Twilight woke up in the plain she had first met Dash, in the distance she could see the portal that gave a view into the real world, Luna had apparently managed to make it self-sustaining.
"Thine are troubled Twilight Sparkle." Luna's voice came from behind her, if Twilight hadn't expected either her or Dash to appear she might have been startled.
"It's hard not to be Princess, the situation here isn't very accommodating to say the least." Twilight responded sitting down on her haunches.
Luna walked up to the fellow alicorn and also sat down, "If it makes a difference, the letter that we sent to thine pegasus companion went through fine."
Twilight let out a sigh, if she made it out of the drop she'd at least had a chance of survival. Twilight started shaking slightly as she had a chance to reflect on herself, "I'm tired, Luna. Everything I thought I stood for just got thrown out the window when I got here." She stated as tears started flowing while she was staring into the infinity beyond. "It's kill or be killed out here. You know I looked into how this war started, do you want to know how?" She asked Luna, who nodded.
"About three decades ago humanity lost contact with one of their colonies, Harvest, it was one of their main farming colonies. When the UNSC sent a recon mission consisting of three ships they found the planet's surface burned to glass and a strange ship in orbit. Out of the three ships the UNSC sent only one escaped the engagement with that ship."
Twilight looked straight into Luna's eyes as the princess was listening intently, "There were three-hundred thousand humans living on that world. It's a testament to human perseverance that only fifty thousand of them died that battle instead of the entire colony."
"Only fifty thousand!?" Dash's voice came from the side, Twilight looked over at the pegasus who had joined in as Twilight was telling her story. "How many lives have been lost if FIFTY THOUSAND is only a small number!" She shouted as she looked slightly pale.
"Over eighteen billion and if Earth falls that number will spike to over twenty-five billion." Twilight said, Rainbows wings dropped as she tried to process that number.
"Don't bother trying to visualize that amount of death, Rainbow." Twilight told her, "You can't. No-one can."
Everypony in the dreamworld looked over at the portal into the real world as they heard a scuffle. They could see the doors flying open and Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Rarity storm into the room.
"TWILIGHT!" Pinkie screamed as she ran into the portal, hitting a wall as the portal wasn't traversable. Slowly sliding down the mirror before making a backflip, coming to a standstill in front of it. "OhmyghoshTwilightIvemissedyousomuchandIwanttothrowapartyrightnowbutyouwouldntbeabletoeatthecakeand *Gasp* yourenotreallyonthisplanetapperantly..." Pinkies ramble was cut off as AJ stuffed her hoof into Pinkies mouth, "What Pinky wants tha say that we're all mighty glad you're okay." She said.
"How much did you tell them?" Twilight asked Rarity and Fluttershy, "Because they deserve to know."
"We thought it best if you told them yourself, darling." Rarity said, AJ and Pinkie looking confused at the fashionista.
"What in tarnation is she talking about, Twilight?" AJ asked sitting down next to Pinkie in front of the portal. Luna stepped forward to stop Twilight from having to go through her story again.
"The world our Twilight Sparkle currently inhabits is involved in a terrible conflict which my fellow princess has gotten involved with." Luna explained, Rainbow meanwhile had walked up To Twilight and held her in a tight hug. "You're still our egghead Twilight, you may be a bit busted but you'll always be my friend."
"uhm, Twilight? Have you found Scootaloo yet?Fluttershy asked, Twilight turned to the animal caretaker. "I've only just managed to get out of the city, I'll know more after I hook up with command but they're going to be in disarray with the covenant here on Earth so it might take a while."
"Oh, okay." Fluttershy said as she hid behind her mane.
"I'm sorry for screaming at you Fluttershy, I wasn't in a safe location at the time. I still aren't really" Twilight said while holding a hoof on the portal.
"I also should have blamed you, I might not fully understand why you're doing what you're doing but I know you'd have thought about it." Fluttershy responded, holding her hoof against the portal in the same spot Twilight was holding it.
"This is all well and good but this all doesn't 'splain ah thing to me and Pinkie." Applejack said as she still looked puzzled while Pinkie's hair deflated by half.
"I'm currently in the middle of a warzone AJ. A day ago the covenant started a planetary assault and in their initial attack landed units in a city down here. I'm part of the QRF that was tasked with driving them back into their ship." Twilight explained, AJ mouth opens slightly in awe. "Initially it went quite well but after the first time I spoke to you girls everything went to Tartarus. After I woke up I found out a second fleet had arrived and we were trying to bug out the city."
Twilight began tearing up again as she remembered the city in flames as the covenant vessels started glassing.
"They destroyed it all." She said sobbing, "It's just like what happened at Reach."
AJ stayed silent as she had no Idea what to respond with.
"Methinks it's best if we let Twilight rest for a bit, just as you might want to process this information." Luna said, while turning to Rainbow, "that means you too my apprentice."
Rainbow nodded and faded out of the dream world as Luna closed the viewing portal. "We have made slight progress in locating the planet you're residing on but as it stands now we wouldn't be able to create a stable portal to bring you back due to the extreme distance."
"We have slipspace capable spaceships here, Princess. I can just make a jump back home provided that we can figure out the coordinates and we don't lose the war, which isn't that Farfetched." Twilight responded.
Luna nodded "Than we shall focus on simply determining thine location. Rest well Twilight Sparkle, we shall guard your dreams to the best of our abilities." She said fading from the dream, allowing Twilight the rest she would need.
Twilight was sneaking through the underbrush of the jungle where a hidden base was located, her sniper loaded with specialized rounds for extreme range engagements and her armor covered in a gilly suit she made steady progress to a ridge to achieve a firing position. It had been twenty-seven days since New Mombasa and the covenant hadn't been sitting still in that time, they had been digging a very large hole, uncovering a very large buried structure.
Sneaking up to the ridge she had navigated to she deployed the bipod on the sniper and started scanning the area, a small squad of grunts accompanied by a brute were mulling around about five-hundred meters away. focusing further out she could see the CAS-assault carriers working on their excavation sight, snapping as many pictures as she could while at it she finally spotted her target about one and a half kilometers out. Another Brute wearing honor guard armor was standing around screaming orders at more grunts who were hastily performing the random tasks given to them.
Twilight made the mental calculation taking windspeed, bullet-drop, Earths location, air-density, and air-humidity into account as she lined up the shot. She felt the telekinetic field in her hooves take hold of the trigger as it slowly compressed.
"May Celestia guide you to the fields of Elysium."She whispered.
BANG
The recoil pushed the pony back a couple of centimeters as she tracked the bullet that seconds later hit the head of the brute, the bullet punching through the shield it possessed and buried itself into the brute's skull. Attaching the sniper to the magnetic clamp on her armor she turned around and sprinted back into the jungle, behind her she heard a few grunts shouting but she knew they wouldn't be able to catch up let alone see her if they did.
Running for almost an hour Twilight stopped for a break and set up the radio she was also carrying. She smiled a bit internally, she could probably beat Rainbow and AJ in one of their 'Iron Pony' competitions if she wanted.
"Stardust to Starfire. Target eliminated and visual reconnaissance complete, returning to extraction. Over." She said over the radio.
"Copy that Stardust, Starfire out." The Zoey responded, Twilight packed up her radio ate some food and headed off again. She had managed to find some marines claiming to have seen a pegasus fighting in the streets of New Mombasa but after the carrier jumped there were none, Dash initially didn't take well to this news but after they had sent a small sliver of paper to the filly they at least knew that she was alive.
The other thing that was occupying her mind was Tyler, the ODST was still in an artificially maintained coma as the doctors had repaired as much of the damage in his body as they possibly could. That said he would probably not wake up for some time as none of the doctors wanted to risk waking him up.
Twilight saw a beacon light up on her HUD as she got close to the pelican hidden pelican that was to extract her. Jogging the last hundred meters through the thinning underbrush she entered a small clearing where the pelican was hidden.
"Get on board, Sparkle. Someone is coming by some ONI space station to talk with the Engineer and they want everyone who helped extract him to be present." She said from the ramp of her pelican.
"Let me guess." Twilight said, "A spook?"
"Doesn't seem like it." Zoey responded while strapping into the pilot's seat, "Some sergeant major, with the approval of Lord Hood that is."
Twilight's ears perked up at that, "When is he arriving?" She asked while strapping in herself.
"About the same time as us getting there." The pilot responded as she whirled up the engines and took off, staying close to the jungle's roof to get some distance from the dig site before heading to orbit. Two hours of flight later they docked at the space station and Twilight made her way over to the rest of the squad while Zoey stayed with the pelican.
As she entered the room she saw the Engineer fiddling with a camera as the other ODST's were sitting around the room doing whatever.
"How was your day, Sparkle?" Mack asked as he saw Twilight enter.
"Shot something, took some pictures, and got my flank away from there as fast as possible." Twilight replied, "How's Virgil?"
The Engineer let out a few happy squeaks as he continued fiddling with the camera. "He's been entertaining himself by repairing and mucking about with everything we give him." Buck answered, a door opened behind them and Dare alongside her the visiting sergeant major. "Does it have access to the covenant battlenet?" He asked
"Limited but yes, we're not entirely sure how it manages a remote connection to the.. Whoa!" Dare said but got cut off when the sergeant threw a lighter at the engineer. Time seemed to slow for Twilight as she focussed on the lighter and stopped it with her levitation.
"Stand down!" Buck shouted as the other ODST's twitched while the engineer picked the lighter from Twilight's magic aura.
"Told ya, She'd do that." Scootaloo's voice came from the door. Twilight immediately turned towards the grinning pegasus and without warning tackled her to the ground in a crushing hug.
"Twilight, air." Scootaloo gasped, Twilight giving her slightly more space. "Did you get a hugging course from Pinkie in the time I was gone or something?" She asked, getting a chuckle from Twilight.
"No, but I can ask her when I get down planetside again." Twilight responded, "Rainbow has been worried sick about you, you know."
Scootaloo grabbed a piece of parchment from a pocket in her armor, which Twilight observed to be burned badly. "Yea, I know. She sent me a message while I was dropping onto Halo." Scoots replied, finally managing to get out of Twilights vice grip. She looked at the other ODST's of her squad but found something amiss. "Where's Tyler?"
Twilight's smile dropped as she had to tell what happened, "He got hit by a gravity hammer. He's in a coma right now."
Scootaloo's smile also dropped, "Damn, is he stable?"
"Yea, he's been recovering and he still has brain function but we'll only know the damage if he wakes up." Lucy said as the group separated itself from Johnson and the other ODST's.
"He'll make it." Scootaloo said, "He's too stubborn to die."
The mood lifted a bit at Scootaloo's comment as everyone agreed with her sentiment, Johnson finished with the engineer and walked over to the group. "Sergeant Cross, get your squad ready you're going down with us."
"Yes, Sir!" He said, Johnson walking off towards the hangar bay. Scootaloo also got up and walked after the sergeant major, "I'll go scare Zoey for a bit, you guys gear up." Scootaloo said as she hobbled off to the pilot. "Oh yeah, we're going to hook up with a Sangheili deserter down there." She mentioned before turning the corner.
Lucy looked at the corner where the pegasus disappeared, "Is it me or does that pegasus only get more insane as the time goes on?"
"I just want to know whatever she went through out there to come back with an elite and an energy dagger attached to her armor." Twilight said as she had noticed the extra augment on Scootaloo's armor.
Twilight sat across from Scootaloo in the pelican as they made their way back down to the surface, the filly was screwing around with the energy dagger module attached to her gauntlet.
"So, Scootaloo. Where did you get that?" Twilight asked as she couldn't stop her curiosity.
Scootaloo lit the blade, instead of the usual blue it had a purple hue to it. "It belonged to a dead elite we found, the 'prophets' have outlawed the elites initiating a civil war within the covenant."
Scootaloo deactivated the blade again before continuing, "We left the arbiter back at the crow's nest but we hope the rest of the rebel elites will show up to kick the covenant out of orbit."
Sergeant Johnson turned to the crew compartment from the cockpit, "Change of plans, ladies. The dreadnought that has been wrecking the navy just entered atmosphere and the guest it was carrying just bailed out."
Scootaloo's ears perked up at hearing that and she immediately checked if she was loaded up on ammo, "Do we know where he landed?" Scootaloo asked, Johnson nodding.
"The arbiter will meet us there with some marines, ETA is thirty minutes." Johnson said, turning back to the cockpit. The other ODST's also making sure they were fully packed, "So, Hurricane. Who is that guest?" Mack asked.
"Master Chief petty officer Sierra one-one-seven." Scootaloo answered, Lucy accidentally dropped her assault rifle at hearing the designation S-117.
"The Chief, as in the Spartan?!" She asked exasperated, "Tell us, what the hell have you been doing when you were gone!"
Scootaloo attached her SMG to her barrel and sat back down in her seat, "After my drop pod disintegrated I figured out how to glide down to a rooftop. After that, I managed to hook up with a squad of marines from the In Amber Clad, the Chief being among them. We fought towards the carrier when the prophet decided to bug out, which you guys probably noticed, we followed them into slipspace encountering a..." Scootaloo hesitated for a moment, "A weapon" She finally said.
"Weapon? What did the covenant build?" Twilight asked, Scootaloo cringing a bit as she was pretty certain the information was classified.
"No it was built by someone else but I don't know who and I'm pretty sure that's classified information." She replied, continuing her story. "After entering realspace again we found the construct and dropped onto it, finding out that for some reason the covenant thought it a good idea to fire the thing. We took out one of their prophets but by doing that the covenant fleet that had shown up in the system started glassing our location."
"How large a weapon are we talking about here? It must be big if the covies decided to just glass a portion of it." Lucy asked, Scootaloo looked forward to the cockpit where she saw the sergeant major also listening in. He nodded to Scootaloo that she could continue.
"It's a ring world with a diameter of ten thousand kilometres and its weapons can supposedly whipe out all life in a twenty five thousand lightyear radius."
Twilight's brain hit a road bump for a moment as she tried to comprehend the size of the object, "T-That's the size of a planet!" She stammered.
"Yeah. Anyway, through some unfortunate events I managed to end up with the Arbiter who I helped to stop the firing of Halo. After that we hitched a ride back to Earth with a prowler to prevent the covenant taking control of a structure called the Ark. You can fire all the Halo's from there apparently."
Everyone seemed to be slightly stunned at what Scootaloo had seen. "So the structure the covenant have been digging up is the Ark?" Mack asked to which Scootaloo shrugged, "Don't know, neither does Discord so I'd rather not take any chances."
"Wait, did you say Discord?!" Twilight shouted as she struggled to keep up with the stream of information. "What does that lawn ornament have to do with this?"
"He's been manipulating things behind the scenes, If he keeps his promise he'll contact Luna tonight. He also said that he would allow Dash and Luna access to my dream bubble so I can talk to Equestria too." Scootaloo explained, the pelican setting down in the jungle. The ramp opened allowing everyone to exit, Twilight tensed up as she saw an elite standing amidst a group of marines but didn't do anything as Scootaloo walked up to him.
"Have you found the demon?" He asked Johnson.
"About a mile north of here." Johnson responded, the Arbiter nodded and motioned the others to move.
"You lead you troops to him, I'll make sure nothing sneaks up on you." He said as he activated his active camo.
"Well what are you standing around for? Let's go get our Spartan!" Johnson said as he and the marines started moving further into the jungle.
"You three coming or are you just going to stand there?" Scootaloo said walking after Johnson.
The three ODST's looked at each other, Mack shrugged and started following Scootaloo. Twilight and Lucy followed closely after him.
They apparently had a Spartan to retrieve.