//------------------------------// // Chapter 14: Two Spartans and an Astartes // Story: For the Emperor and the UNSC! (Old version) // by Titan Commander Sebaste //------------------------------// Chapter 14: Two Spartans and an Astartes *3rd Person Pov* “Who needs me?” Church asked. “See for yourself.” A gigantic portal was open near the front of the massive covenant CSO class supercarrier. Through this portal, a world could be seen. A world not unlike the one they were currently orbiting. “We’re going in.” Church said. “Yes Director, right away.” Songnam’s voice faded away as the carrier entered the portal. *1st Person POV- Sebaste* We had just gotten back from Cruger’s universe when Twilight ran up to us panting with fear. “There’s some giant flying thing above Equestria!” She said. “What does it look like?” I asked. “It's big, purple, has things hanging down the front…” She listed. “Evacuate the town, now! Warn Celestia of what’s going on, we’ll stay behind and stop the Covenant forces!” I ordered. She nodded and ran off. “Of all the times to attack, why now?!” Sebastian groaned. “I don't know, but they’re gonna regret it…” I growled. But when we went outside, we were in for a shock. This wasn’t any ordinary attack force. No, that ship that we were looking at, it was at least 10 times bigger than any attack force the covenant would normally use to even glass a planet. It was… a capital ship. “Frag, we’re screwed..” Sebastian muttered. “As long as we give everyone time to evacuate, things should turn out okay.” I said. The front of the covenant supercarrier suddenly let loose what was identical to the scanning that the Didact’s ship from Halo 4 did. “What in the name of the Emperor?!” Sebastian exclaimed. Once the scanning finished, the ship suddenly became less visible, as if it had cloaked. “The hell is going on here?!” I muttered, “First that scanning, now the cloaking…” After a few seconds, the ship’s shields exploded outward before the ship became visible again with the words, “Project Overlord” visible in English on the side in huge bold letters. “Project Overlord? The hell's that?” I wondered. I then shook my head and summoned an AA variant of the wraith before jumping in and aiming the guns at it. “Wait, Covenant don't do English!” Sebastian exclaimed, “I think we may be dealing with something else!” “What, like another Displaced? Please, who'd join them?!” I said. A few seconds later, a UNSC pelican flew out of the covenant Supercarrier, headed straights towards Ponyville. The scary part? The covenant supercarrier didn’t even attack the pelican as it left. “A Pelican?” I said, confused, “The hell’s going on here?!” I shook my head and tracked the gunship as it came towards Ponyville. The Pelican gunship finally hovered above the center of the town before it proceeded to land. The hatch doors opened… and that’s where the laws of reality stopped applying. The inside was WAY bigger than the outside. Out stepped a Spartan in HELIOSKRILL class MJOLNIR Gen 2 armor, followed by well over 100 identical brown colored Spartans in the same armor as the Master Chief. I facepalmed. “Lopez, which means the guy in the HELIOSKRILL armor must be someone from RvB…” I jumped out of the wraith and walked up to the Spartan, “May I ask who you are, and why you decided to have us evacuate Ponyville and notify Celestia that we were under attack!?” I asked in annoyance. The Spartan shrugged with his sniper rifle which wasn’t any ordinary sniper rifle. “Wait, are you Church from Blue Team?!” Sebastian asked in shock. “Former Director of Project Freelancer. New Director of Project Overlord.” ‘Church’ said. “It’s nice to finally meet another Spartan, I thought I was the only one…” I said. “I’m not a Spartan.” Church said bluntly. He removed his helmet, revealing absolutely nothing. There wasn’t even a body in that armor he was wearing. “Right, A.I.” I amended. “Why did you send my fleet a signal leading to this location?” “What are you even talking about?!” I said,”We didn't send a signal…” “Oh, good. The cloaking does work.” Church said, when he realized they could only see one ship. The sky suddenly was bombarded with darkness as more, equally as big, covenant ships appeared next to the supercarrier. Sebastian quickly summoned his signature pair of lightning claws, and made a threatening step forward, “If you’re planning on invading…” He growled. Church laughed, not even registering the threat, “You haven’t done anything. Besides, invasions are time and money consuming anyways. Not that I’d be able to invade with this fleet. Only destroy.” “Then why are you here?” I asked, holding up my hand to stop Sasha from attacking. “You tell me. Aha! There’s the signal!” Church walked up to me and poked me. “Your weapon generation device. It has generated one of my tokens, and in doing so, sent a signal through multispace, right to me. Heh. Just...like...Ahriman.” He walked away. “Ahriman? You’ve met him?!” Sebastian asked “Yep. Heh. We’re… what you call friends. Though, I align myself with no one. As of yet anyways.” “We’ve met him, and fought three of his cronies.” I snarled, remembering the fight with Khârn, “I’ll warn you once, you’re making a mistake with allying with him. He’ll use you like a pawn, then discard you when he’s done with you…” Church laughed. Hard, “I never said I was on his side.” “As for me having your token, you’re wasting your breath, I’d have heard a voice when I summoned my Energy sword…” “One. I don’t have breath. Two, what, Are you still Halo 4 or something? Ha! Halo 5 Guardians and Halo 6 *censored leaked title* have already come out centuries ago.” Church laughed. “I may be behind on my Halo games, but how far are you on the times? There's a war going on, I'm sure you’ve heard of it?” I retorted. “Of course I have. After teaching me how to use the warp, Ahriman mentioned it and asked me to join him. Well, I didn’t say yes. But I didn’t say no either. I’m currently neutral in the War of Shadows. Craig...” “We were just involved in a conflict on an Alliance ship, and ended up getting diverted from our world after Rainborg threw a plasma bomb as the portal was closing.” I said to the A.I. “One question. Whose side do you think I am on? That is a very important question.” Church said. “To be honest, I’d think you’d be on the Neutrals” I replied. “Ah good. Being a hero is fucking stupid. Being a villain? Meh. Villains get chased and eventually killed. I already killed all the ones who were stubborn enough to want to kill me.” Church patted his Nornfang. “If you’re wondering whose side we’re on, we sided with the Alliance.” I said, “Both sides ended up on our world looking for a neutral, and that’s how we ended up joining.” Church turned deadly serious, “If either side tries to force me to join them, they can expect me to be gone before they can even come close. Think of it like this, there are two sides of one coin. I am on both sides.” “We weren't planning on forcing you or even asking you to join, you idiotic tin can! We figured you didn't want to join, but you jumped to conclusions!” I snapped. “Yeah, you probably don’t want someone who is crazy enough to do this,” One of the covenant supercarriers shot the other one, completely decimating the shields and sending pieces of it flying, headed towards the sun, “Eh, I can steal another one.” “What exactly is your goal here, because we don't have your token.” “Summon an energy sword.” Church said simply.   I shrugged and summoned The Prophet’s Bane Church sighed, “Not that one. Try the regular one. I wouldn’t want everyone to have the Prophet’s Bane. That is the Arbiter’s sword. Passed down onto him. He didn’t even name it. It is Sangheili tradition for others to name the sword of the wielder. I would rather not disrespect them by using that very sword.” I changed it to a regular energy sword. Church pressed a button on it that I hadn’t seen before. It immediately started broadcasting Church’s voice in a saying of sorts. The saying was coming...from the energy sword. “Hmm..” I was surprised to say the least, “Okay, so I somehow managed to find your token, but I always thought it was a regular energy sword..” “I have a theory. Your summoning. It summons objects that are compiled to match your thoughts. But, you never have to think past what you want. You weren’t being COMPLETELY specific. Your thoughts were just, energy sword. Not, WHERE the energy sword came from. OR, WHOSE energy sword. But then again, being that specific can be a waste of time to most.” “Interesting theory, out of curiosity, have you encountered any of the other members of Blue Team?” “What Blue Team are you talking about? You have to be more specific.” Church said smartly. “Tucker, Caboose, and Washington.” I replied “I thought you were referring to, Linda-058, John-117, Fred-104 and Kelly-087.” Church said. “Come on, you should have memories of the teammates from RvB!” “I do. But those memories, lost relevance when I fragmented. Or as most would call it, died.” “Sebaste, that's enough.” Sasha said, “I’m sorry for the hostile welcome, we had suffered an attack from a small Covenant ground force a few months ago, so when we saw your ship, we thought they were attacking again.” “Well, if they weren’t before, they are now…” Church said in surprise. “The hell do you mean by that?!” I asked. “Look up…” Large amounts of banshees were flying towards the supercarriers. And a purple supercarrier that WASN’T holding UNSC vehicles or having english text written on it was firing at the overlords carriers, “Have they always had that…?” Church pointed to the supercarrier attacking the other one. “No, but I think we’d better worry about the ground forces!” I said, pointing at a force consisting of two squads of jackals, three squads of grunts and five squads of elites. “This should be easy.” Church pointed to the Lopez bots behind him. They all were dual wielding kinetic recon SMGs. Sasha went into his terminator armored form and opened fire with his plasma cannon on the grunts, frying two whole squads before the third scattered. Church fired his Nornfang on full auto somehow, which barely made sense since it’s not an automatic weapon. The Lopez bots behind him advanced slowly, firing their kinetic SMGs, disintegrating everything that was hit, just like forerunner weapons. I summoned a Sniper rifle and pulled off a one shot triple kill on three jackals that were advancing towards us. I then spun around and pulled off the same trick on a trio of elites. “TRAITOR!” An Elite Ultra screamed at Church as it charged at him with a energy sword. Only to get gutted by Sebastian’s lightning claws, “The only traitor…  IS YOU!” He roared as he tossed the Elite into one of his fellows. Church facepalmed. “Wow, you killed a good one. He even knew Star Wars memes.” Church said as he stabbed an elite in the back. With his gravity hammer. Meanwhile, I had jumped into the AA wraith and started to open fire on the banshees. *In the attacking supercarrier* “Shipmistress, we’re losing too many. We have to retr-” The shipmistress stabbed her energy sword straight through the Sangheili’s face. “No. I want that ship.” The Kig-Yar shipmistress hissed. “We can let this infested ship burn. In hell.” *Ponyville* “Church, can you have your fleet  fire upon the enemy super carrier?” I yelled as I smashed aside a grunt with a gravity hammer “Negative.” Church said, “Too risky. They’re orbitting Equus’s atmosphere. If I destroy them, you can count on the pieces of the carrier destroying Equestria. Unless of course, you want to be the new ruler.” Church joked. Just then, a huge blast of magic vaporized half of the remaining force, we looked up to see Celestia fly down with a whole contingency of Pegasus Royal guard. “You got Twi’s Message?” I called up to her. She nodded and said, “This threat must be stopped, I will not let Equestria fall to these savages!” Church suddenly screamed, “INFESTED SHIP? FLEET! FIRE! NOW!” The sky lit up with explosions as Church’s fleet fired at the covenant fleet. “The hell was that about?!” I asked Church. Church spoke very fastly, “Precursors! Flood! Primordial! Death! Hive!” Sasha turned and Gibbs slapped Church on the back of the head, “Pull yourself together! Even if the flood fall, we will make it through!” “Let me translate. IT’S A TRAP!” Church said in Admiral Ackbar’s voice. “A trap? What in the Emperor’s name are talking about?!” “They followed me...watching my every move… I get it now. Those weren’t your exact covenant… Because why would they do that now? This is different. My destroying of one of their vessels as a show of power has triggered them.” “Dude, calm down! We will make it through! Things did get complicated by this though…” I said. “If you won’t engage them. THEN I WILL.” Church rushed his troops into the pelican and forced it to fly towards the hiveship. “Church! Blast it!” I swore, I then used my comms unit to contact him, ++Church, we WILL deal with the flood, I was gonna tell you that, but once again, you jumped to conclusions! I was gonna suggest that you take Sebastian with you, but I guess not..++ Right after I said that, multiple covenant drop pods impacted town hall, before infected marines and infected spartans jumped out. “Frag!” I yelled before summoning a flamethrower and incinerating the first wave of infected, Sasha adding to the conflagration with his heavy flamer. “PURGE THE UNCLEAN!” He roared. I received a transmission from Church right after that, ++Prepare for a bad idea. Unleashing warp storm.++ ++Warp storm?! Are you crazy?! It’ll take weeks to rebuild after this!!++ ++Better weeks than eternity.++ Church retorted. ++I’ve let this infestation destroy enough lives. You aren’t joining the list.++ ++Copy that, permission is a go++ ++I wasn’t asking for permission.++ Church said cooly, right before the very aura around us changed to very emotional and hazardous to be around. The warp storm absorbed the whole enemy fleet. ++AHHHHHHH!-++ Church’s transmission cut out. His fleet vanished right after that. “CHURCH!” I yelled.