//------------------------------// // Low On Time // Story: Halo: Stranded // by The R0fl Guy //------------------------------// The group of ponies stood completely still. They were all shocked at the events that had just occurred, and especially shocked at the new side of Princess Celestia they had met. Luna was the first to break the ice. “Celestia...” She whispered delicately, looking to her sister. Luna was the most shocked at what they had just seen. Even when they had fought Discord all those centuries ago, Celestia had stayed calm and collected, which helped Luna to do the same. Of course they were much younger and more forgiving then, but seeing her in the way she just did, in rage, made Luna feel... uneasy. She didn't know what she felt, for she had never felt it before. Even when Celestia, and later on, the girls used the Elements of Harmony against her, she only felt anger. Confused at the feeling, Luna spoke again, “Celestia... are you okay?” She asked in a caring but nervous tone. “Yes, Luna. I am fine. Is everypony alright?” Celestia asked quickly as she looked around at the guards and the girls. They all slowly nodded to her, but when she looked at them she realized that mentally, what they had just seen had shook them. She realized why in an instant. Disturbed at how her actions influenced them in such a way, she looked to her younger sister, knowing she would understand. Instead of understanding, though, what she saw in Luna's eyes broke her heart. It was fear. She suddenly felt disgusted at the way she had acted. She easily could have performed an incapacitation spell on the alien instead, she thought. Assuming it was organic. Celestia took a few steps back, surprised at how suddenly everyone seemed to alienate her when she showed them a new side of herself. She couldn't blame them though, the only side she had ever showed almost anyone was that of understanding and kindness. There was the odd time she occasionally got angry, like when Discord returned, or when Twilight had accused the seemingly innocent Cadance of being evil, but that was mostly out of agitation and dissapointment. Celestia hated the feeling of having everyone fear her, especially her own sister and personal student. She had to apologize at the very least. She didn't want her subjects to think of her as a monster. “Everypony, I'm sorry. I let my emotions get the better of me, and for that I apologize. You must understand that I was just being careful, to protect all of you. This is something that has never happened before. We do not know how dangerous this being is, or what it is capable of. When it threatened us and raised its device to Luna, I was enraged by its brash actions, but I was also fearful for everypony's safety. I was only able to think of one way to defend you all from it. If I knew its intentions, or had more time to think, I could have dealt with the situation differently, but this is an unknown being with unknown intentions. I hope you can all understand.” Celestia said sincerely. They all nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation. Luna smiled at her sister, glad to have the calm and serene Celestia she knew and loved back. Returning to the problems at hand, or hoof, Luna said, “Guards, please take care of those two.” She glanced towards the two fallen pegasi, “This will not happen again. May they rest in peace.” She said softly. Four guards began to slowly pick up their dead, creating makeshift stretchers for them out of the piles of sticks and logs the Chief had collected, while two others tended to Shining Armour, removing his chestplate to inspect his wounds. The rest began to inspect the pod, occasionally checking behind them for the Master Chief. The girls were almost in shock at the scene that had just happened in front of them, they didn't even notice when Celestia approached them. “Girls?” Celestia said quietly. As soon as they heard her voice, they came to. They slowly looked to her, all but Twilight, who looked to Shining Armour, finally registering that her brother could have been killed. Everything had happened too fast for them to wrap their heads around, and she didn't process it until now. She rushed to his side and lay down beside him, crying lightly into his mane. Twilight looked up to one of the guards, “Is he... gonna' be... alright?” She asked between sobs. “Yes, he will be okay, he is only unconscious. He was badly injured though, and all of his ribs were broken. He also has lots of internal bleeding.” The guard said. Twilight noticed the blood trickling out of his mouth, and buried her face into his mane again. “It will be a long recovery, but he will be back to his full strength eventually.” “Okay...” Twilight answered thankfully, glad to hear her brother was going to live. At this, Fluttershy snapped. She, along with almost everyone else, was in complete fear of the Spartan that so easily defeated the three guards. She started bawling hysterically, curled up into a tiny ball at the girls hooves. Applejack was the first to try and comfort her, she slowly lay down beside Fluttershy and put a foreleg around her in an attempt to calm her down. The rest of the girls sat down as well, speechless and unable to think straight. Celestia was slightly surprised at how badly they were taking it, but when she thought about it, she had handled the situation quite poorly as well. Celestia decided that the best plan was for everyone to go home and rest. She no longer wanted to investigate the meteorite, in fear that there would be more of the deadly aliens, but she knew she had to, to keep her kingdom safe. Even if she had to lose some guards. They were not adequately suited to dealing with the alien right now though, and the Elements of Harmony were in no state for a fight. It was very late as well, and the best thing for everyone to do was to regroup and rethink of a strategy to either apprehend, or if need be, eliminate the threat. Celestia hoped it wouldn't have to come to harming it, she now had time to think of a peaceful way to resolve the situation, but she knew if it made another attempt on their lives, she would not hesitate. - Chief ran through the forest as fast as the terrain would allow him to. He ran past bushes, ducked under branches, and jumped over creeks. After running for five minutes, he came to a halt in a small clearing and took cover under a tree. He could take some time to assess his current situation from here. “They seemed rather hostile, I think we may need to skip rest for the night Chief, and find some more weapons from the Dawn.” Cortana said coldly. They seemed rather hostile? Chief knew hostile when he saw it, that was self defense. Surely Cortana would know that. He was the hostile one here, after all. He had no choice though, he had to get off of this planet, and these horses bothering him only wasted his very valuable time. Cortana had entered rampancy once before, and it wasn't a good sight. It would be much more serious now though, she is past the rampancy expected age, and with the amount of time she had to herself on the Dawn, it would have to happen very soon. Chief knew that much. If more of the horses tried wasting his time, trying to help him or not, he would dispose of them in the quickest way he could think of. He figured intimidating them and scaring them off would be the best thing he could do, but he would resort to violence if he had to, like last time. He just hoped it wouldn't backfire and they would start hunting him down. That would waste too much of his time, he thought. It didn't seem likely that they had any spacecraft anyway, so they most likely couldn't help him. Besides, how could they even create something as complicated as a slip space drive with hooves anyway? He thought about what would happen to Cortana if they didn't get off the planet in time, but quickly pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He didn't even know if there was a way to help her, but there sure as hell wouldn't be one here, so there was no reason to waste time on this planet. “Understood.” He replied, ignoring her comment on them being hostile. “Can you establish a link to anything human out here? Covenant even?” Chief asked. Hell, he'd even take Forerunner. “Negative. Everything is still blank. We truly are alone out here, Chief, and by the looks of the armour and weapons those equines used, I highly doubt they would be technologically advanced enough for interstellar travel.” Cortana said sadly. “We may be stuck here for a whi-AAANGH!” Before she could finish her sentence, she started screaming in agony. “What's happening? Cortana!” Chief yelled with worry. She suddenly appeared in front of his visor. She was flickering between red and her primary blues and purples, and the ones and zeros that usually scrolled across her body moved at half the speed they normally did. She looked battered, to say the least, and the way she was holding her head as if she were in pain made Chief worry more. “Chief, the electromagnetic fields surrounding this forest are really playing hell with me...” Cortana said slowly, “...and with the state I'm in, it's a downhill battle for me... we have to get out of this forest.” She added weakly, her voice trembling. Cortana was obviously doing worse than Chief had thought. “Acknowledged. Lets get moving.” Chief said as thoughtfully as a soldier like himself could. he jogged through the forest for the next hour and a half, occasionally running into more of the strange wolves, which he dispatched with no effort, and finally started nearing the edge of it. Glad that Cortana was no longer going to be in pain, he picked up his pace. He also wanted to be out of the forest though, because he knew if he came across the alicorns again, they wouldn't place so much trust into him. Chief thought he helped them in a way, because he found it very foolish that they placed so much trust into him when they had no idea who, or what, he was. He didn't regret his actions however, for the last thing he needed was those horses following him around trying to help him, but he wished they hadn't come across his drop pod. He wanted to remain hidden, the less beings knowing about him being here, the less troubles he would have. It may have been for the better though, because Chief was realizing more and more that Cortana was decaying very fast. Spending a night in the forest would not have been the wisest thing to do anyway, because he didn't know what other predators walked on this planet, and the only thing it was doing for Cortana was harming her. The best thing for him to do now was to keep moving, because once he left the forest he would only be a seven minute sprint over open ground from the Dawn. He could even see the smoke from the wreck blotting out the stars high in the sky. There was one thing he continuously found himself thinking about though. Just how the hell did these things speak English? And how did they speak it so well? Were there humans here? No, there couldn't be. Well, not any with technology anyway, as Cortana couldn't establish a link to any radio or computer nearby. Cortana seemed to be in love with the subject, as she talked about it and thought of different scenarios the entire run through the forest. Each one drew a blank though, and in the end they were both clueless on the matter. Eventually Cortana could think of no more possibilities, to Chief's surprise, so she started thinking of what they would do while they waited for someone to find their beacon. “First things first, once we get to the Dawn we search for some food and water. Then we look for more supplies. If there's no food or water aboard, I guess you'll have to keep your Combat Knife handy.” She paused, “I hope you know how to hunt.” Cortana added jokingly. Chief was glad she was back to her somewhat usual self, although her voice was cracking more and more, and it sounded off-key at times. Cortana seemed to be able to ignore it though, so he did too. As soon as Chief stepped out of the forest, he was greeted by the starlit sky, along with a huge bright moon. It was a sight unlike one he had ever seen before, aside from when he was a child, but even then it never looked like this. He stared at the sky for two seconds, eons too long for a Spartan to get sidetracted. Quickly snapping out of it, he refocused on his current objective and started sprinting across the open plain towards the downed frigate. He arrived at the frigate in roughly six and a half minutes. Checking his mission clock, Chief saw that it had been about four hours and ten minutes since he landed. It was a quick run over the field, the terrain was very smooth compared to the forest, with nothing more than a few hills, trees and rocks to avoid. He had expected horses to be scouting out the frigates wreck, but he hadn't expected there to be so many. He slowly made his way up a small rocky hill, crouching down once he reached the top, and watched as dozens and dozens of the small horses stood in front of the once great frigate, watching it as if they were waiting for it to do something. "They're lucky the main reactors didn't blow when the Dawn touched down." Cortana said. The Dawn had left a huge scar on the planets surface, stretching on for what looked like a solid mile. There had been nothing to stop it, so it slid across the ground until it lost its momentum. Scattered fires burned across the land from stray pieces of the wreck, and ponies frantically raced around trying to extinguish them. “We'll have to sneak by them. Better to not draw anymore attention to ourselves.” Cortana said. “Affirmative.” Chief answered. His green and black armour blended in well with the dark terrain. Sneaking by these things under the cover of night would be no problem at all for him, especially with how widely spaced they all were. Sprinting from cover to cover in the dark with a sniper rifle attached to his back reminded the Chief of assaulting the Truth and Reconciliation all those months ago. He snuck by various coloured horses. Some were standing and staring at the frigate in awe, and some were running around with buckets of water in their mouths, attempting to extinguish fires. Others were just looking at the frigate and the debris from it with quizzical looks on their faces, completely confused as to what was going on. Eventually he made it to the base of the ship, the massive shadow it casted over the land rendering him virtually invisible. The Dawn was almost completely torn to shreds, in a much worse state than it was before, which was certainly saying something. The aft section no longer looked like the aft section. Instead, it was a mutilated, near-collapsed heap of scorched titanium A battle plating. The thruster on the left side of the frigate was almost completely torn off, hanging on by only a few pieces of battle plating. Chief crept along the side of the smoking aft section, and slowly eased his way up and into the hangar. He started walking through the hangar, keeping his eyes open for anything he could make use of. “I'll mark anything useful with a nav point as we come near it. Just keep moving.” Cortana said. As he walked further into the hangar the moon light became less and less, until Chief eventually had to turn his helmet lights on. Illuminating the depths of the hangar, he was able to see the damage that was done. Wall and ceiling panels were lying all over the floor, and shrapnel covered everything. It looked much, much worse than it did while it was drifting. There were no systems functioning on the Dawn, so the only light was coming from the Chief's armour. He started examining some of the weapon racks lining the walls, waiting for Cortana to high light something. As he neared one of the racks, a nav point appeared above it. He looked over to it, illuminating it with his lights, and smiled when he saw what Cortana had marked. It was what appeared to be a fully charged, fully functioning energy sword hilt, one of the best sights Chief had seen since he had woken up from cryo sleep. To him, the sight of the star filled night sky couldn't come close to comparing. He grabbed it and pulled it out of the weapon rack, examining it thoroughly. After a few seconds of looking at it, he pressed the activation switch on the side of the hilt. It came to life instantly with the satisfying hiss that accompanied its activation. This would definitely scare any unwanted horses off, Chief thought. After searching through the ship for an hour, Chief felt he had found enough supplies to last him for a while. He had found three MRE's and a canteen that he would later fill up with water. Satisfied that he had enough food to last a few days, he assessed the rest of what he had found. After finding the energy sword, Chief retrieved his MA5B, still attached to the weapon rack beside the cryo chamber he had occupied. After more searching, he found a pouch containing two M6C magnums with five magazines to accompany each one. Lastly, he found a bag containing spare ammunition for all of the weapons he already had, excluding a shotgun, which he kept the spare shells for anyway. Chief had more weapons than he could easily carry, so he put the small arms weapons, excluding his SMG and energy sword, and assault rifle into the bag with the ammo, then slung it over his shoulder. He had all he needed for now, a sniper rifle in case he was in a long range engagement, assault rifle for medium ranges, and his SMG, magnums, knife and energy sword for close quarters combat. Chief was hardly worried though, these horses seemed to lack modern weapons and armour, but he would still try to avoid confrontations from now on. Checking his mission clock, Chief read 1737 hours. That definitely wasn't correct, he thought, so he changed it to 0000 hours. It was the best estimate he could think of. It was still dark out, and it looked like it would be for a while. “You should get some rest now, Chief. I'll alert you if anything comes snooping around. There's not much more we can do for now but wait, so you should sleep.” Cortana said. “Affirmative.” Chief replied. He placed his bag and sniper rifle down beside him so he could sit and lean against the hangar wall, and slowly dozed off.