Halo Ponies: Headhunter Edition

Chapter 8: Dear Sweet Celestia!

Nurse Redheart sheepishly paced through Ponyville’s crowded streets. She wasn’t sure if helping a patient escape from the hospital and helping to hide them was illegal, but she was sure it couldn’t be all that good.

“Oh Nurse Redheart, good to see you outside the hospital.”

Nurse Redheart’s skin resisted the sudden urge to leap off her body at the unexpected voice; she was too tense for this. She turned around to where a large blue unicorn was smiling at her. Only Pokey Peirce had a horn that sharp.

“Oh, Pokey, you really shouldn’t sneak up on a mare like that.” She hissed through her clenched teeth, forcing a clearly-fake smile.

“Sorry Redheart, I’m used to sneaking up on the kids to pop their balloons. I just wanted to thank you for treating my uncle during the ‘baked bads’ crisis. The other doctors wanted to use a stomach pump!”

“Ah yes, I remember that fiasco. Ponyville had to step up food inspection afterwards, made it a lot harder for the Cakes to sell anything. By the way, have you seen Twilight around?” She was more relaxed by this point, having let all her muscles un-tense.

“Yeah, I saw her by town hall a few minutes ago; I think she was looking for Rarity. Somethin’ about a… stuck helmet was it? I think she was… Redheart?”

The stallion found himself standing alone in the street, the only sign that Redheart had been there was a comical Pony-shaped dust cloud. Pokey looked around, and seeing the mare nowhere went off to terrorize more children’s balloons.

/*W*\

“William watch out!”

The other SPARTAN turned, letting out a trio of bullets. In front of him several flood forms fell to the ground, still twitching and gasping in their twisted way.

“Thanks Richard.” William said, swiping two fingers over his helmet, a SPARTAN smile. Richard returned the gesture.

They had been sent here, to the Covenant High Charity, to investigate the flood outbreak. They were supposed to have to have met up for evac by this point, but the flood had turned the High Charity into a beehive of flesh and toxic gas. Organic matter was the only thing that seemed to hold any structural dominance; it was fascinating in a horrifying sort of way. The original map they had been given was useless, having only confused them the farther than they had travelled. Richard activated his COMMS network, signaling the nearby frigate to tell them the situation.

“This is Richard signaling frigate 5th Of November, we need transport from the High Charity. Our map is useless, and we’re surrounded by Flood, Requesting immediate transport. Over.”

“Richard this is the 5th Of November, we’ll get a pelican to the nearest entryway. Get there and pop a flare. Over.”

Richard turns off the COMMS, turning around to address his partner.

“William we need to—“

He tried to pivot on his two feet, but failed and fell forward on the ground, scuffing his chin. His helmet? Where was his helmet, where was his armor, where were his hands?! He raised his arms, trying to look at his missing appendages; all he could see were two stark white stumps. Why!? These were, these were Pony hooves, but he was human!

“William I—“

He looked up from the horror of his transformation to be greeted by an even worse one, his partner William stood in front of him, trailing orange blood on the floor. Huge pieces of his armor were missing and the holes oozed foul-smelling pus. A tentacle of an infection form hung out of his abdomen, convulsing with each beat of his failing heart. He still clutched his rifle in one hand, raising it slowly to aim directly at Richard’s head.

“You did this to me. You made me this way.” It said, completely lacking emotion. It pulled the trigger, Richard screamed as—

“Richard!?”

Richard jerked awake, panic still gripping him. He went for his gun before he was fully aware, firing off two shots at random.

“RICAHRD!”

He stopped all action, stopping a scream he hadn’t noticed he had been screaming peter out. He looked around, expecting the flood infested walls from his nightmare. Instead, he found himself still in Twilight’s library, curled up on an easy chair in the main room. The only part of his body to have moved was his arm, still clutching his pistol, all the rest of him was curled in the fetal position. He spotted an aquamarine Pony crouched down behind a pile of books, her arms clamped down over her head. Richard pulled himself into a sitting position, holstering his firearm.

“Lyra is that you?” he asked, shaking his head to dislodge some of his post-wakeup sleepiness.

“Is that me!? Of course it’s me! You know, the Pony you almost killed!” She roared, picking herself off the ground and marching furiously towards the groggy Spartan. She raised her hoof, and smartly clopped him on the face, quickly backing away to rub her injured hoof.

“That might have worked; if I weren’t wearing one of the strongest helmets in the galaxy.”

“Stop using words I don’t know and stop shooting me, and I’ll think about it next time.”

“To my defense I shot at you. If I were shooting you in earnest you would be dead.”

“That’s not the point. I came here to check on you, not argue.”

The Spartan raised an eyebrow.

“Check on me? Why?”

“Mysterious warrior all alone in a new place? You guess why I was checking on you.”

“Oh, to see if I was being a good Spartan.”

“Now you get it, and I’m glad I did. You were screaming so loud I could hear you from outside the library!”

“Oh, that, it was nothing.”

The Pony put on an unbelieving face.

“So you just scream at random times?”

“… Yes.”

“I just—“ She sighed heavily. “I don’t care enough to keep asking. I’m beginning to think Forerunners are more trouble than they’re worth.”

There she went again, dropping the F-bomb. Why wouldn’t she just accept he wasn’t a Forerunner and leave it at that? He decided not to bring it up; she would have to accept it sooner or later, so why try now?

“You seem a bit more negative than usual.” Richard said, getting to his feet and swiping off the thin layer of dust that had collected on him while he slept. His sudden nap did bother him a bit; he usually could control himself for days without any rest. He was slipping, that was certain.

The unicorn ignored him, turning towards the door and trotting outside, expecting Richard to follow. The Spartan did with some reluctance, his muscles not wanting to move properly. He had to stoop a bit as they exited, the door being a little small for him. He observed the square, which looked drastically different from when he had first been there. The bodies of the dead elites had been removed, as well as all the blood stains. All the carts had been put in their proper place and repaired; the few whose contents had been smashed were now full to the brim with product. The phantom was gone from the sky and all the plasma burns on the ground were missing. It was an impressive cleanup to say the least.

“How did you manage to get the square looking this way? When I blew through we trashed it in the fight.” Richard asked, looking for any signs of persisting damage.

“OH!” Lyra yelled, doing a little jump. “I didn’t hear you come out. Don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry. But the damage, how’d you fix it?”

Lyra shook her head a little, a slightly dazed expression on her face.

“Twilight used a recall spell. Anything in the square went back to the where it had been at the time she wished. I think it was about two hours before we found you that she set it back to.”

Richard raised his eyebrow. “Interesting, she can do that on anything she wants?”

“Yeah Recla— Richard, it takes a lot of power though. Only the strongest unicorns can do it, and only then a couple times a week. Biological constructs take more power to do, I can’t imagine how hard it would have been for Twilight to recall the entire square, and those monsters!”

“So Twilight is a powerful unicorn?”

Lyra nodded her head. “The most powerful this generation, and she’s getting stronger by the day. She was powerful enough to become Princess Celestia’s personal student when she was just a filly.”

“She knows your leader well then?”

“Yeah, but now we better get moving. Twilight had an idea on how to disguise you in order to move around more comfortably until you talk with the Princess.”

“A disguise, eh, sounds okay.”

They set off from the square, disappearing deep into the back alleyways as Lyra led the Spartan to his destination.

/*W*\