I Have Returned 2 The Broken Ones:
Chapter 2 - Kilo-Five
Celestia’s sun loomed in the morning sky over Ponyville as weather ponies removed the clouds from the sky to prepare for what was going to be a beautiful day. Shops were preparing to open to for business, and the faint smell of morning dew on the grass covered the small town.
It was that way every morning no matter what, even if some monster had terrorized the town the previous day the ponies would just pick up where they left off. Twilight Sparkle marveled at that, if she could she would love to study each and every pony’s life in depth, but she would never have the time for something like that.
Lately she had very little time to study anything period due to her being the Princess of Friendship, she had duties to perform and Celestia expected so much of her. Letting down her mentor was not an option.
As of right now she was leaning on the balcony just outside of her bedroom watching ponies go by.
Today was going to be an extra special day as she had plans with all of her friends. Normally these days most of them were all too busy for all of them to hang out at once, normally all she could do was hang out with one or two of them at a time. Thankfully all of their schedule lined up today allowing them to have a picnic.
Stepping back inside, Twilight knew she would have to cook up something nice for the picnic and she would have to start soon.
“Spike!” She yelled out hoping that the little dragon wasn’t still asleep. “You up yet!”
His reply seemed to come from downstairs.
“Already up Twilight. I’ve already started the oven for you!” He yelled back
Making her way downstairs Twilight also noticed that the Library was cleaned up, probably by Spike hoping she would let him stay over at Rarity’s.
“I see you cleaned up Spike, good work.” She said as she trotted into the kitchen.
“Yup, just trying to help out.” He said scratching the back of his head.
Twilight could see right through his lie, he always did this when he wanted to stay over at Rarity’s, but she would deal with that later.
“Thank you then.”
Now all she needed to do was decide what to make. She could just make a few daisy sandwiches, but no, that would be far too simple. Then again there was always something nice about something simple, but still she had to be a little more creative than that.
Perhaps she could make a few cheeseburgers… wait, what was a cheeseburger? She didn’t know, it just popped into her mind as if it was something she had before, but not for the life of her she could remember it.
A throbbing headache formed as Twilight tried to think further on the issue until finally she gave up on it and just decided to go with the daisy sandwich idea.
Twilight focused energy into her horn to levitate the utensils she needed to make the sandwich, but strangely nothing happened. She stood there confused for a moment as to why it wasn’t working before she tried again. Nothing, no matter how hard she focused no magic would work.
A lightheadedness washed over Twilight and her vision blurred. She stumbled her way into the library’s main room and collapsed on the couch.
A blurred form that seemed to be Spike walked up to Twilight and looked her in the eye.
“What’s wrong Twilight?” He asked, and while Twilight couldn’t make it out fully, his face seemed to be ripe with concern.
“Spike... I… I… feel dizzy. I think I might puke. Can you get me a drink of water?”
To try and make herself feel just a bit better. Twilight closed her eyes and started to take deep breaths. She did this for about a moment only to open them and see Spike in the same position.
“Umm Spike? What are you doing?”
No answer, and she wouldn’t get one as for some reason Spike began to fade away.
“Spike! Spike! Where are you going? What’s going on!”
The suddenly, she heard a voice, a voice that was almost like a whisper echoing across the room.
“Jaaaaaaaaaaane….”
“What, who are you? What are you talking about, who’s Jane?” Twilight said, her senses turning back to normal.
“It’s time to wake up Jane.” The voice said again, now much louder to the point in which she could clearly identify the voice as a male’s.
“Who are you and what have you done to Spike!”
This time though a yellow figure appeared right before her staring her down with a worried look on its face.
“Come on Jane get up.” He said. “It’s not real, it’s just a dream.”
And the world went white.
________________________________________________________
UNSC Port Stanley 2563
The eyes of Jane Arimondo shot open as she awoke from her slumber to find herself in her personal quarters on the UNSC Prowler Port Stanley.
This was the third time she had that specific dream. It was a dream about… well it was about her past. Years ago she wasn’t a human being, but rather a Equestrian pony by the name of Twilight Sparkle.
It was eleven years ago when she became a human being, and it wasn’t until six years later when she finally returned to her homeworld of Equestria. Most would think returning home after six years away would be a fantastic point in her life, it wasn’t. She did a lot of horrible things that she wished that she could forget upon her return home.
Due to her actions Equestria is now without magic anymore, and the planet follows human government for the most part. Ever since then Equestria has been slowly adapting to the new world it was now in.
Looking beside her Jane saw her A.I. companion Roland projecting his holographic avatar next to her bed who woke her up, his face stricken with worry.
“Jane we have a big problem! You need to get to the bridge now!” He said.
“What’s going on, did something bad happen to Mal and Vaz?”
“Big time, an anonymous person tipped the insurrectionists off that they were UNSC personal.”
“Shit. What’s going on right now.” Jane said throwing the covers of her bed off of her and then putting on the bare minimum of clothes she needed.
“They’re heading towards an evac point in a nearby forest to where they are. I sent Naomi and Devereaux already in Tart-Cart to pick them up.”
Once Jane was dressed she stormed out of her room and into Port Stanley’s bridge which was thankfully right next to her room.
In the middle of the the bridge was a holographic projection desk showing the view of a hidden satellite over the forest Mal and Vaz seemed to be running through. On the view she saw there were two green dots representing the two ONI agents. Also there was the view from the sunglasses that both men were wearing.
Next to the table was Dr. Evan Phillips, Kilo 5’s resident scientist and Sangheili expert staring down at the feed coming through. He turned his head towards Jane as she enterned.
“I see you rushed over pretty quick. It’s not often you see ONI officers being so, revealing.” he said pointing out the fact that she was in nothing but a standard Issue UNSC sports bra and training shorts. Jane couldn’t help but chuckle at the remark as well due to it also poking at the fact that ONI officers often being shrouded in secrets.
“Very funny Phyllis.” She replied back, Phyllis being a common nickname the crew gave to Phillips. The nickname came from his interactions with the Sangheili race who due to their unique jaw structure couldn’t pronounce some human letters.
“Glad you liked it. Now onto business. Mal and Vaz real identities were reported about 20 minutes ago. They made it through the insurrectionist hideout without too much damage, but now they’re being chased through the woods as they try to make it to the evac point.”
“Any word on who spilled the beans?”
Roland’s holographic projection appeared on the table with a smirk on his face telling Jane that he had her answer.
“I believe I can help with that. The tip was supposedly given anonymously, or at least that’s what our two colleagues planetside were told, but through hacking into their databases I can confirm that it was someone in their ranks who made the find. Who however I don’t know, they have an insane amount of security and firewalls to get to that information.”
Jane raised an eyebrow. “And this is a problem for you how? You’re one of the most advanced UNSC A.I.’s Roland, this should be a piece of cake.”
“Should doesn’t mean it is. This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen coming from the innies.”
“Do you think it could be Forerunner?”
“I wouldn’t think so. The UNSC has pretty much every Forerunner site on lockdown. From the Halo’s, to the colonies, and to the Trevelyan shield world. The only places we don’t have a firm lockdown on are Sanghelios, and Equestria as part of the deal when they joined the UNSC.”
Hearing the name Equestria made Jane twitch. Her homeworld, her birthplace. The place in which she almost destroyed due to her own personal vendetta. She couldn’t help but clench her fist as she tried to push away the painful memories.
A gunshot rang out from the footage from vaz’s sunglasses signaling that the enemies were catching up.
“Dammit, they’re getting close.” Jane said. “Roland how much longer till evac?”
“Naomi and Dev are just landing in a clearing nearby. Mal and Vaz will be there in a minute.”
Another screen of footage came up on the desk, this one was from a camera in Tart Cart. The live video showed the modified pelican just landing, it’s cargo bay door opening, and Naomi pulling down the deployable minigun from the ceiling.
Mal and Vaz quickly came into view with more gunshots following them. Naomi readied chain turret but couldn’t get a clear shot as the enemies.
As the two Spartans hopped on board the ship one of the bullets heading their direction hit Vaz in the shoulder causing him to hiss in pain. Another shot hit him in the back causing him to fall down and his sunglasses to fall off.
As Tart-Cart started to lift off the sunglasses Vaz was just wearing fell off of the back of the ship and landed on the ground. The cargo bay door of the ship then closed and the ship soared off into the sky to soon meet back up with Port Stanley causing Jane to breathe a sigh of relief.
“That was a close one.” Phillips said. I’m just glad they didn’t hit any vital parts of Vaz.”
“Yeah, he’s a good agent and a good person. I don’t say it enough to him though.”
Before Jane walked away from the desk to go back to her room and get fully dressed something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was the still continuing footage from the sunglasses Vaz was wearing.
In the footage she could see a few human insurrectionists, but what caught her attention was that there were ponies with them as well. One pegasi and one unicorn.
The pegasi noticed the sunglasses on the ground and picked it up.
“I know you’re watching this UNSC scum.” He said.
“Well isn’t he just a bundle of sunshine.” Phillips said.
“You may think we’re blind to the truth, but we know what happened.” The pegasi hissed.
Roland’s avatar instantly turned to Jane with a worried face.
The pony continued. “We will have revenge against the traitor, and we will bring back our queen. You may have fooled Luna but you will never pull the wool over our eyes.”
The pegasi threw the sunglasses on the ground and stomped on them cutting the feed.
“Crazy conspiracy theorist. It’s nut jobs like that who made the insurrection start in the first place.” Phillips scoffed.
Jane’s heart was pumping vigorously as she responded with. “Yeah…. you’re right.”
“Anyways I haven’t had breakfast yet, I’ll see you later Jane.”
“Yeah sure, I’ll be along in a bit.” Jane said now hunched over the desk in a cold sweat.
“You okay Jane, don’t tell me the words of those nut jobs have you scared. Honestly we’ve done nothing wrong to them. Hell we saved them from that nutjob princess of theirs at the battle of the Crystal Empire.”
“No, it’s just that I almost lost a good man today, that’s all.” Jane lied.
“Oh okay then. Anyways chao.” He said as he left the room.
A dead silence fell between Jane and Roland as they both knew what had just happened.
“ONI said they tied up all of the loose ends.” Jane said. “We took all of the steps needed to make sure that everything was covered up.”
It was true. After she left and brought forth the elements to ONI they said they would cover her tracks. A cover story was made to hide the true intentions of her attack on the Crystal Empire.Celestia was used as a scapegoat, she was already a figure who attacked the UNSC INFINITY during her return to Equestria so it was easy to make it look like the battle of the Crystal Empire was just humanity defending themselves from her. The guards from the canterlot castle who she killed was also blamed on Celestia. After that there was the guards from after the attack on The Crystal Empire in which Jane proclaimed that humanity was in charge. They were all told that it was just a misunderstanding and that she was only taking on emergency power granted by Princess Luna for the UNSC to set up a base to defend themselves from Celestia.
“This is not good at all, you’re entire freedom is on the line now. Even if we can’t be certain if that pony has anything credible on him, it’s still a risk leaving him alone.”
“Yes, we don’t know if he has any real dirt on me, but as long as we don’t know he’s a threat to me. I don’t want to lose my freedom, if I do then there is no way in which I can work towards atoning for my sins.”
“Are you going to tell Osman about this?”
“No, absolutely not!” Jane exclaimed. “The fact that they’re covering this all up for me has already allowed them to control me like a little puppet for fear of my crimes going public. If they know that I’m scared they will be able to take even more control over me, and that can’t happen.”
“Then this is something we have to tackle on our own I guess.”
“Indeed, but I can’t just go down there and take care of them myself, too many questions would be raised that way. The last thing I want is Osman breathing down my neck.” Jane said resting her hand on her chin in thought.
Roland’s face lit up for a second as he seemed to have just found out something.
“Speaking of Osman, she’s calling you right now.”
Jane sighed. “Very well then. Put her on screen.”
“The images of the planet below on the holographic projection desk disappeared and what replaced them was a screen with the image of the head of ONI herself Serin Osman dressed in her black ONI uniform sipping a cup of tea.
“Good morning Jane.” She said. “I see you just got out of bed.”
“Thanks for noticing.” Jane said sarcastically while crossing her arms. “May I ask why you are calling?”
“Straight to the point as per usual. Well first things first how is your current mission going?”
“We had to cut it off Ma’am. Vaz and Mal were discovered based off of an anonymous tip. Vaz has two gunshot wounds, but is otherwise fine.”
Osman had almost a sly smile to her as she said her next words. “Very well then. It’s a shame to hear that Jane. I don’t know that information was leaked, but I’ll take care of it so rest easy on that. Do you have any idea on the identity of the person who gave away this information?”
Jane had the hunch that it was the pegasi from earlier, but she choose to keep that a secret. After all, she was an ONI agent, secrets were her speciality.
“Absolutely no idea. I have Roland looking into it right now.”
“No need to Jane, I’ll take care of it. This is actually perfect timing as I have a new assignment for you. You might not like it though.”
“No use beating around the bush then. Lay it on me.”
“Over the last seventy two hours five colonies have experienced identical events. Massive destruction, Forerunner in origin. As of right now we’re trying to find out what’s causing these events, but none of our Forerunner sources are telling us everything. There is however two places where we have limited access to. I think you know what they are.”
“You’re not thinking about sending be back there are you?”
“Yes, and before you ask, we already have a team heading to Sanghelios. So don’t think you can just go there instead. I’m sending you back to Equestria whether you like it or not.”
“I fail to see the logic behind this. We already have limited access, what makes you think me being there will change anything?”
“Easy, we have a cover story to mask your true intentions for being there. This is a secret operation. The Planetary Government of the Equestrian UNSC branch won’t know the real reason why you’re there. You see they are having a bit of a terrorist problem right now, we don’t see them as any threat whatsoever, but President Luna seems to be worried about them. She thinks you’re there to help them with this problem.”
“Does Luna know it’ll be me?”
“Yes, but despite your strained past with her I’m sure both of you can be professional about this. I expect you to be there as soon as possible, now if you’ll excuse me I have other matters to attend to. I’ll look forward to your report. Osman out.”
Just like that the conversation ended and the holographic projection desk reverted back to the map from before and Roland appeared.
“What did she say Jane?” He asked.
“Were being reassigned, back to Equestria.”
“Are you serious? This has to be some kind of test Osman is putting you through!”
“Regardless of her intentions we have our orders. Is Tart-Cart back?”
“Yes it is, they just landed in the docking bay.”
“Good, fire up the slipspace generator, we’re heading to Equestria.”