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// Chapter 4- A Princess's Mistake  
// Story: Marcus 657 
// by John 117 
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As Celestia and her sister, Luna, walked up to a small village cottage outside of Ponyville, the solar diarch couldn't help but admire the scenery of the quaint town. It wasn't big and noisy like Canterlot, with its large crowds, cacophonous streets, and dirty odors. It was small. It was quiet. Tranquil, that’s the word Celestia wanted- tranquil. Perfect peace, quiet, and harmony reigned over the little hamlet. Well, at least most of the time. Twilight Sparkle and her five friends seemed to do an exemplary job at disrupting that. However, with this new adventure, well, those six mares might have just changed the whole of Equestria. Celestia just hoped it would be for the better.

She had long considered it impossible; the transference of beings between worlds. She had poured over every book, investigated every spell, scoured every lead. She had searched for what seemed like ages; it had been ages, making sure that it couldn't be done, but since the letter from last night, she was worried that maybe she had missed something- a minor detail she had either overlooked, not found, or had been lost to history, had just blown a massive hole in her previously ironclad conclusion that inter-dimensional travel was impossible. That fear had been in the back of her mind since she had begun her search all those thousands of years ago. It had been ever since she had witnessed what other universes had to offer that she was afraid to let them come to hers. And now she was afraid that they were coming, and one in particular scared her the most. When she saw that one universe, they had just harnessed the power of the sun itself, and annihilated a whole city with it to end a war that had lasted for years and ended so many lives. Celestia looked over to her little sister to see how she was handling the news. She seemed to be calm, although Luna always did have a good poker face. Nopony could bluff like she did.

"Sister," Luna began, startling Celestia out of her thoughts. "What do you think of all this? ‘Tis strange- a human showing up here… What if they haven't learned the era of their ways? What if they have gotten stronger since last you saw into their world?"   

She just had to voice what Celestia had been dreading. The elder sister put on a strong front. "We shall have to wait and see, but based on the description Twilight gave us, it didn't sound like it. As for if they have gotten stronger or not, well, we shall just have to wait and see." Celestia thought back on the letter she received last night. Twilight had Spike write it quickly, not even caring for the spelling mistakes, which told Celestia that it was an important matter. It seems to be wearing some sort of protective armor, and after further analysis and thought, appeared to have battle marks and burns on the armor, although no real damage seemed to have come to the creature; the armor protecting it must be phenomenally durable. It also seems to posses some sort of regenerating shield that renders it resilient to magic. That part worried Celestia the most. Oh dear, how she hoped her student was wrong, but something told her that she wasn't.
Spike greeted them and let them up the path. They entered Fluttershy's small cottage, prompting a most distressing display from the pegasus, who promptly dove underneath the table. Luna and Celestia both immediately got the bad feeling that this was going to set the mood for the rest of the visit. 
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Marcus had been following a trail of smoke he had seen earlier that day. It had shown up as he neared the edge of the forest he had been hiding in. As of right now, it was his only hope at finding anyone else from the crashed Pelican. Or at least, what he hoped was the crashed Pelican. For all he knew, it could have been a settlement, or a forest fire, or a volcano. As he walked through the forest, he saw plants he could have dreamt of. Some of them were bright purple with bell-shaped flowers. When he either crushed or brushed against them, they let loose a cloud of gas, or maybe it was pollen? The air filters in the armor blocked it all out, so it didn't affect him. Then there were the trees. Grand, old trees that hadn't been disturbed in what seemed to be a thousand years. Few of those remained on human worlds; they had either been glassed by the Covenant, or cut down for colonization.  One thing new to him was the wildlife. Despite having been on many worlds, he had rarely ever gotten a good look at the local fauna. They always ran away and hid whenever war came with its cacophonous gunfire, engines, shouts, screams, and battles. The animals here, however, were strange regardless of the standards used. There were things that looked like wolves, but they were composed purely out of plant matter from trees and vines. There had been a magnificent shining silver stag. There had even been a few seconds where Marcus could have sworn that he had observed a dragon flying overhead!

Marcus definitely knew that he would eventually have to leave the relative safety of the forest and follow the smoke in a more direct path. He continued walking for what seemed like hours. The forest he was in, as magnificent as it was, also had some downsides. Every now and then he would find a bog, and with no way around or over it, and he had to trudge through it. He hated these parts. The weight of him and the armor made him sink like an anchor, and it was a total bitch to get out once he had gone in. Moss and algae stuck to his armor as he walked out of the newest bog. "Disgusting," he said as he wiped as much grim and muck as possible. He continued on. Approximately a half hour later, Marcus decided to follow the smoke a bit more directly. Following it to the edge of the forest, he could see the area where the source of the smoke was coming from. It seemed to be just on the far end of a hillside meadow, obscured from view. He stealthily began to crawl across the field. Even though there seemed to be nobody around, the man could not afford a single mishap. He wished that his armor were painted in a camouflage scheme like those found on historical uniforms from the turn of the millennium. One of those patterns, a Communist German design, called Strichtarn, would have been perfect for just about every single piece of terrain he had so far encountered.

It took him the better part of an hour to cross the quarter mile of meadow. When he finally saw the source of the smoke, Marcus was crestfallen. It wasn't a downed Pelican, but instead merely bits and pieces of half of one- most likely even less. He could already tell there was no way anybody else had survived the crash. Emilia might have made it had she not been ripped away from him just mere milliseconds before the jump. Marcus shuddered, thinking about what her final moments must have been like. Suddenly, there would have been nothing but empty space and a flash of light. And then… nothing. Or worse, she might have lived all the way down to the surface, flailing and tumbling the whole way down. The ground would have come up quickly, getting closer and closer until SPLAT! There was no way that any of the marines could have possibly made it.

A wing lay half buried in the ground, smoking heavily, flames still emanating from it. It spewed great belches of black smoke into the atmosphere. Bits and pieces of metal and molten slag where strewn about everywhere. From what he could tell, only part of the interior of the Pelican actually came with him to where ever he was. That's next on the to-do list Marcus; keep your priorities straight. First, find friendlies- there are none, second- find what weapons and ammo you can. Right, lets get cracking then.

He walked to the debris field, and searched through the wreckage. He searched the Pelican wing first, hoping that part of the interior weapon rack had come with it. It hadn't. Marcus sighed, but continued his search. Finally he came across a weapons container. It was badly twisted and burnt, but seemed to be somewhat intact. It had landed several miles away from the crater, which he presumed to be the entry point of what ever had brought him here. He tried the latches to the case, but they were fused together by the extreme heat. There was no way that any of the marines would have survived that. He did not want to imagine what it would have been like to be burned alive like that.  Marcus had to pry the container open, using his superhuman strength to accomplish it. Once open, Marcus inspected his findings. There was a magnum and three mags of ammo, one of which wasn't usable thanks to bent feed lips. Some jerk had likely been using it as a bottle opener. He got what ammo he could from the mag and pocketed it. Also, there was a standard MA-5 whatever assault rifle, with the same number of magazines, although they were all usable and completely filled with 7.62x51mm full metal jacket ammunition. The guns and the ammo were far from ideal as far as hunting equipment were concerned, but Marcus was a good shot; he'd make do with what he had, just as he always did. This remarkable adaptability was what had kept him alive and separated from the other Spartans. Pleased with his findings, he put the pistol in its holster on his right thigh, and then he slung the assault rifle onto his back.

Secretly, Marcus knew that even with these findings, he would be run down eventually. He’d need to eat; a seven foot tall man with lots of muscle mass doing a lot of strenuous physical activity required massive amounts of food. He didn’t have any with him and there had been none in the Pelican. Perhaps the marines would have had some, but all the food would have likely vaporized as they had. Another issue facing him was power. His suit had a nuclear power source, however, it was not inexhaustible and it would gradually reach the point where it would either go offline through depletion or catastrophic failure, assuming that it didn't either somehow break or stop when a fail safe triggered. He needed to conserve as much power as possible. The problem with this was that he relied so much upon powered electronic armor features to function. His guns couldn’t be aimed without electronics, having no iron sights. Oh what he wouldn’t give for some old-fashioned analogue military hardware. If only he could have for himself the traditional AKM assault rifle and the Flora pattern Afghanka of the legendary Spetsnaz Alfa Group!

Casting aside his wishes, Marcus returned to the task at hand. Let’s hope I won't be needing this. Marcus continued his search, but didn't find much. He only located a spare fragmentation grenade, and a partially filled spare magazine for the assault rifle. Pleased with the turnout, considering his bleak initial assessments, he climbed the hills out of the valley and snuck back into the concealment of the trees. He did not notice the rainbow-maned pegasus with a cyan body hiding behind a cloud who had been observing him throughout his search with curiosity and, even though she would never admit this to anypony, fear.