[{Author's note: it has come to my attention (through one of my pre-readers who is unfamiliar with Halo) that I should clarify a couple of things before this chapter for those of you who are not familiar with Halo. First off, the Forerunners (in Halo theory) existed thousands to millions of year ago, so this is not happening at the same time as the other chapters of this story. Secondly, the Forerunners apore Humans as there was a 300 year long war between Forerunners and Humans who were sided with the San Shyu'um (Prophets). This chapter inculdes a heavy amount of Halo theory along with many different concepts I created and developed myself. I'm taking a huge risk with the Forerunner Saga of books being written currently and the upcoming Halo Trilogy (which will be furthering our understanding of the Forerunners). So, if there is any confusion, I apologize. This is me speaking my mind and my story. After this chapter, however, there will be no more chapters based off of Halo theory. Enjoy!}]
Madegalaxer Takes Forever Sorrow stepped on the platform to take him to his invention. To either dismantle it or hand it over to the Forerunners.
Forever Sorrow looked at the Librarian. "Listen, don't take me to my invention. It's now a forbidden..."
The Librarian snapped her neck in Sorrow's direction. "Be quiet you Heretic. You Human."
Sorrow cringed as she said that. "Stop that! Stop calling my kind, Humans, Herectics we are not!"
"Blasphemy!" The Librarian yelled. "The Forerunners are the true heirs to the Precursors! Not you filthy Humans."
"We did what we had to do because of the Flood, Librarian."
"Don't use such an impurity as an excuse Human."
"I have a name."
"My apologies. Heretic."
"We fought you because of our war with the Flood; to keep the universe safe from the infestation."
"No excuse!"
"It's true! Listen, Librarian. The Eques are using the Fruit of Good for Evil. They are using it to transport The Flood as a transport generator, transporting them here, and taking them from the ship we used to disperse the Flood."
The Librarian stood motionless for a second. "Is that why we found you cowering?"
"Yes."
The Librarian looked at the Guardians and told them to turn around.
Sorrow felt a bit relieved, but heard the Librarian mutter something like "Filthy Human." The floating trolley then stopped at a research bay and the Librarian grabbed the best research and weapon technology, remounted the trolley, and headed back towards the loading bay holding Sorrow's invention.
Sorrow started to panic. "What are you doing?"
The Librarian handed the Guardians all the weapons. "I'm not missing this opportunity to study the Flood. If things get out of hand we'll resort to the Guardian's job."
Sorrow laughed. "You cocky Forerunners. Us Humans barely defeated the Flood 10,000 years ago. What makes you think these weapons will stop the Flood already here?"
The Librarian returned a laugh. "You Humans and your weak technology..."
Sorrow grew angry and his fleshy face flushed with blood. "We almost defeated you in our war. And you call us weak. It took you forever to bash through our defenses."
"You used Precursor technology."
"Along with our own. We had to fight the Flood with biological warfare by altering our own species. The Flood are not to be taken lightly. Get larger forces and eradicate the machine, then the Flood. Don't let the Eques continue to use my machine to harvest Forerunner lifepower."
The Librarian glanced at Sorrow. "So now your machine harvests Forerunners?"
Sorrow shuffled his feet. "Well, yes. I made it to do that. It was to..."
"Why would you do that?"
"It was to bring the Forerunners even more fuel and energy than before. A Forerunner's lifepower is the most source of energy in the galaxy. It could easily power this installation for a generation, but hadn't the clue that the Eques could use it for their own gain."
"I knew it was wrong to use them anyways."
"Then why did you approve it?"
"Because..." The Librarian said. "I thought you were going to use your invention to help them, after what we did to them. Destroyed their home, brought them down to the lowest form of life..."
Sorrow's heart dropped. "Like what you did to Humans." Now Sorrow wished he could of used the machine to help the Eques and their kind, or Humans for that matter.
Sorrow looked up and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the landing bay for the trolley at The Fruit's station. A sort of fleshy, organic material was plastered on the wall and ceiling.
"Please don't do this." He begged the Librarian.
She ignored him.
Sorrow accepted his fate. "Okay," he said, giving a deep sigh and gazing down at his feet. "Just aim for where a Human's heart would be."
The organic mush flattened beneath Forever Sorrow's feet. He could hear the Guardians checking every inch of the area while the group made their way through the laboratory.
"Hmmm." The Librarian mumbled while scanning the flesh with her ancilla.
"What?" Sorrow inquired without taking his eyes off the front direction.
"All this organic material seems to be made from Humans. No Forerunners; just Humans."
Sorrow closed his eyes.'"I told you. The Eques are using Forerunner lifepower to use my machine to teleport all the Flood aboard the ship we Humans sent the remaining Flood off on. The Flood is returning. And it's returning because you Forerunners were too anxious and greedy to let them go. Just like you did to us Humans."
The Librarian gripped her equipment with frustration. "You used them just as much as we allowed you to."
"That's only because I owed you Forerunners a debt. Either way it still gives you no right to treat intellectual species as if they were mere worms."
The Librarian said nothing and the eight Guardians surrounding Sorrow kept their eyes forward, ignoring the conversation he and the Librarian had, but that was their job after all.
"Okay." The Librarian muttered, lowering her research equipment. "Let's move on."
Sorrow scanned the macabre horizon. "Is there anywhere specific you would like to go?"
The Librarian chuckled. "Let's visit your hooven friends shall we?"
Sorrow cringed at the mocking sarcasm as he moved forward deeper into the quarantined area.
One of the six remaining Guardians slammed the heavy door shut while Sorrow leaned against the wall, clutching his pounding chest.
"Was that the Flood?" The Librarian shouted.
Sorrow glared at such an ignorant question. "Of course it was! What else could it be?"
The Librarian shook her head. "A horde of them came out of the mist and just attacked us...."
"I know. I was there."
"What...?" The Librarian stuttered. "What did those small bulbous things do to those two Guardians?"
Sorrow shook his head as he swallowed a large amount of saliva. "Those were the infection Forms. They take over control of sentient beings by over riding their nervous system."
"So, they're pat of the Flood now?"
"What do you think?!?" Sorrow threw his hands in the air towards the Librarian. "You are supposed to be this genius Forerunner, so much smarter than all the others, and yet you ask such obvious questions, why?"
The Librarian looked up at Sorrow through her ancilla. "Listen here, Heretic."
Sorrow clenched his fist.
"No Forerunner was told what the Flood did, for whatever reason we were told nothing. You Humans and the San 'Shyuum told us nothing. So, we prepared in the best way we could by creating these Halo arrays. All you told us to do was to create something to destroy all sentient beings in the galaxy."
Sorrow looked up in confusion. "What? Who told you that?"
The Librarian tilted her head. "A single-minded San' Shyuum, from their original home Janjur Qom. He seemed to be a high ranking San 'Shyuum, but he seemed to have gone insane shortly after. He told us to 'Spark the Great Journey.'"
Sorrow's head darted in the Librarian's direction. "No, did you believe him? Why?"
The Librarian stood there, confused. "What?" She simply inquired.
Sorrow dropped his head. "I was told the Halo arrays were made to automatically genetically engineer sentient beings to counter the Flood like we did. I didn't know they were made following him."
The Librarian began to look worried, even through her ancilla. "What?"
Sorrow sighed. "As we learned from the war between us, Humans can handle battles just fine, but the San 'Shyuum can't. The stress, the worry, the fear gets to them, but some can over come it after some treatment. The San 'Shyuum you just mentioned, however, was one of the few not cured. He began to go on a rant about a cult, and many of the San 'Shyuum followed him before they retreated. He was a war leader for them, so he was seen as having sanity. I... I knew otherwise."
A large bang on the door the Guardians were holding back sounded and everybody in the room looked at the door. Sorrow closed his eyes and continued.
"Whatever it was he told you was a lie. There are other ways to combat the Flood than by destroying their food source, us. If you were to follow what we did we could eradicate the Flood, have them eradicate each other actually, but..." Sorrow looked at the door. "I suppose there is nothing to do in this situation, but..." Sorrow began to think.
The changed Librarian stared at the Human in wonder. Why had such a beautiful and caring race been dismantled in the way they were? If they were the true heirs to the Precursors than so be it.
"What?" She asked.
"If you could turn right a wrong you made to someone, or an entire species for that matter?"
The Librarian closed her eyes under her ancilla and thought about how the Human society was now. Horribly destroyed with the Humans left who hadn't committed suicide. "Yes, I would."
Sorrow nodded his head. "Okay, well I can save the Eques' homeland, whatever it is they call it. Equestria? Yes, I can save their homeland and them as a race if we cannot eradicate the Flood here."
The Librarian smiled. "How?"
Another bang on the door sounded. Sorrow knew that the Flood on the other side was either a Juggernaut or a Tank Pure Form. How he prayed it was the Pure Form.
"Okay," Sorrow began. "If I heard the Eques correctly the Flood are being fed by the negative lifepower of the Forerunners. That means that the positive lifepower is still contained in my invention. I have the ability to use some of the power to eradicate the Flood in this installation, but at a price."
The Librarian looked at Sorrow intently. "I'm listening."
Sorrow sighed. "It will act as one your Halo arrays and destroy all sentient life in this installation as well. Including you; including me."
The Librarian looked down. "What about the Eques?"
Sorrow nodded again, ignoring the next bang on the door. "I can preset the remaining life power to surround the land of Equestria and send the two Eques home, since my machine apparently as the capability of teleportation. From doing that any and all Flood will avoid Equestria for the rest of time."
The Librarian enjoyed the idea. "And doing so will eliminate that Flood, but we swore to not commit genecide."
"Does it matter not, the threat the Flood brings to the universe as a whole?" Sorrow screamed at the Librarian while keeping himself balanced from another slam against the heavy, metal door starting to split behind him.
"It does! But... We can't break such a galacticly, widely held rule that we created."
Sorrow crossed his arms. "You almost broke that promise with us."
The Librarian clenched her fist. "Listen! We are running out of time! That, thing is about to bust through the door and kill us before we can do anything."
Sorrow waved his hands up and down. "Okay, okay... We will... save some of the Flood. If we make it out of this room we can head to were ADIM is resting. He can isolate some Flood and send them to another installation with a message from you, the Librarian."
The Librarian nodded. "Okay, okay... So, we'll head there, and then what?"
Sorrow crossed his arms again. "Well..."
Abrubtly the door behind him exploded from the other side and large, fleshy form stood just outside. It barged in and the Guardians lifted up their weapons and began to unleash the compacted energy inside their weapons. The figure looked like an over grown carrier-form of the Flood with two incredibly long and incredibly large tenticles in place of arms.
It swung at the two Guardians in front one tenticle swinging horizintally, the other vertically, and crushed the two Guardians, sending shrapnelled ancilla bits soaring through the air with trailing orange blood. It swung at the next two Guardians and they quickly dodged it, diving to the side, but one's legs were caught under the blow and the appendages were quickly plastered to the floor.
The Guardian screamed out in pain and the Juggernaut form of the Flood fell to the floor after the concentrated fire from the Guardians' weapons.
The Librarian started towards the injured Guardian, but Sorrow put his hand in front of her. "No, we don't have time we have to move."
The Librarian looked down at the fallen Forerunners and realized the gravity of the situation.
Sweat poured off of Sorrow's face. He wondered if Forerunners sweated too, but he didn't really care at the moment. It was simply him, the Librarian, and the three Guardians left, one of which now had a limp. A needle protruded from the crippled Guardian's leg. Sorrow had never seen, or even imagened a Flood that can fire honed, organic material of its own body as a weapon.
As the group ran for Sorrow's invention a horror filled scream erupted behind them. Startled, they all looked back and realized it was the Guardian who had had his legs crushed and glued to the floor. The Flood had gotten to him.
They turned back around and kept going, fighting through the horrific threat that was the Flood.
Sorrow tried to think about how long they had been trying to find their way around, he lost track of time, time didn't matter. He had tried to lead them to his invention, but the normal path had been blocked, almost all normal paths had been blocked for that matter, blocked by large, corpulant masses of flesh.
They entered an almost completely darkened hallway, but a dark blue light emitted from the end. "There." Sorrow whispered, so as not to alert the Flood of their location. "That should be my machine. We're almost there."
At those words a small orb, which also glowed a dark blue color, floated it's way towards Sorrow. "Master?" It gleamed.
Sorrow looked up in surprise. ""ADIM! Be quiet."
"What's happening?" Its light shone brighter at each syllable.
"Sush! Meet me at the machine."
"The machine? Your machine?"
"Yes, yes. Go. now." Sorrow said in a hushed tone.
"Yes, Reclaimer." The glowing orb dahsed off and the group followed.
"I should be able to put up a field of positive lifepower around us, around this room to protect us while I put in the calculations to..."
"Just do it, Sorrow." The Librarian commanded.
"Okay," he brought up the holographic board and brought it with him over to the command console of his machine. "While I do this tell ADIM the message you want to send."
The Librarian looked at the floating AI. "ADIM, send a message to the other Librarians in the other installations."
ADIM turned towards her at the sound of his name, but did nothing except look at her silently.
"Do what she says, ADIM." Sorrow took his eyes off of his work and at his creation.
"Message sent." The AI said in reponse.
"Now ADIM, please contain some Flood specimen in shipd in the hangar and please direct them to Installation 04, please."
A moment passed before he responded. "Done, Librarian."
In the next second a field draped over the area and a shimmering bubble flexed over the machine, the Librarian, Forever Sorrow, and ADIM in a small radius from the machine.
The Guardians turned around at looked at Sorrow through the transparent wall.
"Why aren't they in here?" The Librarian shouted.
"Be quiet! I don't know! I set the field to spread as far as it could! That should have been the whole room!" Sorrow threw his hands into the air and slammed them on the machine in frustration.
There was a long bridge seperating the mchine from a circular platform and halfway across the bridge is where the bubble ended. "Get them in here!" The Librarian shouted.
"Hush! Hold on!" Sorrow played with his toy a bit more and finalized a command. The bubble began to disappear, and leave them vulnerable.
As the field went up ADIM looked around and said, "Oh, look. Those creatures are back."
Sorrow imediately turned around and the Flood began entering the room from all sides. Crawling out of vents and cascading through any opening available. The Guardians spun around and readied their weapons.
"Close the field, Forever Sorrow!" The Librarian screamed.
"I can't! It will take to much time! The machine will have to cool down the centered reactor, which is used to do immediate physical actions in this room. I can only go forth with the plan to save the Eques now."
The three Guardians fought on the bridge as a final stand, not for themselves, but for the all the Eques.
The Librarian stood and watched the fight, knowing that for the first time in her life she was helpless.
Sorrow typed furiously on the holographic panel and slid his hand across the screen. "The two Eques are home safe!"
The Guardian with a limp stepped back to avoid a spider-like Flood form as it lunged at him. It was the only Flood to make it so close to the Guardians and as the Guardian stepped back his limp gave way, and he tumbled off the bridge to the burning reactor below, but as he fell he managed to reach up, and grab the Flood and together, the good and the evil tumbled to their death.
"Okay!" Sorrow said, "I have placed all the remaining positive lifepower to surround the Eques home world."
A Tank-form charged at one of the Remaining Guardians and flung him off the bridge in one powerful swing. The other Guardian unsheated his sword of glowing plasma and energy and vanquished the beast. He then hopelessly turned back towards the Flood.
"Now what?" The Librarian screamed as ADIM hummed an archaic Forerunner song.
"Now I detonate the machine. And kill every sentient being within multiple upon multiple lightyears from this installation."
Sorrow started to over power the reactor.
"Forever Sorrow." The Librarian said over the loud roar of the reactor below.
After a few seconds he answered. "Yes."
"I... I apologize for what happened to the Humans. It was... indoubtebly wrong of us for it."
Sorrow nodded his head. "Thank you." He returned, sincerely.
A scream sounded from the bridge and the last Guardian fell, needles riddling his body and the Flood charged the last two saviors for this chapter of the galaxy.
"Sorrow! Hurry!"
"I'm trying!" The reactor was difficult to over power as he built it to not explode, but he tried his best.
He heard the Librarian scream as she was over taken by the Flood.
He tried his hardest and sweat poured from his body. His vision began to blur and he felt weak.
A dark tunnel began to take over his vision as he felt an Infection form burrow its prodding neddle into his spine. He shouted out in pain and tears mixed with his sweat. The glowing red circle appeared on the holographic panel to show the final step to save the galaxy from this viscious species.
Madegalaxer Takes Forever Sorrow knew that in the matter of a second he would be powerless and lose control of his body so he flung his hand at the red circle and when it reaached about half of the distance to the final destination, he lost all consciousness.
Back home, Celestia slowly stood up, feeble from the horrible conditions she was under while trap in the forsaken place. She looked at her father, who laid next to her, also on the brink of death.
He opened his eyes and looked at his daughter. He slowly closed his eyes for the final time, smiled, and his horn began to glow. Celestia felt strength enter her body as her father gave her his remaining life so she may survive.
When she realized what her father had just done tears cascaded from her cheeks and she swore vengence on the vial creatures who were the Forerunners. She didn't know what they looked like, where they would be, or if they would return, but she swore vengence.
She looked up at the moon, hate filling her eyes and her soul, and a bright wave made of light shot around Equestria, shaking the planet violently.
Celestia looked back to earth and saw her sister, Luna, in the distance. Her and Celestia were the only Alicorns in existence at the moment.
Celestia smiled at her sister and the shaking stopped, and as the shaking stopped Celestia put what had just happened as far back in her mind as she could, eventually forgetting what had happened. She forgot what had happened until Equestria went to war.