Dear Twilight Sparkle,
As of this moment, we have no idea where you are. All we know is that you're really far away as you and Scootaloo are both missing from the dreamscape. Your friends hope you're doing well along with Scootaloo. The main reason we are sending this message is that if Spike's fire can send these we know you are still alive. I also want you to know that no one got seriously injured when your spell collapsed. I wish we could be of more help from our position here in Equestria. The best help I can think of is to give you permission to use your authority as a princess to it's fullest extent to aid you in returning safely to us, I hope you will return to us soon my student we miss you all dearly.
Princess Celestia Morningstar
Diarch of Equestria
Guardian of the Sun
Twilight letting out a tear as she finished reading the letter, "I don't even know if I could get us back, there's literally nothing here that gives us a clue as to where home is."
"We'll find some way to get back Twilight, we both know that it's going to take a while but we'll figure it out at some point"
Scootaloo said as she gave Twilight a quick nuzzle before opening her own scroll,
Hi Squirt,
I'm not good with all this sappy stuff but I should be the one to write this letter to my number one fan. I already really miss you and hope you come back soon, I still owe you those flying lessons after all those workouts we've been going through. I know you'll be back at some point, with the egghead you'll figure out a way back in no time. On a side note, Luna told us that your magical signature matches the one of a member of the Hurricane family, so you're related to one of the pegasi's most fierce warriors. Scootaloo Hurricane, that probably makes you the second most awesome pony I know. miss you Squirt, get back soon, please.
Dash
"AWESOME!" Scootaloo shouted, "Scootaloo Hurricane! that's so cool!"
Most of the humans standing around the two ponies not understanding what had just happened, two scrolls had just appeared out of nowhere and were apparently from the ponies homeworld.
"That's cool and all but where the fuck did those scrolls come from!?" Tyler half-shouted
"From Equestria, they were send using Dragonfire. To send messages with it the dragon sending the messages has to have a good connection to the creature it wants to send a message to and most importantly said creature has to be alive."
"Your world has dragons?! Actually why the hell am I surprised, I'm talking to a purple talking pony." Tyler said, "I've had enough weird shit happen to me for one day, I'm going to bed.
As the group headed off to sleep a device in Mack's pocket started making a beeping sound, taking a glance at the device Mack stopped walking and turned around, "Captain wants to have a word with me, I'll be right back." Before walking out of medical up to the bridge.
The Captain was looking over at the holotable as Mack came walking in and letting off a salute, "You needed me, Sir?"
"At ease sergeant, I wanted to talk about our 'Guests' and some things cleared up." the captain said as he motioned Mack to come over to the holotable, "At 19:47 hours we detected two slipspace ruptures within the city, initially we just thought of them as a system malfunction but with the arrival of our two guests we theorized that this might be the teleport they were talking about." The captain pressing a few buttons and bringing up a map of the city, "These two locations are where we detected the ruptures, these are the locations of your team and this is the location of the explosion caused by alpha-four" The captain explained putting markers on the map at each location.
"So, if those two ruptures where Twilight and Scootaloo and both of them where attracted to alpha-four's explosion" Mack drawing a few paths on the map, "Then we would encounter Scoots at the explosion site and Twilight further up"
"Correct, so if we can verify that their teleporting ability is slipspace related then we can confirm their story about their teleport here in a manner ONI will accept." The captain said as he cleared the holotable, "I want you and your team to keep finding out information about them. If miss Twilight really is a princess having her on our side will help us out massively if we make contact with their homeworld. I also suggest writing up a comprehensive report for the spooks of everything you find out before we arrive at Reach, you got them onboard this ship sergeant like it or not your fates are now linked. Dismissed."
Mack nodded as he let off another salute before walking back to medical.
Getting back to medical Mack found that everyone had found one of the temporary bunks and was now asleep, everyone except Twilight as she seemed to be twisting and turning in her bed muttering to herself. Mack walking over to her and sitting down on her bed, "Twilight?"
Twilight immediately jumped at the unexpected voice before calming down at the sight of Mack sitting on her bed, "Uhm, how did your meeting with the captain go?" she nervously asked.
"Twilight what's wrong? it doesn't take an expert to see something's bothering you."
For the first few seconds, she tried to come up with an excuse only to come up blank "How do you do it?" she asked him.
"I think of all the things they have done to us, all the killing and destruction. If by killing them I reduce the chance of my fellow soldiers getting killed I'll do it. If it wasn't necessary I would've quit this job a long time ago but I'm not going to quit while my brothers in arms are still out there risking their asses to protect us all."
Twilight seemed to think over his explanation before responding with something Mack hadn't expected, "I-I, Mack would it be possible for me to fight?"
Taken aback by the pony that previously hadn't shown any intention to participate in the fighting, "Twilight, that's not a decision I can make, if you really want to we can give you some training but to fight you'll have to get approval from command and why would you even want to fight in a war that's not even yours?"
Twilight sighing, "If I'd do nothing now and the covenant finds Equis it would mean that either the planet gets destroyed and everyone dies or they decide to invade and enslave everyone, I can't let that happen and humanity even though heavily outmatched, still has a better chance of defeating the covenant then anyone on Equis."
"I'll talk about it with the captain, but don't expect anything from it because he doesn't have a say in it either. Also, what are we going to do with Scootaloo? I don't think she wants to be separated from you"
"I know, even though she'll put up a brave face I don't think she'll want to fight. You know, my family actually has a long tradition of being in the military, my uncle served on the frontier with the Griffins, my brother is the commander of the Royal Guard, my mom was a part of the Special Tasks Group or STG before it was shut down due to research into bio-weapons, my dad not being a fighter still worked in command and I could go on with that list. The fact that I didn't pursue a military career actually shocked parts of the family."
"If you really want to then I'll set up some training exercises, but that's the best I can do. You should probably get some sleep if we are going to train you up to our standards."
Twilight lying back down into bed before looking back over to Mack, "Thank you."
"Don't mention it, glad to know that you want to help us out." Mack said as he found a bed of his own.
Unbeknownst to Twilight and Mack, a certain orange filly had been listening to the entire conversation and wasn't planning to be left behind, 'Like Twilight said I don't really want to fight, but like Mack said he also doesn't really want to fight either and if the covenant find Equis the world we know will just stop existing. AB, Sweetie, Rainbow, everyone I know will be at risk.' Now stuck with this conundrum in her head she made the same decision as Twilight, 'If the princess of friendship of all ponies is going to fight then I'm too.' with that everyone drifted to sleep knowing what the next day would bring.
Twilight's night had been anything but restful as images of the dead elite kept haunting her dreams keeping her awake, just as she finally got comfortable an extremely annoying beeping sound started coming from a device in Tylers hand.
"GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE!" Tyler shouted into Twilight's ears who screamed and jumped into the air letting out a wave of telekinesis against the perpetrator and subsequently everyone else in the room.Causing Tyler to fly into the wall on the other side of the room and everyone else to get pushed out of bed, Twilight now trying to get her breathing under control.
"Twilight what the fuck was that." Tyler groaned.
Twilight realizing what she had just done immediately started apologizing, "I'm so sorry you startled me, are you okay?, I might know some healing spells."
"I'm good Twilight, I'm just interested in how you just knocked me six meters away into a wall." Tyler said as he got back on his feet shaking off a little bit of the disorientation.
"Yeah, that was freaking scary Twilight." Lucy added, getting up from her position on the ground.
"That was a telekinetic wave, it's actually the easiest spell a unicorn can perform because it's just releasing a large amount of magic in an as short time as possible. Most unicorns can't create a wave as powerful as the one you just got hit by but you just made the decision to startle the third most powerful mage of Equestria." To prove her point she used her magic to restore the room to its original state even making the beds to perfection, not that restoring the room was something difficult at all but to someone that had no magic knowledge at all it must be an incredibly impressive sight to see. "I need coffee, please tell me humans have coffee." She added before walking out of the room.
"This crap is going to happen more often isn't it?" Zoey said
"You mean getting thrown around or the casual breaking of physics?" Mack groaned.
"Both" Zoey responded,
"Can we get some food too?" Scootaloo asked the humans as if nothing had just happened, "I remember that Tyler promised me some beef" she added with a smirk.
"If any of you give her meat I'll personally kick your flank off this ship!" Twilight shouted from one of the other rooms.
"Sorry kid, I'm not angering a pony that can probably just teleport me out of the ship." Tyler told Scootaloo, "just have to steal the package again I'm afraid." he whispered in her ear with a smirk on his face.
The group heading off to the temporary dining room, finding twilight sitting at the table with a half-empty coffeepot in her hooves. "Don't judge me, without it I'd be a wreck"
"Just leave some for us, not like we get going without the stuff." Woods said, "Except maybe Tyler but he's an exception."
"Shut up cunt, I'm not doing shit without coffee." Tyler responded, "don't know about you guys but I'm getting breakfast"
At that everyone started eating their rations in relative silence, until Mack broke it again.
"Twilight, you should tell them. They're going to find out soon enough." Twilight getting a few curious glances, Scootaloo's not among them as she already guessed what this was about.
"You're right, yesterday me and Mack had a talk an-" Tyler cutting off Twilight mid-sentence, "Did you two finally hook up?"
Before he could react Twilight had him hanging upside down in her telekinesis, "Can you just shut up for a moment? Thank you very much." After that, she released her grip on Tyler who smacked into the ground, "It's still too early for this crap" he groaned.
"So like I was trying to say, after Mack and I had a talk I decided I wanted to help with the fighting." Lucy nearly choked on her breakfast the moment Twilight said 'fighting', "You want to fight?! And what and what about Scootaloo? You can't just leave her!"
"She's not, I'm coming along for the ride." Scootaloo said, "Like you said yesterday Twilight if the covenant finds Equis the planet won't last a day. I don't really want to go out there but I'm not going to sit still while everyone I know is unknowingly in danger. So, in short, you're stuck with me if you like it or not."
"Scootaloo! you're only fifteen years old!" Twilight almost shouted back, "You can't just go off to war!"
"Actually I can, Equis has three hundred eighty day years Human years only have three hundred sixty-five days. So in human years, I'm already sixteen meaning that I can apply for the Marines here." Scootaloo stated matter of factly.
"She's right Twilight if you get permission from Command to participate in the fighting she'll also be allowed to go." Mack confirmed,
"So we're going to be holding a kind of boot camp for the both of them?" Tyler asked to which Mack nodded, "Sweet!"
"So, are you two up for it too?" Lucy asked the ponies to which Twilight glanced at Scootaloo, seeing that she wasn't going to back down she sighed and responded, "All right, we're in."
"This is the bucking worst!" Twilight groaned while lying in her bunk bed, the last week the ODST's had been meticulously drilling her and Scootaloo. Everything from running to strength training had been covered, Tyler even set up an assault course modified for ponies in the hangar bay. To say every muscle in her body ached was a massive understatement. Also being tired didn't help either, since she spent all of her free time learning about various topics like slipspace and astrophysics. Scootaloo, on the other hoof, had appeared to have thoroughly enjoyed herself, saying that she already did a similar training regiment with Rainbow Dash. Needless to say, if Twilight ever got her hooves on the rainbow maned pony there would be Tartarus to pay for dragging a filly through a training schedule like this one.
"Suck it up Twilight, every soldier has gone through this so if you want to be part of the military you'll have to finish it too." Mack stated as he came walking through the door with two packages under his arm, "No training for today, the crew is going to be defrosted for our arrival at Reach. So I got you two a present to make sure the crew Identifies you two as friendlies in the event you run into one of them." He added before tossing both of the packages to either pony.
Quickly opening the packages the two ponies found a tight-fitting dark-grey bodysuit with name tag and UNSC logo in either package, "Awesome! but why would we need them I mean aren't we staying in medical sarge?"
"Nope, we're going to get front row seats exiting slipspace at Reach. So we'll be present on the bridge meaning the bridge crew is going to see you for the first time, they already heard about you two over the radio when we were on the pelican but they have no clue how you two look like."
Scootaloo accepting the explanation started putting on her suit, a few minutes of struggling later both she and Twilight stood clothed in the suits.
"I don't think I'll ever understand how Rarity can find wearing clothes comfortable." Scootaloo said as she fiddled with the suit.
"You'll get used to it after a while" Twilight assured Scootaloo before turning to Mack who had been waiting, "When are we dropping out of slipspace?"
"In fifteen minutes, but the Captain wants us on the bridge before that." Mack answered, "The others are already up there so let's not keep them waiting for us"
A few minutes of walking and an elevator ride later the group arrived on the bridge. Initially, no-one seemed to notice the new arrivals as they were busy preparing for the arrival at Reach, but as the two ponies got further in the room started to fall silent.
"Miss Sparkle, a pleasure to meet you." A low-pitched voice said from the front of the room breaking the silence.
Twilight and Scootaloo looking over at the source of the voice finding a tall man wearing a naval uniform with captain stripes on his shoulders.
"Pleasure is all mine, Sir!" She and Scootaloo both responding with the salute Tyler had taught them.
"At ease Twilight, I just want to ask you and Scootaloo here some questions." The captain said as he motioned for Twilight and Scootaloo to come over to the side with him.
With the entire room now slowly getting back to work and Twilight and Scootaloo in conversation with the captain Mack stepped back to his squad, "Those two are really quite something, aren't they?"
"If by something you mean that they ran the equivalent of a hell week then yeah, they're quite something." Lucy responded, "With proper training of the usage of firearms I sure as hell wouldn't mind if those two were beside me on a battlefield."
"If command approves of their request to fight alongside us that might actually be something that becomes a reality." Tyler added, "Which with this kind performance isn't out of the question."
Any further conversation was cut off as one of the bridge officers called out, "One minute to slipspace exit!"
Twilight and Scootaloo coming over to stand with the other ODST's, a few moments later the same officer called out again, "Slipspace exit in Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" As the officer reached zero the blackness of slipspace gave way to the star-filled realspace, "Slipspace transition to realspace successful Captain"
"Good, nav what's our location?" The captain asked another officer.
"Drift shot us quite far in system, we're only half a standard AU from Reach." She responded, "10 minutes to visual range."
The following 10 minutes passed in relative silence as the Stalwart Dawn approached humanities main military bastion other than Earth.
"Magnify the planet on the main screen please." The captain breaking the silence with his order and a planet appeared shortly after on the main viewscreen,
"Welcome to Reach."