaned. The Monitor tilted slightly as if confused.

"That wasn't supposed to happen", it stated.

It was at this moment when Cortana reappeared as she suddenly towered over the panel, looking pissed.

"Oh, really?", she said as she gestured and the Monitor fell out of the air, hitting the platform with a clank.

Twilight gasped as she bore witness to this and the Chief started to speak before Cortana interrupted him.

"I spent hours cooped in here watching you two today about helping that...thing get to slit our throats."

'What? What is she talking about?' Twilight wondered as the Chief spoke again. "Hold on now. He's a friend."

"Oh, I didn't realise", Cortana said as she brought her hand up to her mouth in mock surprise. "He's your pal, is he. Your chum? Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?"

"Yes", the Chief stated patiently, even as Twilight gaped at the language Cortana was using. "Activate Halo's defences and destroy the Flood. Which is why we brought the Index to the Control Center."

"And we had to fight through the endless waves of the Flood", Twilight added, "which you could have told us about beforehand."

This seemed to calm Cortana down slightly and she turned to face Twilight.

"I am sorry about that, but there was very little time. If there was a chance that you two could contain the Flood, I had to take it, though I admit I only scratched the amount of information about them when I sent you there. But this...this is an entirely different manner!"

Cortana plucked the index out of the console, even as Spark's eye fluttered on and he hovered just off the floor.

"A construct in the core?" it stated in a furious voice. "That is absolutely unacceptable!"

Cortana's face scrunched up in anger once more at the sight of the Monitor reanimated. Her eyes glowed as she bent forward slightly, her mouth bent into a half sneer.

"Piss off."

"What impertinence!" Spark flew up higher. "I shall purge you at once."

"You sure that's a good idea?" Cortana inquired before making the index disappear into her hand. Twilight noticed that more data seemed to scroll on her surface.

"How...How dare you! I'll..." Spark spluttered out before Cortana interrupted his rant.

"Do what? I have the index. You can float and sputter."

It was at this point that both Twilight and the Chief decided to intervene. Twilight used her horn to produce a bright flash of light, distracting the two AI while the Chief stepped between the two of them, his hands held up.

"Enough!', he shouted, his voice the most annoyed and frustrated Twilight had ever heard. His voice lowered as he turned to Cortana. "The Flood is spreading. If we activate Halo's defences we can wipe them out."

"And stop them from escaping the Ring", Twilight added but felt her face fall as she saw Cortana shake her head, sorrow and pity written all over her face.

"You have no idea how this ring works, do you? Why the Forerunners built it?" Twilight felt her gut get heavy as she saw Cortana's grim expression.

"Halo doesn't kill Flood—it kills their food. Human, Covenant, Ponies, whatever. You're all equally edible. The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them to death. And that is exactly what Halo is designed to do. Wipe out the galaxy clean of all sentient life. You don't believe me?", Cortana stated before pointing at 343 Guilty Spark. "Ask him!"

Twilight really felt cold and dead on the inside as she processed what Cortana just said before turning to face the floating Monitor. Beforehand, she felt that it was just annoying and misguided, but now. Now she felt horror and betrayal from it.

"Is this true?" the Chief asked.

"More or less", Spark said in a direct manner, contrasting to his previous tone of voice. Those words echoed themselves within Twilight's mind, even as Spark began to describe in detail, back to its obnoxious self.

"This installation has a maximum effective radius of twenty-five thousand light years, but once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of life, or at least any life with sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood. It is also capable of shredding the structures of Neural Physic Constructs, rendering them non existent."

"But you already know this", now Spark seemed genuinely puzzled. "I mean, how couldn't you?"

"Left out that little detail, did he?" Cortana spoke out.

"We followed outbreak containment procedure to the letter", Spark said as if trying to justify that what they've done means that they have to follow through to the end with this evil deed. "You two were with me each step of the way as we managed this process."

"Chief", Cortana interrupted, "I'm picking up movement—"

Twilight heard something approaching from underneath the platform before she saw a huge machine appear from the side from her peripheral vision. She then found herself caught in a beam of light, paralysed, being lifted off of the ground.

The Chief swivelled in surprise at what was happening to her, raising his rifle at the machine even as the Monitor kept on talking.

"Why would you hesitate to do what you've already done? Last time you asked me: If it were my choice, would I do it?", the Monitor continued even as a flock of Sentinels appeared from the chasm below. "Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed. There is no choice. We must activate the ring."

"Get. Us. Out. Of. Here", Cortana said through the radio as the Chief quickly inserted her back into his head.

"Let Twilight go!", was all he said.

"I'm afraid I can't do that", the Monitor said. "Protocol dictates that all specimens with the ability to manipulate Neural Physics must be studied by any means necessary. Her dissection will undoubtedly lead to important breakthroughs in methods of containing the Flood further." Twilight's eyes widened at this as she realized what the Monitor was going to do to her.

"If you are unwilling to help—I will simply find another", Spark continued. "Still, I must have the Index. Give your construct to me or I will be forced to take it from you."

Twilight could only watch as the Chief's head moved around slowly, studying the amount of machines arrayed around him. He raised his rifle up at the Monitor. "That's not going to happen."

"So be it", Spark said wearily, before commenting directly to the Sentinels.

"Save his head. Dispose of the rest."
> Three Betrayals Part 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



The Chief slid to the side as several beams of heat burned through the air where he stood in the past second. He snarled as he was hit by a lucky hit from a sentinel, that came from the side. He fired half the mag of his Assault Rifle at it, managing to cause it to go in flames and crash to the platform. He looked back to the entrance, seeing the Monitor disappear in a flash of yellow light. The sound of a machine staring to leave caught his attention as he spotted the machine carrying a paralysed Twilight start to turn in mid air.

'Not going to happen', he thought to himself in a cold rage as he ran at the machine and leapt off of the edge of the platform, landing on top of the huge sentinel like machine. He aimed his rifle at the centre of the machine, where a bright light shone. However, he was hit by a sentinel beam before he could pull the trigger, almost sending him flying off of the machine. He staggered back to his feet before a fifth sentinel hit him from behind, finally causing him to fall off of the top of the machine.

Luckily, he managed to grab onto a small ledge on the side, preventing him from falling into the abyss below. With his Assault Rifle being to heavy to hold and shoot with one hand as he held on, the Chief reluctantly attached his AR to his back and grabbed the plasma rifle on his thigh armour. It was lighter and easier to use with one hand in this situation. He aimed at one Sentinel that was flying towards him in an attempt to get closer in order to finish him off, pulling the trigger and firing a volley of plasma at it.

It seemed that the Plasma Rifle was a good choice to use against the sentinels as its plasma bolts quickly burned through the metal surface of the sentinel, destroying its vital components in the process, ensuring its destruction. The Chief, wary of the tendency of the rifle to overheat if constantly fired for too long, pulled the trigger sparingly, in quick bursts to allow the rifle to cool off frequently, while aiming at more sentinels.

After the third sentinel had been destroyed, the Chief reattached the plasma rifle to his thigh, grabbing another ledge with his newly free hand and pulled himself up, grabbing onto the top of the machine. He vaulted onto the top, grabbed his Assault Rifle and fired at the light on the top. After a few dozen shots, the light faltered and exploded, causing the rest of the lights on the machine to flicker and finally falter, even as the blue aura around Twilight fell away and the Chief could feel the machine start to fall down into the abyss below, taking him with it.

As it twisted in mid air while falling, he tried to leap off onto the platform, but a sentinel hit him with one of its beams right in the chest, the force of impact knocking him off of the machine, sending him falling into the abyss.

That is, until Twilight flew down, with her hoof reaching out towards him. As time seemed to slow, he grabbed onto the hoof with a firm grip. Twilight began to pull him up, though she was struggling to do so from his armour's weight, thus making them actually drop down a few times before Twilight caught herself in the air.

Despite this, they were still sinking down, so Cortana spoke up for the first time since the Monitor disappeared.

"Don't fly us up there, we're too heavy", she stated in a raised voice over the comms, "teleport us up onto the platform."

The Chief heard Twilight grunt in affirmation before he felt his whole form go weird as he appeared floating above the platform, still holding Twilight's hoof. He fell to the ground, accidently bringing a now fatigued Twilight down with him as she landed on top of him.

"Sorry! Sorry! I should have known about the...", the Chief heard Twilight say before she trailed off. He noticed that her face was now bright red as she looked at where she was. He didn't focus on it because he heard the now infamous sound of two sentinels flying up towards them.

He lightly pushed her off him, making sure that she wasn't hit by any sentinel beams that burned through the space where she occupied just before. He blasted them with his Assault Rifle, eventually destroying the both of them as he got to his feet. His motion sensor showed that the last sentinel was trying to flank him, but he shot it multiple times before it could fire, sending it crashing to the floor and exploding.

He looked around, making sure that there was no more enemies in the area before reloading his rifle.

"I think you may want to check up on Twilight?" Cortana suggested, with the hint of amusement in her voice, creating pause within the Chief as he wondered why she would feel humoured by Twilight at the moment.

He looked back, noticing that she was still on the floor, her shocked and guilty expression still present on her face.

"Twilight?" he asked in an effort to catch her attention, which worked, as evidenced by her face blushing and turning to face him.

"I don't know what has gotten into you, but we need to leave now", he stated as he offered his hand to her, which she accepted, using it to pull her onto her hooves, "the Monitor could send in more Sentinels at any time."

Twilight nodded at this, her distracted expression dilating slightly. "I'm still wrapping my head around about Halo being a weapon of this magnitude! What kind of energy source does this thing run on? And what did the Monitor mean about being capable of destroying magical contructs, if he calls magic 'Neural Physics' that is? And who would build something like..."

"Slow down, Twilight", the Chief urged, "you're going to give your self a panic attack over this if you continue to bombard both yourself and us with these questions. However, we have one question that needs to be answered now. How do we stop Halo?"

"I can answer that", Cortana said.

"Let me guess, you have a plan", the Chief said.

"Yes, I do", Cortana replied, "We can't let the Monitor activate Halo. We have to stop him, which means we have to destroy Halo."

The Chief heard Twilight gasp at this, but he ignored it, taking time to flex his stiff joints all across his body. "And how do we do that?"

"That seems impossible", Twilight added in, "the Ring is so large that it must be able to withstand momentous pressure and..." She began to rant again before Cortana interrupted.

"Well, yes. But my plan accounts for that. According to my analysis of the available data I believe the best course of action is somewhat risky. An explosion of sufficient size will help destabilize the ring and will cut through a number of primary systems. We need to trigger a detonation on a larger scale, however. A starship's fusion reactors going critical would do the job."

"But where are you going to find a starship?" Twilight asked. "I guess we could use one of the Covenant's ships, but then they could intervene and prevent it from blowing up."

"I agree Twilight, which is why I'm going to find out where the Pillar of Autumn went down. If the ship's fusion reactors are still relatively intact, we can use them to destroy Halo."

"Is that all?", the Chief asked dryly. "Sounds like a walk in the park", he stated later, inciting a giggle from Twilight and an exasperated sigh from Cortana. "By the way, it's nice to have you back."

"It's nice to be back", Cortana said to him.

"Hopefully, you'll stay this time round", Twilight commented. "I missed having someone to talk to about physics and reality."

Despite Cortana being inside the Chief's mind as a set of information and code, he could still imagine her giving off a bright smile at Twilights statement. The image of the two of them discussing all of these complex topics non stop caused him to groan in silence as he approached the door to the corridor outside of the Control Room, pressed the button and waited for it to open.



Twilight groaned in annoyance as the doors opened, revealing a group of Covenant standing guard at the other side of the corridor, though she was slightly glad that is was Covenant instead of Flood. However, the annoyance turned to interest as a trio of Sentinels flew out of a hatch and began to attack the Covenant. The two groups quickly annihilated each other, leaving only two Elites standing. They spotted Twilight and the Chief and decided to simply wait for the pair to come to there, baring their mandibles in anticipation.

Twilight in turn pawed at the floor, preparing to charge at them, with her horn lit up. The Chief raised his Assault Rifle and fired a short burst at the Elite to the left, enraging it enough for it to fire back, running towards him. The Elite on the right simply looked at Twilight, baring its mandibles and slightly raised its Needler, beckoning her to attack. She stiffened when her eyes fell on the Needler, all rational thought being swept away.

She obliged, teleporting behind it and fired a magic blast at it. Unfortunately, word must have gotten around somehow about her techniques in battle, because the Elite sidestepped, firing at her when it was able to after it twisted around. This caught her off guard, allowing three needle shards to collide with her new magic shield. She initially breathed a sigh of relief after she had teleported to the side, out of the firing ark of the Needler, when she saw the shards hadn't penetrated her shield, but then let out a scream as her vision turned red when the shards exploded, sending a significantly diminished, though still quite painful, version of the pain she experienced when she first got hit by a needler throughout her body, despite the explosion doing no physical damage to her body.

The Elite saw an opportunity when Twilight cried out, falling to the ground. She opened her teary eyes to see the Elite approaching her with eager viciousness. It aimed the Needler right at her face before turning its head to look at her flank. Normally, she would find this rude and unwelcome, but then she realised that it was looking at her scar. It's smile told her that it recognised the type of wound. However, the Elite was thrown back a step as a green bolt hit it, knocking out it's shields on impact.

Twilight's neck twisted round and saw the Chief standing there, the plasma pistol in his hands releasing heat at an alarming rate. She looked down at his feet and saw the body of the other Elite behind him. He threw away the pistol and unslung his Assault Rifle, firing a burst at the Elite, killing it.

Twilight groaned as she got up back on her hooves, tears flowing down her face, both of pain and guilt. She wiped her eyes with her hoof before she noticed the Chief looking right at her.

"Thanks again for saving me, again", she said with a forced sheepish smile. "This is becoming too much of a habit."

'You're getting better", the Chief said. "At least you can hold your own against most things."

"I know, but I always seem to lose it whenever a Needler is present." Twilight visibly shuddered at the thought. "Ever since I allowed myself to be hit by one of those shards, I have been..." She struggled to say it.

"Traumatised", Cortana stated.

Twilight bowed her head in shame. "Yes", she admitted, "traumatized so much that I either don't fight as well against Elites with them or I act to aggressively."

"I wouldn't say that", the Chief said as he started to walk towards the exit. "It's not the actual weapon you are faltering against, but the wielder. I've seen you kill many of the Covenant that use Needlers with ease, yet it is against the individual that you struggle to overcome."

"The Chief is right", Cortana added, "You've only been in this type of combat for only a few days. A lot of the enemies you have faced have been experiencing warfare for a very long time, especially the Elites. There's a reason why they are called 'Elites'. If anything, you should be proud that you've managed to survive some of them."

Twilight nodded, already starting to feel better. With her mood rising, so was her inquisitive nature, and the discussion about experienced enemies got her thinking.

"How do you tell if an enemy is experienced or not?" She asked the Chief as he was about to press the door controls. He paused before tilting his head towards her as he spoke.

"Sometimes you can't, but its usually from the rank of the enemy, normally distinguishable by the colour and layout of the armour", the Chief explained. "With Elites, the ones with the least experience are the minors, in the blue armour. When an Elite becomes a veteran, they don the scarlet armour and become Majors."

He pressed the button as he finished the sentence, stepping back as the mechanisms in the door groaned and faltered for a moment, allowing him to continue.

"I don't fully understand the hierarchy of the Covenant Elites, so Cortana can interrupt me if I..."

"Why, thank you, Chief."

"If I state something incorrectly", the Chief continued unfazed even as Twilight struggled to hold back a giggle. "The Elites next on the hierarchy are the Ultras. Their, and the rest of the higher ranks, have better shielding and sometimes unique armour, so they are especially deadly."

The doors finally slid open, revealing the snowy valley that Twilight knew all too well by now, and the exterior of the pyramid they were inside. On the platform in front of them was a single Elite, with white armour, holding what seemed to be an enlarged Plasma Rifle, but much longer and held like a regular rifle. It spotted the pair quite quickly, shouting out in its alien tongue and was soon joined by half a dozen Grunts and a pair of Jackals.

"Speaking of Ultras", Cortana spoke through the radio into Twilight's ear even as the Elite charged at the Chief, it's shields seemingly eating up the entire magazine of his Assault Rifle. Twilight fired a small bolt of magic at it, causing the Shields to brightly flare but not fail. She yelped as the Elite fired a quick volley of plasma bolts at her, the rifle it carried firing faster than a regular plasma rifle. She was quite unprepared for the speed of the oncoming barrage that a few plasma bolts impacted on her magic shield, causing her to experience significant but bearable pain.

She teleported behind one of the Covenant's deployable cover, an energy shield that was large enough to protect an Elite, and was glad she did so because the Grunts and Jackals began firing at her with their plasma pistols, though one Jackal was equipped with a red energy gauntlet and a Needler.

Twilight started to feel her anger rise again and her inhibitions fail, so she shook her head, repeating "Don't lose your head", over and over again under her breath for a few seconds before using her telekinesis to throw the Jackal over the edge of the pyramid, its cries startling the Covenant troops enough for her to grab a plasma pistol right out of a Grunt's hand and open fire when she flew over the cover, quickly eliminating three of the Grunts before the remaining troops opened fire in a panic, many of their shots going wide. She grinned as she realised she could now use her flight as a tool against the Covenant, flying high above the three Grunts and the single Jackal, dodging their bolts and firing back at them, swiftly killing them.

She turned her attention back to the Chief, who was still fighting the Ultra, with both of them having expended their shields. She couldn't help but continue to stare as both veterans leapt behind different pieces of cover, an deployable shield for the Ultra, a large piece of debris from the structure for the Chief, at the same time. After half a minute, flashes of light from both places informed Twilight that the two combatants had their shields restored. Soon enough, the fight resumed, with the Elite igniting a plasma grenade, throwing it at the Chief as he was coming out of his cover, who dodged it just before it could impact his helmet. He dove out of the radius of the explosion, firing his rifle in response at the Elite, getting in a few cheap shots on the chest armour of the Elite before it opened fire.

Twilight flew down at the Ultra, firing blast after blast at it. The Ultra snarled as it dodged the majority of her volley only to get hit by the last one. Its Shields flaring even as Twilight landed on the surface, creating a tiny shockwave from the impact. She sent the Ultra flying backwards, right at the Chief, who was ready to stab it with a knife he produced from a compartment on his wrist, but the Ultra pulled out an Energy sword, dropping the rifle it held, and swiped at the Chief.

The Chief was forced to abandon his attempt to kill it in order to not get cut in half by the sword and the Ultra kicked a pile of dust at Twilight's eyes. She cried out as she stumbled back, blinded by the dust, quickly wiping her eyes with her hooves in order to get the dust out of her eyes so she could see again. When she finally regained her vision, she was met with the boot if the Elite smashing into her face, sending her flying to the ground.

She wasn't done, as she sent a magical blast at it, trying to replicate the scenario with her first kill on the Pillar of Autumn, having dumped a very significant amount of magic into her horn, but the Elite dodged it. It grabbed her head and pinned it to the ground at an uncomfortable angle that ensured she couldn't fire at him with her horn.

It raised its sword before being tackled by the Chief, who dug his knife into the neck of the Elite, causing it to choke on its own blood. Twilight got up onto her hooves even as the Elite continued to spasm as it slowly died, until the Chief fired a 	round into its head, instantly killing it.

She sighed in relief, her shoulders sagging slightly. She walked slowly up to the Chief, on edge as she looked left to right, dreading the sight of more Covenant, or worse, the Flood. However, she was met instead with the sight of a plasma mortar heading towards the edge of the platform she stood on. She panicked, teleporting to the other side and found herself in sight of a trio of Grunts down a ramp, waiting for the Chief or her to appear. They jumped at her sudden appearance before running away as she launched into the air, flinging a large piece of debris at the spot where they were.

"Twilight, could you see where that Wraith is that is firing at us?" Cortana asked from the comm.

"I can see it already", Twilight replied as she saw the blue-purple monstrosity on the snowy plains, just hovering next to the edge of the pyramid. She also spotted the Covenant Soldiers rushing up the walkways towards the Chief.

"Covenant! Moving up the ramp towards you!", Twilight shouted over the comms as she saw three Elites appear out of nowhere onto the final ramp between them and the Chief, with more Covenant following them. She saw him raise his rifle and situate himself behind cover.

"Don't worry about me", the Chief said he fired at the first Elite as soon as it appeared after ascending the ramp. "Can you deal with that Wraith?" he said as another mortar was shot out by the Wraith, landing a bit closer to where the Chief was.

Twilight looked back down at the Wraith and frowned as she mentally calculated how she could take on the wraith. She then flew straight towards it, hovering far enough above it that she could dodge any mortar it launched at her, and low enough that the Wraith could not dodge her attack.

She drew up as much of her magic as she could into her horn and shot it as a single, constant beam at the wraith, melting its thick armour with ease, and the snow around it as well. She tried to ignore the scream of pain coming from inside the vehicle, which ceased as she intensified the beam.

The Wraith finally exploded, its reactor no longer able to withstand the heat. Twilight looked to the side in shame before spotting an empty Banshee just laying there, its cockpit open.

"Chief, there's a Banshee here, with no pony in it", she told the Chief over the comm. "Do you want me to destroy it?"

"That's a negative, Twilight", Cortana replied instead. "We'll need it to reach that platform up there."

A Nav point appeared on Twilight's eyepiece, to a place up high in the canyon.

"Why do we need to go up there?" she asked.

"Because located in that cavern is one of the three main primary firing mechanisms for Halo. We need to buy some time in case the Monitor manages to find another way of activating Halo without the Index, so we'll need to damage or destroy each generator so the Monitor will have to divert his attention towards fixing them."

"Alright", Twilight nodded, "Do you want me to teleport you down here."

"Yes, the Covenant are taking up too much of our time." Twilight could hear the slight urgency from Cortana's voice

"Alright then, hang on Chief", Twilight said to the both of them as her horn lit and in a flash of pink light, the Chief was suddenly standing in front of her. He stumbled slightly but then quickly regained his footing.

"Please warn me in advance before you two come up with these ideas involving me", the Chief stated sourly as he looked around before spotting something, clenching his fist. Twilight, curious, followed his gaze when she saw it, the body of a Flood Combat Form, half covered in snow.

'No, no, no!' she thought to herself as the Chief approached the body. 'Not here, not this soon!'

"The Flood is spreading, fast", Cortana said over the comm as the Chief picked up the shotgun next to the body. "We need to get to those generators as fast as we can, so we can find the Captain and blow up Halo, before the Flood get off this ring!"

Twilight was still staring at the body, her mind and breath racing. "How do they do it?"

"Do what?" the Chief asked, concern evident in his voice, undoubtedly directed at her, but she didn't notice it.

"Always finds us, or are here before us", Twilight explained. "It's like they can appear at any place they want, then pervert it with their...their presence. No matter how many we kill, even if the place is totally reclusive and on the other side of the ring, they always spread."

The Chief paused before he was about to enter the Banshee.

"I don't know how the Flood can do what they can, but even they can't be everywhere, even though it might seem that way. Not yet anyways. That's why we need to do what we can to prevent that from ever occurring."

Twilight couldn't help but give a grim smile. "Are we all going to say different variations of the same sentence, of destroying Halo, for the next few days?"

She saw the Chief shake his head, a sliver of light laughter coming through the comm, before he entered the banshee. She jumped into the air, hovering as she waited for the Banshee to fly. She cocked her head to the side as she waited for a few minutes before the engines finally lit up, and the Banshee was in the air, flying towards the nav beacon, with Twilight following close behind.

It only took a minute for them to reach the platform sticking out of the Cliff face, though they soon discovered that it was defended by a group of Sentinels, which sent out beams of energy at both her and the Chief's banshee, though she noticed that the Sentinels were only aiming for her hooves and wings, not where any vital organs were located. The Monitor must want her alive.

The Sentinels were easily dealt with, as the Banshee's twin plasma cannons quickly ripped them apart. Twilight landed on the platform as the Chief flew the Banshee right onto it, jumping out when he was sure that it was secure.

The two of them walked through the hatch, traversed a quick corridor before arriving in a large room, where a beam of light and energy were in an inner chamber.

"We need to interrupt the pulse generator's energy stream", Cortana informed the two of them. "Chief, I've adjusted your shield system so that it will deliver an EMP burst and disrupt the generator, but you'll have to walk into the beam to trigger it."

Twilight and the Chief looked at each other. "I'll have to do what?"

"You'll have to walk into the beam to trigger it. The EMP blast should neutralize the generator."

"Should?" the Chief demanded, leaving Twilight to laugh uncontrollably at the conversation. "Whose side are you on?"

"Yours", Cortana replied, her voice sounding firm, but also a bit insulted. "We're in this together, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember, but you're not the one with the bruises."

Twilight, barely standing from her fit of laughter, wiped a tear away but her laughter faltered as the Chief cautiously approached the beam of light.

"I'll have to walk into that thing?" the doubtful tone in the Chief's voice was impossible to miss.

"You'll be fine", Cortana replied in a smoothing manner. "I'm almost sure of it."

Twilight winced at her declaration. "I don't think you should have added the almost", she told Cortana before the Chief stepped into the light. The center of the light seemed to explode, the light pulsated and the entire room shook. The Chief quickly backed away, with Twilight noticing that his shields were down.

"The pulse generator's central core is offline. Well done", Cortana said.

This was just before a squad of Sentinels showed up from small hatched in the ceiling. Noticing how vulnerable the Chief was, Twilight erected a shield over the two of them. The Sentinels opened fire at it, causing the Shield to burn. Twilight cried out as she felt pain from the impact on the Shield, with the Chief's response being to rush out and destroy each Sentinel with his shotgun.

As the last sentinel fell to the ground, Twilight looked at the Chief, who looked back.

"One down, two more to go", she said in a forced cheerful tone.

"I can hardly wait", the Chief stated in a sarcastic manner.



Discord walked back and forth as he impatiently looked at the watch that appeared on his chicken hand. He barely took in his surroundings, with it being totally white, a single void with no end in sight and nothing to show any life nearby.

Except for the angel like creature floating next to him, who looked on with a grim expression. The tension was obvious to both of them, even non deities could sense it. But it wasn't between them, rather what was unknown to them.

"You know, for a Lord of Chaos, you are more ordered than I would expect at something like this", the angel stated to Discord, who barely registered his words. The Angel sighed. "I understand your apprehension, my friend, but you should have nothing to worry about..."

"Nothing to worry about?!" Discord shouted out, finally turning to acknowledge the angel. "When I came to the council for information about the location of my friend, I didn't expect them to lie to me!"

The Angel flinched in surprise. "They did?"

Discord sighed wearily, his shoulders falling. "I was told that Twilight was still in my Galaxy, albeit on the other side. But She isn't in the Galaxy in MY universe, Herseriv!"

Herseriv actually moved backwards in shock, as his expression transformed into one of consideration.

"How did you learn of this?" he asked Discord.

"I decided to consult an old aquantance for help in finding Twilight on the other part of the Galaxy. But he revealed to me that she wasn't there. He did track her lifeforce be sent out of the dimensional boundaries of the universe."

Discord began to pace again. "When she was transported by that structure, the power signature given off by it was small, too small for a feat of that magnitude. So the structure was too weak to achieve any dimensional breaches."

"Which means a deity, specifically one from the high breeds would have been involved", Herseriv deduced, "deities which sit on the council."

Discord nodded, his eyes lit up in anger.

"I want to know why"

"So that is why you've asked for a personal meeting with the Lord" Herseriv stated, understanding evident in his voice. "You know that he'll never see..."

Another figure suddenly appeared from thin air, a being made up of fluid, seemingly in constant motion with waves flowing across its entire body. Both Discord and Herseriv looked at it with humbleness as they took a step back in respect.

"Discord", the being said in a rich tone, "Lord of Chaos of Equestria, Lord Anazakos will see you now."
> Three Betrayals Part 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



The Chief snarled as he threw himself backwards, just in time to avoid the tentacle arm of the combat form that swung at him. He had just entered the second pulse generator and thus his shields were down from powering the EMP, leaving him vulnerable. The Flood chose that moment to attack. Rushing in from every angle with their mutated combat forms and infection forms, the odd one out firing a rifle at either himself or Twilight.

After taking down the first generator, the pair backtracked through the same route they took while trying to find the Control Room. What slowed them down considerably was the fact that the Flood had taken up residence in many of the corridors and cavernous rooms that made up the path. The eldritch horrors were fighting with such ferocity so they could achieve one goal: Consume the Master Chief. Looking behind him, Master Chief was starting to notice that the Flood weren't trying to infect Twilight, but instead drain her of her magic. A fresh onslaught of infection forms took away his attention, but he made a mental note to ask his escort the next chance he got.

His motion tracker went crazy, revealing multiple blips trying to blindside him. He turned around, shotgun at the ready, and fired. The volley of pellets he shot out collided with the dozen or so Infection Forms that were mid leap, causing them to burst. Behind them was a single Combat Form, with a shotgun in hand. The Chief cursed as he backed away as fast as possible. His shields hadn't recharged yet, leaving him open to be killed by a single shotgun blast from that combat form. The flood form seemed to realize this as it used what remained of the hand on its left arm to pump the shotgun and aim it at the Chief.

Time seemed to slow as he saw the infected Elite pull the trigger, but suddenly the shotgun was aimed away from him as Twilight literally flew in and kicked the Combat Form in the chest with enough force that it shattered, the shotgun flying from what was left of its grasp. Unfortunately, it was not angled away enough for the buck shot of the shotgun to avoid hitting the Chief. A sharp pain on the side of his chest informed him that he had taken a hit from four pellets, piercing part of his chest plate.

He grunted as he instinctively covered the now bloody hole in his armour, but forced his hand to the grip of his rifle as he fought against the pain, firing at another combat form. This one was unarmed, but still ran at him with incredible speed, acting more viciously as if it could sense how its prey was wounded. That was, until it took a beam of magic to the chest, sending it flying backwards. With its blood glowing from the magical blast, it quickly got back up onto its feet. This time however, Twilight was ready for it, materialising a spear in front of her and throwing it at the burrowed infection form inside of the combat form. This caused the corpse left behind to fall apart with rotting tendons splitting from bone.

Satisfied with how Twilight dealt with those two Combat Forms, Chief quickly did a check of the room before realising that there were no more enemies nearby. Their bodies, or what was left of them, still remained, some of them showing evidence of them being killed by Twilight. Despite the pain he felt, the Chief couldn't help but feel a small, guilty sense of pride as Twilight was becoming better at fighting and winning. That pride quickly fell away as he realised that she would be quickly losing whatever innocence she had left.

From all the stories Twilight told, Chief couldn't help but wonder what her friends back home on her home planet would think of her if they could see her now. Would they place the blame on him? The latter thought didn't bother him too much. Over his long history as a Spartan, he had been the receiving end of hostility, scrutiny, and blame from others in the UNSC, so he was used to it. He couldn’t shake the thought about how Twilight could possibly be treated. Would she lose her friends and be banished from her society? Or would they ignore it and still accept her for who she is?

He shook his head as he considered what he was thinking. 'I'm over thinking this too much, getting distracted from the mission by a pony.' He paused as that didn't sound right at all. He  immediately realised why. 'Not pony, friend.' He now easily admitted to himself that he cared for Twilight deeply now, close to how he cared for his lost brothers and sisters. The two of them had experienced in only a couple of days so much that no one else could share with them over it. Her not being human or even a Spartan could take that away. He was so caught up in his thoughts that it was only when he felt a slight impact on his helmet that he came back to reality, hearing Twilight say his name in an urgent manner. 
"Chief! Chief, please don’t be dead,” she repeated, knocking her hoof on his helmet in an effort to elicit a reaction of any kind. He lightly grabbed her hoof as a gesture of showing he was still alive.

"You're bleeding pretty badly," she said, pointing at his wound, “Will you be okay?”

Cursing himself for ignoring his wound, Chief reached for the object attached to his belt, a med pack he had found lying next to the body of a fallen Marine. He began to treat his wound, using biofoam to close the wound and sealed the penetrated armour.

Discarding the used med kit, he straightened up, the pain in his chest reduced to a dull throb . He grabbed the shotgun that was used to harm him and quickly removed all of the shells still in the weapon. He needed all the ammo he could get.

Twilight followed his example, while still eyeing him to see if he was alright, procuring several magazines for her M6D magnum, putting them inside her pouch. Chief was surprised that, in all of the melee battles, flying and teleportation that she has been involved in, the pouch was still intact, including the strap.

After acquiring fresh munitions for their weapons, the pair moved out of the generator room and back onto the platform in the cold, snowy landscape, high in the air. There lay the Chief's ride out, a Banshee, the second he had commandeered within the last hour. He got in, activated the engines and flew off, with Twilight following, her wings flapping at a steady pace.

Beneath them was a small group of Covenant Ghosts fighting off against a wave of Flood Combat Forms, with support from a Dropship that distributed a Wraith before flying off, still hosing down the Flood with its plasma cannon. Despite being their enemy, the Chief suddenly, for a split second, felt a pang of concern for the Covenant as his sensors showed that many of the Combat Forms carried Rocket Launchers, allowing them to blow up several Ghosts. The Covenant may be ruthless and genocidal, but they sure as hell were better than the Flood.

It was then as the Chief was flying circles above the battle, waiting for the two sides to annihilate each other, that Cortana spoke up.

"I've located the Pillar of Autumn. She put down twelve hundred kilometres up spin. Energy readings show her fusion reactors are still powered up."

"That's good, then?" Twilight asked over the radio.

"It is, though there is one crucial detail that complicates this. There are some safeguards that even I can't override without the Captain's authorization on the Autumn. To start the fusion detonation, we'll either need to find him, or his neural implants."

Chief felt his stomach churn from sickness as he recalled that the last time he saw the Captain was on Private Jenkins’ recording, right when his group was ambushed by the Flood.

'There were Marines that managed to get away', Chief told himself, 'So the Captain could still be alive and well.' Even as he thought it, he didn't believe a single word.

"One target remaining, Let's take care of that final pulse Generator." Cortana announced.

As Master Chief and Twilight watched the two sides fight, he noticed that there was a large tunnel, one that both he and Twilight had traversed through before. The one where the Flood have now occupied, and judging from the reinforcements flowing in from it, they were quickly turning the tide in the battle below. While the Wraith was still active, more and more of the Covenant were being overrun. Some of the unlucky bastards were being converted into combat forms, their mutated bodies turning against their former comrades.

Chief and Twilight flew high above the battle raging below them, though Twilight had to fly above the Chief's Banshee to avoid all of the weapons fire coming towards them. Chief glanced at his controls as the Banshee seemed to absorb hit after hit, but knew that it wouldn't take much for it to become overwhelmed. He noticed multiple flashes coming from the ground, his gut dropping as a volley of rockets flew towards him.

He spun his Banshee backwards, dodging the volley, yet more were fired at him in quick succession. Twilight yelped as she almost scraped the side of one rocket that flew way too close for comfort. Chief fired at the source of some of the rockets with the Banshee’s fuel rod cannon and was rewarded with the sight of multiple combat forms getting melted by plasma.
“It would appear that the Flood are starting to prefer explosive ordinance launchers to attack aerial vehicles,” Cortana told Chief and Twilight, “And considering that they were originally using whatever their host had upon infection would appear to indicate an increase in intelligence.”


Another volley of rockets narrowly missing the banshee caused Cortana to stop speaking and allow Chief to focus on flying. Twilight however, was having a difficult time dodging small arms fire from Flood and Covenant alike.

Chief activated the boost on the Banshee, quickly flying into the open, square like corridor that was at the end of the 'natural' tunnel. The last time he traversed this corridor, he was in a Scorpion tank. Chief decided that a Scorpion would be quite useful in this operation, as it could take quite a lot of punishment and dish it out at the same time. The only problem he could see with it was that it was a bit slow, and potentially the Flood could overrun the tank and...

'And hijack it', the Chief's eyes widened as he saw on the monitor that a ghost in the corridor that was piloted by an Elite suddenly had a combat form leap onto it and throw the driver out before jumping into the seat and using the Ghost to kill the former driver. 'Shit!'

"Did that combat form...?!" Twilight's voice was filled with fear as she saw what just occurred, before the Ghost began to fire at the Banshee. Fortunately, a single fuel rod blast was all that was needed to destroy the Ghost and liquefy its pilot.

"It did", Cortana's voice was subdued. "I would be fascinated if it didn't mean more trouble for us. The Flood is definitely adapting, growing more intelligent. But how, I don’t know?"

Only half of the Chief's attention was focused on what she said. The other half was focused on flying the Banshee, before they reached the large doors that remained closed. The Chief landed the craft, with Twilight landing smoothly on the ground beside him, got out and moved to the controls on the side, pressing the button.

He didn't expect the explosion from behind the door as the mechanisms partially failed, leaving only a small opening large enough for the Chief to fit through. With his shotgun raised, he approached the opening, just as a combat form rushed out of it, quickly falling victim to a shotgun blast. He looked back at Twilight, who had her side arm drawn out, nodded to her and walked through.



Twilight moved through the opening, behind Chief as he swung his shotgun to either side of the area near the door, in case there were Flood waiting to ambush them. From the lack of the sound of the shotgun firing, Twilight could easily tell that the coast was clear, for now.

She looked at the huge cavernous area they had entered. The last time they had been here, there were Covenant shade turrets positioned on the corners of the room, and next to the bridge that connected the two sides of the room together. This time, it was quiet, too quiet. No movement whatsoever.

If she had remained in Equestria, Twilight would have just felt relief in finding a quiet space after lots of action, perhaps even taking out a book from her pouches and reading it to help her destress, but instead she now felt uneasy, paranoid even. This was just too good to be true.

Apparently, Master Chief felt the same way, as evidenced by how cautiously he moved, head constantly on the move, surveying the area. They approached the bridge slowly, the Chief focused on what was in front of them, while Twilight focused on what was behind them, walking backwards as she covered the rear. They only walked a few meters on the bridge before a hundred infection forms suddenly sprung out of their hiding place behind some pillars on the bridge, followed by a couple of combat forms. She leapt back in surprise as she fired her pistol at the flood forms, knowing that her pistol wasn't as effective against the swarm of Infection forms.

'How do they keep on appearing...Oh, for Celestia's sake. I'm not going to continue to ask myself this', she thought to herself as Chief tossed a grenade into the middle of the swarm and watched them all pop from the explosion, sending the two combat forms flying off the edge of the bridge. 'It's almost like Pinkie Pie, except much, much more frightening.'

From another section of the bridge, more Flood appeared out of the woodwork, this time a much larger group of Flood. There were too many coming too quickly, so Twilight was forced to leap into the air in an attempt to divide the Flood's attention, which only partially worked. The majority of the swarm were aiming for the Chief. It's like they thought she wasn't a threat, or a good food source.

'Well', she thought to herself, 'they may not want to infect me, just use me as a constant source of magic. But why?'

Chief was forced to back away from the swarm, firing his shotgun as he went, taking out either one or two combat forms or a dozen infection forms at a time with each shot. Twilight shot a carrier form and watched as the ensuring blast caused the flood forms around it to be flung off the bridge.

Finally the swarm was dealt with and Twilight subsequently flew to the other side. Waiting for the pair however, was an even larger swarm of Flood. 

"Shit!" Twilight screamed as a rocket flew past her head, the trail singing her fur slightly. She fired a magical blast at the combat form , but the only positive consequence was that the rocket launcher itself was destroyed. The combat form became enraged upon the destruction of its only ranged offensive option. It leaped high into the air, grabbing Twilight’s hoof, subsequently dragging her down with its weight.

She aimed at its chest area with her pistol and fired round after round, blowing holes through it until the infection form was destroyed, and the body simply fell apart. She looked down and saw that Chief had single handedly defeated most of the ambushers. He had picked up an MA5B and used it to tear through the combat and carrier forms, switching to the shotgun for the infection forms.

She couldn't help but stare in awe as he fought through each enemy. Realizing what she was doing, Twilight immediately returned to firing at the remaining Flood from the air. That is until she heard something behind her and turned to see a massive robot rise from the abyss. It appeared to be made out of the same materials as a sentinel, though it had two blue energy shields on the front and what looked like several appendages made for grabbing large objects on the bottom. As it reached a high enough position in the air, it began to fire at both the Chief and the Flood. She flew to him, grabbed him and teleported two meters closer to the exit, just as the place where he stood was blown up by explosives made of light.

The large machine slowly turned to face the pair, as sentinels flew down from hatches across the ceiling. And they were closing in fast. She fired two bolts of magic at the large robot and stared as the energy shield simply absorbed them. Then the Sentinels fired those burning beams at her, with those that actually hit her causing no physical harm, but made her feel like she was burning. She clenched her teeth together as she fought back, flinging two Sentinels together and watching them explode.

As she fought, she noticed that the machine had turned to face away from her. She looked down to check on the Chief and found that he wasn't there. In fact he was running towards the pile of dead Flood, dodging the incoming missiles fired at him. He slid towards a dead corpse and, in one single, fluid motion, picked up a SPNKr rocket launcher, aimed it at the Machine and fired just behind the shields as it turned. It wasn’t destroyed, but the shields appeared to be taken offline and it was heavily damaged where the rocket had hit.

Twilight fired another blast at it, this time hitting it and causing several appendages to fall off, the magic having a lesser degree of success against the materials of the Forerunner creations. One last rocket finished it off, the explosion knocking out several more Sentinels.

Twilight flew to the exit door, landing next to the control panel, with the chief close behind, having discarded the launcher. He pressed the panel and together they moved through the door before they could be overwhelmed by the number of Sentinels. As they passed through, Twilight teleported Chief and herself to the other control panel, with Chief quickly pressing the button to close the door, barely stopping a few heat beams coming through at them.

"That was a close one," Twilight said, her adrenaline pumping throughout her body. "I'm not sure who was worse, the Flood swarms or those Sentinels and that huge machine?"

"From what I discovered while inside Halo's control center", Cortana spoke through Twilight's radio, "looking through whatever database I could, I believe that I found that machine listed as another type of Sentinel: An Enforcer Sentinel, to be precise."

"Charming name", Twilight muttered, then frowned. "Do you know what the normal sentinels are called?"

"Accurately speaking, the sentinels we have encountered are the most common form of Sentinel, the Z-1500 Automated System Drones, or the Aggressor Sentinel, though it is simpler to just call them Sentinels and the Enforcers as...Enforcers, but there are many other different types of Sentinels, most of which I do not want for the three of us to encounter."

"Why? Are they larger than that Enforcer?" Chief asked.

"Lets just say that some sentinels are the size of a capital ship", Cortana stated. "Fortunately, there shouldn't be any other type of Sentinel on this ring, except for the constructors, which are harmless, by the way."

Twilight suddenly looked up in alarm. "Wouldn't these constructors be able to fix the two broken Generators?"

"Yes, but not as fast as you fear. Remember Twilight, the Monitor can't activate the Ring without the index and the Generators were only meant as a diversion to divide the Monitor's attention."

"Oh, right." Twilight replied sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck with her hoof.

"Let's move out,” Chief barked as he started to walk down the large corridor they were in. "Those sentinels will be after us again soon, not to mention any Covenant and Flood that are situated in any area they can be."

With that statement in everyone's mind, the two of them traversed through the corridor and exited into the open, snowy space at the bottom of a canyon, only to be once again ambushed by the Flood. Though there were very little in terms of infection forms for once, there were plenty of combat forms to more than make up for their absence, some of which were—once again—armed with SPNKr rocket launchers.

Twilight vowed to herself that, if she was able to alter the universe in any way, she would immediately ban the Flood from ever being able to use the stupid weapon ever again. Especially with one rocket colliding into her. The explosive didn’t cause obvious damage to her because of her shield but it sure as Tartarus hurt a lot more than any other injury she had dealt with. She was flung back and collided with the rocky cliff face, creating a crater on impact.

Twilight groaned as gravity took over, causing her to fall to the ground with a thud. She could feel that something had broken inside of her: several ribs and she probably cracked the bones in her legs too, putting her both in severe pain and making her pissed.

Very pissed.

Her horn began to glow as she pumped more magic into it than she had ever used in one go. She got back up onto her trembling hooves as her Cutie Mark began to glow with a lavender light. Her mouth formed a sneer as a growl began to emit out of her throat.

She opened her eyes as she leapt into the air, wings outstretched, magic bleeding out of her eyes, the air around her almost being vaporised by the energy now being emitted. The snow melted quickly on the ground, with snowflakes in the air turning to rain drops.

With the loudest, most angry scream that had come out of her throat, she sent a beam that seemed to fill her entire vision with a flash of purple at the horde of Flood. She could hear the scream not only from the parasite, but seemingly also from various voices interwoven underneath, which she believed must have been the hosts' voices.

As the blast ceased and the purple began to fade from her vision, she felt very exhausted, similar to how she felt when she first used magic on Halo, falling to the ground with a thud. Her eyes slid shut and slid into brief unconsciousness.

She heard a voice calling out for her. As she began to drift back into consciousness, she began to recognise the voice. Then she felt her body being shaken by something. The voice was instantly recognisable as the Master Chief's. She opened her eyes and saw him shaking her body with his hand.

"Twilight!", he called out, alarm evident in his voice.

"I'm here." she sluggishly replied, much to the relief of the Chief as he visibly relaxed a bit and Twilight could barely hear the fraction of a sigh of relief in the radio.

"Good," she heard Cortana say, "your vitals dropped once again, like when we first arrived here. Luckily, it seems that your new power upgrade seems to make you recover much faster, since it took you a few minutes to fully recover from before, but here you only fell unconscious for half a minute."

"Half a minute?!" Twilight practically yelled as she immediately sat up from where she was lying on the ground from surprise. "But scientifically, that can't..."

"We can focus on how impossible you really are later", the Chief interrupted, "but we have other priorities right now, such as what you did with that blast."

"What did I..." Twilight asked before looking over the Chief's shoulder and gasped.

Where the Flood forms that were attacking them once stood, there were now burnt corpses. What was most surprising was that the fluid Flood had for blood was everywhere, and it was glowing brighter than Twilight had ever seen. She stood up and took a step towards the blood and immediately felt the magical energy that seemed to emit from it. Then, she felt a familiar connection with that energy and after a few seconds of contemplation and came to the conclusion that it was her magic. The biggest amount of magic she had ever conjured up and dumped into a spell, and the Flood, even dead, still seemed to absorb it.

"The readings from that fluid is extraordinary", Cortana exclaimed in an intrigued voice. "Just before you fired your magical blast, the amount of magical energy was so large that even I could detect it using the Chief's sensors in his suit. You must have really been pissed off"—Twilight sheepishly laughed for a brief second at this—"Then, when you fired and hit all the Flood, it burnt everything but the fluid."

"Now, here's the most intriguing and mysterious part: the blood didn't boil like I would suspect it would. In fact, a small area began to sizzle and glow like it is now, but only in the area where one Combat Form once stood. As it glowed brighter and brighter, the magical energy left by that blast seemed to dim significantly. That same energy that was disappearing then reappearing within the blood. It was being transferred and...altered in a way I cannot yet determine. But that single amount of blood seemed to have a limit to how much magic it could absorb. When it hit its limit, another blob of blood began to absorb. This continued on until all of the magic was transferred."

Twilight's mouth dropped at Cortana's description of what had occurred, her mind internally both excited about what this could mean for magical studies and horrified at what this could mean for the Flood. Most likely from experience something horrible for everything else.

"All that, in half a minute?" her voice barely a whisper.

"Is the blood a direct threat?" the Chief asked, his rifle half raised, ready for anything to happen.

"I wouldn't recommend touching it", Cortana replied, "but the bloody area stops just over to your left, so we can easily go around it. I'm also pretty sure that the magic is dissipating at a slow rate, but it won't be here for too long."

"Good, we don't want to know what the Flood can do with that magic if they can get the chance", the Chief stated as the pair started to walk around the Blood and continue their way to the final Generator. They just cleared it when the Chief suddenly stopped.

"Behind us!", he said, twisting around, raising his rifle. Twilight did the same but the both of them paused as they beheld the sight before them.

Three carrier forms had come out of the blue and gathered near the largest concentration of blood. They waddled up close before their flimsy tentacle arms suddenly lashed out and attached to the blood. Then the glowing texture of the blood seemed to become absorbed by the carrier forms as their 'skin' began to pulse and glow over their sack like body. Twilight could easily tell that the magical energy was being transferred to the carrier forms, due to the glow fading from the blood.

One of the carrier forms then started to shake as it's arms retracted to its normal length before collapsing on the ground, it's bulbous areas expanding, then contracting in size before infections forms started to pop out one at a time in the most abominable, gruesome manner. As the carrier form slowly deflated, Twilight spotted that these infection forms were not the same as the Infection forms that she had been fighting against.

They had the same basic shape, except they were significantly larger, and the tip of their pod body was more exaggerated. They had a lot more tentacles, albeit they were shorter. Then there was the colour. They were glowing like the pure mana blood, but much brighter than what the carrier forms had been, so much so that Twilight's uncovered eyes unconsciously half closed in order to block out the glare from them. The skin itself was pulsating slightly as well, but the ripples were more intense in a way as Twilight could literally see the most powerful magical sparks she had seen fling out from them.

Another key difference between this type of infection form and the normal type was that wherever this type 'walked', the ground would transform into a veiny, fungus like surface, with a texture similar to that of the flood. It was like the infection form was turning the environment into a Flood haven. The infection form was also faster than the normal type and seemed to almost let out a really, really tiny growl that Twilight could only hear through practice of hearing Fluttershy speak when she was very shy.

All of these factors made Twilight feel ill from fear and horror, almost shaking on the spot, as she watched more and more of the magic-augmented Infection Forms get released from the carrier forms before they fully deflated, then melted into a puddle of Flood biomass.

Twilight pulled out her sidearm, her magical grip shaking from fright, preparing to be assaulted by the Infection Forms, but was surprised when they suddenly spun around and shuffled away from her and the Master Chief. All, but three, who just stood there.

Twilight looked at Chief in confusion, which he returned, or at least she thought he returned when he looked back at her through his visor.

"Any idea why they're standing there?" she asked the Chief, who shrugged.

"If I was doing a similar thing in front of my enemy, it would be as a..." the Chief trailed off as his grip on his rifle tightened, "...distraction,'' he whispered as Twilight saw him turn around, and followed his gaze before gasping in shock and becoming petrified from fear, not feeling a warm substance dripping down her flank.

A group of thirty combat forms had snuck up behind them, along with a couple of carrier forms, all of which where now running towards them, all of them armed. Then she heard the growls and groans from both her left and right, not needing to look to know that more Flood were swarming in from the sides. It was the shots fired at the Chief that finally shook her out of her trance before she fired some very ineffectual shots at the Flood gunning for her.

Within seconds, the pair were overrun, Twilight being grabbed by at least a dozen tentacles, thrown away from the Chief before being dragged along the snow, all the way to the three mana Infection forms. She was dumped in front of them before being restrained by multiple combat forms.

She struggled to get free, shaking and wiggling in an effort to slip out of the grips of the Combat Forms, pain from her broken bones lacing her body, while shooting magic from her horn in order to knock back any Flood she could, succeeding in a few attempts, but not enough to help her break free. But she was pleasantly surprised when the combat forms suddenly let go.

Then, everything erupted into pain and horror as a carrier form wrapped its tentacles around her neck and started to suck out her magic at a rapid rate. She could feel her magic disappearing, being extracted out of her against her will, similar to how Tirek did it to her, except worse. So much worse. As much as she tried to hold on to it, hide it away inside of her, the magic was always found and ripped out of her.

It wasn't just her magic that was being affected. She felt her mind, her heart, her soul, her very being, all of which were being violated by the flood. She could feel the flood coursing through her innermost self, trying to reach every part of her that it could touch. She shrieked out as the Flood seemingly studied her then proceeded to rip out the parts of her which it wanted, her emotions, her memories, her personality. They were still there inside of her, but now it was no longer her own personal self. The Flood had taken all that she is. All that she felt now was pain unlike anything else. Not just physical pain, but mental, emotional, from the soul. Everything that made her was screaming out in pain, overwhelming her to the point of death being a much, much preferable alternative What was worse was that she could feel a sense of sadistic enjoyment and victory coming from the Flood.

Finally, she felt that she was nearing the end of her magic being drained, almost welcoming the end just so the Flood could end her suffering. That is, until she felt the tentacles of an infection form touch her horn and started to feed into her small specks of pure mana, which seemed to completely restore her magic. She had a brief second of realisation, all hope lost of escaping this fate before the draining started again, sending her into more spasms of pain.

This time, however, she felt her own magic begin to abandon her slowly. Beforehand it struggled to stay with her, but now it was starting to willing go to the Flood, be drained from her. She was now starting to lose control of her magic as it now seemed to obey the Flood's will, becoming bolder and bolder with its allegiance to its new master.

As she lay there, trying to break out while in the middle of the pain, one thought seemed to blossom in her mind, as if the Flood was encouraging it to come out.

Her own magic had betrayed her.



The Master Chief was knocked back as twenty combat forms tackled him to the ground. Despite their augmented strength, he was able to grab hold of a rocket launcher in one of their tentacle grasps, ripping it away along with the frail hand of the combat form, and used it as a bat to knock off the combat forms on him.

He got up to his knees, aimed the launcher at a group of twelve combat forms running towards him and fired, blowing up the entire group with a well aimed rocket to their feet. He discarded the launcher after seeing it only had that one rocket in it before grabbing his shotgun and blasting apart two more Combat Forms that tried to rush him. He wasn't going down again like he did just before.

A continuous blood curtailing shriek erupted from the side, shaking him to his core, especially when he recognised the voice as Twilight.

'Oh, no...please no', he instinctively thought before calling out. "Twilight!"

He turned around and saw her in the distance, surrounded by Combat Forms with a Carrier form standing over her, its tentacles wrapped around her neck, pulsating as it drained her magic quickly. The only sight that gave him the slightest speck of relief was that the Infection Form, despite it's tentacles being attached to her horn, was not infecting her.

He only took this in for a split second before his peripheral vision spotted movement behind him on his motion sensor and instinctively lowered himself before twisting around, bringing his shotgun to bear right into the remains of the infection form embedded within a combat form. He pulled the trigger and the former Elite shattered. Before he could rush to help Twilight, more combat forms arrived, armed with a variety of weapons, intent on shooting him where he stood.

Aware that he could not help Twilight until he had dealt with the current enemies, he decided to find out what exactly were they doing.

"Cortana, can you identify what the Flood are doing to Twilight?!" he shouted out to Cortana as he ran to the side, firing six shotgun blasts before he heard the chamber click as it was empty. He started to feed shotgun shells into the weapon, only managing to get two in before he felt multiple rounds of both bullets and plasma collide with his shields. He found the closest of the culprits, sent that monster to hell with a single round before aiming at another. He fired the last round he had in the shotgun currently, but the combat form used its tentacles at the last minute to nudge the shotgun to the side slightly, causing the combat form to survive, barely.

Snarling, Chief smashed the butt of the shotgun into the center mass of the combat form, finally killing it before bringing out his MA5B. Though it was less effective, he managed to take down three or four combat forms with well aimed shots before he expended the magazine. He reloaded and began to take down the remaining attackers, one by one.

"I can't be sure on this, Chief, but I think that the Flood are using her to fuel the carrier forms with her magic so that they can create more of those augmented infection forms. It seems to correlate with what I am viewing with your sensors, due to the carrier forms that drain her reaching a certain level of magic storage before being replaced by another carrier form, and imploding, releasing those infection forms."

Chief would have been much more horrified by those words if he wasn't so focused on avoiding being killed by another rocket launcher wielding Flood form, running erratically to confuse the combat form and cause it to fire in the wrong direction. Out of all the enemies he had encountered on the ring, he feared them the most. A group of four hunters would be better than them.

"So..." he began as he finally had a window of opportunity as the rocket Flood had to reload, firing a long burst at it before being rewarded with the sight of the Flood form crumbling under the weight of the volley. "She's a battery for them until she runs out of magic?"

"Yes, though from the rate of how much magic is being drained from her, she should have been dry a minute ago. Somehow, one of the augmented Infection Forms are able to refill her magic supply easily, thus making her a prisoner of a never ending process. By my calculations, within ten minutes, the Flood will use Twilight to create approximately ten thousand augmented Infection Forms."

'Ten thousand?!' he grimly thought to himself as he grabbed hold of a knife from a fallen infected human and brought it down onto the chest of another Combat Form. "We can't let that happen! Do you know what will happen to Twilight if we interrupt it now?"

"With the current data I have currently, I don't know. Either she'll be physically fine, or she'll die. I can't be sure. What I am certain of is that we'll have to risk it."

That dug right into the Chief, as he knew she was right, and he wouldn't hesitate, but he still hated that fact. Still, if Twilight would die, she would be free of the pain that she was feeling at the moment, due to the shrieks and howls of pain and agony that he was hearing. This hate turned into anger and sheer determination as he rapidly killed form after form.

He finished off the last couple of combat forms before running towards Twilight, firing at the carrier form in an effort to stop the sickening process. He tried to avoid looking at the spasming body of Twilight, her eyes closed as she wailed, tears flowing down her face. As he got much closer, the Chief could see the magic flowing out of her.

The carrier form was hit, releasing Twilight from its grasp before collapsing on the ground and exploding, sending out ordinary Infection Forms. The remaining Flood gathered around the single augmented Infection Form that was still grasping Twilight, but another showed up and attached itself to the nearest Combat Form. Chief raised his rifle, ready to fight for Twilight, who was still alive and her mind still intact, but paused as he witnessed something unexpected.

The Combat Forms all decided to attach themselves onto the single combat form that the augmented infection form was currently on, before they all collectively began to melt into a puddle of biomass. Then the biomass began to take a much larger form, rising from the ground, shaping into a large, monstrous creature, no sign of the hosts bodies except for the substance it was made of. A large, yellowish sack of skin began to form at the top of the biomass as it rose, with two long appendages separating themselves from the main body until they seemed to form two long tentacle like arms, which were longer than the main body and seemed to flop limp to the ground. The stocky, long legs were next, the final mass of biomatter being used to construct them finally disappearing into the creature.

Chief lowered his rifle in sheer shock, his mind slowly coming to grasp with what he just witnessed before the creature attacked him, swinging its extra long arm with a surprising amount of density and force, knocking Chief right into the cliff face. The impact of both the arm and the cliff face caused Chief's shields to collapse and he felt several ribs crack as he fell to the ground.

He grunted in pain as he got back up onto his feet. He felt and heard heavy footsteps coming his way and saw the newly formed 'Pure' Flood form stomp towards him with a heavy stride and surprising speed. It raised its arms above its 'head' and, with the intention of crushing Chief, brought them down towards him. He just managed to roll away, cursing both at the Flood form and the pain on his side.

He ran to the nearest weapon on the ground, a Plasma Rifle, grabbed it, twisted around and started to fire short bursts at the Flood form, backing away as fast as possible. The Plasma Rifle did absolutely nothing to the beast, except enrage it as it was now extending its arms to crush the Chief. Once again, despite the speed and force of its attacks, Chief always seemed to avoid being hit, having learnt from the first time.

Instead of attacking, Chief opted to let the Creature have the initiative for now, in order to study its movements and abilities, trying to find a pattern or weakness to exploit. This almost turned out to be a fatal error as the Abomination, as Chief chose to call it, stopped and raised its tentacle. Chief was confused, until he saw the rock flying at him from the other side, enveloped in an aura that was like a hybrid between Twilight's magic and the mana blood's colour, except it was more obvious and bright. He ducked, the rock barely scratching his newly recharged shield before noticing the same aura seemed to be around the tentacle of the Abomination.

The Abomination swung at Chief again, trying to grab him, while using magic to throw objects at him or even shoot out a blast of magic from its arms. Chief was constantly on the move, fatigue quickly spreading throughout his body. At the first chance he got, he dropped the plasma rifle for an assault rifle, which was slightly more effective as the rounds pierced the sack on the 'head', the small holes slowly leaking fluid.

Finally, after the Abomination charged at him and missed, he saw a weak section of flesh on the hip. Even better, he was standing next to a rocket launcher.

In a single, fluid motion, Chief grabbed the Launcher, aimed it at the weak section of the Abomination and prayed that the Launcher had a rocket in it, since he grabbed it so fast that his HUD couldn't link up with the weapon.

He pulled the trigger and was rewarded with a rocket shooting out, colliding with the creature, ripping it's mid section into two. Now aware that there was one more rocket in the weapon, he aimed at the bulging, pimple like sack that seemed to be its head and fired. The head exploded, spewing out bright mana blood and the Abomination seemed to crumble into chunks of flesh and gunk.

Without even a moment of breath, Chief raced towards Twilight, throwing away the Rocket Launcher and procured a Shotgun from a fallen combat form. He slid over to her still shaking form, spotted the infection form still attached to her and reached out to rip it off. His finger touched it and then the Master Chief's vision went blank.

He found himself in a strange void, endless in all directions, though the background all seemed to be fluid, not dissimilar to that of the Flood's oily blood. He looked around, attempting to spot any potential threat or exit, finding none. Nevertheless, he still felt as if something was with him, watching his every move.

"Cortana, can you find out where we are?" he asked, but there was no response. His gut now filled with dread once more,  Chief tried again. "Cortana, do you copy? Cortana?!"

He lowered his head as the realization that he was alone dawned on him, sending a shiver down his spine. It was this moment that he realized how much he came to depend on Cortana or Twilight being there with him on Halo, almost making up for the loss of his Brothers and Sisters.

As he thought of his fellow Spartans, his head began to ache as the entire landscape shifted and transformed into an all to familiar place. Somewhere that he thought he'll never see again: The Spartan Training Facility,on the Planet Reach.

Within his helmet, he blinked in surprise and confusion, once again doubting his sanity for a brief moment, an all too necessary action when considering the Flood as a whole. Then he heard the voices to the side, which caused his heart to stop beating for a full second. He turned around and just stood there, disbelief etched all over his face and body language.

He saw himself, not as the Master Chief, not as the Augmented Spartan, but as John, a nine year old boy, surrounded by his many friends...no, family. The only family he ever knew, gathered together discussing a plan to beat trainers. All his brothers and sisters, all young. All alive. A tear began to slid down his check from a mixture of happiness, sorrow and anguish. He almost choked when he heard his best friend Sam’s voice ask, "When do we start, John?"

Immediately, when his name was uttered, the entire scene turned red as Chief experienced a full blown migraine. The then scene crumbled and returned to the void where Chief originally was. It was then that Chief felt something, a presence, withdraw nearby. A presence that had the intention of studying him, but retreated after his own name was spoken. He also barely noticed a hint of fear, though not from him, but+ in the air.

'That must have been a memory', the Chief thought to himself before he heard Twilight's scream not too far away.

He immediately ran towards it, the void giving way to him as Twilight suddenly appeared in the distance, sinking into the floor, which had become a pit of Flood matter and tentacles, pulling her half-conscious form into the pit. He immediately jumped into the pit, but was surprised when the Flood matter gave way to a solid surface just before any part of him touched it, like it was scared of him.

He didn't pay this much attention as he was fully focused on Twilight, running towards her as she was now almost completely engulfed by the pit. He reached out and grabbed the closest hoof and started to pull her back up, struggling as the Flood mass did not seem to want to give her up, quickly creating a stalemate.

As he continued to hold on to her hoof, 'playing' a game tug of war with the Flood, it seemed that the Chief became connected to Twilight's mind as every single memory that she had began to bombard his own mind. Her first moments of life, her toddler—or as she called it 'foal years'—school and tutelage years, her friends and family in Equestria and all of the adventures and emotions she had ever experienced until her arrival on the Pillar of Autumn, he saw them all, seared into his own memories now.

Here, fighting to save her, was when he finally understood everything about Twilight. Her inquisitive and scientifically minded process of thought, her moments of madness when confronted with peculiar problems, her initial reluctance and aversion towards making friends until her final acceptance of it, her internal journey that led to her ascension as an Alicorn, her personality.

This only seemed to strengthen him as he began to pull harder, slowly pulling Twilight out again. He could feel frustration emanate from the Flood mass as it too increased its effort to pull Twilight back down, but the Chief wasn't giving them an inch. He gritted his teeth as more tentacles erupted from the Flood mass and attached to both himself and Twilight, the ones attached to his arm trying desperately to break his grip, while the others were helping the original tentacles pull Twilight.

'No! I'm not losing another friend!' he shouted within his mind as he pulled harder than he ever had before. His friendship was the only thing driving his strength. "You can't have her, ever!" he shouted at the Flood, causing some ripples in the pit to stagger backwards. A sudden memory of a motto that Twilight lives by popped into his head, giving him the strength to finally make Twilight start to come out faster and faster.

"Because, Friendship...Is...MAGIC!"

As he shouted with the loudest tone he had ever used in order to both convey a message and intimidate the Flood pit, Twilight popped out of the pit. Time seemed to slow down as a roar of anguish and anger filled the entire void as it slowly turned to white, leaving Twilight and John alone.

John opened his eyes, blinked, then realised that he was looking back to Twilight's body, now limp, but breathing heavily, in the snowy canyon ground. He looked at his hand, seeing the squirming Infection Form in his grasp as it struggled to break free from his grip.

Disgusted, he crushed it, sending Flood matter splattering everywhere, but he didn't care. All he cared about was that Twilight was still breathing and not infected.

"She's coming to." John was never more glad to hear Cortana's voice.

Twilight opened her eyes slowly, before tears started to flow down her face at an extremely rapid rate before she started sobbing. John's heart broke as he recognised the escalating sobbing and cries to be that of an eternally traumatised person, doomed to live with an event that would haunt them till the end of their days.

He pulled her close as a means of implying protection and in turn, she wrapped her hooves around his waist and planted her face on his chest plate, continuing to sob and scream from the immense terror as the last remaining innocence she once had was taken from her.

He sat there for a moment, letting Twilight cry her heart out, with no comment from Cortana, who was disturbingly quiet. Finally, her tears started to slow down and the crying became quieter and quieter. She still trembled but it seemed as if Twilight was getting better. John, however, knew that Twilight might never heal from her ordeal at all.



Tears still rolling down the fur on her cheeks, Twilight closed her mouth for the first time since Chief had rescued her, her throat sore from screaming and crying. Her breathing was still quick as her heart continued to race. Her eyes were wide open, not seeing Chief's armour but rather the Flood perverting her very existence with what it did to her. That was seared into her brain, never leaving her vision for a single second.

It wasn't the sound of Chief's voice, or Cortana's, that shook her out of her trance, but rather the screech of a Banshee as it flew overhead, firing down at the both of them. She felt Chief lift her up and move her out of the way of the plasma bolts before lowering her gently to the ground.

Twilight, barely even understanding what was happening, looked on at Chief as he ran to another spot in the snow, firing his shotgun at the Banshee in order to gain its attention, which he succeeded in. As Twilight's brain finally started working to its normal ability, becoming totally aware of her situation, she almost panicked as the Banshee flew down towards Chief, as if trying to ram him. But he had it under control, using the pilot's own intentions against it as he fired several rounds at the Banshee as it got too close to him, causing major damage that resulted in the vehicle's destruction.

She got back up onto her hooves and slowly walked to Chief, who waited for her calmly. When she reached him, he knelt down, his visor opposite her face. She could see her reflection on it and knew that Chief was staring at her from behind the helmet with a look of concern.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her, sympathy and concern rolling off each word.

Her mind flashed to what she experienced, causing her to tremble from fear and terror, but she managed to shake her head even as fresh tears started to swell up in her eyes. As she started to cry again, she felt Chief's hand on her shoulder, his grip firm, yet soft and calming. She immediately felt slightly better, the horror and fear still present, but almost pushed to the side in her mind.

"I...I don't know how to explain what just happened to me,'' she whispered in a sullen tone. "The F...F...Flood just used me like a power source, making sure that every individual part of me in my mind had been c...contaminated. Taking my magic from me, but also ensuring that I was always full so they could feed, and that the nightmare would never end."

The Master Chief was quiet for a moment. "Do you remember anything about sinking into a pit?" he asked in a wary tone.

Twilight, her terror momentarily forgotten, looked at him in surprise, his words making no sense with what she had experienced.

"No", she answered, "no I don't. All I remember are my memories, personality..." her words became stuck inside her open mouth as she struggled to even speak, choking off of her newly reignited terror.

"Chief, I don't know where you got the idea of a pit from." Cortana stated in a confused tone. "We obviously both saw the Flood holding her down and sucking the magic out of her."

"Please don't say that!" Twilight moaned out as she covered her face with her hooves. "I'm getting more than enough f...flashbacks to torment me for life right now."

"Sorry", Cortana said, guilt in her voice over the radio. "But I still don't get why you would even..."

"When I grabbed the infection form, I'm not exactly sure how, but I found myself in a strange, dream like world." Chief explained, much to Twilight's astonishment. "It was like a never-ending world, yet it didn't feel right. I never felt like I was alone, something was watching me, studying me. Then the void disappeared into a memory of my early years, until something that was said seemed to break the world."

He then looked right at her. "Then I heard you scream. I ran and found you sinking into a pit of Flood."

Twilight suddenly felt really ill from the mere suggestion, much less the imagined visual representation in her head, but refocused as Chief continued to explain.

“I rushed over to grab you and pull you out, but when I touched you...” He paused and looked at his hand before looking back. “The Flood reeled back.”
> The Captain must go down with the Ship
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



“What do you mean, ‘The Flood reeled back’?” Twilight asked, the first words she had spoken since John had explained what he experienced within her mind.

They were currently in the third generator room, having teleported there after Twilight made the decision to avoid any more confrontations with the Flood. Upon arriving, the pair had to deal with a half dozen Sentinels before finding the generator exposed, along with a weapons cache, comprised of weapons that John was unaware of being in the Autumn’s weapon compliment. He acquired a DMR and gave a Twilight two M7 Submachine Guns and full ammo capacity. He made sure to stock up on ammo for both of his weapons as well.

He answered her question with another as his shields finally recharged from overloading the generator.

’ONI will have my head for this, but she deserves to know. Especially after that ordeal.’ “Would you like to know my past?” John asked.

“I would, but you still haven’t answered my original question.” John could see her demeanor improve at the prospect of learning about her friend.

“My story started on the human colony of Eridanus II. It was a fringe world, so it was far away enough from Earth to be filled to the brim with Insurrectionist activity.”

“Insurrectionist?” Twilight asked.

“Rebels”, the Chief stated, his eyes narrowing slightly within his helmet, “who aim to have many of the outer colonies free independent from the UEG and the UNSC. Before the Covenant, they were the main threat of Earth and her colonies.” John paused, “I was originally created to combat the threat they posed.”

“You were created?” Twilight asked. “But I’ve seen you bleed.” 

“I was born on Eridanus II to George and Nichole Laarson. At the age of six, I met a woman named Catherine Halsey. A month later, I and One hundred and Fifty other candidates were kidnapped by ONI agents.”

The two were interrupted by Covenant weapons fire coming from the corridor behind them. ‘How did they get… Most likely a dropship which must have tracked our teleportation signature.’ He raised his DMR as four Elites charged in, with numerous Grunts and Jackals behind them.

“Cortana, what’s taking so long,” John shouted over shots from his DMR,”I thought you said you’d be in the teleportain grid by now!”

“I would if snowglobe hadn’t locked me out.” Cortana spat back. “Just be glad we came across this weapons cache when we did, because you are going to need all the ammo you can get.”

John and Twilight continued to fight off wave after wave of covenant forces. Twilight fired off a fresh volley of rounds from her newly acquired SMGs, several colliding into the shields of an Elite, subsequently dropping them. John finished the Sanghelli warrior off and was about to reload when Cortana spoke up.

“I’m going to kill that glorified christmas ornament the next time we meet,” Cortana said with an exasperated sigh, “But I found the Captain. He’s alive!. And the implants are intact.Teleporting you two now.” And with that, the unlikely team was whisked away, John barely noticing a pile of Flood corpses in the corner of the room.



Twilight found herself in a familiar looking corridor, though when she had seen this type of architecture before, it was pristine, well maintained, and functioning. This wasn’t the case as the corridor was on fire, sections ripped out of walls, blood everywhere and everything happened to be on the ceiling.

‘Come to think of it, I feel pulled to the ceiling’, she thought to herself. Just as she realised everything looked upside down, she felt gravity pull her to the ceiling, or more accurately, the floor.

She landed with a light, even graceful ‘thud’, while Chief next to her collided with a heavy ‘clank’. They both groaned as they got back to their feet

“Oh!” Cortana exclaimed. “The coordinate data needs to be-” Twilight watched Chief smack the back of his helmet which elicited an apology from the AI.

“So,” Twilight started to say as she looked around, taking in the damaged interior with a growing sense of dread, expecting the flood to leap out of every shadow to attack her. The memories of pain came back, causing her to take a step back before taking a deep breath. “What happened to this…”

“Twilight, Chief. . .Don’t be fools. . .Leave me.”

“That sounded like the captain!” Twilight stated excitedly. “Cortana, can you pinpoint his location?”

“According to my readouts, he’s right on the other side of this wall,” Cortan said, “but reaching him is going to be tough considering the Flood have captured this vessel. From what I've been seeing on the Covenant battlenet, they’ve sent several strike teams to retake the ship, so be prepared to potentially run into them as well.”

“Understood. Twilight...”, Chief started to ask, “Can you teleport us to his location?”

“I can try,'' she replied, already drawing the energy in. With her horn lit, she visually pictured them on the other side and made the spell.

Just as she activated it, she heard Keyes shout out “Twilight...don’t do…”

The warning came too late however. As she began to teleport them both, images of the flood flashed across her eyes, and she and Chief landed in the canyon below.

‘That wasn’t supposed to happen.’ Twilight thought to herself.

“Yeah, no kidding.” The Master Chief stated.

She immediately gave a scream of surprise as she felt her back hoof in a very cold, liquid like substance, taking it out of a green fluid. She gave a sigh of relief when she realised that it wasn’t anything Flood related, rather it was flowing out from ripped out sections of the Covenant warship above them.

“What is this stuff?” she asked Cortana directly.

“Coolant. Keeps the reactors cool enough to function without blowing up the ship when the stress and heat is too much”, Cortana explained. “Both us and the Covenant use it, though theirs is a different type.”

“It looks like the coolant is flowing from holes in the cruiser caused by internal explosions. The Covenant must really be fighting hard to keep it out of Flood hands.” Twilight stated.

“Do these canyons look familiar to anyone, by any chance,'' Chief asked.

Twilight cursed to herself as she realised Chief was the only one who had been looking at their immediate surroundings, not being distracted by the coolant. She took a closer look at the structure of the canyons, which she definitely had seen before and after a moment realised where they were.

“We’re under the Truth and Reconciliation”, she stated, with Chief nodding at this.

Before they could discuss the meaning of where they were, the sounds of fighting suddenly appeared to their right. The two of them raised their weapons as an Elite appeared from behind a canyon face, backing away from an unseen foe, firing its plasma rifle. Twilight guessed correctly that the assailants were a pair of combat forms, who appeared a few seconds later and broke the shields of the Elite.

Knowing that it was about to die, the Elite decided to go out in a blaze of glory, priming a plasma grenade and managing to stick it onto one of the combat forms as it skewered him with an elongated blade made of bone. Seconds later, the area was showered in blood, guts, and pus.

Twilight winced, but was thankful that the shield she had erected managed to protect her from the explosion of viscera. The Master Chief however, was not so lucky.



He looked down at his gore coated armour and sighed. ’Thank god this suit has its own life support.’ John thought to himself.

“C’mon Chief, don’t make me jealous.” Twilight wined. 

John was about to make another remark when his eyes widened and both he and Twilight 
looked at each other in shock.

’Did she just hear my thoughts?’

’Did I just hear his thoughts?’

The fact that Twilight’s voice echoed through his brain without her mouth moving was very unsettling. From her facial expressions, John could tell that she was just as surprised as he was.

“Cortana?” John asked, “What’s your take on this?”

“I can’t be sure,” Cortana stated, “but whatever you did in Twilight’s mind to free her from the flood must have created a mental connection between the two of you.”

John looked at Twilight and tilted his head.

“It’s happened before.” Twilight said. “If I remember correctly, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are mentally connected to an extent, though they could not hear each other's thoughts. If they were able to, it would have stopped a lot of pain and suffering.”

“I think this may have more to do with the Flood itself than with you, Twilight”, Cortana stated. “I have a hypothesis that the Flood shares a sort of hive-mind, one that may allow all of the infected to share the knowledge of the infected hosts and to coordinate efforts and infect more people.” The conversation was interrupted by a brief firefight with another group of covenant.  “If the Flood created a separate mental link with you to… attack you Twilight,” Cortana continued, ”then the Chief may have accidentally inserted himself into that connection and broke the Flood’s own connection. Thus, you too have your own personal mental chat, to which I’m not invited. Not that I’m annoyed or anything.”

“Well, you are in my head in a way,'' John stated in a manner of fact tone as he reloaded his DMR, “so I don’t see you having a need to complain.” He heard Cortana humpf over the radio.

“So…” Twilight started to say out loud, but her face was filled with doubt and reluctance that stopped her from speaking, but John heard her unfinished thought anyways. ‘What are we going to do about this situation?’

“For now, nothing,'' John said. “Right now, getting back aboard the Truth and Reconciliation and 
rescuing the Captain is our top priority.”

With that in the air, the pair moved on to find the Gravity Lift just like the first raid. Due to the Covenant Forces actively engaging the Flood in almost every area, casualties high on both sides, so John and Twilight were to pass by several encounters mostly undetected, except for an encounter where John had picked up and used a sniper rifle to kill a couple of Elites and was then forced to use the sniper against an ambushing combat form. The encounter was nothing like what he had expected, for the sniper round simply passed through the combat form, doing absolutely nothing, except cause a disgusting scene.

After finally killing it off with a small volley of DMR rounds, John dropped the sniper and picked up the combat form’s discarded shotgun. He then led himself led Twilight to the open space where the Grav Lift was located. On the top of a considerable hill, a squad of Covenant were fighting off seemingly endless waves of combat and carrier forms, with a mixture of plasma rifles, carbines, needlers, even a fuel rod cannon. Despite all their efforts, it was clear to John that it was a last stand, and the Covenant knew it.

He’d been there countless times, against the Covenant, yet this almost made him have a brief sense of camaraderie with them. For about a second, he stood there, silently respecting those individuals before remembering that he’ll have to kill them to get back up into the cruiser.

So he rushed ahead, breaking through the horde of flood, killing dozens upon dozens. He heard the sound of SMGs behind him, informing him that Twilight was close behind. He saw an infection form about to take out an Elite, and after a microsecond of deliberation, he raised his DMR. The Elite turned around as the infection form leaped, but was surprised when it got torn to the side. Turning to face the shooter, he was surprised to see that the demon had saved him, and was even more surprised when he found himself and his squad aboard the flagship of his fleet, The Ascendant Justice. He stood there, stunned, before immediately activating his communicator, with the intent of reporting this incident to Supreme Commander Thel ‘Vadamee.

John, after seeing Twilight teleport the entire Elite squad somewhere, now focused on killing the rest of the flood nearby. It took a minute of constant fighting with no breaks, but there was finally a pause in the flood reinforcements, allowing John and Twilight to finally reach the peak of the hill. He quickly reloaded before stepping into the beam of light and was pulled upwards into the cruiser.



Twilight gasped in horror at the state of the gravity lift chamber, where many of the vehicles and consoles lay in ruin, smashed or burnt. Blood covered the entire room, and corpses of various shapes littered the floor. Several infection forms were crawling about, seemingly ignoring the pair. Oddly enough, The parasite appeared like it was busy preparing something as the infection forms darted to several corpses with the intent of converting them.

Twilight snarled as she fired a short burst from her SMG at the closest infection form as it attempted to attach itself to the chest of an Elite. The pop hadn’t even registered in her mind as she swivelled on the spot, taking out as many infection forms as she could.

After finishing off the last of the infection forms, Twilight stood there shaking in anger and fear. She again had tears streaming down her face. Her eyes were wide open this time however. In what had become a frequent occurrence, memories of the traumatic experience flashed before her eyes. She tried to ignore them as she wiped away the tears. She noticed the Chief waiting for her at the only door that was open. Well, open was a very loose term as the door had basically been ripped open and was covered in both Covenant blood and Flood gunk.

She walked over as one of the huge bay doors opened up, revealing a group of combat forms, along with a single, augmented infection form. She snarled as she brought her SMG to bear at the infection form, ready to fire. That is, until the infection form attached itself to a combat form. Twilight felt a sense of dread from Chief as the other combat forms surrounded the flood mass. She wondered what he was afraid was going to happen. That was until the small group of Flood collectively began to dissolve and break down.

She shouted in both surprise and horror, her anger now forgotten, replaced by fear as what was the group of combat forms started to merge and grow something. She looked to her side and saw Chief slowly backing away, DMR raised, his hands gripping the weapon tightly. It was like he knew what was about to happen.

Her suspicions were proved correct when he simply muttered “not again” as the growth started to take a more unique form. She could only look in horror as a new flood form was born through the flesh, bone and fungus of the infected, the final remnants of individuals finally wiped away, absorbed by the flood in a horrific manner.

‘Is this my fate’, she wondered to herself as the flood form’s growth seemed to slow down and finally stop, the final product being a large, bulky humanoid like thing with a huge sack on the top and really long tentacle like arms.

“What...is...that?” she whispered.

“An Abomination”, Chief replied, “I encountered one when you were being… used.”

“Don’t even think about using magic against it”, Cortana stated, her voice similarly quiet to her own. “The one we encountered was able to use your own telekinesis and magic bolt magic. They are also quite resilient to most weaponry, especially plasma weaponry.”

“How did you be…AAHHH!” Twilight screamed as the Abomination suddenly leapt at her and used its arms to throw her to the wall behind her. The force of her being thrown was so great that she broke through multiple walls and internal machinery until she landed three or four corridors away from the grav lift room.

She got back up onto her hooves and flew straight back into the fight, using her magic to blast the ceiling above the Abomination, resulting in chunks falling on the lumbering beast, with her not noticing her magic beam starting to wane when it got too close to the Abomination. They did nothing to harm it, but it proved to be a good distraction as the Abomination momentarily raised its hands to protect its head.

Using that chance, both Twilight and Chief attacked. Twilight ripped a support structure from the wall and threw it like a spear right into the abdomen of the Abomination. Chief, at the same time, ignited a plasma grenade, aiming at the sack section. Unfortunately, Twilight’s attack did nothing and Chief’s grenade was intercepted by the left tentacle before it could land its mark.

‘Shit’, Twilight heard Chief say in his mind as they both witnessed their attacks miss their mark. That was before the grenade detonated, amputating the arm, sending it flying. Twilight gave a quick, silent “Yes” before telekinetically grabbing the support structure embedded in the chest of the Abomination and used it like a knife, cutting upwards, slicing through the body until it was launched out of the sack, spewing out gunk everywhere.

The two of them breathed a sigh of relief as the Abomination collapsed. Its body began spasming as flesh, bone and fluid was spat out of newly formed holes at an increasing rate causing the flood form to slowly dissolve. As Twilight walked into the corridor behind Chief, she realised that, other than fear, horror and anger, she was also feeling...pleasure. It was as if she downright enjoyed something from the fight.

As she reviewed her perspective on the fight, she found the time where she felt so much jubilation and pleasure: the Abomination being cut in half by her own hoof (well not really, more like her action). Seeing the flood form be destroyed so brutally and slowly, made her realise she wanted to see similar things to any flood form, making her a monster in a way. This should have been frightening, but what was truly frightening was that she realised she didn’t care.



John walked steadily through the corridor, shotgun raised. Behind him, Twilight had her head lowered in thought, though John could hear what she was starting to think, how she was becoming a monster from enjoying killing the Flood.
Before she could start to tear herself apart mentally, John decided to intervene.

“You’re not a monster,” he stated to her as he paused in the middle of the corridor, with one eye on the motion tracker, seeing the small red dots on the edges, knowing that an attack was inevitable, but not happening at the moment. He turned to face Twilight and knelt down so his visor was almost in line with her eyes.

“You think that because you hate something with such passion and that you want to see it burn makes you into something evil.” The slightest movement of her head to the side and her eyes now looking away from his face confirmed his words. “But you have to remember why do you feel this way.”

Twilight looked back at him and he didn’t need to be able to hear her thoughts to know she was confused at his statement, or where it was going.

“What the Flood have done to you, and to those on this ring, is horrifying. The things I have seen them do are horrific compared to what the Covenant have been doing to humanity for the past three decades” he sighed quietly as he tried to push the memories of seeing his fellow Spartans being killed out of his head. “So I hate them more than the Covenant already.”

With his fist clenched, John continued on. “Just like you, I’ll do everything that I can, sacrifice anything and everything in order to stop the Flood from leaving Halo and end them for good. I can guarantee that every human and Covenant are thinking the exact same thing on this ring. Does that make us monsters? No! We’re only thinking that so those we fight for back home will never, ever see what the Flood is even remotely capable of. If they never even find out about the Flood and never need to is a victory. Those are some of my reasons for wanting the Flood gone.”

“But your hate for them is more personal. They did something that I cannot imagine to you and you want… the only word I can use is vengeance. They hurt you and not only do you want to pay them back, but to stop them from doing it to your people back at your home.”

“I know that feeling because I’ve felt it before, several times when the Covenant began this war,” John paused before continuing. “It’s natural, given everything. You may think that it may be monstrous due to the culture you’ve been brought up in, but in this situation you can’t help it.”

“The Chief is right”, Cortana added, also set on helping Twilight. “When you first arrived, you were horrified by all of the killing and having to kill yourself. And to an extent you still are. That’s not a characteristic of a monster.”

It looked like their words were having an effect on her, since John could hear a lot less self hatred in Twilight’s thoughts now. He knew that one talk wouldn’t convince her entirely, but he was satisfied to a least abate it a bit.

‘The only thing that could convince her completely would be chatting with her friends and family back in Equestria’, John surmised to himself, before Twilight suddenly said, “I can still hear you, Chief.”

He briefly smiled at her slightly lighter tone before she asked something out of the blue: “Are we going to make it off of this ring at all, out of the hoofs of the flood?”

“We’ll make it”, he immediately replied, turning back to face the end of the corridor and started walking again. For now, they had a mission to complete. Personal issues, especially ones that have been mitigated slightly, would have to wait.

“Cortana, can you use the Covenant Battlenet to calculate the quickest route to Captain Keyes?” John asked Cortana.

“I’m already on it”, there was a brief pause. “The Covenant Battlenet is a mess, Chief. I can’t access the schematics for the ship. However, my records from our previous incursion indicate that a shuttle bay should be…” a waypoint appeared on his HUD, in the distance “here!”

“Acknowledged”, John stated, trying to keep his disappointment from his voice. He wasn’t surprised with how badly the situation was, but he would still like to have as much intel as possible. Fortunately, he still remembered part of the route he took to get to the brig from the last incursion, so he had an idea of where to go.

They passed the corner of the first corridor, entering a firefight between a small squad of Covenant and a seemingly endless horde of flood, who were jumping down from a hole in the ceiling. The corridor was too narrow to go around the fight, so John and Twilight were forced to shoot their way through, with John focusing on the flood while Twilight had her attention set on the Covenant. This proved to be an excellent strategy as the Covenant proved to be especially vulnerable to Twilight’s magic, and John could kill the flood forms in any way without worrying about boosting them like Twilight would.

As the last of the current enemy combatants fell to the ground, the pair rushed forward, barely avoiding the carrier form that dropped down from above. As the carrier form expanded to blow up, they sprinted past it, getting out of the range of the blast radius, while turning around and throwing a frag grenade to kill the newly birthed infection forms.

As they got closer and closer to the hangar, more and more Covenant seemed to be showing up, as if they were finally gaining the upper hand for the moment. This was a bittersweet realisation, though, since the Flood being fought off by the defenders meant more Covenant that both he and Twilight had to fight.

As they reached the hatch, a message came in from the CNI link that Cortana was following, one from Captain Keyes. The message conveyed a weak and slurred voice.

“I gave you an order, soldier, now pull out!”

“He’s delirious”, Cortana said, “in pain. We have to find him!”

The hatch opened, revealing the first level of the shuttle bay. On a raised platform connected to the first level was a shade turret, manned by an elite minor, along with two other elites and a jackal sniper. The sniper called out a warning, alerting the elites to the presence of Twilight and John.

The shade turret turned to face John, but Twilight quickly gripped the gunner with her magic and threw him off of the turret. John fired a single shot with his DMR, killing the jackal with a headshot before it could target either him or Twilight with its particle beam rifle. The two remaining elites ran towards the main section of the floor, off of the exposed platform, where Twilight teleported to greet them.



Twilight dodged to the side avoiding the strike by the closest elite, a minor if she remembered the ranks correctly. She blasted him with her magic blast, easily punching through the energy shield and blowing a large hole in the chest area.

Even as the body of the elite went flying, Twilight turned her attention to the remaining elite, a major, judging from its crimson armour. She became more weary, the slight bruise on her face reminding her of what happened the last time she underestimated a major.

This one didn’t have an energy sword like that one, but it did have a longer, more rifle like plasma rifle. The major fired several bolts of plasma, ones that were larger and more powerful than the regular ones, at her, all of them colliding quite quickly, the force sending her back a few steps. She growled in annoyance as she felt the plasma slightly burn her fur under her magic shield.

The major didn’t seem to be fazed at how his shots didn’t get through the shield. Instead he took out a purple ball from his side, pressed a button on it that caused it to turn into a blue ball of plasma and throw it at her. Twilight teleported to the side, far away from the elite as possible and watched the grenade explode in an explosion of blue and purple energy and heat.

Twilight then teleported the new plasma weapon out of the major’s hands and fired back at him with it using her telekinesis. The elite’s shields were shredded quite quickly, but inaccurate aiming caused many of the plasma bolts to miss vital parts of the body. The major leapt to the side, rolling to cover. Twilight continued to fire, not noticing the heat building up in the weapon before it finally started to slow down, red marks appearing on the side of the weapon. Twilight looked at the weapon, feeling the heat with her magic.

Using that as a distraction, the major rushed out of cover, pulling out a needler, before he was stabbed with a knife that Chief had produced from his belt. Deciding to distract herself from the gory way Chief was killing the elite, Twilight decided to try to release the heat on the Covenant weapon, looking for the button to do it.

“I guess I know now why the Covenant only fire for a short amount of time,” Twilight commented out loud, attracting Cortana’s attention.

“Much of the Covenant plasma weaponry build up overheat at a rapid pace,” Cortana explained through Twilight’s earpiece. “If the heat is too much, there is a chance that the weapon might explode. So all handheld plasma weaponry, such as the plasma repeater you’re holding, have a safety feature, where the weapon, if it gets up to a certain temperature, opens up heating vents to cool off, preventing the weapon from firing further.”

“So, it does it automatically?”

“In most weapons. The plasma repeater actually doesn’t. You have to open the fins manually, but it has the unique feature of continuing to fire, albeit at a slower pace.”

“You two can chat later,” Chief said, already on the other side of the hangar. “Captain Keyes needs us.”

“Right,” Twilight said, throwing away the plasma repeater, pulling out her smg and teleporting to Chief before he entered through a hatch leading to a corridor leading upwards.

They fought through two levels of the shuttlebay and the surrounding corridors before finally arriving in front of the hatch that lead to the area outside the control room. Then, they heard Keyes scream over the radio.

“The Captain!” Cortana shouted out, alarmed, “His vitals are fading! Please...Chief, hurry!”

Twilight’s eyes widened. They were so close to the control room, yet there was a chance that Keyes may die. Hearing his screams was horrifying, but she had to keep on going. If only to stop a fate worse than death to someone kind, not to mention a person who helped her and was more than kind to her. She didn’t need a mental connection with Chief to know that he felt a similar, if not much more stronger and personal, way, but the connection did help her realise that the Captain and him go a long way in the past.

The hatch opened, revealing a firefight in motion between several Covenant in black armour and numerous flood forms. The Covenant in the fight seemed to be more skilled than the ones Twilight has seen previously, judging from how easily they were taking down combat forms one by one. However, there were a lot more combat forms and the bodies on the ground showed that several Covenant had already fallen.

“Those are spec ops covenant”, Chief stated as he brought out his shotgun and killed three consequtive combat forms. “These guys are some of the most specialised and experienced covenant soldiers you’ll ever encounter. Be extremely careful.”

Twilight nodded, half distracted by the fighting. She fired a continuous, fast burst at a combat form, watched it fall down and aimed at the closest elite. She fired the rest of the ammo in her mag, eyes widening as the elite’s shields proved to be stronger than most she’d encountered, having remained intact despite the amount of bullets she put into it.

The elite retaliated by aiming the two plasma rifles he held in his hands and fired. Her shield was hit multiple times, each hit causing more agony directly to her. She instinctively raised another shield in front of her, but the elite simply sidestepped out of the way, punching her in the face. She tried to blast him, but he grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the bulkhead.

‘Fuck, they are tough’, she thought to herself as she landed on her wobbly hooves after gravity took her from the mini-crater she created. As the spec ops elite threw away his rifles and pulled out an energy sword, she turned her back towards him, deliberately. He rushed forward again, only to have his skull crushed by Twilight’s back hooves as she timed a well aimed buck.

Somehow, Chief managed to close and seal the door that was letting the flood come through, soon leading to the flood being annihilated by both the covenant and the pair. After that, Twilight used her wings to hover in the air, dodging plasma bolts and needles before firing her own magic bolts that burst through energy shields easily. The grunts accompanying the elites were easily killed, though one had a weapon that reminded her of a rocket launcher, except with green projectiles. This grunt managed to blow up several combat forms, and almost hit her before Chief finally killed him, dropping the weapon.

Twilight, expecting Chief to pick up the weapon, was startled to see him move backwards at a rapid pace, away from the weapon which was now glowing. She realised why after a few seconds, when the weapon exploded.

“What in Celestia’s name was that?” she asked.

“Dead’s man switch”, Cortana explained. “Some variants of that weapon, the fuel rod cannon, have a device that will overload the ammunition stored inside when the user is…”

She paused just as Chief opened the hatch and entered the control room before saying “No…”

Twilight felt her heart stop beating as she realised what Cortana was talking about, but didn’t want to believe it. To distract herself, she entered the control room, and found Chief staring at something attached to the main platform.

That something was clearly flood, a new bulbous, immobile form, which seemed to connect itself next to the controls and had tentacles extended to all parts of the room. It didn’t react when the pair moved closer, in order to see what the Flood form was and to follow the CNI signal.

“No human life signs detected,” Cortana said, then added in a remorseful and regretful manner, “the Captain’s life signs just stopped.”

Twilight felt a tear run past her check as she heard Chief ask about the CNI, with Cortana replying that it was still transmitting. Then she saw Chief clench his fist. However, she noticed that it was only a moment after Cortana had spoken, and that he was looking at something on the flood form. She followed his gaze, and looked upon the partially absorbed and decayed body of Captain Keyes, grotesquely distorted and covered in the sickly flood skin. Despite being mostly fixated on the agony on Keyes’ face, Twilight spotted the remains of many other faces, human and covenant, scattered all throughout the surface of the flood form.

“The Captain!” Cortana said, shocked, “he’s one of them!”

‘No’, Twilight thought as she processed what she was seeing. ‘He can’t be… he can’t be dead like this…’

Chief was now shaking in anger and hate as he too stared at the remains of Keyes. Then she heard him mutter, “I’m sorry, sir, for being too late.”

“Chief, it’s not your fault”, Twilight heard herself say in order to comfort Chief, but he ignored her, unmoving. She took a step back, lowering her head, not noticing the sliver of magic starting to emit from her horn and float towards the flood form.

“We can’t let the Flood get off this ring!” Cortana said desperately. “You know what he’d expect… What he’d want us to do.”

Chief finally reacted, nodding at Cortana’s words. That is, until he noticed the stream of magic.



“Twilight, your horn!” John shouted, unnecessarily, but he was so much in shock and anger that he couldn’t help himself.
Twilight didn’t complain however, as she looked at her horn and put her hooves to her mouth in shock.
“I’m not doing this!” she shouted back. “I haven’t even activated my magic.”

“Get away from it, now!” Cortana urgently demanded, with Twilight complying, the stream becoming more and more diluted as she went further and further away from the flood form.

John looked back at the Flood form, knowing what he had to do, both to stop the flood form from absorbing Twilight’s magic, as evidenced from how it was now expanding in some areas, lighting up, and to honor Captain Keyes. He drew back his arm and plunged his arm into the face of what remained of Keyes. He punched his way through momentary resistance until he finally felt his hand enter the partially dissolved brain. He then felt for and found the implants that Keyes used to hold his codes.

He pulled out of the wound, making a disgusting popping sound, ignoring how Keyes’ face was now just a hole. After shaking his hand to get the spongy gore off of the implants, John slipped the implants into some spare slots in his armour.
The Flood form seemed to stop sucking Twilight’s magic, but the glow coming from within told John that it was not dead, only wounded.

“It’s done,” Cortana said somberly. “I have the code. We should go. We need to get back to the Pillar of Autumn. Let’s go back to the shuttle bay and find a ride.”

John nodded, before turning back towards the destroyed body of Captain Keyes and saluted. ‘Thank you Captain.”

Then, every door opened all at once and a host of Flood poured in, as if summoned by the unmoving creature. Comprised of a variety of flood forms, made up of combat forms, carrier forms and infection forms, three of which were augmented. One of them began to form an abomination as the rest lead the horde towards John.

“Twilight, get off of the platform!” John shouted, firing his DMR while the flood were not too close yet.

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” she replied, flying into the air, firing her smg at a bunch of infection forms. However, none of the flood paid her any attention; they were all focused on John.

John backed away quickly as the Flood ran at him with such fury that he was overwhelmed. By chance, he stepped off of the platform and plummeted to the deck below, landing in one of the channels on the side, giving him time to switch to his shotgun and fire three rounds, killing numerous flood. However, the break was over quickly as the flood was quickly either jumping off of the platform as well or just going round it.

He saw a trio of flood get hit by multiple rounds from Twilight’s smg, but the flood still had its attention on him and him alone, as if the creature on the command deck demanded vengeance.

‘There were multiple faces on the surface of that thing, and there were several bodies dumped together all throughout the flood controlled areas of this ship,’ John thought to himself even as he put out enough firepower to significantly kill much of the flood in the room, but the flood kept on flooding in and the abomination had finally formed. It was now stomping towards John, tentacles twitching.

He primed a grenade, waited until the Abomination was near the middle of the horde and threw it, hoping to damage it. He was not expecting the entire horde to be caught in multiple explosions, some of which were from plasma grenades. Once again, luck was on John’s side as most of the combat forms had grenades on them, which were ignited by John’s grenade, causing a domino effect. The Abomination was torn apart by the number of sheer explosions, ending the threat.
“You all right?” John called out to Twilight, fearing that she may have been near the explosion.

“I’m good!” Twilight’s voice came from behind him. He looked back and saw her hovering in the corner of the room, firing at some of the remaining flood.

There were still a considerable amount of flood still in the room, but they were soon engaged by a group of covenant spec ops, both elites and grunts. What made the spec ops group significantly more dangerous than the remains of the flood horde in the room was the fact that every grunt was armed with a fuel rod cannon, and were blowing up everything they saw.

With them distracted fighting each other, John took the time to reload his shotgun, exchange his DMR, which only had three rounds left in it, for an assault rifle and met up with Twilight, who had landed, horn lit up.

“What are you planning?” John asked, recognising the facial expressions on Twilight’s face as her concentrating on something.

“I’m doing an experiment that I don’t want to see the results of, but have to anyways,” she replied as she shot a bolt of magic at a grunt, barely missing it. Somehow, it didn’t notice as it was too busy melting a carrier form down into fluid. She fired a second bolt, this time at a combat form.

The bolt of magic, when it closed in, started to diminish, as it was starting to be absorbed by all nearby flood forms until it hit, dealing a lesser degree of damage than it might have.

Twilight then teleported, and arrived in front of the flood form on the platform.
“Aahh!” John heard her scream as she ran off of the platform. From where he was, John thought he saw miniscule tentacles reach out after her to a degree.

Twilight ran to John as he ran towards her, her face terrified.

“I...I didn’t aim to teleport there,” she stuttered.

“Then how did you…” John started to say, but then stopped. He lowered his weapon slightly as he saw an augmented infection form scramble to the lethargic beast and jump into it, becoming part of the body. Then the beast started to grow a few more appendages and expand slightly in some areas. What was the most eye catching was that it was starting to glow and John could see the aura of magic that was beginning to surround the beast.

He brought up his rifle and fired a single burst, all the shots colliding with a magical barrier. The flood form rippled slightly, as if amused.

‘The beast is using Twilight’s magic to grow the creature and empower itself at the same time,’ John realised, ’while the flood is collecting bodies to add it to the creature, or use as hosts. If there are no more victims left, do they all form more of this beast, or add to it and form something worse?’

“Oh, no, no, no”, Twilight muttered after trying a few spells. She looked at John with a distraught expression. “I can’t control my magic. It’s doing stuff that I don’t want happening. It’s like its…”

“Obeying that,” John finished as they both looked at the flood form.

“The Flood must have done something with your magic, made it under their control,” Cortana confirmed. “This complicates things greatly. I wouldn’t recommend using your magic near large groups of flood anymore, Twilight.”

The battle near the hatch had finally ended, with the spec ops covenant victorious, only to be blown up by a fuel rod cannon overloading next to a dead grunt. John and Twilight waited for the resulting explosions to end before they walked cautiously to the now broken hatch.

“Wait,” Twilight said, stopping. “What are we going to do with that thing… and Keyes?”

John looked back at the thing, aware that there were no heavy weapons he could use to blow it up.

‘Perhaps I don’t need one…’ he thought as he noticed how a section of the ceiling was damaged from a stray fuel rod blast. Coincidently, it was also just over the flood form. He threw a captured plasma grenade onto it. As it blew, the beast seemed to shudder in what appeared to be rage before it was crushed under a huge pile of rubble, the entire creature sending gore everywhere.

“That solves that,” Cortana commented. “I believe that we may have just slowed down the flood considerably and released Keyes from that existence.”

“Let’s go”, John said, moving towards the hatch, with Twilight following him. Going back the way they came, they fought through numerous groups of Covenant, mostly spec ops, and flood, making their way back to the shuttle bay.

When they finally reached the door leading to the first level in the shuttle bay, they were greeted by an elite in the black spec ops armour, wielding a carbine. He roared at John with such fury, yet with a touch of respect in its tone before throwing away the carbine and pulling out two energy swords, one of which was deactivated.

“What’s he doing?” Twilight asked, her tone suggesting confusion at why the spec ops elite wasn’t attacking, even as two more elites arrived from the hatch. John knew what was going to happen, lowering his shotgun and quickly raised his left hand to grab the hilt of the sword thrown to him. Dropping the shotgun lightly on the floor, John placed the hilt in his right hand and activated it, the unfamiliar sword type uncomfortable in his hand.

As soon as the spec ops elite saw the blade ignite, he charged John with merciless intent, slashing the blade towards his head. John parried with an uneasy effort, knowing that he was disadvantaged in this fight. However, he would rather fight one on one against a spec ops elite than against three of them at once in such a close space. This way he had a slight chance of maneuvering the duel out into the shuttle bay, giving him the environment Twilight needed to take out the spec ops elites easily.

The spec ops elite once again attacked John, this time with a stab to the chest. John moved his body to the side, but was caught off guard by the sweeping kick from the Elite, who had anticipated his move. He still managed to block two more strikes from the elite before noticing that they had swapped positions, with John’s back now towards the hatch to the shuttle bay. He needed to get past that hatch, and the Elite was giving him the perfect opportunity, being on the offensive, pushing him backwards.

He backed away, blocking as many strikes as he could, though one managed to break through his energy shields and slice the side of his shoulder piece, not penetrating enough to deal major damage or compromise the suit. However, it did bolster the elite’s confidence and moral. As they entered the shuttle bay, the elite paused its attacks and began to chuckle.
“You are mighty, demon,” he spoke out in a semi-practised english, pointing the sword at John. “But I will be the one to slay you, and end your rampage, for the honor of my ancestors and the Covenant.”

“That’s not going to happen,'' John responded by sliding to the side of the elite, taking him by surprise. He sent off a few blows before grabbing the elite’s sword arm and pulling it away, leaving the chest exposed enough for John to plunge his sword into it. The elite looked down at the visor of John’s helmet with a shocked expression on its face. ‘Overconfidence. Gets anything killed’, he thought to himself

“Sorry, pal.”

As John withdrew the energy sword, the elite fell to his knees, but simply had a content look on its face.

“Then...I die with hono...” were the last words the elite said before finally collapsing entirely and died.

John breathed a sigh of relief before he saw the shade turret at the end of a platform in the middle of the bay swing to face him, the elite gunner roaring with murderous glee.

“Shit”, he swore as he noticed his shields hadn’t fully recharged yet.



Twilight could only watch in concern as she saw the Chief activate the energy sword. The two other elites that arrived were too close to Twilight for her to intervene without the risk of being killed on the spot. Though her enigmatic magic shield was powerful, somehow, she doubted that the energy sword wouldn’t penetrate it, or at least cause a fatal amount of kinetic energy to sweep into her.

Despite this, she still readied herself, horn lit, magic primed. The other black clad elites themselves activated their energy sword, with one holding a plasma rifle in the other hand.

“You will not interfere, apostate”, one spoke out, surprising her with how it spoke equestrian/english.

“You understand me?” she asked in reflex, not able to stop herself.

“Indeed, I understand and speak this… abominable language,” the elite growled out. “Now, remain where you are.”

“Why even have this duel?” she asked, causing the elites to take a step back in shock, then shake with anger. She ignored this and continued pressing on. “What is the point of it? This is war isn’t it? You’re ruthless, killing innocents and those who are simply fighting for their lives en masse, yet you do these duels that suggest honour?”

“I will gut you where you stand, vermin!” the other elite shouted, before the first elite simply held his comrade back. She looked past them, and saw Chief and the dueling elite pass into the shuttle bay.

The first elite looked back at Twilight now, his face contorted in what Twilight surmised to be a fierce expression, one which suggested that she had just insulted him.

“The humans deserve only eradication. Their heretic beliefs and ignorance of the gods, even as they trample on their creations, must be punished by death.” The elite’s explanation, nor his vicious tone, did nothing to warm Twilight up to their point of view.

Then the elite’s expression turned more respectful, though his eyes glazing to the side suggested that it wasn’t directed at her.

“But their warriors are strong, capable, truly respectable. Those who fight well deserve only the best death: An honorable, swift ending to their ignorant lives. None more so than their ‘Spartans’, the demons that have plagued the Covenant for too long.”

“Now, all but one are dead, turned to glass on the planet we freed from heresy, following your human vessel here, to Halo. Now, the true demon shall perish by our blades, under the eyes of the Forerunners.”

“And so will you!”  the other elite shouted, running up to Twilight.

She teleported away, trying to appear behind them, but instead she appeared in between them. She cursed as she ducked to avoid being decapitated by an energy sword. Her magic was definitely not working for her now, even with that flood beast dead. She tried to buck the one holding both the plasma rifle and the energy sword, but he leapt backwards with such agility that it was startling.

He fired a volley of plasma at her, causing her to back away, only for the second elite to try to stab her from behind. She used her magic to materialise a sword, only for it to break with the first impact against the energy sword. As the first elite approached her, rifle raised, and the second elite was on the other side, swiping at her with his sword, Twilight noticed that she was trapped between the two of them.

Deciding to try something new, she used her magic to send out a shockwave that sent both elites flying a small distance. The elite to her left, the one with the rifle and sword, got up on his feet quite fast and barely dodged her magic beam. The second one had only just got up on his knees when Twilight aimed her beam at the ceiling, causing part of it to fall on the elite, killing it.

The remaining elite roared in anger, throwing away his rifle and brought out a plasma grenade. He threw it in front of Twilight, who raised a shield that broke from the force of the explosion. She retaliated by telekinetically activating all of the grenades he had on his belt. She expected him to explode, but instead he quickly removed his belt and threw it towards Twilight.

Once again she teleported, but this time it went right and she teleported behind him, while also having teleported the fallen elite’s sword to her. With a lucky guess, she found the button on the first try and activated it, the sword piercing through the shields of the elite and his chest.

As the elite fell to the ground, dead, Twilight heard the sounds of a shade turret firing. She ran out into the shuttle bay and saw Chief take a shot to the chest.

“NO!” she shouted, throwing the turret off of the platform before rushing to Chief.

She sighed with relief as he got up onto his feet, his shields broken and a huge burn mark on his chest plate, some of it slightly melted.

“You all right?” she asked him, to which he nodded.

“Yeah. Shields hadn’t recharged fully yet, so the shade wore them down extremely fast before part of the final shot that it fired broke through and hit me in the chest. My armour’s still functional, so it’s nothing.”

“Phew. You had me worried for a second there,” Twilight said with a slight smile.

They were interrupted when they saw a banshee fly in to the hangar, land and open up, with the elite pilot getting out, unaware of the two intruders looking at him.

Both Twilight and Chief looked at each other, thinking the same thing.

The next second, the pilot had his neck snapped after Twilight teleported Chief and herself behind him. Twilight flew into the air while Chief got into the banshee. Together, they exited the shuttle bay and into the night sky, avoiding the plasma rounds fired at them.
> When you bite the hand that feeds...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Twilight stared out at the huge ring on the horizon, reaching upwards and over her. She had been flying for at least two hours now and was getting very tired, her wing movement starting to slow a bit.

“How far away is the Autumn?” she wearily asked.

“Too far for you to fly without rest or supplies” Chief answered. “That’s why I suggested that we head over back to Alpha base.”

“The more time we spend there, the higher the chance the Flood gets off of the ring”, Cortana said.

“Don’t play devil’s advocate, Cortana. You suggested this.”

“I didn’t say we shouldn’t go. I just said that we have to spend as little time as possible. We do need supplies, Twilight needs rest and we should report directly to Silva and tell him what has happened to the Captain. Besides, I have already contacted the Major’s AI, Wellington and have informed him partially of the threat, but that was before we found what had happened to the Captain.”

Twilight heard Chief’s thoughts darken at the mention of Silva. She herself didn’t like the man, but it seemed as if the Chief and Silva were almost antagonistic to one another over a single topic.

‘Don’t ask’, the Chief mentally thought, which Twilight heard, so she filed the topic away in her mind, however secure that was recently, for another time.

“Twilight, do you have a moment?” Cortana asked.

“Sure, as long as I can stay in the air,” Twilight half-joked.

“I’ve been investigating how your magic is being influenced by the flood, and I think I have a partial answer.”

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed. “What have you discovered?”

“When your magic began to act counter-intuitive, I decided to alter some of the Master Chief’s sensors in his suit. A task that is quite easy for an AI of my level…”

“I didn’t hear you ask for permission,” Chief said over the radio. Twilight could feel the slight annoyance in his mind, but could tell that he would have approved of it anyways.

“Well, you were very busy on the Truth and Reconciliation, doing many things such as fighting a veteran Spec Ops Elite in a sword fight to the death,” Cortana rebuked calmly. “For such an insanely dangerous action, you needed all the concentration you could get.”

“Anyways, I finally managed to find a sort of radiation that went active once you used your magic, and used that to triangulate whenever the Flood was affecting or manipulating your magic.”

A display popped up on Twilight’s screen. It displayed a map of a part of the Covenant ship, with multiple dots, some of which had a circle with a large radius around them.

“This is an overhead representation of the area just before we escaped the Truth and Reconciliation, with the dots representing living life forms. I distinguished both you and the Chief with blue dots, purple for Covenant and green for the Flood. The green dots with the circle area around them are the augmented infection forms that were in the area.”

The dots then began to move around, one blue dot disappearing and reappearing in different spots on some occasions. That dot was most likely Twilight herself.

“As you can see, whenever Twilight was near one of the augmented infection forms, her magic started to behave in a detrimental form. The more augmented forms there were, the more control the Flood had over her magic. And while she was next to that… thing in the control room, it had almost full control. However, when it was killed, the Floods ability to use her magic started to decrease.”

“Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that Twilight’s magic will work fine as long as there isn’t an augmented form, or anything created from it, nearby. With this in mind, I have modified both the motion sensors for both you and the Chief, to pick up the augmented forms in the distance,and highlight for immediate termination.”

Twilight let out a sigh of relief. One of the many problems that she faced was now at least marginally contained. She then smiled as Alpha base came into view.

Within a minute, she was on the ground, lying down as the Chief landed the Banshee not as gracefully as she would have liked to have seen. It took Silva and Lieutenant McKay half a minute to arrive where the Chief was waiting.



John switched off the engines and opened the canopy, stepping outside into the bright light. His visor prevented most of the glare of the sun from blinding him, so he was able to see Silva and McKay clearly. He sighed, unhappy with the news he was about to deliver, but waited for the two of them to reach him. As they approached, Twilight appeared to fall asleep from exhaustion, which John could sympathise and understand.

He saluted as they arrived, with only McKay returning the gesture. Silva however stood there, silent, as if he was expecting, correctly so, bad news.

“Master Chief,” Silva stated, his voice neutral. “Why did you come here in a Covenant Banshee and why isn’t Captain Keyes with you?”

John, ever the professional, somehow managed to keep his voice from breaking when he spoke. “In an attempt to recover the Captain, we infiltrated the Covenant Cruiser that we had previously extracted him from.” He paused before continuing. “However, we arrived too late.”

Silva’s eyes slightly hardened at hearing of the Captain’s demise, while McKay’s face fell into slight hopelessness.

“Please tell me at the very least you killed the Covenant bastards responsible for…”

“It wasn’t the Covenant, sir” John informed Silva, causing the major to slightly jerk with shock. “It was the Flood.”

John hoped to see that the two officers before him would respond with expressions of confusion, but he was met with expressions of understanding and horror, especially from McKay, her eyes aimed at him but obviously seeing something else.

“Was he a combat form?” Silva asked, his voice quiet. John shook his head.

“Negative. He wasn’t a Carrier form either. He was… absorbed into a larger Flood form that seemed to act as a controlling influence on the Flood. From what we could tell, it seemed to be why the Flood have been getting smarter and acting less feral.”

“A controlling influence…” McKay repeated while Silva covered his mouth, deep in thought.

“How did the Captain even get infected by the Flood from his original position?”

Cortana answered this time. “The place where he went was a flood containment facility, originally occupied by the Covenant. That’s where the Flood was unleashed.”

“So the Covenant unleashed this while looking for anything relating to their faith,” Silva surmised, somehow unsurprised. He sighed in resignation. “So all those hours you spent away were trying to find Captain Keyes then?”

“Negative, despite attempts to do so. After fighting through the Flood at the containment facility, Twilight and I were acquisitioned against my will to fight within some kind of citadel on the other side of Halo by the Monitor of the ringworld in order to help retrieve a device needed to activate Halo’s defences and stop the Flood, though he didn’t tell me how it’ll help.”

“However, since I was in Halo’s control room, I discovered what that actually meant: Wiping the Galaxy clean of all sentient life” Cortana’s statement shocked the two officers to the extent that they took a step back.

Cortana and John then explained everything in as much detail they could fit in as little time as possible, with the first encounters with the Flood, the Monitor appearing and teleporting them away, the vile experience in the Library, the confrontation in the control centre, damaging the pulse generators and finally finding the Captain. McKay paled significantly but kept her composure, while Silva listened intently, only swearing at the description of the Flood form that absorbed Keyes.

“Thus, we need to arrive at the Autumn ASAP, because the Flood are attempting to get off the ring by any means. The sooner we destroy Halo, the less likely they’ll succeed.”

Silva hesitated as he mused over what he just heard. “When you contacted Wessley, I thought that Halo was just the home of the Flood, not this.” He then nodded, “Agreed. We’ve, unfortunately, have had experience of how fast they spread. In fact, the Flood were underneath Alpha Base, trying to break out. But we have contained the threat, for now.”

John frowned at the ‘for now’ part. But then refocused as Silva continued.

“Alright. We’re currently preparing for a full-scale assault, but I’m sure that the armoury has more than enough equipment and ammo for you to resupply.”

“An assault on what target?” Cortana asked.

“The Truth and Reconciliation,” Silva answered, much to the astonishment and horror of the Spartan and AI. John looked at McKay, who looked back at him with a stoic, yet tired expression, but her eyes spoke volumes about her disagreement with her superiors decision.

“With all due respect, Major,” John started to say, but Silva cut him off.

“No, Chief. From your own description of events, the Covenant were purging the cruiser of the Flood when you left, and that Flood controller was destroyed. I see no major threat from the Flood there, but a vulnerability on both the Covenant and the Flood.”

With his hands behind his back, Silva walked to the side, looking down at the landscape below. “The Truth and Reconciliation is the closest vessel that can fit all of the survivors of the Autumn, plus it is filled to the brim with Covenant Tech, all of which will help us win the war back home.” He turned to face John, ambition in his eyes. “So, yes. We are taking the Truth and Reconciliation and that is final.” The tone of his voice suggested that the decision was final, and no amount of arguing would change it.

John sighed silently but still nodded. “Acknowledged, sir.” He paused before continuing. “However, I need to inform you about several new forms of the Flood, creating using stolen magic from Twilight. The smallest are Infection forms that are slightly bigger and glowing, but they are immensely dangerous. If one attaches itself to a group of combat forms, they merge to form a much more deadlier and larger form, an Abomination. They are highly lethal and heavy weapons are needed to destroy one. If there are any traces of magic in the vicinity, the Flood can absorb it and become stronger.”

Silva waved away the concerns. “We’ll manage quite easily. You were one man, we are a battalion of the finest men in the UNSC. They won’t know what’s hit them.”

McKay on the other hand, looked very sceptical of her superior’s claims and looked horrified. “Perhaps there’s another way we can get off the ring,” she suggested, but Silva gave her a look that shut her up.

“Restock on weapons and supplies, Chief. Then head to the Autumn and destroy it. Us honest to god humans will handle the cruiser,” Silva ordered before walking off. McKay remained for a moment.

“I’ll try to further reason with him, but I believe his mind is set,” McKay said. She looked at John with a face of despair. “We found one of the marines that accompanied the Captain, but he was changed into a combat form. However, he was still partially aware and has helped us with finding the Flood underneath us. What they did to him…” she visibly shuddered, much paler than before. “We can’t let the Flood get off the ring.”

Her face then transformed to one of grim determination. “Don’t worry about us or the cruiser. If the flood is onboard and Silva is still going to fly it back to UNSC territory, I’ll make sure that it won’t happen.”

John’s face also transformed into a grim expression, but at how the actions of a superior officer and the random chances of fate has led to McKay having the burden of choosing to sacrificing her and the other marines’ chances of survival for the future of the galaxy if it came to that.

“I hope you won’t have to,” he said honestly. He saluted, which the lieutenant returned.

She started to walk off before pausing. “You know, despite what many of the other ODSTs will say and think of you, you’re no freak, or a dying race. You’re still human and never, ever forget that. Good luck.”

With those last words, McKay walked off to prep for the assault. John stared for a second, processing her statement and the fact that a great marine like her will most likely die away from home, before walking up to Twilight and waking her up.

Twenty minutes later, John was inside the Banshee once again, restocked with ammo for his Assault Rifle and Shotgun, and flew off, with Twilight beside him outside, armed with an smg and magnum.



Twilight’s eyes widened as she beheld the sight before her, seeing the full scale of the Pillar of Autumn against the beach landscape in the distance, and the impact gouge left behind by the Autumn when it crashed. Unlike her previous glimpse before, she could see all the details of the ship, wowing her with just how different the human ships were to the Covenant.

As they approached the cruiser, the Chief’s Banshee started to let out smoke on one of the wings and began to slowly fall. Twilight’s eyes widened as she saw this happen as they were getting closer and closer to several empty airlocks.

“This thing is falling apart.” Cortana stated, sounding very concerned.

“It’ll hold.” Chief’s reply was the complete opposite, sounding calm and stoic as usual for him. His tone did little to dissuade both Cortana and Twilight for worrying about the state of the Banshee as the wing tip caught on fire.

“We’re not going to make it!”

“We’ll make it.”

Twilight groaned in frustration before teleporting both her and Chief into the airlock, out of the Banshee as it crashed below them. She sighed in relief and turned to face the Chief.

“You two sound like an old couple arguing,” she playfully teased before walking off, leaving Cortana spluttering various replies and Chief silent, not knowing how an old couple would even act.

They entered a very familiar type of corridor, with Twilight hearing Cortana sigh with relief at the sight of the interior. However, it was clear that the crash had damaged a lot of the superstructure and many of the panels on the walls and ceiling were either loose or had been thrown off entirely.

“We need to get to the bridge,” Cortana began. “From there, we can use the Captain’s Neural implants to initiate an overload of the ship’s fusion reactors. The explosion should damage enough systems below it to destroy the ring.”

“What about our escape plan?” Twilight asked as they passed the corner at the end of the corridor and approached a maintenance corridor.

“Once we trigger the countdown, Foehammer will come to pick us up and take us to the Truth and Reconciliation, if Major Silva manages to cleanse it of the Flood,” Cortana replied. “It’s not a likely scenario, but it's all we got at the moment.”

“Still, once we get you in the Autumn’s computer, could you see if there is anything we could use as a backup still in the inventory,” Chief stated, as they walked through the corridor before running into a trio of Infection Forms that appeared from an accessway on the floor, thus destroying the hope that the Flood had not found the Autumn yet. He quickly fired a burst from his Assault Rifle before jumping down. Twilight quickly followed suit, finding herself in the middle of a firefight between the Flood and a group of Sentinels.

Twilight fired her smg at the closest enemies, a bunch of infection forms, easily popping them. She then turned her attention at a sentinel, who burned a combat form into a blackened state, using her smg to penetrate the metal surface at multiple points, the last few rounds destroying the propulsion unit, causing the sentinel to drop to the floor and explode.

She fought with fury against the rest of the enemies in the room, with Chief and her slaying them all. As the last sentinel was destroyed, a hatch on the other side burst open, spewing out another horde of Flood. Twilight snarled as she fired at them, before cursing as she had to reload, just as three combat forms leapt at her. She materialised a shield in front of her, preventing the combat forms from touching her, allowing Chief to blow them into body parts with his shotgun.

She reloaded quickly until a new ping on her motion sensor came into focus; an augmented infection form has entered the vicinity and judging from the bunch of red nots next to it, it wasn’t alone.

Fear started to emerge from within her causing her throat to harden, making it difficult for her to breath. Despite the threat of the augmented infection form being easy to overcome now, she still had flashbacks to that initial encounter, and the subsequent mindrape that occured to her. If it happened before, it can happen again.

She was knocked out of her thoughts by Chief grabbing her and pulling her out of the radius of a carrier form’s explosion.

‘I won’t let that happen again!’ Chief’s promise, unspoken except in his mind, was heard by Twilight, signaling that he had known what she was thinking about. She smiled as she too peered into his mind, the mental connection showing her that his mind was filled with both concern and duty, willing to do anything to protect the human race, Cortana and her.

‘Hopefully, you won’t need to’, she thought back, as she spotted the augmented infection form rush through the broken hatch. She pulled out her pistol, aiming directly at the infection form, ignoring all other flood, and fired an entire magazine at it. It was mostly a waste of ammo, as the infection form died after the fourth round, but she didn’t care. If wasting ammo made her feel better, so be it.

As the last of the Flood were mopped up, again, the pair went through the broken hatch, traversed the short corridor and found themselves in the middle of a skirmish between the Covenant and the Flood. Despite the large number of Flood forms, it seemed the Covenant had the upper hand in the fight, the Spec Ops Elites and Grunts killing dozens of Combat Forms easily. It didn’t help the Flood when three sentinels arrived and began hosing down the combat forms with their lasers.

Twilight immediately used her magic to construct a large spear, and threw it at the nearest Elite, piercing its skull and leaving it hanging on the wall. She then bucked an unfortunate Grunt before firing with her SMG at three more. She then threw an abandoned barricade at one of the Sentinels, the machine having barely enough time to even swivel slightly before exploding on impact.

Then, her blood ran cold as a Hunter entered through one of the hatches that lead to the cafeteria next door. The roar that announced the imminent attack seemed to echo throughout the corridor before a Fuel Rod blast enveloped the area where she had stood just milliseconds before.

Twilight snarled as she materialised behind the Hunter. She pawed the ground as she built up her magic into a single point in her horn, and fired at the Hunter. The bolt of magic struck true, sending the Hunter flying, colliding with the wall and sliding down, its back sizzling from the blast.

Twilight frowned. After her initial contact with the Flood in the containment facility, Twilight’s magic had grown exponentially, providing her with a magic shield and much more powerful spells. Here, she easily killed a hunter, despite how much trouble it took for her magic to penetrate the shield of one in her first encounter. In some way, the Flood had helped her.

She shook her head. No, the Flood used her new potential to fuel their own methods of infection. She was beginning to suspect that she was a tool for them to exploit.

She was knocked back to reality when the second Hunter hit her with its shield, sending her flying across the corridor. If it wasn’t for her magic shield, she would have been killed by the impact, however, she hurt all over.

‘Serves me right for underestimating hunters’ she grimly thought to herself as she got back up on her feet, before spotting the Hunter charging at her.

She raised a magical barrier that broke apart when the fuel rod blast hit it, but then the Hunter wailed and fell to the ground. Twilight looked past the corpse and saw the Chief turn and fire at an unseen threat through the door, a dozen dead Covenant behind him.

He swiftly took cover to the side of the hatch, narrowly avoiding a Fuel Rod Cannon aimed at the spot where his face was. Twilight teleported to the opposite side, reloading her smg.

‘Three Spec Ops Elites, and six Grunts, two with Fuel Rod Cannons’ Chief thought, knowing that Twilight would hear that information through their mental link. She then saw the memory of him looking at the Cafeteria, seeing where all of the Covenant were. It appeared that their mental link had progressed enough that they could send memories to each other now.

She nodded. ‘What to take the left?’ she mentally asked him so that the Covenant wouldn’t hear them. ‘The right is all yours’ he responded.

In a single motion, Twilight teleported the both of them into the cafeteria, near the middle, away from the doorway where the Covenant had their sights aimed. Exploiting the element of surprise, the two of them fired at their respective targets; Chief with the Elites on the left, Twilight with the Grunts armed with Fuel Rod Cannons on the right.

The remaining Covenant reacted quickly, the last Elite fired at Twilight with its dual plasma rifles, moving backwards towards cover as it did so. Twilight simply ignored the pain as the plasma bolts hit her shield. She telekinetically lifted the Elite and threw him down on the ground with enough force to snap his neck. The fleeing Grunts were subsequently mopped up by the Chief.

Just as they were about to move out, another trio of Covenant entered, An Elite followed by two Grunts with Fuel Rod Cannons. As soon as they spotted the duo, the Elite roared and pointed at them, commanding the Grunts to open fire, which they did. Twilight erected a shield that stopped the first three shots, allowing her and the Chief to move out in different directions, firing at the Elite.

One of the Grunts was seemingly enjoying the experience of firing his weapon, as Twilight could hear its ecstatic, almost borderline insane, laughter as it fired round after round at her. The grunt was silenced when Chief threw a plasma grenade which landed on its head. Twilight heard silence for a second before the grunt shrieked, running around and finally exploded, just as it ran past the Elite and its comrade, sending all three of them into oblivion through plasma.

Twilight waited a second for the Fuel Rod Cannons to detonate before she cautiously moved forward. Chief quickly joined her as she arrived at the hatch on the other side of the cafeteria, before entering first, his assault rifle raised. He fired a full magazine at an unseen foe, after which Twilight heard an Elite wail, followed by a thud.

Twilight entered in the corridor, recognizing it as the corridor near the bridge before spotting the corpse of an Elite in dark purple armour, a Covenant Carbine lying next to it.

“What does the purple armour mean?” Twilight asked, curious at the Covenant colour oriented ranks.

“I think it’s a newer variant of the Spec Ops Armour,” Cortana answered. “Some of the Covenant Fleets must be replacing the black armour with this for their spec ops contingents.”

The discussion was interrupted by Grunts armed with a variety of weapons came out of the Bridge, firing as they walked. They were quickly dispatched and the pair entered the bridge.

“The Bridge,” Cortana said. “We made it. Let’s get to work.”

The bridge was barely in one piece. Every inch of the area was either burned, ripped out, bloodstained or smashed. Twilight was amazed that Cortana thought she could even use it for anything.

A single Grunt with a fuel rod cannon was left in the bridge, it’s weapon held in a shaky grip as it saw Twilight and the Chief. It screamed in fear, but still fired a shot before Twilight shot it in the head with her pistol.

“Chief, I need you to upload me into the control systems. The terminal is located next to the main view screen.”

The Chief grunted as he walked towards the view screen. Twilight watched as he took out a chip from the back of his head and inserted it into the terminal. The semi-transparent model of Cortana appeared, who looked around the bridge, shaking her head.

“I leave home for a few days and look what happens.”

“Can’t say the Covenant are into renovating places,” Twilight commented as Cortana brought a hand to her head.

“This won’t take long…” There was a brief pause before Cortana opened her eyes and a countdown appeared on the screen. “There! That should give us enough time to make it to the pelican when it comes and put some distance between ourselves and Halo before detonation.”

Twilight grinned, until another voice was heard.

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

“Oh, hell.” Cortana stated.

Twilight and the Chief spun around, expecting to see 343 Guilty Spark behind them. Instead, the bridge was devoid of anything, but Twilight could still hear him talking into her ear through her headset.

“Ridiculous! That you would imbue your warship’s AI with such a wealth of knowledge. Wouldn’t you worry that it might be captured? Or destroyed?”

Twilight turned back to face Cortana, who frowned in frustration. “He’s in my data arrays—a local tap.”

Twilight growled as the monitor kept on talking.

“You can’t imagine how exciting this is! To have a record of all our lost time. Human history, is it? Fascinating! Oh, how I will enjoy every moment of categorization. To think that you would destroy this installation, as well as this record… I am shocked. Almost too shocked for words.”

On the screen, the countdown froze, the text turning red as words appeared underneath. “He stopped the self-destruct sequence,” Cortana warned.

“How?” Twilight spoke out, now worried. “Shouldn’t he be here to stop…”

“Why do you continue to fight us, Reclaimer?” Spark demanded. “You cannot win! Give us the construct and the Equine—and I will endeavor to make your and the equine’s deaths relatively painless and…”

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as the monitor’s words were chopped off as if someone had thrown a switch. “At least I still have control over the comm channels,” Cortana said.

“Where is he?” the Chief asked, Twilight already knowing that he was fearing the worst had come to pass.

“I’m detecting taps throughout the ship,” Cortana replied. “Sentinels most likely. As for the monitor—he’s in engineering. He must be trying to take the core offline. Even if I could get the countdown restarted...I don’t know what to do.”

Twilight looked at the AI in surprise. Throughout her journey here, Twilight has almost completely relied on Cortana to know everything so that she could learn and survive. But this, this was something new.

“Could I try to use magic to…”

“Twilight, I wouldn’t. If you tried anything, it might cause the core to go offline, explode now with little impact or destroy everything. We know very little about how fusion reactors will react to your magic.”

“How much firepower would you need to crack one of the engine shields?” the Chief asked.

Twilight turned to look up at his helmet. Even without having the mental connection, she could somehow tell that he had an idea of what to do, for his voice was determined, filling her with a slim piece of hope.

“Not much,” Cortana replied, “a well-placed grenade perhaps. But why?”

The Chief produced a grenade, tossed the device into the air and caught it again. Twilight couldn’t help but smile at the sight, her hope fully restored. “You were saving that, weren’t you?” she jested, to which the Chief responded with an unseen smile.

Cortana nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

The Chief began to reach for Cortana’s chip, but was interrupted when a squad of Sentinels flew into view outside of the bridge. “Chief! Sentinels!” Cortana warned as Twilight erected a shield around them.

The Sentinels opened fire, easily burning through the magical bubble as Twilight ducked under the console. The Chief quickly joined her as he removed Cortana from the terminal and inserted her into his helmet.

“Ready to get back to work?” the Chief asked Twilight.

Twilight gave a grim smile. “I thought you’ll never ask.”

The two of them nodded and emerged from cover, weapons raised at the machines.



John reloaded his shotgun for what seemed like the third time in the last few minutes, enjoying the brief moment of silence. Twilight and him were in a passageway heading towards the Cryo chamber, though jammed hatches, locked doors and other obstacles meant that the two of them had to take several detours on the way there.

Not only that, but they were under almost constant attack by either the Flood or Sentinels, so much so that John actually felt relief when they would come across the occasional Covenant squad. Unfortunately, that had not been the case just then, as both he and Twilight fought through a large horde of flood, with most of them being quite resilient. Finally, the last one fell to the combined onslaught of the Spartan and pony duo, but at the expenditure of much of their ammo.

John entered a large room, abandoned rifles, shotguns and pistols on the ground. The sounds of combat could be heard from an area beyond a closed hatch on the far side of the room. He quickly stocked up on ammo, throwing Twilight a couple of magazines for her pistol, before heading for the closed hatch. As he approached, the noise faded away, as the battle beyond seemed to have ended. He opened the hatch, slipped out into the seemingly empty corridor and put his back against the wall, trying not to make a sound.

His caution proved fortuitous for behind a cargo module stood a Hunter, unaware of his presence, judging from the almost lax state of its spines. The second Hunter could be heard moving slowly nearby. Twilight tiptoed next to him, her horn alight, ready for the fight.

‘Just think the thought,’ he heard her in his mind as she aimed at the Hunter.

‘No. Aim for the second hunter when it comes,’ John stated in his mind as he pulled out two grenades. He primed them and threw them over the cargo module, at the first Hunter’s feet. The behemoth went down with a bang, followed by the roar of outrage from its bond brother.

The second Hunter charged at the Spartan, knocking the cargo module away before it was hit with a beam of magic, sending it flying backwards into the wall. It wasn’t dead yet until Twilight teleported directly to it, and fired a hail of bullets at the exposed worms, finally killing it.

“Honestly, Twilight”, Cortana stated as John nodded in approval to Twilight, “I think you’re becoming quite the expert when it comes to dealing with Hunter’s quickly.”

“You think so?” she asked John.

“Yes,” he replied. “Hunters are amongst some of the toughest enemies I’ve ever had to deal with, but you have the potential to quickly kill them without much effort. For me, either heavy grade firepower, tactics or just luck is needed to survive most of my encounters with Hunters.”

Twilight blushed at the compliment, but they were interrupted by the sound of automatic fire in the distance. They made their way through the ship’s corridors, passing past blood-splattered bulkheads, bodies, blown hatches, junction boxes with sparks flying out and a series of small fires that were thankfully fairly well contained. They arrived at a very familiar area, next to the cryo bay. John’s mind briefly flashed back to him escorting Twilight out of the Cryo Bay when she first arrived, believing her to be a potential threat. How the times have changed.

The sounds of combat were coming through a hatch that led into a large room, where another large horde of flood were fighting for control of the room against a group of sentinels. John waited for the combatants to take some losses on both sides before firing at them with his assault rifle, with Twilight flying into the air to avoid contact with the Flood and to deal with the sentinels.

As the room was cleared, John walked over to a ladder at the other side of the room, climbed a ladder up to the catwalk above, where Twilight joined him. From there, they looked on to the otherside of the catwalk, where the Maintenance Control Room was. It was also the stage of another skirmish between the Flood and the Sentinels. They seemed too occupied fighting each other to notice the pair watching them, so John decided to take advantage of that to enter the control room, entering the fight as well.

A big mistake.

At first, it seemed that both him and Twilight were easily taking out the enemy combatants, quickly destroying the sentinels and most of the Flood. But everytime one of them killed a Flood form, two more seemed to arrive to take its place, like the hydra from ancient mythology back on Earth. Soon, both he and Twilight were forced to retreat into an antechamber adjacent to the control room.

Forced against a locked hatch, John fired, kicked and punched his way out of certain death, against a ruthless enemy, running out of ammo completely in his assault rifle. He was thankful that Twilight decided to teleport a short distance away to escape the flood. That way, she was at least safe for a brief moment, allowing her to get her bearings while John took the full brunt of the horde.

He discarded his rifle and pulled out his shotgun, blasting apart several flood forms before forced to reload. He ducked to avoid a tentacle aimed at decapitating him, slicing it off of the main body with his combat knife. Another combat form was hit with the butt of the shotgun.

He was then helped by Twilight, who had managed to procure a container of grenades, priming and throwing them against the seemingly endless horde. The ensuing detonations seemed to bring about a pause in the Flood’s relentless charge, allowing the two of them to escape the room and enter another corridor.

They fought through corridor after corridor, room after room, trying to make their way to Engineering. They dispatched the last member of a Covenant combat team when an augmented infection form threw itself at Twilight, who erected a barrier, a barrier that grew a large hole that the infection form flew through and wrapped its tentacles around Twilight’s neck. It tried to grab Twilight’s horn, but she managed to get a hoof in the way, blocking it from touching her horn, but it was clear she was struggling to hold it back,a fact that she was clearly aware of, due to the overwhelming fear on her face.

“Twilight!” John shouted, rushing towards her, just before a combat form leaped onto his back and smashed a large wrench into his helmet. His shield failed from the force of the blow, allowing an infection form to land on his visor.

Even as he staggered from the impact, trying to grab the slimy bastard, the infection form exposed its penetrator and punched its way through his neck seal, slicing open his bare skin.

John gave a cry of pain as he felt the tentacle slide down his flesh, towards his spine, and knew it was over.
> ...You Drive into the Mouth of Hell
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



John felt the end upon him as the infection form’s tentacle punched through his flesh, getting closer and closer to his spine. Still, despite being held in place by the wrench wielding combat form as it hung on his back, he was determined to fight on, to the end. Nothing less would honour his fallen brothers and sisters, the marines on this ring, Captain Keyes and Twilight.

But he was spared by the sudden intervention of Cortana, or so he assumed. He really couldn’t think of what actually happened, only that he suddenly jerked as the infection form pulsed with what seemed like electricity before popping, sending green blood spray across his visor. Ignoring the sudden swell of pain in his neck, John reached to his back, grabbed the still human arm of the combat form, his grip easily wrapping around the bicep before, in one swift second, tightening it with as much strength he could muster, breaking the arm in half.

With its only method of holding on compromised as the other side of the Spartan’s back was now covered in slick blood, the combat form slid off, its inhuman screech haunting the room. Time slowed down for John as his enhanced reflexes and instinct took over, his body already twisting around, elbowing the flood form a few meters away. His visor partially covered in flood gunk, John could still see well enough to catch the wrench before it touched the floor, leap at the combat form and used his remaining strength to plunge the wrench into the embedded infection form like a knife.

His breathing short and shallow, John wiped some of the gunk off of his visor, his arms heavy with fatigue before his ears caught a groan of horror and weariness originating from behind him. His eyes widened with realisation.

“Twilight!” he shouted as his fatigue instantly vanished, cold adrenaline now pumping in his veins.

He spun around and ran up to the prone pony, still caught in the deadlock between her and the augmented infection form. Her hooves were trembling, veins were popping out in her narrowed eyes, even as tears streamed down her face. Her breathing was rapid, incomplete as the infection form seemed to come closer and closer to her horn with each passing second.

John crossed the distance between them in no time, grabbing the infection form with his bloody hand, his fingers digging into the fleshy sack that was its body, penetrating it in a second, resulting in the inevitable pop.

He had no time to even register his actions before he was tackled by two other combat forms, driving him to the ground, attempting to use their defunct heads to bite him. He threw one off of him with his right hand as his left was used to hold the other combat form at bay, allowing him to alter his position into a much more secure guard position on the ground, protecting him from the combat form for the time being.

His motion sensor pinged red to his side, prompting him to look over with his peripheral vision, witnessing the other combat form get up on its feet and run towards him, before a translucent, purple spear pierced it through the side, ripping it in half.

Taking advantage of the opportunity given to him, John kicked the combat form with his armoured foot, right in the elongated, mutated neck, his superhuman strength breaking through the mutated flesh and breaking the combat form apart.

With the combat form taken care of, and his motion sensor showing no more contacts at the moment, John got up on his feet and looked at the now standing Twilight as she looked back at him, her concern very obvious.

His nerves were on edge and his heart was beating at a rapid pace, but he was alive and so was Twilight. That’s all that matters. At least, that’s what he told himself as he picked up his shotgun with trembling hands. His neck seared with pain from his wound, with his hand instinctively reaching out to it, only to find it half covered by his helmet in a way that his fingers couldn’t properly reach it.

“Chief?” Twilight whispered, as if afraid to speak. He glanced at her, the mental connection between the both of them conveying her demoralised state of mind to him. He sighed as he realised that she wasn’t demoralised from her encounter this time, rather seeing her armoured protector, her friend, almost fall, potentially becoming a combat form. Everything that they had gone through, and it was a single, fleshy ball that almost brought him down. It was a wakeup call for the both of them for how vulnerable he truly was. Only dumb luck, and Cortana, saved him.

“I’m alright” he lied to her as he straightened up, grasping his hand to stop the shaking, an action that did not go unnoticed by Twilight. She stared directly at his visor.

“No, you’re not, Chief!” She stated harshly. “You were almost infected! If you were fine, I would be even more worried for your state of mind.” She tapped her head with her hoof. “I can read your thoughts, so don’t bother lying to me, especially in your state!”

John was surprised at Twilight’s change of tone and attitude. She rarely even talked like that at all. He simply turned to look at her as tears began to stream down her face.

“I...I know that war is all you know! I know that you had no choice but to fight with everything you got, to remain strong for me, but you were so close to dying....no, suffering a fate worse than death, and I HAVE HAD IT WITH DEATH! I HAVE HAD IT WITH WATCHING MY FRIEND, WHOSE REAL NAME I ONLY KNOW FROM READING HIS MIND, ALMOST DIE FOR ME, AGAIN AND AGAIN, WITHOUT COMPLAINT OR EVEN REGRET!”

She ran up to him, knocking him back a few steps with the force of the collision and wrapped her hooves around him, sobbing into his armour.

“I don’t want to lose you, John!”

John’s eyes widened as for the first time, Twilight actually said his real name. The one he rarely told anyone. As he processed what he just heard, he realised how she knew.

“How long?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Since you rescued me from the Flood,” sobbed out Twilight, who unwrapped her hooves and stood back, her tears slowing down. “I only heard the name, and saw some memories, but it took me a while to connect them to you.”

“If you knew his name, then why didn’t you call him that this entire time?” Cortana asked, curious.

“I guess I’m just used to calling him the Chief, Cortana”, Twilight answered with a sheepish smile.

“I don’t mind what you call me”, John assured her as he knelt in front of her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It doesn’t change anything about how we view others or each other. We’ll still be friends, no matter what names we give each other.”

Twilight smiled. “You sound like me giving a friendship lecture back in Equestria.”

“And I promise that you’ll get back home” John said as he stood up. “But for now, we need to destroy Halo and get out of here.”



Twilight smiled, but realised that John was still bleeding at his neck wound. He seemed to realise this as well as he lifted his hands to his helmet and lifted it slightly to the side, allowing him to pull out an infection form’s appendage from the wound.

As he applied some antiseptic to the wound, Twilight turned around and grabbed her SMG from the ground, reloading it. She sighed as she saw that she had only one full magazine left of ammo for it. She would have to use it wisely.

John, now finished with patching himself up, led the way once more, the two of them now running through a series of passageways before encountering a Covenant patrol. Twilight used her magic to blast an Elite into oblivion while John ripped another apart with his shotgun before switching to an assault rifle and killing the grunts with short, controlled bursts of bullets.

Twilight attached her SMG to her belt and picked up a plasma rifle from one of the dead Elites, firing a trio of bolts to test it out before following John through the hatch into another network of maintenance tunnels, where infection forms lay in ambush. Her plasma rifle proved to be an effective weapon in the close space of the tunnel, each bolt burning an infection form with ease.

“Huh,” she said as she decided that the plasma rifle might be something she would use a lot more if she ran out of ammo or access to UNSC weapons. She still had to watch out for the overheating function though, and that she only had a limited amount of shots.

After maneuvering through the tunnels, the pair exited into another main corridor, this time with two paths, the main one leading to Engineering, the other one leading to an Armory. Knowing that time was not on their side, they went down the path to Engineering. The silence was unsettling, as Twilight had somehow got used to the chaos of battle and the quietness had become unusual.

They entered a new type of corridor, one that was more square and smooth in shape. As they traversed it and rounded the corner, Cortana spoke out.

“Engine Room located. We’re here.”

As if summoned by Cortana’s words, a pair of sentinels flew towards them, firing their beams at John. They were easily dispatched, but the familiar humming from 343 Guilty Spark could be heard.

“Of course he would be close by,” Twilight muttered to herself before remembering that Cortana had said that he was in Engineering beforehand.

“Alert!” Cortana suddenly cried out as the pair approached the main hatch. “The Monitor has disabled all command access. We can’t restart the countdown. The only remaining option will be to detonate the ship’s fusion reactors. That should do enough damage to destroy Halo.”

“If there’s no countdown, how will we get out?” Twilight asked, dread starting to fill her up once more, but Cortana’s reply dispelled it quite quickly. “The fusion reactors will take some time to explode after destabilization. We’ll use that time to reach the rendezvous point with Foehammer and get out of here.”

“However, we still need to start the process, so I’ll walk you through the most effective way to cause the reactor to go critical with what we have. First, we’ll need to pull back the exhaust coupling. That will expose a shaft that leads to the primary fusion drive core.”

“Oh, good.” John said as he reloaded his assault rifle. “Despite your assurances, I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be easy.”

“When has it ever been easy on this ring?” Twilight commented as they walked in front of the hatch, only for her motion sensor to go crazy. Her eyes widened as it displayed that there were five augmented infection forms past the hatch, meaning that her magic will be a liability when she enters Engineering.

“Shit”, she heard John say as he too saw the data. “That complicates things.” he looked at the hatch, then down the way they came before finally turning to face Twilight.

“Twilight, teleport back to the junction outside of the Engineering section and head for the nearest Armory,” he ordered as he opened the hatch, revealing a large room that had huge platforms and machinery everywhere, as well as lots of Flood and Sentinels fighting for control of it. “Once there, grab a rocket launcher and as much ammo as you can carry before teleporting back here. I’ll deal with the first step and as many of those augmented infection forms so you can use your magic properly.”

“What if they form five Abominations?!” Twilight asked.

“That’s what the rocket launcher will be for,” John replied, “If you run out of ammo for it, teleport back to the Armory, collect it then teleport back here. Understood?”

“On it, Chief!” Twilight reflexively replied, as John ran in, firing at a group of Flood. Twilight did as John asked, materialising back in the main corridor and running down the path that led to the Armory. It wasn’t far, so it only took her a few dozen seconds to reach it. She quickly entered the room, spotting a whole bunch of rocket launchers and rockets on the far side, as well as plenty of ammo for the shotgun, assault rifle, magnum, smg and dmr. What she didn’t spot were the multiple shimmers across the entire room until she accidently bumped into one.

She staggered backwards before powering up her horn, ready to take on the stealth elites, only they weren’t stealth elites, not anymore. No, these were flood combat forms with active camouflage, and there were a dozen of them. Fortunately, rushing towards her while roaring helped Twilight spot all of them, and she used up the remaining ammo on her plasma rifle and SMG to kill all of the Flood.

Sighing in relief, Twilight ran to the rocket launchers, grabbed one and some ammo for it before teleporting back to where she had left John. As she entered Engineering, she noticed that three of the five augmented infection forms weren’t on her radar anymore, and her magic didn’t feel like it was as erratic as it could be. She spotted John on one of the platforms above her, though she gasped as he dove to the side, barely avoiding being hit by a large barrel, almost rolling off the edge. Her shock turned into horror as two Abominations made their way towards him.

Her horror was replaced with rage and hatred as she raised her rocket launcher, aimed it at the Abomination closest to John and snarled.

“Infect this, you bastard!” The rocket flew directly into the sack-like head of the Abomination, rupturing the entire body of the Flood form. Twilight couldn’t help but smile at the devastation she caused on the Flood form, but the other Abomination turned its attention to her, and now lifted several barrels with HER magic and threw them at her.

“Oh, now you’ve done it, YOU BASTARDS!!!” Twilight shouted, giving into her anger and hatred of the Flood, blasting all of the barrels into dust with a single magic blast from her horn. As the Abomination shot a magic blast at her, she deflected it with her stronger magic.

‘So the augmented forms can control my magic, but not so much as Abominations’ Twilight realised, her mouth in the form of a feral smile. Now she had the advantage!

She launched a direct attack at the Abomination, but the Flood form seemed to absorb some of it, making the beam’s effect weaker than she expected, while also powering its own captured magic. Her smile fell as the Abomination leapt off of the platform with the intention of crushing her with its large tentacles. She teleported out of the way, but was struck when one tentacle swiped across the floor, knocking her back a fair distance.

This only made her even angrier, her horn pulsating with magic, her eyes glowing with hate. She got up onto her hooves, and charged right at the Abomination, while grabbing as many loose objects off of the floor and throwing them at it. It raised its arms to block the objects from hitting its head, before Twilight materialised a sword and sliced one of the tentacles off.

As she ran past and skidded to a stop, she looked on in satisfaction as the Abomination spewed out blood and gore out of its gaping wound. ‘Ha, serves that thing right...Wait, why am I satisfied with this! This is disgusting and horrible!’

She stopped, realising what she was doing and how she was enjoying being angry at the Flood, taking pleasure at seeing it get hurt in any gruesome way she could inflict on it. Granted, it’s the Flood, but this isn’t the way her friends would want her to feel. She winced as she understood that her anger and hate had blinded her to more sensible options to take out the Abomination.

Her pause allowed the Abomination to wrap its tentacle around her and throw her at John, who had just finished off fighting a horde of Flood. She crashed into the super soldier, sending them both falling onto the floor on the second level. John got up first, pulling Twilight up, just as the Abomination climbed up to their level. However, Twilight had regained much of her composure and senses, thus she telekinetically grabbed the fallen rocket launcher and fired it at the Abomination, killing it.

The two of them had a three second breather each before resuming their task. As they went to work, Cortana listed off the procedure and her recommendations. “Twilight, hand Chief the launcher. He’ll do the damage, while you go up to the third level and activate those panels, which will retract the shielding and give us a straight shot into the fusion reactor. Chief, once Twilight has activated the release mechanism, use your rockets to destabilise the magnetic containment field surrounding the fusion cell. We only have to do this four times, so save those rockets, Chief.”

“I’ve got enough for one rocket on each target” John remarked as he positioned himself, reloading the launcher. “If worse comes to worse, I’ve grabbed some grenades that’ll do the trick.”

“Since I have the ability to fly, I’ll just go to each panel, then once we’re done with this side, I’ll teleport you to the other side, Chief,” Twilight told John, who nodded.

She flew to the nearest control panel, activated it and watched as the cover was released, revealing a rectangular slot, which John fired a single rocket into, the explosion causing Twilight to put up a shield around her out of reflex. They quickly moved on to the second panel, though Twilight was distracted momentarily by a trio of sentinels, along with the Monitor, who had flown down to see what was happening.

“This is unacceptable, Reclaimer!” Guilty Spark stated in an annoyed tone, “Cease your actions immediately and surrender both your construct and equine companion!”

“Not going to happen!” John shouted as he put a burst of bullets into one of the Sentinels, causing it to fall to the lowest level and explode. Twilight activated the second panel and was subsequently hit by a sentinel beam, causing her skin to feel like it was being burned, yet it wasn’t as her magical shield was still up.

“How very interesting” Guilty Spark commented when seeing her shields in action. “It appears that the equine has almost permanent neural physical shields. Oh, how your dissection will help us develop countermeasures against future outbreaks!”

“Fuck you!” she shouted as John blew up the second opening, while Twilight fired a bolt at Spark, who easily dodged it. He continued to ramble on about how much of a scientific goldmine she was, ignoring all of the attempts she made to kill him as he hovered there, dodging left, right and center.

“Twilight, focus!” John said, having had to move to the ground level to get to the other side so he could shoot the two openings on the other side.

“Right.” she said, finally turning her attention away from the monitor. She teleported to the nearest panel on the other side and activated it, just as more Flood jumped down from somewhere above to ambush her. She looked up just in time, rolling out of the way as the combat forms used their tentacle hands to crush the platform panels she was just standing on. She pushed them back with a spell before firing her SMG at them, killing all but one, who she finished off with a magical constructed sword. The sword did the physical damage, but Twilight still saw the magic from it begin to get absorbed. However, she did find that the sword was great at slicing through the armour of the Elites: something useful against the Covenant. She morphed the sword into a spear, throwing it at a Sentinel. She didn’t even see it get destroyed as she was already pressing the button on the control panel, then sprinted to the last one.

She activated it and watched as John sent two well aimed rockets into both openings, completing the objective. The room began to shake, and a piercing siren wailed high above them.

“That did it! The engine has gone critical!” Cortana exclaimed as Twilight teleported John up to where she was. “We have fifteen minutes to get off the ship!”

“Do we have an escape route?” John asked, firing at a Sentinel that got too close with his Assault Rifle.

“Preferably one that’s close by!” Twilight gave a shriek in surprise as part of the platform next to her gave way.

On Twilight’s eyepiece, a nav point appeared. “There!” Cortana stated. “The third deck elevator. It will take us to a Class Seven service corridor that runs the length of the ship. Hurry!”

Twilight spotted the path, and teleported the two of them further down it, only where Twilight could see. After that, the two of them ran to the hatch, fighting through a pair of combat forms that seemed to be waiting there aimlessly, all without stopping. After having sped through the passageway, they arrived in one of the regular, larger corridors that they had previously travelled through in the ship, coming up directly at a large elevator area, where the nav point was.

Twilight sighed in relief, they were finally going to stop the Flood for good, and get off of this beautiful, yet terrifying and horrible Ringworld. This place has too many bad memories for her now. To the side, she saw John slightly relax as well as the elevator was coming to them. But then Cortana shouted a warning as the lift came to a halt from below.

Twilight felt time slow down as she turned around, her eyes widening as she registered the snarl from the Spec Ops Elite as he aimed his shade turret at John and opened fire.



It could only be described as luck that Cortana’s warning came at the right time. By the time the shade turret, along with the three Grunt escorts, had arrived, John was already in motion, backing away, allowing him to dodge the first three shots. However, he still took enough hits to dangerously deplete his shields before he got behind cover.

He heard a yelp of surprise before Twilight teleported next to him, as a fuel rod blast ripped through the air where she was a second before. It seemed that at least one Grunt was armed with a Fuel Rod Cannon.

“Where did that come from?” he exclaimed, furious at being caught off guard. And he also noted that the Elite gunner was ready to fire at the entrance, at him specifically, even though the turret’s barrel was aimed closer to Twilight. He easily concluded that the Elite was specifically gunning for him with a vengeance, leaving the Grunts to kill Twilight. If he had hesitated for a second, the Elite might have succeeded.

“It looks like someone has been tracking you,” Cortana said grimly, most likely having come to a similar conclusion to him.

He only had a limited amount of time to act, with the shade turret melting through his cover. Fortunately, just as the cover melted, Twilight erected a shield around them, absorbing the continuous fire from the shade, a volley of fuel rods and several plasma bolts. The shield began to crack, yet it had given them a breather.

“I’ll take control of the elevator and cause it to drop. Twilight, blast them from the sky when they’re distracted while Chief, roll a couple of grenades down the shaft.”

“Roger!”

“Got it!”

Just before the magical bubble shield broke, the lift suddenly dropped down, with very little time to process the action. John ran to the shaft, already having primed a grenade while Twilight swept past him and sent a single, yet large bolt of magic down at the plummeting squad of Covenant. If there were any unfortunate souls who survived Twilight’s bolt, their lives were painfully ended by an explosive packed full of shrapnel.

John couldn’t help but wince when he saw the result of the carnage as Cortana brought the blood stained and burnt lift back up to them. Twilight, despite having been exposed to gore and violence for a while now, still gagged at the sight of the mangled bodies and the stench. The two of them reluctantly stepped onto the platform and felt it rise at a fast rate. They were just in time, as the corridor they were just in erupted into flames, the sight of it sobering up John and Twilight.

As they ascended, Cortana contacted Foehammer over the radio in order for her to come pick them up. As he felt several explosions, John’s eyes constantly flicked towards the countdown timer that Cortana had projected. He just wished that the platform would be faster, even though it already was quite fast.

Twilight wasn’t much better. He could tell from her fidgeting and her ears rigidly straight. He softly patted her head as a means of calming her down, if only very slightly, even as he and her listened to Cortana’s conversation.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, yet was only a minute, the lift came to a halt. The pair quickly ran off while Cortana spoke to the both of them. “We have six minutes before the fusion drives detonate. We need to evacuate now! The explosion will generate a temperature of almost a hundred million degrees. Don’t be here when it blows!”

“A hundred million degrees?!” Twilight exclaimed. “I can’t even fathom that high of a temperature.”

John ignored Twilight’s statement as they entered a warthog hangar, where there were a dozen still parked. He ran to the closest one and jumped into the driver’s seat. As he ignited the engine, Twilight flew to the turret on the rear.

“I wouldn’t recommend getting on that” John warned. “It requires human-like limbs to operate the trigger.”

“And somehow, I can still operate triggers with physical contact from my hooves,” Twilight stated as she jumped on, her horn lighting up as she materialised boots onto her back hooves, allowing her to stand up and operate the turret like a human while not at risk from slipping off. She gave John a ‘told you so’ expression as she swivelled the turret to the side and back, showing off.

John shrugged before turning his attention back to the warthog and the countdown. It was already five minutes and forty seconds. With that in mind, John pushed down on the accelerator and drove out of the bay, right into a skirmish between Covenant and Flood. He ran over an Elite and three combat forms, driving past the rest as Twilight maneuvered the turret to open fire. His mental link with her told him that she was preferring killing Flood over Covenant, which he could hardly blame her for.

He drove up the ramp as it bent a curve, before continuing down the slope as he didn’t want to lose any time at all, but slow enough that he could slow down or stop to prevent a mistake from occurring. John swerved to the right as an explosion caused a part of the Autumn’s superstructure to come crashing down into the warthog’s path.

He avoided crashing into the debris and continued onwards into a large, open room, with several pillars, arches and platforms on different levels. John chose to drive straight through the middle, going down a ramp that quickly led back up, the momentum carrying the warthog into the air before falling back down to the floor, the suspension working overtime to prevent the warthog from flipping.

Twilight growled as she fired at several sentinels who fired at the warthog, leaving scorch marks on the side of it. John noticed that her aim with the turret wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t as bad as he would have thought for an equine. His attention quickly returned to driving the ‘hog as he went down another ramp and back up, this time the momentum carrying the ‘hog over a shade turret, which fortunately had just finished blasting a horde of flood to the side, allowing John to drive out of its range before the turret even finished swivelling to face them.

The corridor they entered was designed in a way that made John cringe. Who designed maintenance hallways this large to curve left and right like a snake? If he could meet the designer of the Halcyon class, John would have a chat about this. Even so, the warthog traversed the corridor quickly, driving past several fleeing Covenant squads.

They passed through four more large rooms, each different from the last before John slowed the warthog as he reached the navpoint Cortana laid out for him and Twilight.

“Wait! Stop!” Cortana exclaimed in an insistent manner. “This is where Foehammer is supposed to meet us.”

John brought the warthog to a stop and looked to his left to see Echo-419 barely able to keep itself in the air, It wasn’t long before the banshee trailing it fired a blast from it’s fuel rod cannon sending the dropship into a nosedive. John knew that foehammer was done for, likely scrambling with the controls to attempt to make a survivable landing. What surprised him was a feeling of determination from Twilight as she disappeared and then promptly reappeared with the pilot in tow. 

“Foehammer, take shotgun!” John barked to the stunned pilot. “We’re getting off this damn ring.”

“There's a Longsword in launch-bay seven.” Cortana said with a sense of urgency. “If we move now, we can make it!”

John gunned the warthog as the timer raced towards zero, propelling the vehicle across a large gap, almost losing Foehammer and Twilight in the process. They finally reached the nav point, right behind a series of containers that prevented the warthog from going further. With just more than a minute left, John and Twilight leaped from the warthog, the spartan slinging Foehammer over his shoulders and the trio booked it for the Longsword



Twilight’s eyes widened as she took a quick glance at the countdown: 01:02:45. Just over a minute left. They sprinted towards the longsword fighter on top of the raised platform as both sides of the walkway were filled with explosions, bodies, and firefights. Why a straight path to their objective couldn't be simple was a question only Celestia herself knew the answer to.

Twilight cried out in surprise as the body of an Elite collided into her, the neck spewing out blood where the head should have been. She threw it off before dodging the combat form that swung at her with a bloodied tentacle. She kicked it away before teleporting to the top of the platform to make up for time.

“Take Foehammer and run!” John shouted as he tossed the pilot the way a desperate outfielder would chuck a baseball to the man at third base when the opposing team had two outs.

Twilight panicked before catching her with her magic, teleporting the both of them to the entrance of the longsword. Foehammer only spent a few seconds puking before running up the ramp and starting the launch sequence, while Twilight waited for John at the end of the ramp, only 40 seconds left.

She smiled as she saw John climb up onto the platform, sprinting as fast as he could towards her, her smile fading as she spotted a large horde of Flood following him. With speed that would make Rainbow Dash take notice, Twilight slammed her hoof on the button to close the ramp. Thankfully John cleared the distance and managed to soar through the gap, his armoured body grinding to a halt on the Longsword’s lower deck.

Twilight felt the longsword shift underneath her as Foehammer called out. ‘We’re clear of the Autumn and are almost clear of the atmosphere!”

Twilight went to help John up, but he was already on his feet, racing to the cockpit where Foehammer was at the controls. Twilight followed and found John jumping into the co-pilot’s seat next to Foehammer, motioning for Twilight to get in her own seat, which she did.

Twilight looked out of the window and was amazed at how fast the longsword was travelling, the blue sky quickly turning into black as the longsword broke free of Halo’s atmosphere.

‘Shut off the engine’s Foehammer.” Cortana said, “We’ll need them later.”

Twilight felt the smartfoam of the Longsword’s seat shift and expand to accommodate her equine stature. She was distracted by a bright flash of light as the Pillar of Autumn’s reactors went super critical and exploded. No sooner had the crater started to cool, did she notice the area around it start to shift and buckle until a char of Halo broke free. She watched as this shard tumbled across space shearing through the opposite side of the ring.

John stood up and strode over to Twilight, joining her in watching the ring fall to pieces. They watched as Halo slowly broke itself apart from lack of structural integrity as the ring continued to spin in space.

“Did anyone else make it?” John asked to the side, causing Foehammer to look down at her controls in order to not face the Spartan.

“Scanning” Cortana paused for a moment before speaking again. “Just… dust and echoes, Chief. We’re all that’s left.”

“Last thing I heard over the com in the pelican was that the Truth and Reconciliation was going down,” Forehammer added. “I don’t think anyone made it off that ship.”

Twilight’s ears drooped in sorrow as she thought about all those human lives that were so close to making it off the ring, only to have died at the last moment. She thought of Lieutenant McKay, who was the first ODST to actually be nice to her, and the marines that she conversed with back at Alpha base.

“We did what we had to do” Cortana stated, as if trying to convince everyone about the means justifying the ends. “For Earth. An entire Covenant armada obliterated, and the Flood… We had no choice! Halo’s finished.”

With a grim look in her face, Twilight looked over at John as he removed his helmet before saying, “No. The Covenant are still out there. Earth and for all I know Equis, are still in danger. We’re just getting started.”
> Dust and Echoes
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



1st Lieutenant Melissa McKay meant what she said to the spartan. He was just a human whose government made him what he was without his consent. But now was not the time to be focusing on that. The Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation had been successfully captured by human forces and its crew were now going through pre-flight checks.

McKay felt someone touch her arm. “Lieutenant? Do you have a moment?”

McKay immediately turned to face the “offender” and saw who it was. Lieutenant Commander Gail Purdy. Now despite being a member of the UNSC Navy, Purdy still outranked McKay, so she gave the proper respect in her response. “Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?” 

Purdy brought McKay to a nearby tube, which the Lieutenant Commander described as an access point to the fiber-optic pathway that connected the control room to the engines of the ship, and what would happen if they were severed. “Given the fact that twenty percent of this ship remains under Covenant control,” Purdy continued. “I suggest that you post a guard on this piece of equipment until all of the Covenant are under lock and key.”

McKay knew an order when she saw one. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of it.” 

The deck suddenly and violently lurched as the engines and repulsors of the Truth and Reconciliation roared to life, her human crew having nowhere near the amount of experience with her systems as her previous Covenant masters. The two women and all those not braced against pillars or walls were thrown from their feet from the sudden jostle, eliciting a remark form Purdy regarding the sloppy takeoff.

Whether spurred or hindered by the vibrations of the engines, The Flood chose that moment to attack the engine room. A vent exploded open and a horde of infection forms shot out, only to come under immediate fire by the several marines stationed in the engine room.With all of the chaos, the captive combat form of Private First Class Wallace Jenkins went berserk, causing his Marine guards to struggle to keep him under control. 

The assault was over just as soon as it began and the vent was sealed, but the attack served to give truth to the Master Chief’s report. McKay realised that the Flood could not leave Halo under any circumstances..

The Marine used her Status as XO to get through to Silva, gave a report on the attack, and finished by saying, “It’s clear what the Chief and Twilight said was accurate sir. I suggest that we put down and sterilize every square centimeter prior to lifting again.”

“Negative Lieutenant,” Silva replied with a grim undertone. “I have reason to believe that Halo is going to blow, and soon. Besides, I want some specimens, so see what you can do to capture some of the ugly bastards. Especially any augmented forms that Twilight and the freak told us about.”

“The Lieutenant is correct,” Wellesley, the Pillar of Autumn’s secondary AI interjected. “The risk is too great. I urge you to reconsider.”

“My decision is final,” Silva growled. “Now, return to your duties. That’s an order.”

McKay immediately broke the connection. There were many virtues imbued in her by the military, namely the service and protection of Earth and her people. Virtues she couldn’t betray by allowing the tyrant major to exfil this parasite from Halo. She looked around for an answer to her conundrum, and with none revealing themselves, she turned to face Jenkins as he lurched in the direction of the fiber-optic connection. McKay realized what Jenkins was trying to do, and realizing that he was powerless to do so, took matters into her own hands. It was horrible, but also simple. So simple that even the grotesquely ravaged jenkins knew what to do. McKay strode to the connection, dismissed the guard, and took one last look around before triggering a grenade. The last thing she saw before her world went white was Jenkins mouthing the words “thank you”.



It had been nearly four days since Twilight had disappeared in that structure. Applejack was dealing with the fact that she may never see her friend again by busying herself with work at Sweet Apple Acres. She was in the middle of bucking trees in the northwest field when her brother came up.

“AJ, Ah know you’ve been hurtin’ since Twilight went missing, but you can’t keep pushing yerself like this.” Big Mac said.

This was met with a glare from Applejack as she replied, “Big Mac, This is the worst I’ve felt since mom and dad died. I know you just want to help me, but I gotta deal with this my own way.” She paused a moment to move a bucket that was slightly off target before continuing. “If you wanna help, you can start by collecting the-” Applejack didn’t finish her sentence as she got distracted by a glare just over the hill.

“Is the Princess lowering the sun early?” Big Mac asked, the light having grown twice as bright. “It’s getting awfully bright-” He was cut off by a large WHUMP followed by a sudden blast of air that knocked both of them back a good fifteen meters. “AJ, you alright?” Big Mac called out to his younger sister.

“Yeah. Ah’m alright.” Applejack responded, collecting her stetson. “We should probably check on that area of the farm, see what damage was done.” The pair of ponies made their way across several rows of trees and as they crested a small hill, the two were horrified to see several trees flattened, with a smoking crater as the centerpiece. 

Applejack noticed that the charred dirt at the center of the crater appeared to be bubbling slightly. No, not bubbling, something in the crater was moving. 

“It kinda looks like a hairless diamond dog. Doesn’t it AJ?” Big Mac asked.

Applejack initially thought the same thing, but upon closer inspection, the creature lacked a muzzle and it had a relatively flat, hairless face. She was about to probe further when the thing opened its eyes.



McKay woke up to both a pounding headache, and an orange horse prodding her chest. ‘C’mon, the least you can do is buy me a drink first.’ she thought to herself. The last thing she remembered was priming a grenade and then a flash of white. ‘Did it work?’ She looked around and was surprised to see an apple orchard surrounding her. When she looked up, she couldn’t see Halo arching overhead, so she concluded she was no longer on the ringworld.

McKay turned to see the orange horse staring at her. ‘No not a horse, too small to be a horse. Pony would be a better term for it.’ McKay gave the orange pony a look over. “You kinda look like Twilight, except without the horn or wings. That and a different tramp-stamp.”

“You know Twilight?” The orange pony asked, wide eyed. “Is she alive?”

“As far as I know, yes.” McKay responded. “How do you know her?” The Helljumper was genuinely curious. She couldn’t recall Twilight mentioning friends off the top of her head but could imagine her having a decently sized social bubble, her being royalty and all that.

“I’m one of her closest friends, as well as an Element of Harmony.” The orange pony responded. “And any friend of Twilight’s is a friend of mine. The name’s Applejack, and this here is my brother, Big Mac.” She said, extending her left foreleg. 

McKay shook Applejack's hoof and responded, “Pleasure to meet you Applejack, I’m First Lieutenant Melissa McKay.”

“Yer in the military?” Big Mac asked. “Is Twilight safe?” He asked with a worried expression.

“I don’t know.” McKay responded. “Last I saw her was at Alpha Base before she and the Chief left to self destruct the Pillar of Autumn's reactors. She honestly deserves several medals for the amount of courage and bravery she’s been displaying on the battlefield. I can’t imagine it’s been easy for her essentially being drafted into the war. Especially since she mentioned the last conflict your country fought in was over a thousand years ago.”

“What do you mean drafted into the war? What war?” Applejack demanded.

“A little under twenty-eight years ago, humanity came under attack by an alien alliance known as the Covenant. In that time, we’ve lost hundreds of worlds and billions of people. The last I checked, the death toll was over twenty-four billion. I pray that Twilight isn’t among them.” McKay paused to take a deep breath. “But then again, she’s been doing her part to kick the covie ass. She has demonstrated exemplary bravery and conduct on the battlefield and were she an enlisted member of the UNSC armed forces, she would be halfway to general by now, that is, if she doesn’t join the navy. She’s gotten one hell of a partner too, never seen a spartan gel with another soldier like the Master Chief does with Twilight. All in all, she’s been doing her best to make sure humanity survives this war, no matter the cost.” 

“There’s no way Twilight would willingly take another’s life. That just isn’t what she’s like.” Applejack stated, clearly in denial over all of this.

“War can change a person, Applejack. She didn’t have a choice.” McKay responded. “Where I’m from, it's kill or be killed. My species is facing extinction and there's not much we can do about it.” She knew where Applejack was coming from, having seen several pacifists having been drafted into the war having become great commanders, her first CO being one.

“She’s right you know, Applejack.” came a voice from over McKay’s shoulder.

“What do you want Discord?” Applejack asked, contempt deeply present in her voice.

“Relax, I know Twilight’s disappearance has been weighing on your mind and I was actually coming to lend you a hoof with your harvest when I noticed this lovely little lady crossing interdimensional barriers.” Discord said, circling McKay to give her a full view of his mismatched body.

“And here I thought the Flood was ugly.” McKay spat at the draconequus.

Discord’s face momentarily darkened at the mention of the Flood, yet returned to its mischievous expression. He simply appeared above McKay in a flash.

“Discord, what’s the ‘Flood’?” Applejack asked.

McKay was about to begin when she realized her mouth had disappeared.

“It was an old friend betrayed and slaughtered by his children.” Discord said with clear pain choking his voice.

“I must say, though,” he began, “I simply didn’t expect anyone from over there to arrive here.”

“Does it matter to you?” McKay asked in a stern manner, her mouth having reappeared.

“Actually, yes,” Discord’s voice and expression turned serious. “Twilight herself shouldn’t have arrived in your conflict, and if you’ve come here, then that means the barriers between worlds are starting to break down.”

McKay gave Applejack a questioning expression, who returned a shrug, not knowing what Discord was talking about herself.

“Discord, why don’t you skip all of the roundabout descriptions that you were planning on saying and just tell us what is going on?” Applejack impatiently exclaimed. “And besides, you’ve also been gone for a day or two now. Where did you go off to?”

Discord looked at the horizon, his face clouded.

“Now, that is something I’ll have to tell everyone together, not just you alone.” He turned to face Applejack. “I just came back from Fluttershy’s house to tell you to come to Canterlot within the next two hours. You’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

“Two hours, huh,” Applejack repeated, deep in thought. “I suppose Big Mac can handle all the chores for today. Alright, I’ll be there.”

“Splendid. Now, off to tell the others.” Discord said, turning to face McKay. “And I guess I’ll have to bring you too.”

“The only problem that I can see with this meeting is that Spike left a day ago…” Applejack began before Discord interrupted, his face grave.

“Where?”

“Back to the ruins,” Applejack gulped at the horrified expression on Discord’s face, “Princess Luna invited him back there so that the two of them could have their own investigation. I don’t think that you could get there in time to tell them to teleport back to Canterlot, with that mysterious shield blocking magic from working within the site.”

“Lieutenant, with me!” Discord shouted, “We must stop them before they break the barriers further!”



The unlikely pair sprinted through the Everfree, Discord having temporarily enhanced McKay so she could keep up.

“Normally I could just teleport us directly there, but due to the shield over the ruins, we can’t do that,” Discord explained. “The distance is also too great for us to run there, but there is an old magical rift on the other side of the Everfree that will allow us to teleport to a place closer to the ruins.”

“So this is what it’s like to be a spartan.” McKay commented swinging under a branch. “What’s with the urgency?”

“The barriers are already weak, If you could pass through, damaging them further could release the Flood upon this universe.” Discord paused to phase through a tree before continuing. “Tell me, human, what stage was the Flood at when you were transported here.”

“Stage? What the Hell do you mean?” McKay shot back, narrowly avoiding the swipe of a manticore.

“Have they left the planet you found them on?” Discord exclaimed, the urgency ever present in his voice.

“Planet? We found them on Halo.” McKay responded.

“Those fools, they built the rings to destroy the Flood, yet kept specimens?” Discord shouted

“How do you know so much about Halo and the Flood?” McKay asked.

“Because all higher beings such as myself know about the ancient threat quarantined in your universe.”

“Quarantined?!” McKay shouted, “and what the hell do you mean when you say ‘universe’!”

“Valid questions that we do not have time to answer right now!” Discord shot back.

“The hell we do!” McKay roared in anger, having hit her limit with Discord already. “I swear, once we find them…”

“Onwards!” Discord shouted as they reached what McKay deduced was the portal Discord was talking about, just before he grabbed her and leapt in. They soon found themselves in the middle of a plain, with the barrier that Discord was all too familiar with close by. Close enough to see the silhouettes of Luna and Spike walking towards the center, disappearing shortly after.

“Oh, no,” Discord whispered as he saw a gap in the barrier suddenly become fixed.



[Six minutes earlier]

Spike placed his hand on the forcefield, feeling the electricity run through his hand as he touched it. What was more surprising was the fact that his hand didn’t simply halt at the surface or feel any resistance yet passed through. He looked back at princess Luna, who stood behind him with a contemplating expression.

“I thought you said that the barrier blocked anypony from entering?” Spike asked.

“It did, yet look at the colour,” Luna pointed at the field. Spike turned back and squinted at the field. It was in constant fluidity between blue and orange, creating a contrasting mixture of colours and shades. He then looked further down to the left and saw that there the field was more yellow tinged see through there. He flew over to that section of the shield, and tried to put his hand through, yet was stopped by the field.

“Okay, so the colours show how weak it is,” he commented to himself.

“Indeed,” Luna agreed, lighting up her horn. She fired a bolt of magic at the weak section of the shield, frowning when it was blocked. “But strong enough to stop any form of magic.”

“That reminds me too much of what Starlight told us about Chrysalis' throne’s power when she rescued us from her clutches,” Spike couldn’t help but state, shivering as the thoughts of being trapped inside one of those cocoons returned to haunt him for a brief moment.

Despite looking composed, internally Luna also shivered at her perspective of the same memories. Being the princess of the night and guardians of ponies dreams, she was only affected by the memories for a second before her instincts kicked in, sending the bad memories back into the dark recesses of her mind.

“For the past few days, ever since the barrier appeared,” Luna began to explain to Spike, who had walked next to her, “I have constantly been returning to the barrier and going around the entire thing in order to find any differences from the completely uniform appearance of the barrier, even to the detriment of my duties as Princess of the Night. My efforts were in vain until yesterday when I found this blight on the field. Afterwards I discovered that a pony could walk through the field, yet without the ability to wield magic inside the field.”

“Does Princess Celestia know?” Spike asked, yet the lack of Celestia herself here spoke volumes about the answer to the question. “I mean, if she doesn’t, we should probably tell her.”

“Believe me, I know that my sister, out of all ponies, should have been told of this development,” Luna agreed, “but unfortunately, she is currently in Rijekograd, trying to negotiate with the River Federation in order for Equestrian archaeologists to be allowed to excavate a newly discovered site, on the coast of the Nimbusian province, which is a two days journey from here. Similar sites have been popping up all across Equis.”

Spike just simply stood there; the only movement was his eyes blinking as he stared at Luna with a deadpan expression. Luna nervously laughed as sweat drops appeared on her side, not knowing why he was doing that. “Spike, my friend, why do you glare at me like that?”

“You have the power to teleport,” Spike crossed his arms, his face now displaying an annoyed expression.

“The River Federation has set up a powerful spell in their country that allows them to regulate teleportation that is attempting to come into and go out of the country,” Luna explained, her nervousness gone now that she knew why Spike was annoyed. “If Discord was still here, I would have asked him to teleport me there!” She could not help but mumble “even though I wouldn’t trust him to make fun of me for going to him for help.”

“Seems too convenient for me, but I’ll accept it,” Spike said, shrugging despite his doubts. “Though why did you bring me instead of the others?”

“Because out of everypony, you have the longest connection to Twilight,” Luna said as she entered the barrier, with Spike following close behind. “I know a few ancient spells that allow the bonds between friends and family, both blood and name, to locate ponies, or any trace of where they are. It’s a stretch, but if there is a trace of Twilight left here, then you may be the key to finding her.”

“I hope so,” Spike muttered, wiping away tears as he spotted the first ruins that littered the area around the site, the memory of Twilight’s disappearance still fresh in his mind.

“Another reason is that you don’t rely too much on magic as a dragon,” Luna continued before looking back at her companion. “Do you mind if I ask you to try to breath fire right now?”

“...Sure?” Spike did as he was asked, easily breathing out a healthy flame.

Luna nodded in approval. “A mighty flame,” she said before a mischievous expression filled her face. “One that all of the crystal ponies would flock to your beck and call to see, swarming you to…”

“Oh. Ha. Ha. Though it’s always nice to see them think of me as Spike the brave.”

“I admit, I do get jealous of how they worship you almost as highly as Cadance.” Luna sighed. “Even though I’ve gotten used to being back in Equestria and I no longer hold any ill will towards my sister, I still feel like the least liked out of all of the princesses.”

Spike looked back at the Night Princess, spotting the depressed look on her face. With a look of empathy, he went up to Luna and gave her a hug. Luna briefly stiffened with surprise but quickly relaxed and returned it, a smile on her face and a tear running down her cheek.

“I… understand,” Spike reassured her, “Originally, I thought that every pony seemed to forget that I existed, focusing only on Twilight and her friends. I admit that I was jealous sometimes, even if they were my friends. But I soon realised that it didn’t matter. As long as I had my friends, it doesn’t matter how others viewed me.”

He let go of Luna so that she could see his face. “And you got one friend here.”

Luna smiled with happiness. “Thank you, Spike.”

“Hey, no worries. Just remember, if you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

The conversation was interrupted by the ground shaking as the large structure in which Twilight disappeared began to emit a blue light. Luna and Spike glanced at each other before running towards the structure, at least until another barrier blocked their path. Luna growled as she noticed that the barrier all but encircled them, preventing the two from flying over the barrier, except…

“It didn’t block this way,” Spike noted, his hand to his chin as he looked on at the supposedly only way out, “though the way the barrier is shaped forces us to go into this smaller structure.”

“We are being herded towards it,” Luna deduced, with Spike nodding in agreement.

“The only questions are,” he said, looking around for any detail he could get a clue from, his years serving as Twilight’s number one assistant having helped him develop an eye for deducing facts from small details, “why this structure and how can we get out of this evident trap.”

“I don’t know, and we can’t,” Luna answered, trotting over to the path set by the barrier, with Spike following close behind. As they walked up the ramp and entered an open doorway that led into a lightless corridor, the barrier disappeared, with a door slamming shut behind them, trapping them inside. As they jumped and spun around after hearing the sound of the door, the lights in the corridor lit up, leaving Luna and Spike in a blue glow. They looked back at the corridor and spotted another walkway that led downwards a fair distance away.

“Guess the only way out is inside,” Spike said, resigned.

“Then let us make the most of this,” Luna announced. “If there are any clues to where Twilight is inside here, then we must spring this trap and overcome any obstacles that stand in our way.”

“Right!” Spike shouted as the two of them started to walk through the corridor, ever so wary for any traps. Yet they could not be aware of the presence that was watching their every move.



Twilight looked out into the void of space through a viewport for the second time in her life, sighing as she looked out at the ever-expanding debris field that was Halo. She was feeling quite lost now that she was away from all the fighting on the ringworld, and the Flood. Especially the Flood.

Her entire body trembled with fear and anger each time she thought of the two words themselves, even if they weren’t in context with the parasite itself, and having the flashbacks to what it did to her caused an even worse reaction, so much so that a few times, Foehammer, who had informed Twilight of her actual name, Carol Rawley, and John-117 had to directly calm her down in the Longsword fighter. It didn’t help that the longer she waited, the angrier she felt, and the harder she tried to repress it. From an outside perspective, it would make it look like the Flood has put her in an almost permanent state of stress and unease.

She was deep in thought when suddenly John slammed his helmet on as he shouted, “Power down!”, bringing Twilight back to reality. “Take everything offline except minimal life support, passive scanners and enough power to keep you active!” she heard him say to Cortana.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked before she looked out of the viewport and saw what looked like the Covenant Cruiser ‘The Truth and Reconciliation’, that she and John had boarded twice, flying through the debris field. She looked back at the main piloting station after hearing Rawley curse, as she went through the process of quickly switching most functions of the Longsword off. Twilight was still new to much of human technology, so she did not feel qualified to even operate this thing in any way, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to help in any way.

“Twilight, is there any way for you to turn the Longsword invisible?” John asked as he spun his seat around to face her.

“Maybe, but will that do us any good?” Twilight asked, wracking her brain for a suitable spell that she could use. “I mean, you have that motion sensor in your helmet, so the covenant would have a scanner that could detect movement, right?”

“In space, it's a little different,” Cortana explained as the lights switched off. “Since there are so many objects in space that are tiny, yet moving at such high speeds, scanners usually operate by detecting emissions from power, life signs and radiation, more so than relying on visual sight. However, there’s still a chance that they may detect a power signature, however small it is, from us, so we’ll need to be invisible in order for us to avoid being caught by the Covenant if they come and check out our location.”

“I’ll try!” Twilight called out as she lit her horn, finally having found a suitable spell. The occupants of the Longsword shivered as they felt some sort of energy pass over them, only John, having experienced Twilight’s teleportation multiple times, being able to find a slight familiarity with the sensation from previous spells Twilight has used.

As Cortana’s holographic form switched off, Twilight could do nothing but hope that she did the spell in time as the Covenant cruiser continued to move through the debris field, her anger beginning to flare at the possibility of failure. Even further in the distance, Twilight could make out more ships, some of them cruisers, others were different types.

“Have they spotted us?” John asked tensely.

“Negative so far… Interesting, they’re using the same scanning frequencies that we do,” Cortana mused to herself.

“That sounds all well and good, Cortana,” Rawley spoke out, “but I think it’s best if you focus more on the Covenant ships that can vaporise us with a single shot.” She shivered, despite her voice being devoid of fear like usual. “I’ve always hated the sight of those SDV corvettes after Reach,” she muttered as she recognised one of the Covenant ships in the far distance.

“Corvettes?” Twilight asked, completely unfamiliar with many of the terms that she was hearing from Rawley, and the conversation between John and Cortana.

“A light naval warship class,” Rawley explained in the simplest way she could think of. “There are many types of warships in both the UNSC and the Covenant navies. For example, the Autumn was a light cruiser, one of the heavier ships in the UNSC, the Truth and Reconciliation being similar, though I personally don’t know what they label it as.”

“A CSS class Battlecruiser,” Cortana couldn’t help but add, “But that ship right there, I don’t know about that.”

The ship she was talking about was a new Covenant vessel that entered view, orbiting the gas giant that Halo had itself been orbiting, larger than many of the Covenant vessels Twilight had seen.

“What the hell is that?” Rawley whispered, stunned at the size of it.

“I’m picking up a lot of encrypted chatter from the new contact,” Cortana whispered, “It appears to be sending out orders to the cruisers and corvettes, directing them in their search efforts.”

“A flagship,” John murmured, his tone being the calmest of all of them, like he was figuring out a plan, “Interesting.”

“What do we do?” Twilight asked as John got up off of his seat and walked towards the rear of the longsword. Twilight and Rawley looked at each other before Twilight shrugged, soon following the Spartan.

Turns out he was looking at what seemed to be a weapons system, of what kind Twilight wasn’t sure of, but she hoped that it would be useful. After a moment of examination, he moved on to the weapons locker.

‘Maybe there’s some ammo or heavy weapons in there!’ Twilight hoped, but was immediately corrected as John opened it up, completely empty.

He said nothing, but Twilight could hear a single thought through their mental connection: ‘shit.’

“Got something!” Cortana called out, Twilight rushing to the bridge in response.

“What is it?” she asked, hoping for some good news.

Even before Twilight finished voicing her question, the closest viewport highlighted a cylindrical object floating in space.

“It could be a cryotube,” Cortana suggested as John joined them, “If needed, thrusters can be attached to the tube in case of emergencies, such as the ship being abandoned.”

“Of course,” Rawley stated, understanding what Cortana was going with, “The Autumn didn’t have time to awaken most of the crew from cryo when the Covenant attacked, so some of the cryotubes must have been jettisoned before she crashed on Halo.”

“Move us towards them,” John ordered, “Docking thrusters only. We can’t risk the Covenant finding them, or the fact that they will perish when power runs out for them.”

Twilight shuddered at that last statement. Cortana had told her about the dangers of being exposed to the vacuum of space in the spare free time she had between battles on Halo, so she knew about how deadly space could be. Her anger flared up again, but she tried to repress it once more.

Cortana quickly plotted a course and Twilight could feel the Longsword move faster. As they moved closer to the Cryotube slowly, Twilight could see that there was a Covenant cruiser and two Corvettes closer to it than they were.

“ETA twenty minutes,” Cortana said, but then added in a low voice, “That cruiser and its escorts will reach the cryotube in five minutes.”

“Do you think that the Covenant could detect magic?” Twilight asked.

“Potentially. If the Flagship is directing everything here and was in charge of all of the Covenant forces on Halo, then they would have all of the data that the Covenant gathered on you and your magic. If the commander is smart, he would have informed the captains of those cruisers to scan for any magical energy that they could detect.”

“So it’s not worth me teleporting that tube to us?” Twilight pointed at the cryotube, “because it may be spotted by the cruiser soon.”

“We’ll have to use that as a last resort,” John commented as he sealed his helmet. “Cortana, we need to go faster without firing the engines. Foehammer, Twilight, find any equipment that you can use that will prevent you from dying in vacuum.”

“On it, Chief!” Rawley immediately ran to a panel in the side of the cabin and opened it, pulling out a mask with an oxygen tank connected to it. She slipped on a suit next to it that covered all but her face and put on the mask, sealing her body from the potential dangers of space. She checked a meter on the mask. “I have around three hours of oxygen supply in this, but the suit isn’t designed for combat. I’ll be best stationed here for now.”

“Alright,” John said as he walked over to the weapons console and memorized the controls and the fastest way to activate the weapon systems. “Do you think Twilight can fit one of those masks over her face?”

“No,” Rawley said in a sombre manner. “They’re designed for human faces only, and her head is definitely not human shaped at all.”

“I’ll manage,” Twilight said as her horn lit up and was surrounded by pink light. “This will allow me to breathe normally in space and act like I’m flying,” she explained to the curious humans.

“Have you tried this before?” Cortana asked.

“No, I just made this on the spot!” Twilight snapped before laughing nervously, “I’m my own guinea pig this time.”

“Well, we’re about to find out if it works,” John commented, trying to ignore Twilight’s spontaneous anger, as the aft doors opened, sucking out all the air and depressurised the compartment. Twilight had to grab on to one of the seats in order to avoid being sucked out to space, with Rawley having already strapped herself to the pilot’s seat. It became even more of a struggle as the longsword shot forward.

It took Twilight a moment to realise that she was actually breathing normally. “Ha!” she shouted, “Another new spell to write in Starswirl’s magic guide!”

“Adjusting course,” Cortana stated as the doors closed again, and the cabin pressurised. Twilight, to conserve her magical energy, took down her aura while Rawley took off her mask to conserve her oxygen supply.

“Well, that’s one way of guiding a fighter quietly,” Rawley commented to Twilight.

“Not quietly enough,” Cortana’s statement immediately soured the mood as they noticed the Covenant cruiser and its escorts slowing down and beginning to turn towards the direction of the Longsword. “They’re increasing scans of the area. Attempting to jam them in order to buy us some time.”

“Shit,” Rawley muttered. “We wouldn’t even last a second if one of the corvettes finds us!”

“Then we won’t be found,” John stated calmly, his firm tone reassuring the occupants of the craft, despite the impossibility of his statement.

Twilight looked at the console that Rawley was studying and noted that the cryopod was actually three cryopods, which means three potential survivors to rescue. If they survive this ordeal, that is.

“New contact!” Cortana shouted, drawing everyone’s attention. “I think it is. Give me a moment... There is an object, most likely some form of vehicle, on one of those asteroids and… damn, it just rotated out of view. However, from my calculations, I can guess that it was a pelican dropship.”

Cortana sent an image to the consoles on the bridge, allowing everyone a look at what she found. “It appears you were right, Chief. That would be a perfect place to hide to avoid being spotted, or more likely that they crashed there.”

“I doubt it,” John responded. “The way the dropship has landed indicated that it can lift off at a moment's notices with ease.”

“Chief’s right,” Rawley nodded. “If I wanted to hide, but be able to speed off if needed, that’s how I would park. Hell, one of my fellow pilots is probably at the wheel of that thing, if the occupants are still alive.”

“Well, crashed or not, looks like they’ve attracted some attention,” Twilight said urgently, pointing to one of the corvettes moving towards the new contact.

“Damn,” John said, getting up and floated towards the rear of the ship. “I’ll get the cryopods. You two, stay here and get ready to fly off on my, or Cortana’s command.”

“Got it.” “Ok, Chief.”

“Coming about, Chief,” Cortana informed the Spartan, as Twilight looked on in apprehension. “Brace yourself and get ready to acquire that cryopod.”

“Acknowledged,” John said as he attached what appeared to be a metal rope to his suit and to a wheel near the door. ‘If the tether snaps, teleport me back, Twilight, if you are able to do so without being detected,’ he mentally told Twilight.

‘Let’s hope I don’t need to,’ she replied back through the mental link.

“Decompression in three seconds,” Cortana announced. Twilight had enough time to strap herself to the closest seat and activate her new spell before the bay door opened once more, this time with John leaping out into the black void.

Twilight felt helpless, watching the Spartan close the gap between the Longsword and the cryopod, unable to do anything without risking being spotted by the Covenant. Through the mental link, she witnessed his thoughts as he corrected his course to the cryopods and gasped when she saw his thoughts as he missed the first two of the three connected pods before grabbing onto the third one, breathing a sigh of relief.

As John wrapped the tether around the pods and began to get pulled back to the Longsword, the three Covenant ships began to move, certain sections of their bodies beginning to light up.

“Oh, no!” Rawley shouted as she saw that. “They’re getting ready to fire!” She quickly began to bring the engines back online, while Twilight stared out through the bay door, processing what she just heard.

This was it. They had survived the Covenant forces on the ground, survived the Monitor, survived the Flood, only to be destroyed by the Covenant in space?! ‘No!’ Twilight screamed in her head, her anger rising, ‘I will not allow us to end here!’

She got up off her seat, her mind totally consumed by her anger, not noticing the missiles streak towards the cruiser and collide with its shields as the Pelican flew out of its hiding spot. No, all she was doing was turning her anger into magical power.

Despite her traumatic experiences on Halo, her magic was more powerful than ever. And now that she was no longer near any Flood, it was hers to command totally. Power unlike anything she ever felt flowed through her horn as she teleported herself outside in space and stared down the Covenant Cruiser as several weapons on it and the two Corvettes turned to aim at her.

“TWILIGHT!” John called out to her, but she did not hear it.

All of her anger was finally unleashed. Her eyes glowing pink, darkeing into a purple, she produced a massive ball of power in front of her and threw it at the Cruiser.

John and Rawley stared at the ball of magic as they saw it fly straight into the Cruiser and pierce it. Within seconds the Cruiser broke apart, the debris colliding with the Corvettes, blowing them up as well.

For Twilight, she didn’t see any of that, for as soon as the ball was launched from her, her consciousness faded as her sight went black.