Crimson

Five ducked underneath the Halberd's blade and swung his arm out to try and catch Celestia's barrel with the Energy Sword. Seeing this, Celestia kicked her right legs out to try and roll away, but still felt the sting of the twin blades as they melted through her armor, cutting out a nasty scar nearly a foot long.

As Five recovered, he turned and tried to dig his combat knife into Celestia's neck, only to swing at air as Celestia rolled over her broken wings and stood up a good few meters away from the Spartan. She glared at him with the fury of the Sun as he calmly twirled the knife into an under-handed position.

"You're as good as dead," Five stated. "I scored third highest in CQC at the academy, and that was before I was a Spartan."

"Your training means nothing in the face of a God," Celestia seethed.

"I think the Covenant would beg to differ."

Celestia reeled her Halberd back and thrust it at Five, who in turn shot his Energy Sword forward to parry. When the spear-head slid off of the curved plasma blade, Five stepped forward to stab at Celestia. She anticipated this, however, and managed to turn the Halberd further from Five's parry and aimed it at Five's head.

"Behind you!" Chrysalis called out.

Five ducked on reflex and rolled underneath Celestia's swing before she changed its fulcrum to swing it down at the Spartan. He brought the Energy sword up to block the strike, and held firmly against the blade.

\\\//////

Sombra watched on with a sour note playing in his mind. His Covenant followers were right, this Demon was a formidable foe. He not only held his own against his puppet's most powerful Dark Magic attack, but he came out unscathed and was crippling his asset. Had he not been able to manipulate Celestia through such a view, she would likely have died when those cannons fired.

"This won't do at all," he muttered. "Rondanee," he called out.

A Sangheili in red armor approached and bowed before the Forerunner device holding Sombra's intelligence.

"My Lord, how may I serve you?"

"Prepare the medical facilities for emergency care, I'm pulling in a puppet to be fixed."

\\\//////

Five pushed the blade to the side and slashed at the pole underneath the Halberd's head and sliced the blade off.

Disarmed and barely capable of keeping herself together, Celestia limped back and gasped for air. She could feel her insides burning, running on borrowed power to keep her pinned together. The Princess could feel her bones threatening to break into dust and her heart beating against the fragments of a rib.

The Spartan charged at the alicorn, ready to finish her off, before she was concealed by a purple wall of fog that struck out and slammed into his abdomen.

As Five landed on the deck, a dark chuckle echoed through the void where Celestia once stood. There, two red eyes glared at him, hovering above a fanged smile. The portal closed immediately after, taking Celestia with it.

Five let out a groan as he stood up.

"Great, more portal bullshit."

Behind him, the Changelings were watching as the Spartan picked up the spent weapons, as well as the magically drained fragments of Celestia's weapon, before walking up to them.

"Thanks for that call, Chrysalis," he said. "Glad you guys all survived whatever the Hell that was."

"I... I've never even heard of Celestia being twisted enough to use that much Dark Magic," Chrysalis said, a distant look in her eyes.

"Yeah, well there's a first time for everything, I guess. Now, everyone inside. I'm locking down the Frigate until further-"

"More unknown contacts approaching the starboard docking bay," Sid announced.

"God damn shit!" Five shouted. "Can I get one whole minute without something on this planet trying to- fuck it, give me visual."

Five's HUD lit up with the security footage from the starboard crew entrance, showing several ponies lining up, including one Applejack and...

"Seal all entrances below this deck," Five ordered.

"Who's there?"

"I don't know, but they brought kids."

"Kids? They brought children to an alien ship?"

"So did you," Five pointed out.

"I did it because we have literally nowhere else in this world to go."

"Exactly. So why would someone bring a bunch of kids-"

"The pink one is calling you by name, sir," Sid stated.

"Put me on speaker."

Five's helmet was filled with static before he heard the audio sync up with the footage.

"Mister Sergeant-Five-sir, I'm really sorry to bother you, but please please please let us in! Everypony in the Royal Guard just turned super-evil and are trying to hunt us down! They know about the foals and won't stop until somepony's hurt! Please help us!" the pink pony cried as she looked directly towards the camera.

"Why would anyone be after you?"

"Because somepony did a thing that made everypony in the Guard go evily-meany! They wanted to arrest us for treason against somepony who they shouldn't be serving and want to foalnap or... end anypony who gets in their way! Please, think of the foals!" she insisted, holding up twin ponies.

Five felt his curiosity unsatisfied, but stopping that thinking when he thought of their scenario.

'That was their leader that came here to kill us all,' *Five thought, 'so maybe they* are being hunted by their government for treason. I shouldn't because of the thousands of protocol violations that I'll be issued with once we reach UNSC space... ah, fuck me.'

"Follow the lit path and don't deviate from it unless you want to be thrown in a cell," Five answered. "Sid, light up a path for them to the barracks and seal off all adjacent hallways."

'This is gonna be a long debrief if I ever get back.'