Fluttershy reloaded her magnum, found she was low on ammo, and decided to put it away in favour of the plasma pistol she'd picked up a while back. She used it to take care of a few stray parasites, and once there was no living or un-dead thing in sight, she squinted her eyes and carried on through the carrion.
"These corridors are rife with both factions," Twilight piped up. "Grenades are a blessing here."
Frightfully, Fluttershy stuttered, "G-got it," and rounded the next bend.
Grunts and Jackals were in the process of loosing to the Flood when the lone Mare made her appearance. Taking Twilight's advice, she rolled a frag grenade up the inclining corridor and into their midst.
It went off with a resounding BOOM and triggered a detonation from a Flood carrier form, which, in turn, triggered a detonation from a plasma grenade that'd been dropped. The triple explosion sure took its toll on the Honest Mistake's internal structure as metallic purple panelling broke and came loose, blocking the corridor, only a minute gap on the floor providing Fluttershy with a way through.
After shooting a surviving Jackal in the face and feeling bad about it, she hurried over to the hole and scrambled through... until she got stuck. She groaned as she put all her strength into pulling herself through the hole, and the metal scrap creaked in response. The compactness of the hole compressed her stomach, making it ache more than ever.
"Come on, Fluttershy, you can do it!" encouraged Twilight. "Heave!"
Once the rather slim Mare succeeded only in becoming more wedged in the even slimmer hole, infection forms came rolling around the corner ahead, along with a terrifying shriek.
"Oh no, not now!"
Using her forelegs, she battered the little blighters aside, making them dissipate in clouds of stinking green spores. She coughed and gagged, holding her breath, wafting them away.
"Uh, Fluttershy? I don't wanna alarm you, but-"
"-WRUUURRGH!" a Flood form sounded right behind her.
Covering her tearful blue eyes, Fluttershy squeaked, "Oh, you don't have to alarm me, Twilight! I'm already alarmed! Waa-"
-Without warning, the beast grasped her back leg and pulled. The metal pieces fell apart as the Pony was forced out of their embrace and into the clutches of the Jackal she'd shot dead prior to getting herself stuck. The mess she'd made of his face came close to her eye, and she'd swear she'd be scarred for life at the sight of it. She did that. She killed him, and now he was back from the dead to exact his revenge.
His right hand exploded in a cloud of purple and green blood to make way for a new, ghastly, organic blade that continued to grow until it was half the length of Fluttershy's whole body.
Before it could do anything to harm her, Fluttershy brought up the plasma pistol and screamed as she fired bolt after bolt into the part of its body where the parasite's red tipped tentacles sprouted. With the parasite within burned alive, the creature let Fluttershy drop and fainted to the deck, dead.
Hyperventilating, Fluttershy articulated, "Th-that... was... close..."
"Not as close as you think," chimed the AI, just as another warped bellow pierced the yellow one's ears.
The purple scrap heap that blocked her progress shifted and made heart-stopping banging noises; the Flood on the other side attempting to get through.
As soon as Fluttershy screamed and set off running, Twilight demanded, "No! Don't run! They'll clear our path!"
"But, what about-"
"-There's not that many of them! Just be ready for them when they break through!"
"Can't I just hide?!"
"Can you find anywhere to hide?!"
Wordlessly, Fluttershy scanned the area, and soon zipped into cover in a hole in the wall. Pipes and conduits snaked around each other inside the wall, some broken and leaking coolant, or fuel, or red hot steam. An electrical wire snapped around as sparks zapped from its severed end.
Shivering, Fluttershy aimed her plasma pistol out, listening to the Flood trampling the scrap heap. Once the heap crumbled, four combat forms pushed through, and stomped right past the little yellow Pony nestled in the Mistake's mechanics.
"Phew." She'd just wiped the sweat from her brow, when one of the monsters returned with an abrupt grunt. White, unseeing eyes aiming straight at her. "Gah!"
Panicking, she pulled the pistol's trigger over and over again, green plasma scorching the ex-pony. The other three combat forms came sprinting back as Fluttershy scrambled deeper into the tangle of pipes.
She succeeded in killing the ex-pony, but two ex-elites and an ex-jackal remained, and they clawed their way into the metal jungle with her.
Ferocious, the Jackal scratched and bit, its talons screeching the metal. Fluttershy whimpered as she wormed further back, firing her plasma pistol into its face. Eventually, it fell, and was thrown out of the way by the next monster in line.
A horizontal pipe ran along the wall, a jagged hole blown into it. Heat seethed out of it as the terrified Pegasus squirmed her way inside and dragged herself through.
"Bad idea, Fluttershy!"
"Why?!"
The reason why came in the form of smouldering steam that blasted up the tube. The infected Elite had just crashed into the shaft when the steam came up, melting his decaying skin, making him bubble and pop. He was still alive though, and he thrashed his way towards Fluttershy.
With her shields going down in the steam, Fluttershy wailed and weaselled on, the beast on her tail. If the beast didn't kill her, the steam would.
An aperture in the side of the pipe beckoned her like heaven's light. Pink tinted luminosity from the corridor cut into the dark, humid tunnel like a blade. The Mare's eyes widened as she drew closer to the prize.
"Quickly, Fluttershy!" Twilight strained. "Your shields are almost down!"
Snarling, the ugly freak behind her grabbed her tail, stopping her just as her head made it to the hole. She could see the shiny purple corridor, the flickering lights, the stains of blood, looking more appealing than the mess she'd gotten herself in now.
"No!" she shrieked as she was being pulled back, feeling the burning steam. "No! Let go! Ugh!" Madly, she kicked and wriggled, but it was hopeless. What she needed was a hero, and that's exactly what she got.
Her knight in shining armour, or more precisely; her knight in blood stained blue armour, punched into the hole and latched a couple of tentacles to her head, yanking her out of the tube. The forth combat form just saved her, but why? So it could kill her of course! Strong as a rogue rhino, the monster threw her against the wall, draining her shields completely.
The Elite in the pipes had just emerged, hanging out of the wall, looking like a steamed vegetable, when Fluttershy fired a single bolt from her plasma pistol. She missed both beasts, but the steam, or gas or whatever it was, became ignited.
KABOOM! One hell of an explosion rippled the length of the corridor, utterly demolishing the entire side wall. The Flood were perished in the blue flames. Heat and debris were thrown at Fluttershy like food at a bad act. She curled up and shivered, protecting her exposed head. Since her shields were down, she'd have to rely on the metal armour until they came back up.
Soon, the inferno simmered down, and Fluttershy rose from the ashes like a noble phoenix. Well, jittery phoenix in her case. Her teeth chattered and her eyes darted around.
"Twilight? Aha-aha," she coughed as her shields recharged. "Am I safe now?"
"About as safe as you can be in a place like this," answered the AI over the distant fighting. "The way is clear. And the Flood left us a little something."
The mischief in Twilight's tone unnerved Fluttershy. "Um... what did they leave u-"
She'd just set off trotting when her hoof made contact with what looked like an overgrown banana. Faint green lights decorated the banana, and Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion at the object.
"That," Twilight started, "Is a fuel rod cannon."
*****
Meanwhile, a pitched fight was underway within a cramped corridor. An Elite wrestled with what had been one of his soldiers, a Grunt tossed a grenade into the swarm, and a Jackal convulsed as he became repurposed. The gunshots, explosions and war cries spread all around the ship, telling a story.
"Make way for Fluttershy!" a certain synthesised voice sounded as the yellow Pegasus came hurtling into the fray, eyes closed and streaming tears of fear.
The conflict paused as each combatant beheld the Mare, running straight and true, unleashing a barrage of fuel rod projectiles all over their sorry faces. Bright green explosions melted the aliens and smashed the walls.
"Make way for Fluttershy! Make way for Fluttershy, hahahaha!"
Just like that, Fluttershy had vaporised her way through the conflict and charged head on through the green and blue flames, leaping to avoid the radius of a lingering plasma grenade.
The instant she arrived unscratched at the other end of the corpse filled corridor, the ceiling caved in, no turning back, and she whimpered in trauma.
Twilight on the other hoof, was less shaken. "Hahahaha! I know I shouldn't laugh, but, that was amazing! You just charged right through it all! I think somepony's on her way to earning every medal in the UPSC!"
She sang that last bit, and Fluttershy felt a little reassured at the AI's optimism. As for the medals; she couldn't care less.
But of course, something just had to come and spoil the moment, but funnily enough, it didn't come from the Flood, nor the Covenant. It came from a dear friend of hers.
"I told you... not to come heerre," groaned Rarity over the radio, sounding really, really sick.
Fluttershy gasped, "Rarity! Hold on! We're coming!"
Rarity gipped before continuing. "I... can't... be saved!" Her words were slow and spaced apart.
"No! It's not too late!"
"It was... too late... the moment they... caught meee!"
And that's when the connection ended, and Fluttershy started to weep. It sounded like the Captain was right.
"Oh no," whimpered Twilight.
"What is it?"
"Rarity's vitals are fading. Hurry!"
Fluttershy hung her head. "Oh Twilight, it's too late."
"... Not necessarily."
"Huh?"
"Just get to her... and you'll understand."
Sloppily, Fluttershy reloaded the fuel rod cannon with the last five round magazine and trudged onwards.
Emerging out of the exploding corridors and onto the third floor balcony of the shuttle bay, Fluttershy came across a faint trickle of red Pony blood at her hooves. She inspected it. It was still wet and warm. Fresh. Fleur's?
Her pondering was interrupted by the thundering of the Flood that gathered in a doorway, just along the balcony. They huddled around a fallen crate, unaware of her presence.
Using two other Covenant crates as cover, Fluttershy primed and tossed a plasma grenade out into the Flood and covered her ears as it went off with a mighty BOOM! A quick peek through the crack between the purple boxes revealed that the grenade hadn't landed anywhere near the Flood, and only succeeded in grabbing their attention.
Ugh, I'm too tired for this.
Using the fuel rod gun at such close range would be idiotic, so she drew out the plasma pistol and squeezed the trigger, building up an overcharged bolt.
She could hear the carnivorous nightmares, gurgling, screeching, closing in around her. She wasn't sure if she could take them all on with just a plasma pistol.
Just as she was about to bail, a new sound thrummed from outside the Honest Mistake, beyond the translucent hangar doors. Whatever it was entered the Cruiser, and the Flood turned their backs on Fluttershy to attack it instead.
Not sure what to do with the intense orb of green energy she'd built up at the tip of her vibrating weapon, Fluttershy discharged it into an infected Elite as it jumped to land on the source of the new noise: A Covenant Spirit drop ship.
"Thank you, Covenant!" giggled Twilight as the "U" shaped vehicle began to back immediately out of the Honest Mistake. "The Flood are posted on that thing. Now's our chance."
Heedfully, Fluttershy rounded her crate cover and paced along. Her pace soon picked up into a trot, and then into a hurried gallop.
Navigating the ship's corridors once again, Fluttershy came up to a fight scene with the Flood and the Covenant, and proceeded to resolve the conflict with multiple FRPs. However, some of the Covenant survived the bombardment, and the Flood just kept throwing more bodies into the fray, so Fluttershy took her empty banana gun and did what she did best. Hid.
It just so happened, Grunts were pretty good at hiding too, and the first sign the young Pegasus had that she was sitting right next to one was when it reached out and touched her lips.
"Sshh," it breathed, looking deep into her surprised eyes.
Feeling unthreatened yet shy around the little alien, Fluttershy peered over its shoulder to see two more Grunts cowering further up the devastated branch of corridor she'd ventured down. One of them mimed slitting his throat, and the other one just stared at her seriously.
"Wow... Umm..." In Fluttershy's head, Twilight was lost for words.
Fluttershy felt that the time to make friends with the enemy was now.
Over the deafening sounds of battle just around the corner, Fluttershy whispered into the first Grunt's ear, "Hi, um, I'm... I'm Flutter-"
"-Ssshhh!" the Grunt repeated, a little more aggressively. "Shush, Pony."
The last thing she wanted to do was aggravate the aliens. Actually, the last thing she wanted to do was give away their position, so she pursed her lips and gazed awkwardly around the burning corridor, mindful of the war around the corner.
Something exploded and sent a contaminated corpse hurtling right into the secret den, eliciting louder responses from the Grunts than from Fluttershy. That said, when that corpse got up with an infernal shriek, Fluttershy did scream the whole ship down.
As a unit, the Grunts and the Pony opened fire on the ex-elite. It braved the plasma, chopping the heads off two Grunts with a single swing of its serrated appendage. Fluttershy and the remaining Covie were splattered by the vibrant blue fountains that squirted out of the Grunts' neck holes.
"Quick! Take it out!" urged Twilight, prompting Fluttershy to build up an overcharged bolt.
The monster had just turned to face her when she let the green plasma loose, and it burned a hole the size of a dinner plate right through the Elite's upper torso. Blue flames, purple walls and the surviving Grunt could all be seen clearly through the hole, and since the parasite within had been burnt to a crisp, the ravaged Elite body slumped over onto Fluttershy. She moaned as the weight crushed her, and the stench filled her nostrils. It made her gip, and she felt like she was going to be sick again.
Once she'd hauled the ex-elite off of her, she looked up to behold the last Grunt, curled up in a fatal ball in the corner. He shivered and whimpered, and whenever an extra loud noise tore up from beyond the branch corridor, he joined Fluttershy in jolting.
Gently approaching the cowering Grunt, Fluttershy came up short upon Twilight's voice.
"Let him be."
"But, I was just gonna-"
"-Doesn't matter what you were gonna do. Rarity is close, and she needs us more than he does."
Fluttershy hesitated, looking down worryingly at the Grunt.
In the end, she harvested the two dead Grunts and one dead combat form for ammo and grenades, and spied around the corner to see what was what.
The Flood and the Covenant were still at it, so she kept herself hidden and awaited the end of the fight. She even took a much needed swig of water from her canteen, spilling it a little as death and destruction echoed a mere few metres away.
At last, the fight ended, and two Flood forms were left standing. One of them was a carrier form, so Fluttershy tackled that first, watching it explode and send the combat form crumpling into the ceiling. The newly spawned infection forms slithered along the walls and floor, but were soon put down by the shy and her plasma pistol. Well, except for the last one.
The last parasite was lucky, as Fluttershy's plasma pistol simply refused to fire.
Twilight diagnosed, "Uh-oh! Plasma pistol's dry!"
Fluttershy let out a feeble whimper as she reared up and flicked the snot-bag away, killing it on impact.
Now that the area was relatively secure, it was time to check out her arsenal. She had grenades a plenty, an M6D with low ammo, a fuel rod gun with zero ammo, and tonnes of shotgun shells, but no shotgun.
Flood and Covenant bodies carpeted the floor, and Fluttershy didn't have time to go searching through them for what she needed, but a trio of bright green fuel rod magazines caught her eye, and a needler was resting on the body of an un-infected Elite, so she snatched them up, along with a few reloads, and marched up a second branch corridor where she came up to a blood stained door.
I wonder what's on the other side.
What was waiting for her on the other side was quite a shock.
She instantly recognised the chamber with its elevated central podium and shifting, holographic display screens. She was at the bridge!
Not even Twilight had been ready for that. "Wait, what?! How did we..." she trailed off upon noticing something huge and Flood fixed to the rounded podium.
Fluttershy was petrified of the thing, and she froze in place, not taking her eyes off it. She wanted to ask "what is that thing," but the words were stuck in her throat.
"... Approach it."
After a big gulp of anxiety, the yellow Pony took slow, quiet steps towards the podium and the leviathan lump of Flood that stood upon it.
The Flood ball was ginormous! At first, Fluttershy thought it was some sort of giant variant of carrier form, but after noticing the long, spider-web-like spines that stretched up to the ceiling, keeping it suspended, she surmised that it wasn't meant for moving about.
It did move about though, she realised as she got nearer. Odd shapes within pushed up against the skin of the unyielding sack. Some of them were motionless, but others seemed to be struggling for release.
Oh gosh; those shapes resolved into hands! Hands of Covenant soldiers that had been absorbed by this... this thing! Some of their faces pushed up against the thing's skin too, and Fluttershy recognised a Jackal snapping its beak, and an Elite spreading its mandibles, trying to bite their way out, not succeeding. None of them screamed however. More wailed. Cried. Despaired.
Fluttershy screamed though. She screamed until her throat was sore. She screamed until she was cut off by her own gut, sending sloppy vomit up and out of her mouth.
"Oh my gosh," Twilight breathed in disbelief. "This must be the Flood's central intelligence... Still half formed... I... I've never seen anything like it."
A shudder coursed through the Mistake's deck as something exploded far below.
All Fluttershy could respond with was a series of tortured groans. She really didn't feel well. "Nnnguurrg. Gurrg. Urnnng."
Holding her excruciatingly painful tummy, she continued to stare at the gargantuan lump of biomass, tranced by the thing. She didn't even bother wiping her mouth clean.
Since all the bodies that made up the mass of Flood were Covenant, the presence of a Unicorn horn caught her attention. She peered at the horn, trying to locate a face, but she was so weary, and her vision just blurred in and out of focus. She felt like she was going to collapse any second now.
AIs didn't need sleep however, so Twilight ended up locating a Pony's face before she did. Well, not just a Pony's face. The Pony's face.
"Is that Rarity?!"
Dazed, Fluttershy tried to focus her eyes on the Pony's face, and they widened with horror when she made the discovery. "Rarity!"
They'd found her, and she was in a worse state than Fluttershy. One of her eyes was half open, exposing the blue iris. Her mouth was jammed wide open, as if she was still alive and seeing. Witnessing the horror. Screaming at it. Crying for help. Crying for none. Her hind legs dangled from the pile of bodies, and her three diamond cutie mark was just visible under patches of blood and hideous growth.
The skin of her face was actually morphed with the skin of the Flood, like she and the Covenant bodies were all just one big organism.
Fluttershy would've puked again, if she had any left in her, and she hacked violently as she turned away from what her dear sweet Rarity had become.
Hacking not quite over, she laid down on her belly and buried her head in the floor, not caring for the pools of Flood blood left on it, or the possibility of being ambushed. She'd never felt more dreadful in all her life, and she just wanted it all to be over.
Tears broke through her tightly shut eyelids and trickled down the grubby coat of her face, speckling the deck. First Pinkie Pie, now Rarity. Was anypony going to make it off this Celestia forsaken ring?
It got her thinking about Rainbow Dash and Applejack. She hadn't heard a peep out of them since the discovery of the Flood in the swamp, and the strength of worry was crushing. She hadn't heard from the Truth and Reconciliation for an even longer time, and the way things were, she wouldn't be surprised if it had gone down. Gone down or left without her.
"F-fluttershy?" Twilight started with a croaky, tearful voice. "We... we must destroy this ring... We must... For Rarity, for Pinkie Pie... We can't let the Flood win."
To say the Twilight in her head was only an AI, she was acting so true to the real life, sentient Twilight. It was as if she really was Twilight that had shrunk and hitched along for the ride, had the ability to feel, to cry.
Gazing up at the towering monstrosity, Fluttershy's lower lip began to tremble. She'd seen a lot on this ring that would no doubt scar her for life, but this took the cake. There was no way this image was ever going to evacuate her memory.
"... Do you remember why we came here?" The digital Princess even added a sniffle at the end.
Finally wiping the puke off her face, the depressed Pegasus answered, "We came to find Rarity," sniff, "... And we found her."
"Right... or... or her neural interface."
An awkward pause befell the Mare and the AI, and the ship wide battle could be heard raging on and on.
The neural interface was something that an officer in the UPSC, like Captain Rarity, had to have implanted in the back of their skull. Something that would grant them access to important things in a starship, like the self destruct sequence. If they were going to rig the Autumn to blow and destroy Halo and the Flood, they would need it.
"Fluttershy... sweetie... you're not going to like this..."