Vanguard

Chapters

Unexpected Arrival
Another New Guest
A Walk In The Park
Space Cowboys
Heart Of Darkness
The Lonesome Starry Sky
Dark Tidings
Preparations
Mini-Codex (OC SPOILERS)

Unexpected Arrival

"Urgh." Matias Orion let out an unintelligible grunt as he picked up his head, looking around the wrecked cockpit of his crashed fighter. There were alarms going off, their shrill sounds the only complement to the flickering controls.

"Undetected, my ass," he muttered under his breath. He took stock of his cockpit. Pretty much everything was smashed, save for his own equipment lockbox. His omnitool, thankfully, was intact. And after a few active checks on his L5n implants, was sure that he was still combat-capable as a Vanguard. His head throbbed painfully, but that was par for the course, crash-landing a fighter.

He couldn't make out anything beyond the fighter's crashed cockpit glass; it was covered in dirt. He slammed the release button and the hatch explosively opened.

He brought a hand over his eyes as the bright sun crashed through his rebreather helmet, the glare reflecting off of his own N7 heavy armor. He looked around. The planet was surprisingly green, and had... breatheable air... and TREES! Now that was surprising. He'd been on Mako runs before on Alliance patrols; most planets tended to not have--

Wait. It could be possible that he crash-landed on a planet listed as off-limits by the Citadel Council. If this was true, they might be willing to overlook his transgression, given his situation, but...

It didn't matter. Not while the Reapers were out there.

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Orion was stationed with Admiral Hackett's fleet when the Reapers struck Earth. They had little to no warning as huge percentages of the fleet were smashed through in a matter of minutes, despite their heightened readiness. He himself had little to no time to deploy; it didn't take long before the battle went beyond south and Hackett ordered a full retreat, leaving Earth to fend for itself.

The initial decision was met with reluctance, and eventually anger as Alliance soldiers realized that they had just been ordered to leave their homeworld to die. There was a lot of talk of deserting, even mutiny, but they were soon quashed by Hackett himself as he issued a fleet-wide transmission: they had found plans for a Prothean superweapon that could defeat the Reapers, and all resources were to be immediately diverted to building it. Dislike him as much as he'd like, Orion needed to give Hackett credit: the man was practically a walking and talking wall of steel, and everyone followed his orders.

The soldiers, despite their grumblings, knew that complaining would solve nothing. They knew full well after seeing what happened in orbit above Earth that they couldn't stand a chance against the Reapers conventionally. So they picked up their tools and started construction; anybody who could hold a tool was thrown into the project. Morale was boosted after it was stated that the legendary Commander Shepard himself would be rallying the Council races to war against the Reapers, and to provide much needed resources for this new project, dubbed the Crucible.

However, Orion, and the other N7 operatives that were still alive, were needed to hold back the Reaper tide as long as they could, wherever they could. Many times, he found himself working alongside other N7 operatives and even Council special forces, like the famous Asari commandos, Salarian STG, Turians, and even Krogan, Quarians, and Drell. They held off the tide against the Reapers, rogue Geth, and even Cerberus (where they had gotten enough soldiers to march in full force Orion had no idea).

But on this particular op, after weeks of fighting and severe casualties, Orion was deployed, alone.

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He jumped out of the cockpit and surveyed the rest of his surroundings. He began an omnitool scan of this world to at least try to get what he could out of it.

Well, for one, it was breatheable. Orion took off his helmet and took in a deep breath. The air was fresh, fresher than anything he'd even inhaled before. Or maybe it was because he was just happy to be out of a metal coffin. Further information revealed that this world was very much like Earth, with mountains, rivers, clouds, and obviously, the trees. Actually, almost exactly like Earth, now that he thought about it.

He ran a hand through his short-cut brown hair. Looking in the reflection of the cockpit's glass, he noticed that most of his facial features seemed intact, stubble and all. He held the gaze of his own brown eyes momentarily before looking away. The wind swayed his hair a bit, but it was otherwise quiet, aside from some birds chirping.

"Hmm, that's strange..." The Omnitool began giving off weird readings. There was some strange type of Element Zero on this planet that Orion wagered that no species had ever seen before, and in rather insane amounts. It looked like the deposits were untouched, and were so abundant, it permeated the air itself. He wasn't sure what would happen if he was hopped up on Eezo, though, so he put his helmet back on, sealing it with a hiss, just in case. He could scan if the airborne Eezo could affect him, but that would take too much time right now.

He'd made a note of that, but now he had to take stock.

He pulled his lockbox out of his cockpit, but not without difficulty. The box, labeled with a serial number and the N7 logo on it, was huge, and locked to the immediate right of his seat.

"Damn techs..." he muttered as he dropped the huge box with a thud on the ground.

He waved his omnitool over the box and the locks popped with a hiss. He surveyed the contents of the matte-black box:

An M920 Cain. Well, it was a deep-strike mission, heavy ordnance was expected.

An N7 Crusader shotgun. His loyal N7 weapon, with years of service under the belt.

An M-99 Saber semi-automatic rifle. His own, actually, he was actually quite the sharpshooter with it.

And an M-5 Phalanx. His trusted sidearm. There were still scuffs on it from battles past.

Given his operative nature, this was a lot to arm a Vanguard for this mission. But he was given much promise by the techs that they had replaced as much as possible with lightweight materials and refitted heatsink mechanics. They can all fire indefinitely, but they had to cool down if fired for too much, much like the retrograde weapons they had during the Saren incident. Orion didn't mind, it saved him the trouble of running out of thermal clips, which were already a dwindling commodity in deep-strike missions. The weight promise certainly came through; he could walk around at full speed, even faster, which would help a lot with cooling down his implant abilities.

He holstered his weapons, and after making sure he had everything he needed, he checked his mission computer.

This wasn't the world he was supposed to be on, that was for sure. He flipped open his omnitool, and found that his intended target was... nowhere? He double checked again. His omnitool couldn't get access to the Alliance database. That was strange. Did something happen en route to his destination? Maybe that was how he crashed. He was being followed by those damn orb-fighter things (Oculus, the reports called them) that the Reapers seemed to have in spades. His fighter was armed with an experimental FTL drive for solo missions deep within Reaper territory. He distinctly remembered taking an engine hit just as the drive activated. Maybe it destabilized the drive and threw him... somewhere else. The following engine failure forced him to land on this planet.

It was just supposed to be another mission, damnit, another trek deep into enemy territory, another few months spent eating crap just to get the chance to maybe die a little later than usual. Reaper hotspots, Geth nodes, Cerberus bases; each and every one after the other, no downtime, no rest, not until he was dead. But his former standard objective of infiltration, elimination, and information retrieval had suddenly been shot down.

The fact of the matter was: he was now stuck on a planet that may or may not have natives that have access to interstellar travel technology, and even if they did, he can't just up and go anywhere without the coordinates of his current location, which he couldn't get because he couldn't access the database. Otherwise he'd be floating around in space like a sitting duck. So he essentially couldn't do ANYTHING.

He frowned. "Damn. Failed the mission before I even got there... shit."

He mentally kicked himself as he'd just realized that he'd been standing here for too long. N7 training had taught him that you never leave yourself in the open for too long, especially after a loud crash, and he'd done exactly that. Seeing that he was surrounded by trees, he immediately began for the dense forest that seemingly encircled his landing zone.

To the natives, it was known as the Everfree Forest.

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"Hey, Twilight!" said Rainbow Dash, flying in through the treehouse's front door. "You gotta come with me! I saw an explosion near the Everfree forest!"

"That's dangerous, Dash. Maybe we should--"

"No way! We gotta check it out! Come on, come on, please!"

Twilight sighed. "Alright. But I'm sending a letter off to Princess Celestia first, just in case. We don't know what it is yet."

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This place was dark, Orion noted. Really dark. He could barely make out any of the ground features. He stumbled over a root a few times.

He readied his shotgun. He didn't like this place. It was like something was watching him...

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Deep within the recesses of her own mind, Nightmare Moon awoke.

Someone new was here. Someone she could use...

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"What the HELL!" Orion shouted, sprinting through the forest. There was someone--someTHING--chasing him. It looked like some mix of an assload of animals back on Earth; what was the word for it? A Chimera? Yeah, he'll call them that. He fired off his Crusader a few times to no avail. This thing wasn't having any of it.

"Shit!" he shouted as he ran through the forest. His arms glowed as he readied a Pull ability. Maybe if this worked...

"Better... than... nothing!" he shouted as he pointed his arm at the creature. Surprisingly, given the mass and size of the creature, it started to float.

"Yes! How do you like me now, asshole?!" He spun around and readied Incendiary Ammo for his Shotgun. "Burn, sucker!" He unloaded into the monster; the shots tore through the flesh, much to Orion's amusement.

The beeping noise and hissing sound of his weapon indicated that he needed to let it cool down. The Pull field faded, and the monster flopped to the ground in a bloody mess. He noticed a clearing and sprinted for it. Now he could finally get out of this--

Aw, damn it. He was back where he started. He'd ended up going in a circle.

"Huh?" He noticed two... things... examining his crashed fighter, who had just turned to him as he entered the clearing. Two... colorful... ponies?

"Huh?" he spouted back, panting. He pointed his Crusader at them. "I don't know who are you, but get away from the wreckage! Do it, or I'll shoot!"

The ponies seemed to give looks of fear on their faces as they slowly backed away from the jet. They seemed to understand him, at least.

Orion couldn't freaking believe this. Ponies. Colorful ponies. And a Chimera. Are there Thresher Maws now, too? His mind was in a torrent of thoughts as he still had his gun raised to them. N7 training doesn't cover in-depth interactions with other species, unfortunately.

"Um... hello... uh, my name is Twilight--" said the purple one as she slowly walked towards him.

"WHOA. STOP. RIGHT. THERE. You can TALK?"

"Um, yes."

There was silence for a moment. "Who are you and where am I?" Orion asked, his voice echoing through his helmet.

"I'm Twilight Sparkle, and this is my friend Rainbow Dash." She gestured towards the rainbow-maned pony with wings. "And you're in Equestria!"

Equestria. Equine. Orion didn't study animal anatomy in school, but he could piece two and two together. This was some Planet of the Ponies stuff going on here or something.

"Right... Equestria..." he muttered, lowering his weapon. "Listen, I just need to find a way off this planet. I need to get somewhere else and I need to do it soon."

"Is that what this thing was for?" Dash pointed to the fighter.

"Yeah... well, it's smashed now," shrugged Orion. "Can't use it."

"What in hay are you, anyway?" asked Dash.

"I'm... a human. A human soldier. What are you?"

"I'm a pegasus, dummy." Orion took further notice of her wings. Flying ponies. Fantastic.

"Right..." Well, these ponies were smaller than him. And they didn't seem harmful. Or out for blood. He holstered his Crusader and approached them, hand out for a shake. "I'm Matias Orion. You can just call me Orion, it's what my friends do."

Twilight shook his hand using her... hoof? "Pleasure to meet you, Orion." Dash stepped in quickly afterwards and did the same, nearly tripping him in the process.

"So... what are you again?" she asked.

"I'm a human. Uh, you know what that is, right?" They shook their heads. "Well, consider this your first interaction with an extraterrestrial species."

Twilight seemed piqued by this, but decided not to push the issue at the moment.

"We should head back to town before more things show up," she said. She must have heard the commotion in the forest. "We can talk more there."

"Uh, sure. Is it okay to just leave my crash sitting here like this?" Orion asked. The fighter's engine was still smoking. "I'll just vent the systems and shut it down..." He leaned into the cockpit and pushed a few buttons. The engine gave a whir, then went silent, and the smoke disappeared.

He hopped off the side of the fighter, closing the glass hatch, and after a long look at the surroundings, he sighed. "Lead on, Miss... uh, Twilight."

The trio ventured off towards Ponyville.

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Celestia was dreaming. She knew she was dreaming. Standing in a dark, dark room, she turned, and saw it.

Nightmare Moon. Her form was huge and her power immense. She walked slowly towards Celestia.

Celestia couldn't scream. She couldn't use her powers. She could do nothing but shrivel in fear as Nightmare Moon approached her.

Then she saw it. Something appeared in front of her, holding some strange weapon in his right hand and glowing with an eerie blue energy. He vanquished Nightmare Moon using his fearsome power and turned towards her, towering above her and watching her through his helmet. His armor was black, bulky in size. He had blue trim on his armor, with what appeared to be a triangle on his right shoulder, with white line trim.

The last thing Celestia remembered before waking up was an inscription on his upper-right torso armor.

N7, written in white letters, with a red triangle at the bottom right corner.

And then she noticed a letter from Twilight sitting right next to her. Opening it, she was interested by this sudden incident of an unexplained explosion in the forest. Perhaps her dream and the explosion weren't entirely unrelated...

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"So... wait... where are we again?" Orion was sitting in Twilight's treehouse, with a cup of tea in front of him. He had taken off his helmet, and after scanning that the tea was indeed free of poison, had taken a liking to it. However, he did have a bit of hard time trying to sit down in his rather bulky armor.

He had been making conversation with Twilight, while Dash's eyes were seemingly stuck on taking in every detail of his armor, especially the parts where they glowed.

"You're in Ponyville, Orion."

"Pony... ville..." he repeated, taking a sip. He figured he shouldn't be surprised. This planet was seemingly inhabited by talking ponies. It was as if somebody took the rainbow and painted this world with every kind of color imaginable. It felt odd compared to the dull colors of homeworld Earth. "Sorry, it's just that I'm having trouble... getting used to, uh, talking ponies." He looked over his shoulders as Dash started poking at the glowing lights on his back.

"It's okay. You're new around here."

"NEW?! SOMEONE NEW?!" you hear someone shout from outside. This new pink pony pokes her head in through the door and lets out a loud gasp. "SOMEONE. NEW." Her fuzzy pink hair seemed to jump as if for emphasis.

"Hey, Pinkie Pie." Orion gave Twilight a look. Their names were about as strange as Hanar soul names. "This is Matias Orion. You can call him Orion for short."

"Well, NICE TO MEET YA, ORION!" She had closed the distance from the door to his face in about one second, which caused Orion to jump back. "You know what this calls for? A PARTY!" She skipped out the door.

"She's... uh... cheery."

Twilight giggles. "Yeah, she's Ponyville's resident party thrower. She gives everyone new in a town a welcoming party."

"Even for me?" Orion was surprised.

"Yes, even for you," Dash joked. "Everyone gets one, whether they like it or not."

Twilight and Orion started talking about Equestria, the Princesses, and the day-night cycle...

"Whoa, hold on. You mean the sun and moon have to be raised and lowered manually?"

"Yes." Orion had a shocked look on his face. "I take it that doesn't happen in your world?"

"Well, no. They do it on their own..."

His stomach grumbled, and Orion took that as a sign that it's time to finally pop some MREs.

"Hungry?" Twilight asked. He just nodded and made for his bag, which he'd brought with him from the fighter. He took out what appeared to be a cylindrical tube and popped open the lid, and proceeded to drinking from it.

"Uh, what is that?" asked a curious Twilight.

He swallowed hard. "Ugh. Military rations. They're far from fantastic, and taste like crap, but it gets the job done." He downed another gulp and finished the rest. "There. Good until my next meal."

"That's not going to work out very well..."

"Hey, Twilight, how's it--whoa! Who's the guest?" asked Spike, coming down from upstairs.

"Hey. I'm Matias Orion. You can just call me Orion."

"Well, we were just about to have something for lunch, Spike. Would you mind making something?"

"Oh, no, not at all..." Spike walked into the kitchen while giving Orion a strange look, as if to say "I'm watching you."

"So, what's he?"

"Spike? He's a dragon."

"Kind of small for a dragon, don't you think?"

She laughed. "He's still young."

"Oh." There's going to be a lot to get used to here... He began introspecting about his circumstance, and found it odd that he'd accepted it so quickly. He assumed that contact with other extraterrestrial species helped a lot in dealing with talking colorful ponies. He wasn't sure if English was the actual language they spoke or if it was just his universal translator kicking into gear. Maybe he should ask--

Orion was broken out of his stupor by a knock at the door.

"I'll get it," Twilight said as she approached the door. She opened it and was surprised to find two Royal Guards awaiting her.

"Ma'am," said one. "Princess Celestia wishes to--" He tensed up as he noticed Orion, who was sipping his cup of tea. "Get back, ma'am!"

He ran in front of Twilight and drew his wings in an intimidating manner, while the other guard entered the treehouse. Rainbow had retaliated and jumped in front of Orion.

"Hold it!" shouted Twilight. "He's a friend!"

"He might be dangerous!" responded the guard.

"He's NOT dangerous!" Dash shouted in response.

"Hold on, now!" Orion shouted, putting down the cup and holding his hands up. "I don't mean any harm. I was just having conversation with Miss Twilight there." He made sure to stress the 'don't mean any harm' part.

The guard looked at Twilight, who nodded her confirmation. "Hmph." He lowered his wings. "The Princess wishes to see you, ma'am."

"Duly noted," she responded. "Orion, you should come with me! It'd be a good idea to talk to Celestia; she knows some powerful magic! Maybe she can help!"

Spike, who had returned to the room, dropped his plates in shock. "Whoa!" he shouted as he scrambled to grab them. "Twilight, what's going on?"

"Your, uh, Princess wants to speak with her," Orion shrugged. "She wanted me to go with her."

"Oh! Well, if that's the case, I'm coming, too!"

"Not with us, Spike. The Princess wants to speak with all the Elements of Harmony. Could you do me a favor and gather them at Canterlot, please?"

Spike sighed. "Yeah, I guess."

Orion picks up his helmet and follows Twilight outside. Spike follows her out, leaving for a trail towards some farm in the distance. Twilight locks the door and smiles at you.

"Uh... Elements of Harmony?" Orion asked. He hefted his helmet along his right side, and looked over his shoulder, making sure his weapons were still there.

"Yes, the Elements of Harmony. That's what me and my friends are. A while back, we sealed off an ancient evil using our powers and Equestria has been in peace ever since."

"How old is this evil?"

"Pretty old, but I'd say probably about a thousand or so."

"Oh, so nothing like Reapers," he muttered.

"Beg pardon?"

"Reapers," he repeated. "It's what my people are fighting against. They come around every 50,000 years or so to 'extinguish all life' or some crazy stuff like that. I guess they can also be considered an ancient evil. We aren't... really doing well against them." He looked towards the distance, holding a steely gaze, remembering Earth and the skies of burning wreckage.

"Oh... well, we should go talk to Celestia to see if she can help you."

"HIYA!" shouted Pinkie, appearing out of nowhere and now hopping circles around Orion. "Where ya goin'?"

"We're headed to Canterlot, Pinkie. Celestia wants to talk with the Elements of Harmony," Twilight smiled.

"Really?! I'll be sure to join you all soon! I need to bring cupcakes and streamers with me!" She started to skip away.

"What for?" asked Twilight.

"To throw a party for our new friend when we get there, of course!" her voice fading as she bounded around a corner.

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Orion learned on his omnitool, in between bouts of casual conversation with Dash and Twilight, that the planet's Eezo factor was insanely high. Tests run seem to indicate that they could even supercharge his biotic powers, knocking cooldown rates to practically zero and pump up power to near ludicrous levels; he'd wager that if he decided to harness the latent "advanced" Eezo on this planet, he could probably run a Reaper through just with a single charge. Despite the allure of becoming a biotic god, though, he wasn't sure if his body or his implants would be capable of taking the large strain of hyper-induced biotic combos.

Further scans seem to show that he couldn't be affected by it. The ponies were, obviously, but they seemed to have built a resistance to the stuff after being exposed to it for so long. He wondered if all this Eezo could explain why unicorns could use magic. Or maybe even mutate pegasi to have wings? Or maybe alter the endurance of the Earth ponies? Orion didn't read much at Twilight's treehouse, but he got the basics down of the pony types, at least.

Twilight seemed to have a vested interest in his omnitool, after Orion had explained what it did. Orion's eyes were constantly glued to it, but so were hers.

His helmet clanked on his armor as they walked. He'd found a strap and managed to tie his helmet to his utility belt. Wearing a helmet all the time is functionally smart, but could become stifling, and Orion figured that if the Eezo couldn't affect him, there was no harm in getting some fresh air.

"So, what's your home like?" asked Dash, floating around his head in circles. "The other Earth?" Orion was surprised that they had called their world the same as his, though the feel felt different. That, and the lack of rubble.

"It was nice. Was."

"Was?"

Orion stopped and looked up into the sky, sun shining down on his face. "Yeah... was."

"What happened? Did you leave?" asked Twilight.

"The Reapers found it." Twilight didn't know much about the Reapers aside from what Orion had said earlier, and drooped her head a bit.

"Oh..." Dash knew nothing, but even she could that something as intimidating as "Reapers" sounded bad.

Orion wasn't really one to mull over what happened. He was a spacer, much like the legendary Shepard, and grew up going from Alliance station, to cruiser, and lots of places in between. He didn't really know much about Earth aside from pictures and videos, as shameful as that sounds, but there was one place he grew fond of.

"Man. I miss Rio."

"Rio?" asked Dash, poking at the blue stripes on his combat armor.

"Yeah, Rio." Orion broke out into a grin. "You wanna know how I became one of the best?" Dash's ears perked up. Orion could tell that she was definitely one of the competitive types.

"Yeah! You're one of the best?"

"What do you think this N7 means? Only the best of the best get this small thing on their armor. Oh, Twilight, just how far are we from Canterlot?"

"About an hour or two. We'll be there before the sun goes down, don't worry."

"Great. So, Dash, Rio's this awesome city, great for parties and stuff. But that's where my people had a training base for the best of the best. We called it the Vila Militar, or the N-School, for the occupation letter. Oh, that's what the N means. It means special forces. It already takes the best of the best just to make it to the top without the N, but the N-School turns them into lean, mean fighting machines."

Orion seemed to be holding Dash's rapt attention, and seemingly Twilight's now, it seems. He assumed that the city that was sticking out of the mountain side must be Canterlot. Making another mental note, he continued.

"Man, it was crazy. You guys--er, ponies, ever been to a party?" They nod, remembering Pinkie's parties. "Well, imagine that, except it's all about the strictness and the training and all that stuff. We trained endlessly for months there, doing drills, running practice, simulating all this stuff that could mean life or death if we won or failed."

"Wow, how much did you guys train?" asked Twilight.

"No less than twenty hours a day."

"A day?!" asked Dash. "That's crazy!"

"Only for the best of the best! And that was just to get in!"

"Wow, totally harsh entrance exam," she chimed.

"Yeah, just making it into the N-School is like being handed a medal. No one says it, but damned if everyone-er, pony, doesn't respect all that work. And then you go through more training on other planets, until you hit N6."

"Then what?" whispered Dash.

"Then it's the final run!" Dash was practically sitting on his shoulder now, and he looked at his armored hand and closed it into a fist. "The only way to earn your N7 stripes is by taking all that training and putting it to use... in the field."

"Whoa. What'd you do to get yours?"

"I blew up a facility that was running illegal experiments. Mostly small-fry stuff, but still important enough to throw someone like me in there. And, man, when I got my stripes, I was the happiest man in the world." It occurred to Orion that regaling these talking ponies with his graduation story seemed a bit strange, but then again, he did have a conversation with an elcor once, and it was terrible; this was a much better change.

"Wow, that sounds awesome!" Dash started flying again, making circles in the sky above them.

"That's because you're not the one that had to do it," laughed Orion, remembering all the sleepless nights, endless drills, and all the yelling.

They had been climbing this mountain for quite a while now, circling around a multitude of paths and trails, and came upon flat ground, and the entrance to Canterlot. Orion was glad to have made it without too much incident.

"Finally!" he panted. "Flat ground!" Twilight and Dash had to stifle a giggle as he kneeled over to kiss the ground. The sun had just began to lower.

"We should probably head to the castle as soon as possible," Twilight reminded. Orion didn't really feel like complaining.

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There were a lot of gasps and whispers as they approached the castle. Orion figured that non-ponies were extremely rare around here. That, and Orion essentially looked like a walking tower of armor to the ponies' eyes, aside from his face, that is.

The city itself seemed like some really hoity-toity place, the kind you could expect from a bunch of rich folk. He didn't really much like it, most grunts like him never really fit in that well in high society.

They passed through the city without too much incident and passed through the gates and into the castle. They then proceeded into the main hall without any further incident, following a nod of acknowledgement from two guards.

"Ah, Twilight, I--" Princess Celestia cut her sentence short as they saw who had accompanied them, this strange being in excited conversation with Rainbow Dash. The rest of the Elements of Harmony were also present. Pinkie Pie had a party hat on and fired a small streamer cannon.

"WELCOME!" she said, hopping up to Orion with a tray of cupcakes.

"Oh, thanks. Wow, these are good!" said Orion, between bites. He figured that if he could drink their tea, he could probably eat their food. So long as they weren't dextros, which, judging by their world, they obviously weren't, he could eat their food.

"Thanks!" Pinkie returned.

"Princess, is there something wrong?" asked Twilight.

"You... he's... it can't be... Twilight, we need to talk..."

"Princess?" Twilight asked again; she walked up to her and they began having a hushed conversation.. Orion was still in the middle of wolfing down cupcakes, Pinkie beaming with pride. Celestia seemed to space out, her gaze fully intent on the black-clad human before her.

"Wait, how'd you get up here before us?" Orion asked Pinkie.

"Airship!" she smiled back.

"Hey, we should have taken one!" said Orion, turning to Rainbow Dash, who shrugged.

"We didn't think you'd fit," she said flatly. And she was right, those things were made for ponies, not a human, and definitely not a human wearing armor, for that matter.

He frowned and returned to eating the delicious cupcakes. He'd noticed that Twilight was now next to Celestia, at her throne, and talking about something. And then he noticed the other ponies walking up to him. He quickly cleaned himself up and gave them a smile.

"Howdy there, pardner. Name's Applejack."

"Nice to meet you, Applejack. You own the farm outside of town? I saw it on the way up here."

"Why, yes, I do! You should come by sometime to try our apples!"

"I'll keep that in mind," he smiled, turning to a yellow pony with a pink mane.

"I'm... uh, Fluttershy. N-Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too. Don't worry, I don't bite," he laughed. The meek pony returned a shy smile.

"And I am Rarity!" said a purple-maned white-coated pony, giving a dramatic flourish by throwing her hair back.

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Rarity." He bowed and elicited a giggle from her. Then he turned to all of them. "My name is Matias Orion. You can just call me Orion for short. I'm a human, and I sort of got here by... well, actually, I don't know. I think it was an accident. That's what we're here to find out." He gave a nervous laugh and rubbed the back of his head.

He noticed that Twilight and Celestia had ended their conversation. "Step forward, Matias Orion," Celestia said.

Not really knowing what to do, Orion simply went with what he knew about royal figures and kneeled before her.

"Interesting to see one who knows royal etiquette," Celestia chimed. "But enough of that. I have need of your services."

Orion looked up at her. "Need me? For what? Er, your Excellency."

"It is best that we retire to somewhere more... private. Twilight, please bring Spike and the Elements of Harmony with you." They all followed her into a library, where the guards closed the door behind her.

After everyone sat down and made themselves comfortable, Celestia turned towards Orion. "I have seen you in my dreams."

Orion blinked for a few moments. "That sounds awfully coincidental."

"Yes. Ponies, Nightmare Moon stirs in her slumber, and she is set to awaken soon. But the Elements of Harmony are not enough to stop her this time." She looked at Orion again. "He must be the one to bring her existence to an end."

"Uh, I'm not sure I follow..." he said.

"That's not surprising. You read some books, but you don't know a lot about our history," said Twilight. "We should fill you in."

And so they filled him in on the past. The beginning of Celestia's rule and the creation of Equestria, the Windigoes and Hearth's Warming Eve, Discord's reign of chaos, and the banishment of Princess Luna as Nightmare Moon. They went further into the raising and lowering of the sun and moon, and the ponies' role in keeping the land safe.

"Well, that's mighty fine, ladies, but this stuff seems a bit over my head. I mean, I'm just a new... uh, person, and you're already asking me to... well, banish a great evil?"

"You will not be banishing Nightmare Moon, Orion. You will be the one to end her."

"Yeah." He sighed. "Well, I suppose I'll be ready for that when it happens."

"Are you sure you're a soldier?" asked Applejack. "You sure don't seem like one."

"I suppose it doesn't seem like I am, doesn't it? It's nice to take a break when you can, so I'm not really all gung-ho at the moment."

"Aren't you in the least bit concerned that you're talking with us? I'd imagine this is your first time talking to a pony," asked Rarity.

"Nope. Where I come from, we've already made contact with so many other extraterrestrial races, another one on the list just seems par for the course. Double points for being something I can recognize and talk with without getting lost in translation," he smirked.

"Very well then. This meeting is over for the time being. All of you are welcome to stay here at the royal castle until further notice." The other ponies left, eagerly chatting amongst themselves.

Orion, figuring that he could use some fresh air, decided to go walking around the royal gardens.

================================================================================

"Hmm. Strange statues," he muttered, as he walked along.

"Do you wish to return?" he heard a voice ask. He pulled his Phalanx out in response, aiming it around.

"Who said that?"

"I did."

"Who is 'I'?"

"Over here, my friend, to your left."

Orion turned and noticed a statue of some dragon-esque thing.

"And just what the hell are you?"

"I'm Discord." Oh, him. The ponies had told him. "I'm sure the ponies have told you ALL about me."

"Yeah. What're you getting at?"

"I can help you get back."

There was silence. Then Discord was mentally thrown back as Orion started laughing out loud.

"Back? Back? Buddy, you don't know the half of it. If you knew how to get ME back, the last thing you'd WANT is for me to get back."

"...I don't follow."

"Help me get back, and you open Pandora's box."

"Uh..."

"You're saying you want to knock on the door of the little shop of horrors." Orion knew the truth. If he was still... where he was, he'd need a mass relay to return home. But the problems was that there WERE no mass relays nearby. Even if he wanted to leave, he couldn't. Which was a problem. The lack of comm buoys, which were normally everywhere he went, in the sector also seemed to cement that Orion was in someplace that no person should normally be. And if he could get back home from here, that also meant that the Reapers could get here the same way.

God knows what the Reapers would do if they found themselves a new galaxy to... "purify", as much as the term disgusted Orion. Shepard didn't just have supporters in other Spectres, he also had the support of many of the N7 operatives, as well, after they saw his mission feeds dealing with Sovereign and Harbinger.

Discord was wordless. "You're just asking for trouble, pal. And I hope you stay in that damn rock form of yours, because if you get out, I'm gonna give you an old-fashioned human beatdown!" Orion shouted defiantly, knowing that Discord was probably someone who he, and his new pony friends, probably didn't want getting out.

"You fool! I WILL make you my pawn! You don't know what you're denying; the power you could HAVE! I WILL HAVE YOU!" said Discord, his voice becoming increasingly desperate and manic. His statue started glowing, his voice eerily reminded Orion of what he'd heard Harbinger say in voice logs.

"You can try..." growled Orion, readying his hand into a fist and form beginning to glow with blue-purple energy.

"Orion! Wait!" he heard somepony shout. But it was too late. Whatever Discord had waiting, shot into Orion.

And what happened next was unlike anything anypony or anyone had expected.

Discord's statue exploded into pieces, and Orion stood there, unharmed.

"What the hell...?" Orion muttered, looking at the bits and pieces of rock flying everywhere. Celestia, Spike, and the Elements of Harmony ran up to him.

"What did you do?" asked Spike. "That was crazy!"

"I... I don't know," said Orion. "One minute, we were at odds, and then he turned into a pile of rubble!"

Celestia seemed to know. "It would seem you... have an odd element inside of you, Orion. A new one."

"Do tell, please," he said, folding his arms. The others gave Celestia a questioning look.

"You seem to have the element... of order. A new element of harmony, unlike anything seen before."

There was a palpable silence that followed.

Orion didn't figure himself to be stupid. He'd read up a lot on Reapers and their technology after the Saren incident at the Citadel. The biggest connection he noticed, was that Element Zero is inherently connected to the Reapers, because the Reapers were the ones who used it first; how else could they around with mass effect fields in dark space? And the Reapers wanted Element Zero to be used by advanced civilizations to develop them down a certain ordered technological route, so that the Reapers could cripple them all in one fell swoop after everyone had played right into their hands, and bring in their "order" to the galaxy. Rinse and repeat every 50,000 years, and you've got yourself an endless cycle of repeating "order".

By that logic... Eezo was an inherently "ordered" element, given it's heavy association with the Reapers, and seemed to fit in with these "elements" of harmony! Sure, it sounded stupid, and maybe a bit crazy, but it was the best explanation he could piece together.

"Discord represented the nature of disharmony and chaos. When he came into contact with your element, it undid everything that his nature stood for, and in doing so, destroyed himself."

"Well, I'm not complaining. I would have pulverized the bastard anyway," Orion shrugged, rubbing his shoulder. Despite active testing, he was still unsure if he could still use his implants, and was kind of eager to be able to test it out. "Say... is there, like, I don't know... something I could... smash?"

Celestia blinked. "Why so?"

"Need to practice a bit. Don't want to get rusty, especially after that little accident."

"Ah, the crash in the forest. Do not worry, Orion, I will dispatch my guards to bring it here."

"You sure? It's kind of broken... and heavy."

"Do not worry, they will be able to handle it."

"If you say so."

"I will ask the guards to prepare training dummies for you." Celestia said, walking off.

"Wow, that was crazy!" Spike came up, waving his arms around.

"Talk about bringing business," Orion said, looking at his hand. "Didn't know I had it in me. Well, literally."

"You said something about practicing?" asked Dash, throwing a one-two hoof for emphasis. "I wanna see what you can do!"

Orion smiled. "You're going to LOVE this."

Another New Guest

"Come on, come on, work!" muttered Wade Jayce. Damned if he didn't want to slap "ex-Cerberus" on his resume, but now he's paying back for it in spades of bad luck.

The console returned another failure again. "Damn it!" He slammed his fist into the console. The alarms in the Sanctuary facility were absolutely deafening. He just hoped that Miranda Lawson could find her sister before he had to send this place sky-high. "Fine, more subroutines, and another backdoor." He went back to work again. This sort of work was normally reserved for engineers, but since he was practically a shoot-on-sight target for Cerberus, he figured that wouldn't work out for him, since he probably wouldn't have any takers. He was a soldier: the only thing he was good for was following orders and shooting guns, not this egg-head crap.

"Never should have dropped out of N-School..." he muttered, cursing as the text went flying past his screen. His helmet was open, the light of the console revealing his military haircut and youthful patrician face in the half-lit research room. Small holograms projected onto his cheeks from his helmet.

He was Miranda's inside source in Cerberus. Jayce had a special position in Cerberus as a shock trooper; expected, especially given his training in N-School. He was lucky to have avoided the indoctrination that hundreds of refugees underwent at this facility. It was an abomination, and needed to be destroyed.

On the outside, he looked the same as any other Cerberus assault trooper, but his armor was a different color, worn grey instead of bone white, and bulkier, and he had an entire repertoire of weapons on his back. The only way Jayce could get into Cerberus bases without being detected was keeping his mouth shut: his voice, even through his helmet, was completely different from the mindless drones the Illusive Man now had under his command. Aside from that, most soldiers usually didn't question him unless ordered to; they even ignored his different armor color, strangely enough.

"Warning: Internal temperature increasing. Please contact Engineering immediately for assistance," said a VI. Great, it worked! Jayce had cut off the coolant flow from the facility's Eezo reactors, in a last bid to blow it all sky-high, and expose it's existence to the rest of the universe, for what good it did now.

He noticed three figures moving on the security feed near his terminal. From what Jayce could gather, it was Commander Shepard and a couple of his lackeys. He was glad that both Kai Leng and Shepard had ended up going after Miranda instead. Maybe they don't know that he was here, or maybe they just thought he wasn't worth killing. Either way, their preoccupation with Miranda allowed Jayce to successfully sabotage the reactors. Jayce was in the primary indoctrination facility, separate from the refugee testing facility, where Miranda was at, and sabotaged the reactor to self-destruct, but he had no idea what the collateral damage would be. Now that he did what he came here to do, he needed to get out.

But there was just one problem...

"Warning: Power flow interrupted. Containment units unsealing. Warning: Unauthorized personnel in storage." The screaming of husks mingled with the alarms.

"Aw, shit..." Jayce closed his helmet as he picked up his M-96 Mattock and wheeled around to see husks exiting their pods.

The closest one roared at him... and then it's head exploded in a mess. Jayce chuckled, aiming his Mattock at where the husk once stood, the effect of his headshots was never lost on him. He quickly mowed down the rest of them and made for the exit.

"Miranda? Miranda! Come on, Miranda!" he said, keying his helmet comm. "Miranda, I've sabotaged the reactors, you've got to get out of here!" No response. Damn. She might already be dead. He couldn't do anything for her; she was on the other side of the facility, along with the Illusive Man's personal ninja boy scout and Shepard himself rolling through there.

"Agh, no! Not now! Shit!" The only door out had been jammed. The only other way out was through the reactor room, and that place was already unstable enough as it was. But, damn it, he had no choice. "I swear, when I get out..." he angrily muttered, making for the reactor room entrance, mowing down more husks along the way.

================================================================================

Miranda had approached him in secret, asking that as a former colleague and trusted friend, if he could help her with some problems. Jayce had been well aware of Miranda's attachment with her sister, and so opted to help. At the time, he hadn't spoken to Miranda for quite a while, following their escape from a Cerberus base. Miranda had just come hot off a possible lead on her father, a long cry in terms of difficulty after Shepard blew up that Collector base.

Jayce was glad Shepard had done so; the place was already the hotbed for the deaths of thousands of humans, and he disagreed with the Illusive Man about keeping it around; Jayce had seen indoctrination and wasn't really keen on seeing if the Collector base had the same effects. The Illusive Man had to find new ways to learn about Reaper tech, and his new-found obsession with the technology had many of Cerberus' finest minds and most elite soldiers deserting, including Miranda and Jayce.

But Miranda was so sure that her father was up to something, that he was working with Cerberus. Jayce assured her that he would dig up whatever he could find. Making a living off of finding Prothean artifacts wasn't bad, but it wasn't something that Jayce would have liked to keep up for long. And after the Reapers showed up on Earth's doorstep, he figured he might as well go out with a bang, and thought up an idea... like something akin to shitting on the desk of his former boss.

Miranda needed to know what her father was doing with her sister. Initial checks through information dumps seemed to indicate that Miranda's father was indeed contacted by the Illusive Man for something, but he couldn't figure out what. More digging, and he learned that it was something related to the Sanctuary facility located on Horizon. Pulled some strings to curry favor from the Shadow Broker, and then he had his evidence that Cerberus was definitely dabbling in something Reaper down there. Mix with refugees, and that can't be good. With this evidence, Miranda had told him that she couldn't do it alone, so he went along for the ride.

Jayce wasn't entirely sure how he'd met Miranda. He'd been an initial applicant for the N-School and made it to N1. But he figured he didn't like playing by the rules of the Alliance, and the training annoyed him to no end, having to follow orders instead of doing what he did best: shoot things and protect humanity. He dropped out and joined Cerberus instead, quickly ascending the ranks and even earned a personal promotion by the Illusive Man himself for his outstanding combat capabilities as a soldier. He liked working for Cerberus; they were pro-human and had their interests at heart, and they definitely didn't take shit when it came to the First Contact War.

He was given freelance missions and worked solo; given his experience, Jayce very much preferred it that way. But after the Collector base incident, the Illusive Man started giving strange orders. He wanted relics, lots of them, and people started disappearing. Those that were still able to started to converse in secret about trying to bail. But in Cerberus, the only way out is through a body-bag, and the Illusive Man's new attack dogs were more than eager to oblige.

It was during an escape from a Cerberus station that Jayce ran into Miranda. The two were the only ones still alive, and they fought back-to-back to the hangars in order to steal a shuttle. They stayed on the run together for over a year and a half before they parted ways at the Citadel; Miranda muttering something about 'talking to Shepard' or some hubbub. Jayce didn't mind; if Shepard was willing to help her, then more power to her. But Jayce thought he'd lost contact with her until she asked for his help a month later, and they'd agree that Jayce would sabotage the systems, Miranda would grab her sister, they'd extract in a shuttle, and everything would be nice and peachy. But, no, Murphy's Law always liked to be right.

And now he was here, stuck inside a facility set to self-destruct, with an army of robotic freaks standing in his way. What a crappy way to die.

================================================================================

The shrill beeping of his Mattock reminded Jayce that he should probably take cover and let the thing vent. The reactor room was gigantic, and thankfully had ample cover along the half-circle walkway that led to the exit proper. But husks were pouring out of every nook and cranny in this room, and it was becoming a pain in the ass to deal with them, having already exhausted half his grenades.

Jayce had told Cerberus techs that he preferred having his weapons retrofitted with the old heatsinks. He didn't like running out of ammo, and he figured that waiting for the gun to cool down a bit after firing it for a while was a better alternative than the new run-out-of-clips-and-die-painful-death route that everyone liked jumping down these days. He still thought thermal clips were pretty stupid, and now you had to hack doors manually and repair crap manually, too. God, he missed omnigel.

A rogue piece of metal dinged off of his Cerberus assault armor; the reactor was definitely going haywire. There were a multitude of objects flying all over the damn place and the reactor itself was practically a giant glowing ball of Eezo now. He had to restrain a laugh as he saw a chunk of sharp metal decapitate a charging husk.

The heat from the reactor was crazy. Jayce charged forward, knocking a husk over the edge and into the boiling energy, letting out a scream. The door was right there, if only he could just--

"You have got to be shitting me!" The door was locked! Kicking the door once, he turned around and fired, dropping a few more husks, and readied his omnitool to hack the door.

"Come on, come on! Work, damn it!" He frantically looked around, taking potshots at husks, dropping some, keeping others back.

Then he noticed that the husks were floating now, towards the reactor, and being incinerated. He activated his mag-boots to hold him in place, but it didn't cut it. He felt the floor beneath him give a metallic scream as it gave way. The door was still locked, Jayce holding on for dear life on a metal pipe, trying to open the door.

"Come... on... you... fucking... piece... of... shit!" He tried to keep his omnitool as close to the door as possible, but he could tell that his grip was losing strength; he only needed a little more... "DAMN!" He lost his grip and felt himself being pulled into this new Eezo-energy singularity.

He really hoped his Cerberus assault armor could hold up against an imploding reactor, but he wasn't holding his breath.

================================================================================

"Wow! Do it again!" shouted Dash. Orion laughed as he walked back to the group. He had been demonstrating his Vanguard abilities on the training dummies the royal guards put out for him. Even they seemed impressed.

Orion took up a lunge position as he felt time dilate and his body moved forward. He concentrated his barrier energy into a single massive strike that crashed into the dummy and blew it into a bunch of flying hay.

"Whoa!" said Spike. "Dude, that is awesome. It's like teleporting, except you get to, like, hit stuff with it!"

"That's something only people in my line of work can do," Orion smiled. He balled his his left hand into a fist and threw a Shockwave at another dummy. The remaining two he used a Pull field on, smashing the first with melee punches, and destroyed the second one using a biotic strike. He felt great about being able to use his powers again. There was something with this Eezo that changed minor properties of his abilities, though: his Biotic Charge could activate much faster, his Nova recharged as he was using it and his Shockwaves were more explosive.

He was flexing his fingers when he... felt something. It was strange. Kind of like how it was with the whole 'disturbance in the Force' thing from those really old Star Wars films. It felt like that. He looked around and up in the air. This feeling was putting him on edge, but he couldn't figure out why.

"Something wrong?" asked Twilight. The others were chatting amongst themselves again.

"Yeah... I felt something."

"Felt something?"

"Yeah. Like something was... out there. Like something just changed."

She raised an eyebrow in response. "Sure you're not just being paranoid?"

He considered it for a moment, then laughed. "Yeah, I guess I am..."

"Come on, dinner's going to be prepared soon!" shouted Spike, waving to Twilight and Orion as the rest of the group proceeded to head back inside.

"Well, I'm pretty hungry," Orion shrugged, walking towards the entrance, Twilight following him.

He tried to shake that feeling, but he felt that he should be expecting something... or someone...

================================================================================

"Ugh... what the...?" Jayce opened his eyes, and looked around. He was laying in what seemed to be a crater. Made by the reactor explosion? But it looked like he was nowhere near it. And nowhere near Horizon, for that matter. This sky was too clear, too blue in contrast to Horizon's musky beige skies and endless fields of brush.

His helmet HUD was all fritzed out, but miraculously still intact. Hell, he was still intact, that was already a pretty big fucking miracle. He picked himself up, dusting off his armor as he did so. He was in some sort of clearing, surrounded by a forest, and there was some sort of...

"An Alliance fighter?" he almost shouted, walking up to it. "And N7, too. Shit..." If Alliance special forces were here, something must be up. Reapers? Possibly. He pulled out his Mattock just to make sure. The sun had begun to set over the horizon, and it was getting dark. Jayce felt that spending a first night in possible enemy territory, Alliance or Reaper, wasn't a good idea. He had to make his way out of here, and find somewhere safe to camp.

He was pretty sure he wasn't dead. His equipment had only shortcircuited for a moment before booting back up, and the sores and pains in his body meant that he was definitely still alive. The fact that there was an Alliance fighter here only made him more curious. No use trying to figure out why he was alive, might as well make the best of it, right? He could already be considered a dead man, anyway.

Among the nearly-identical walls of trees surrounding him, he noticed a path leading out. Following that, and nearly tripping on a bunch of tree roots in the progress, he came to the edge, and saw a town.

"A town, huh? Architecture seems a bit primitive..." He switched his visor to binocular mode. "What in the name of fuck...?"

There were ponies walking about. Colorful ponies. Talking. In English. He was sure he must be hallucinating; that Eezo explosion must have done a bigger number on him than he thought. Or maybe he was dead. Sure didn't feel like it, though.

So Jayce figured two things about the ponies: bright color meant that they were either colorful, or poisonous, and he was pretty sure it wasn't the latter since that Alliance bastard is skulking about somewhere; he saw his footprints leaving the forest and go straight into that town. They might know where he is, and he was sure he could take them on if things got sour. So he walked into the town, holstering his gun.

There was a number of gasps and whispers as the ponies hid in their houses. He came upon a town square of some sort and found a single pony waiting for him.

"U-uh, g-greetings, human!" said Mayor Mare.

"You know what I am?" Jayce questioned, pointing to himself.

"Yes! Another human was here earlier today!" She could hardly suppress her fright towards him.

"Really? Could you tell me where he went?"

"H-he went to... to Canterlot!" she squeaked out, pointing at the mountainside city in the distance.

"Right. Well, thanks for that." A world full of talking colorful ponies. And Jayce thought the Asari were as weird as it could get. He began to set off. It looked to be a long, long trek...

================================================================================

Orion looked out the window suddenly, stopping mid-bite in a salad.

"Somethin' wrong, sugarcube?" asked Applejack, who sat right next to him.

"Could have sworn I felt something..."

"Aw, shucks, pardner, you're just being silly now. You're hungry! Just eat!"

"Yeah, yeah..." He went back to his salad.

================================================================================

It was well dark by the time Jayce had made it to the top. There was no one else on the roads, and it didn't seem like there was any freaky shit trying to jump him. Still, walking up a mountain was always on tiring job.

He walked through the empty streets of Canterlot, all the other ponies having gone to sleep or retired inside, taking in the views and the buildings. The moon was pretty nice tonight, he thought to himself. Wait, it looked a lot like the moon back on Earth. Was it? Probably not, there were no talking ponies back on Earth.

He walked up to the castle and approached the gate. A guard stopped him.

"Halt. Do you have an appointment?"

"Well, no, but I'm looking for another human here. Have you seen him?"

The guard said nothing. Well, Jayce wasn't particularly eager to see how this N7 would react to a guy wearing Cerberus armor showing up on his doorstep.

"What's going on out here?" asked a purple unicorn, coming out of the gate. She had been studying stellar constellations in the royal gardens. "Oh, my! Another human?" She ran inside and brought out Orion.

"As if it's actually anothe--" His expression soured as he drew his Crusader. "Cerberus!"

"Not while I'm alive, buddy!" Jayce shouted, drawing his Mattock. "How's it like being an Alliance puppet?" He could play nice, but like hell if he was going to let someone else point a gun at him without returning the favor.

"Easy for you to say, Cerberus dog."

"Hah. Like I haven't heard that one before. I hear the Alliance did such a fantastic job preparing against the Reapers."

"And like Cerberus did much better trying to kill Shepard and murder colonists."

The tension could be cut with a knife. The two stood silent, aiming their weapons at each other. The guard had drawn their wings, making a fence of sorts between them.

"Twilight, what's going on out here?" asked Celestia, walking up behind her. Twilight motioned for her to shush.

"This guy is nothing but trouble," said Orion, his gaze never moving away from Jayce.

"And so are you. What the hell are you doing here, N7?" Jayce shot back.

"The name's Orion to you, dirtbag. And I got here by accident."

"You have a fighter, and you got here by accident. Right."

"I had to crash land. My FTL jump got screwed up after those Reaper fighters scored a hit on me." Silence again. "So what're you in for, Cerberus?"

"That's ex-Cerberus to you, Orion. Name's Jayce. I blew up the Sanctuary facility on Horizon and now by some weird shit, here I am--"

"Back the hell up. You blew up Sanctuary? The refugee Sanctuary? You guys are nothing but a bunch of terrorists!"

The guards, Twilight, and Celestia had been watching this back-and-forth exchange for a while now, not really knowing what to make of it. The guards just looked at each other and shrugged.

Jayce sighed. This was going nowhere. He holstered his Mattock and held up his hands to show that he wasn't armed. "Cerberus was running that facility. I went in with another ex-Cerberus to take the place down. You ever wonder where the hell the Illusive Man started pulling soldiers out of his ass from? It's from Sanctuary! The damn place is an indoctrination facility! They were using colonists as test subjects, man. No way in hell I was going to let that place stand."

Orion kept his gun trained on him. Jayce lowered his arms, then shrugged.

"And that place wasn't going to last long with the Reapers running around outside, anyway." Jayce wasn't willing to chance a fight with this guy. His HUD read that he was staring right at a Vanguard, and at the range he was at, he would be dog food if he tried anything stupid. "Listen, man, I'm stuck here just like you. We should at least work together, right?"

Orion eyed him carefully. "What else happened in Sanctuary?"

"I went in with Miranda Lawson." Orion knew that name. She worked with Shepard. If she was with him, then maybe he could trust her. "I'm sure you must have heard about the Illusive Man's most experienced assassin?"

"Yeah. Kai Leng, right?"

"Yeah. Well, that fucking boy scout was going after Miranda. Shepard came in hot on his heels. I rigged the place to blow, but I guess you can say I didn't make it out in time." He shrugged again. "I got pulled into the core of an exploding Eezo reactor and--"

"Wait. An Eezo reactor?"

"Yeah. Something wrong with that?"

"No. Just that Eezo's been connected to how I got here, too."

"Your fighter?"

"Using a special Eezo-enhanced FTL drive, which took a hit just as I activated it."

Jayce raised a hand to his chin in thought. "Weird." Orion holstered his weapon.

"So what was Miranda doing at Sanctuary?"

"Turns out her dad was working for the Illusive Man. Ran the whole damn facility. And he took Miranda's sister, and she wouldn't take shit for that. Shepard went in to make sure she didn't do anything stupid."

"Did they make it out?"

"How the hell would I know?"

"Right. Well." He held out his hand to shake.

"Matias Orion, N7."

"Wade Jayce, ex-Cerberus."

The two shook hands. "Well, uh... that went well," chimed Twilight.

"Uh, yeah, what's up with all that?" Jayce asked, pointing towards the ponies and the alicorn.

"Don't ask," Jayce laughed. "You hungry?"

"I just got blown up to hell and back, you bet your damn ass I'm hungry."

================================================================================

"Wait," said Jayce, in between bites of fruit. "You're telling me that the Alliance is building some Prothean superweapon from some plans? Found in some millenia-old Prothean rock?" He was sitting at the dining table, helmet sitting next to his plate.

"Yeah. It's crazy. We don't know how the hell it works, or if it even does, but it's better than trying to break our arms at the Reapers," said Orion, sitting across from him. They were the only two there, the ponies having gone to rest. It was a strange sight to the guards, to see two heavily armored humans having a conversation.

Jayce nearly choked. "You don't even know what it does?"

"Still better than nothing."

"Right." Jayce finished up the last bite of fruit. "Well, we're stuck here, then. No relays, no transport, no comm buoys, no nothing. So what the hell do we do? I mean, it's not like we can take one of their damn airships and make a relay jump with that."

"Well, they need me to banish or end some sort of 'ancient evil' from their old times." Orion made air quotes to emphasize.

"Oh. Well, how's that working out so far?"

"Absolutely crap. Some Nightmare Moon or some crap."

Jayce snickered. "I'll eat my own helmet if she's just some two-bit Reaper wannabe."

"Yeah. I suppose you got the go-ahead to stay here, then?"

"Yep. Well, I don't think there's really anything to do. Other than work, I mean, we're practically freeloading, right?"

"I didn't take you for the working type."

"Hey, I don't like following Alliance rules. Too strict and all that shit. We're playing too nice and no one's taking us seriously on the Council. But on that, I'll still work to make a living, just not to play puppet for those deadbeats in high seats."

"Sounds like Udina. The nice thing, I mean."

"The councilor?"

"Yeah. I heard Shepard had to pull the trigger on him when he was exposed for working with Cerberus."

"The asshole got what was coming to him, working with those bastards." Jayce took a sip from his cup, then looked curiously inside. Apple juice. Huh. "As far as I'm concerned, Cerberus is a terrorist organization. I might have agreed with what Udina said sometimes, but he went about things the wrong damn way." He laid back a bit, his armor clattering as he did so. "We should get some jobs," he said nonchalantly.

"I don't think anyone's hiring."

Jayce gave him a look. "We have fucking thumbs, man. You know they'll hire us for that."

"Lots of manual labor that could use some thumbs," Orion nodded thoughtfully.

"Yeah, that could work. So I hear N7's been run ragged pulling missions out of their ass."

"No joke. Hackett wants us stonewalling the Reapers every chance we get."

"Hmm. Hackett. There's a man who went by the books if I ever saw one."

"Talks like a brick wall."

"Yeah, I guess he has that." He looked out the window at the rising moon. "At least he didn't just sit and twiddle his thumbs like those assholes in the defense committee did. They're probably all dead by now."

"Serves them right for ignoring Shepard."

"Tough talk for an N7 like you. You could get court-martialed for that."

Both laughed as they recalled war stories late into the night. A curious Celestia had been eavesdropping on their conversation the whole time, intrigued by human culture...

================================================================================

Another one. There was another one of the beings here. A new one. Different, but also the same. Yes.

Perhaps he could also be made of use, as well.

================================================================================

"You're telling me we're breathing Eezo?" Jayce said to Orion, both now in combat fatigues instead of armor. They'd met up in the morning and they were both on their way to the dining hall.

"It's not harmful, and it only affects you if you're a biotic, like I am. You're 100% soldier, so nothing will happen to you."

"That's like saying drinking mercury is fine because I can't process it. It's fucking Eezo, man, that's some dark matter shit right there." He gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine. I'll just go along with it. I haven't sprouted wings or horns or some weird-ass shit, so we'll go with your explanation."

"It'll be fine. I mean, we're not dead yet, right?" he said as they entered the dining room.

"Good morning, you two," Celestia said, sitting at the head of the table along with Spike and the Elements of Harmony.

Silence. Then a huge gasp.

"SOMEPONY NEW?!" Pinkie jumped out of her seat. "We need to have a PARTY!"

"Party? With booze?" said Jayce.

"No, of course not, silly! With cakes and balloons and streamers and cupcakes and--"

"We get it, Pinkie," Orion said. "No booze here, man."

Jayce grunted disapprovingly. "I can do without it, I guess."

They sat down to have breakfast. Mostly non-meat fare again, but Orion was glad to avoid anything that wasn't military rations. Jayce seemed to share the same sentiments as he eagerly bit into a piece of bread.

"Oh, Celestia. Did you manage to bring my fighter here?" Orion asked.

"Yes, we retrieved it early this morning. It should be awaiting in one of the storage rooms below."

"Thank you. We'll go down and take a look to see if we can't salvage anything from it."

Breakfast passed uneventfully, though Jayce still expressed his concern being in a world full of talking ponies. Orion countered by regaling a tale of conversation with an elcor that ended badly, lesson of the story being that anything was better than talking to an elcor. Laughs were had.

================================================================================

"Gentle... er, men," Celestia said uneasily, unused to non-pony words. "I hope you will find something in your research. Good day to you." She went off to tend to her royal duties, the door closing behind her.

In the massive storage room, Jayce and Orion stood before the Alliance fighter.

"Nice piece of work. I'm surprised you actually landed this thing in one piece," whistled Jayce.

"For what it does now. The engine's beyond repair." Orion tore off the engine panel, revealing a mess of melted wires underneath. "There's nothing we can use here..."

Jayce popped open the cockpit. "Damn. They really did a number on everything."

"So we can both agree it's useless then?" Orion looked at the engine block in frustration and shook his head, then proceeded to dig further into it.

"What about weapons? Anything extra?"

"Nope, anything that was useful I already brought with me."

"Damn. Noticed the Cain back there, by the way. Sweet hardware."

"Let's just hope we don't have to use it."

"If the Reapers find this place, we might just have to." The men stopped for a moment. That was a thought they didn't want to entertain.

"Like hell. No relays, no comm buoys. It's like we're in a completely different universe."

"True to that. Those damn comm buoys are usually fucking everywhere. Cheap to build and throw out, so I think you just might be right."

"Greetings," they heard a female voice said. They both looked around, apprehensive.

"Shit... and I pick today of all days to think that it just might be fine to walk around without a gun..." muttered Jayce, grabbing vainly at the empty space where his pistol normally was.

"Whoever you are..." Orion's form began to glow. "You better show yourself."

"Calm yourself, human, I mean no harm," a midnight blue alicorn stepped out of the shadows. "I was merely interested in who you are."

Jayce threw up his fists, his massive bulk implying great strength. "And just who are you?"

"I am Princess Luna, beloved sister of Celestia and Princess of the Moon."

Jayce eyed her. "How the fuck do I know you're not lying? Or some crazy bitch out for our blood?"

Luna was unfazed by the insult.

Orion shrugged at Jayce, his forearms covered in engine oil. "If she wanted us dead, she'd have probably jumped us while we were scrounging through the fighter, Jayce."

Jayce gave Orion a sneer, then looked back at Luna. "Fine. But I'm watching you." He sat down on the fighter's wing, watching Luna with an apprehensive look.

Luna ignored him. "What is this contraption that you have brought into our palace?"

"A fighter. It's mostly used for travel, and, uh, defense."

"Travel? What kind of travel?"

"Flight," Jayce flatly said.

"Your people can fly?"

"Yeah," Jayce said mockingly. "We just do it by shooting lots of fire out of our ass and call it flight."

"Jayce..." Orion warned.

"Pff." Jayce repositioned himself on the wing. "It's just a damn joke. You've only been here a while, and you already put too much trust in these... things, Orion."

"I know enough that they're not going to kill us."

"Not yet, anyway."

Orion frowned. "Apologies for my... friend... here. He's a little suspicious about being here."

"But it was you who came to our world, did you not?" Luna rebounded.

No response. Jayce looked away in denial. "Well, it's not like we knew how we got here... or how to get back..."

"And did my sister not tell you of Nightmare Moon?" she asked.

"Yeah, well..." Orion gave a sigh.

"That dream talk you told me about earlier?" asked Jayce.

"Yeah. Apparently I'm needed here for something. When I find a way, you can just head back, Jayce, I can tell you don't like it here."

Jayce scoffed again. "Astute observation, Private Obvious."

"That's Lieutenant Obvious to you, ex-Cerberus." More silence. Luna had walked up behind Orion and was looking at the engine block with him, curious about the contents.

"Why bother?" Jayce said out of nowhere. "Why bother going back?"

"Huh?" Orion was genuinely confused by Jayce's question.

"Think about it, man. Earth is as good as fucked. The Reapers are spreading like a fucking plague across the galaxy. Hell, last I heard, they were pushing full speed for Thessia. Thessia. You know things are in the shitter when even the Asari are getting their asses creamed. And last I heard, they're taking heavy casualties trying to retake Palaven."

"That's why they need men like us back there, Jayce."

"No, that's why they have Commander Shepard. The only thing grunts like us are good for are eating, shitting, fighting, and dying."

Orion's brow furrowed a bit. "You seem a bit bitter about this."

"Of course. Spend all this time trying to work against the Reapers, and then it all fucks up anyway because those stupid shits at Arcturus Station wanted to plug their ears and sing themselves a lullaby. Short-term notice was never going to work against the Reapers, and now they're paying for sitting on their asses with billions of lives. Don't get me wrong, man, I don't hate you Alliance types, but goddamn if the politicians aren't stupid as fuck."

"Yeah, well, sometimes I feel the same way." After deciding that there was nothing to be salvaged, Orion sealed off the engine panel, clapping his hands free of grime as he stood up. "Nothing in there. This thing's a giant paperweight now."

"Keep it around. Might come in handy if we need to detonate the drive as a bomb or something."

Orion frowned at Jayce. "Not in here, I hope."

"No guarantees," he shrugged, walking out of the room. Orion and Luna gave each other worried looks.

This was going to be a long week.

A Walk In The Park

"Seriously? You blew up some talking dragon statue by having him connect with your Eezo? That's bullshit, man," Jayce said, walking with Orion up to the pedestal where Discord's statue once stood.

"No, seriously. The way I see, you know how the Reapers are all about bringing order and stuff, right? Well, they've been using Eezo as long as anyone could remember. So, maybe, by chance, they created it? And the Reapers are all obsessed with order, so taking the theory to it's logical conclusion, that means Eezo is an 'ordered' element. So this guy who's all about chaos, ends up blowing himself up."

"If he's so powerful, why didn't he just stop bitching and break out of his prison? Or put himself back together? Dick ain't so powerful if he can't resurrect himself from the dead."

"You try finding something that can outclass Reaper tech. Everything they make is twisted and insane, there's no possible way that using it against them would work."

"No shit to that, man. And now the Illusive Man's crazy about trying to control Reapers. Well, they pushed humanity up against the wall. I say we should just kill all the fuckers. And maybe the Illusive Man, too, while we're at it. Two birds, one stone." Jayce kicked a small chunk of rock that didn't seem to match the grounds; he figured it was probably from the statue.

"Yeah, well, I think I should go talk to Celestia about this whole Nightmare Moon shit."

"Think I should sit in?"

"Probably worth it. Having an extra gun never hurt when it came to defeating ancient evils."

They both made for Celestia's throne room.

================================================================================

"Greetings, you two," Celestia said. "What brings you before me?"

"I'd like more information on Nightmare Moon."

"Of course. What would what you like to know?"

"How'd she come about?"

Celestia closed her eyes for a moment. "She was my sister, for a time."

Jayce snorted. "Your sister became an ancient evil? A supervillain or something? See, Orion, I told you we couldn't trust her."

"No. We had... disagreements for a time, and she fell prey to the offers that Nightmare Moon promised her."

"Oh. Well, thanks for airing your dirty laundry, we appreciate it."

Celestia blinked, the meaning lost on her. Jayce sighed. "Thank you for letting us know about something that was probably unpleasant for you to recall," he said slowly. He should just let Orion do all the damn talking.

"So, anyway, Princess, I thought that we should..." Jayce simply walked over to a nearby wall and leaned against it, listening in on the conversation. It didn't take long before Jayce found himself slightly more distracted than he normally should be.

"You." Jayce blinked. Who said that?

"You... will do. Do you wish to return home?" asked the strange female voice.

"And what's it to ya?" he shot back. Orion was still in the middle of saying something, and Celestia seemed to have not noticed.

"I can give you power. To defeat your evil. To save your planet."

Jayce thought. He thought for the longest time, his gaze unwavering. This offer was tempting. He could get all this power and go back and kick some serious Reaper ass. And then he'd kick the Illusive Man in the nuts and throw him out of that window he's always sitting in front of. Yeah, that would be nice. But then he had an idea, one that threw Nightmare Moon off-guard...

"Yo, Orion."

"...so that's why I--huh? What is it, Jayce?" Orion turned to him.

"There's some bitch talking to me in my head. I think it's Nightmare Moon."

"You FOOL!"

Jayce was wearing a shit-eating grin from cheek-to-cheek. "Oh, yeah. It's definitely her." Celestia stood up, her horn charging up with magical energy.

"Oops. I guess she noticed," he said, his smile still holding. "Eat shit, bitch. I don't take orders from anybody."

"You will regret doing this! I will return, and you will pay for your transgressions!"

"And I'll be waiting to rip your spleen out through your ass. Beat it, asshole."

Celestia shot a beam of light directly onto Jayce. He could feel the presence leaving his head.

"Huh. I wonder if that's how indoctrination works," Jayce shrugged.

"Was it truly Nightmare Moon who spoke with you?" asked Celestia.

"You tell me. She breaks into my head and starts offering all these promises of power. I say she can go fuck herself." Celestia was taken aback by the language. "The last time I followed anything that resembled promises of power, I ended up in N-School surrounded by by-the-book soldiers with broomsticks up their asses."

Orion had a look of shock. "You went to N-School?" Then he shook his head. "No, wait, more important things first. You sure that was her talking in your head?"

"Of course. You see any other psychic ponies around here?" Granted, Jayce didn't know the answer to that question, but if it was on his mind, fuck it, he was saying it.

Celestia's horn stopped glowing. "I have put up a protective spell on your mind. She shall not be able to harm you for a period of time, but I cannot say what will happen once the spell wears off."

"I'll tell you what's gonna happen, Princess. I'm gonna find her, and I'm gonna kick her ass. In my head or otherwise," Jayce said, folding his arms. "You know her, Princess? Where the hell you keeping her locked up?"

"I do not know. The Elements of Harmony banished her presence from my sister many months ago, but I could not ascertain her location."

"Hmph. Guess we'll just have to have our guns ready when she shows up." He looked at Orion. "And when she does, she can have a grenade cupcake straight down her fucking gullet, courtesy of me."

"Right. Well. Whoa, wait," Orion said, holding a hand to his head in confusion. "You went to N-School."

"I did. Dropped out when I got N1 and joined Cerberus instead."

"Oh. How'd that end up?" Orion smiled.

"Better than I thought it would," Jayce deflected. "More credits per mission than you probably ever made in your entire career."

The two began arguing when Celestia cleared her throat.

"Aside from that, you two, I have plans in mind for both of you."

"What do you have in mind, Princess?" asked Orion.

"You will go to Ponyville to live with the Elements of Harmony, and work with them to defeat Nightmare Moon when she decides to show herself."

"Er, pff." Jayce suppressed a laugh. "Right, Ponyville. And just where is that, exactly?"

"That town near where I crashed my fighter."

"Oh. That's Ponyville? Great, now we have to walk all the way back down the hill."

"No, you won't," said Celestia. Jayce turned to her.

"And why is that?"

"Gather your belongings, then meet me here again."

================================================================================

Wearing their equipment again, the duo returned to the throne room, bags in tow.

"Please stand in the center of the room," Celestia asked. The two did so, their faces obscured by their helmets.

"What about the Elements?" asked Orion.

"I sent them back earlier today. They will meet you at Ponyville when you arrive. Now stand still, I don't want an accident to happen."

"So, how the fuck does this work?" asked Jayce. "Is this some sort of crazy magic teleport shi--"

================================================================================

"-IIIIIIIIIIITTTTTT!" he screamed, materializing out of thin air and slamming into the ground with a thud, his bags flopping down next to him.

"There they are!" Twilight said. "Welcome back to Ponyville, you two!"

"Oh. So that's what this town was?" asked Jayce, dusting himself off as he got up. He looked around. "Peachy."

"Just who is he?" asked Rarity.

"Oh, we haven't introduced you to the other ponies yet," said Twilight. "Everypony, this is Wade Jayce. We can call him Jayce for short."

"Hey." He waved.

"Is he a f-friendly human?" asked Fluttershy, hiding behind Dash.

"Friendly enough, I guess," he said. "Nice to meet ya, er..."

"F-Fluttershy," she whispered. "N-Nice to meet you, too... um... Jayce..."

"I'm Rainbow Dash!" Dash quickly closed the distance to Jayce's hand, shaking it quickly with her hooves. "Man, this is awesome, now we have two humans here!" She flew back to Fluttershy and began talking tall stories about what awesome stuff she could do with them.

Rarity walked up to Jayce and gave his armor a look. "Your armor certainly has some style, dear. I love the colors. Oh, I am Rarity. I own the designer clothing store here in Ponyville. If you ever need to update your wardrobe, you know who to find."

"An honor to make your acquaintance, Miss Rarity." She giggled.

"Why, another human with manners! If only every stallion were so sophisticated."

He turned to a small purple dragon eyeing him cautiously. "And you?"

"I'm Spike. I'm, uh, Twilight's assistant. Help her with stuff and keep the books in order."

"Hmm. Nice to meet you, Spike."

"Likewise. Hey, nice duds."

"Thanks."

Jayce noticed an orange pony looking at his boots. She broke out of her observation as he approached her.

"Oh, I'm Applejack. Nice to meet ya, Mister Jayce." She tipped her hat at him.

"A pleasure," he nodded back. "Er, you work on a farm?"

"Yep," she glowed.

"Nice. I know what that's like, myself."

"You're a farm human?"

"Well, I grew up on one."

"Well, shoot. Nice to meet a fellow farmer!" They began on having a conversation on seasonal farming when Orion grabbed their attention.

"Now that we've got the introductions aside, it's nice to see you all again," Orion said. "So how is this whole thing being set up? Are we staying with one of you?"

"Well, that's what we're here to talk about," Twilight responds. "Since there's only two of you, we should figure out where each one of you would be best suited to staying with."

"I'll go with you, Twlight," Orion follows. "I still need to do more research, and it looks like your library has got plenty of space. Well, on the ground floor, anyway. Definitely can't fit through those stairways." Twilight gave a nod in response.

Then everyone... or rather, everypony and Orion turned to Jayce.

"What?" his voice buzzed through his helmet. "You do something about it, I'm not good with this shit."

"You got some bulk on you, Jayce. Maybe Applejack can make some use of you?"

"With what, exactly?"

"She has an apple farm."

"Oh. Sounds good. At least I can do an honest day's worth of work." Orion gave him a strange look. "You know, honest work? The thing batarians have never heard of?"

Orion shook his head. "Bad jokes, man."

"Pff, shut up." Jayce grabbed his bags and followed Applejack out of Ponyville.

Orion turned to Twilight and the others. "Well, looks like I'm staying in town then."

================================================================================

"And you can just drop yer bags here, sugarcube." Applejack and Jayce were standing in a spare guest room in Applejack's house. It was a little cramped, but Jayce could still walk around, so it wasn't all bad.

"Er, nice place you got here." He looked around. The room definitely captured the old rustic farm feel.

"Aw, shucks, don't flatter me! Here's your bed, and you can lay your bags over there. As fer your metal suit... well, I guess you can fit it in the corner when yer not wearin' it, that is."

"And, uh..."

"Hmm?" Applejack had just turned to leave the room.

"Er. Fine. I'm not good with this stuff. But thanks for putting up with me. And Orion."

"Don't mention' it. You're our friends, after all," she smiled, walking out the door.

After locking the door, Jayce began to disassemble his armor. In a matter of short moments, he was down to his combat fatigues again. He set the armor carefully in the corner. He left all his weapons in another lockbox that Jayce had provided for him, this one a generic black-colored one that came from Orion's left side of the cockpit. There was nothing in there save for combat rations, which Orion had taken with him, and so left the lockbox available for Jayce.

He closed the lockbox and sealed it with his omnitool.

There was a knock at the door. "You ready, sugarcube? I'm headin' out to work on the farm now, feel free to help whenever you'd like." He heard her hoofs tapping down the hallway. He opened the door, and headed outside.

"That's a lot of trees," Jayce said.

Applejack smiled. "Our trees produce some of the best apples in all of Equestria! You won't find a better apple anywhere."

"Applejack! You're back!" said another voice. Jayce wheeled around to see a smaller pony standing in the doorway. He hadn't seen her walking out of the house. "And who's that with you?" the pony asked in a suspicious voice.

"Hey, Applebloom! This here's Jayce. He's helpin' me with work on the farm!"

"Really?" she asked, her suspicious gaze locking on to Jayce.

"Yeah. Really. I won't cause any trouble, don't worry. Nice to meet you, Applebloom."

"Nice to meet ya, too, Jayce. Have you met Big Macintosh yet?"

"Who?"

"That'd be me." Jayce turned around to find himself staring at a red stallion as tall as he was.

"You gonna do work on the farm?" Mac asked.

"Uh, yeah. I think it's an equal trade for letting me stay with you guys."

"Can you buck a tree?"

"What?"

"Buck a tree. We kick the trees to knock the apples down so we can harvest 'em." Harvest. Jayce mentally flinched after hearing the favorite love-verb of the Reapers used on him, but returned to his senses quickly.

"Uh, yeah, I guess. Doesn't seem too hard. You don't kick the trees that hard, do you?"

"Nope. Just hard enough so the apples fall off."

Jayce walked over to a tree and gave it a light kick; nothing too hard, just like kicking a soccer ball. He found himself being showered by ripe apples.

"That's how ya do it!" shouted Applebloom.

"It doesn't seem too hard at all," Jayce said, picking up the apples. He neatly gathered them into a basket and left it next to the tree.

"Well, that's mighty fine, then! Well, let's get to it! We got a whole day o' work ahead of us!" cheered Applejack.

================================================================================

"Yeah, this'll do. Plenty of room to sleep and work in." Orion dropped his bags next to the newly-placed bed on the first floor. His armor and weapons was locked away in this N7 lockbox, itself already absurdly heavy enough at it was. Magic or not, Orion was pretty sure that no one could steal it, or open it. The ponies on this world definitely didn't have omnitools, and for that he was thankful; he shuddered at the thought of Rainbow Dash being able to fly around with the Cain.

"I'll start digging up some books for you," Twilight said, her horn glowing as a multitude of books began flying off the shelves and piling up neatly on a table next to Orion's bed. They were a variety of them, but mostly dealing with pony history or culture. He figured that Twilight must really want him to learn about their people. He would read them, but now he was more interested in the strange Eezo on this planet.

"Uh, Twilight."

"Yes?" She stopped and turned to look at him.

"Do you have any books on substances? Like alchemical ingredients or magical substances of sorts?"

"I think I have a few. Why do you ask?"

"I'm curious about something that I learned about this planet."

Twilight stopped pulling out books again and looked at him. "And what would that be?"

Orion sat down, motioning for Twilight to do the same. "There's this substance back where I came from, used a lot in our ships for travel, that also acts as the substances that can activate my powers. It's called Element Zero, and it looks very much like a radiating dark energy that activates when it comes into contact with electricity."

Twilight pondered for a few moments, before shaking her head. "I don't think we have anything like that here."

"You've never seen it before?"

"I don't think so."

"Then you might be surprised to know that we're breathing it right now."

"What?"

"Yep. This planet, from what my scans show on my omnitool," the device powered up on his wrist, flashing data on a screen," that this planet has a special type of Element Zero that's extremely advanced. It's so potent, that if I could harness it, it could supercharge my abilities to near ludicrous amounts of power."

"Wow. This is the first that I've ever heard of it."

"And I also have reason to believe that it's strange affinity with other Element Zero types is what brought me here."

"That's... really interesting. But I'm afraid I don't know of any such texts on the subject."

Orion had expected that. "Then I guess I'll have to go do some research myself."

================================================================================

"Jayce." Orion's voice came in over Jayce's omnitool. They'd linked up their devices to a local network after they'd met to keep in touch.

"What... is... it...?" he said, in between kicks at an apple tree. "Kind... of... busy..."

"I'm heading off to the forest to where I landed. I'm gonna go do some scans to see if I can dig up any more info on this Eezo stuff. Bringing the gear just in case. Meet up with me when you can."

"You watch yourself out there," Jayce huffed, picking up apples around him, and tossing them into the wagon that Big Macintosh had brought along.

"You can head on back to town, sugarcube. We can handle the rest from here. It looks like you should go meet up with Orion, he could probably use yer help." With Jayce's help, they'd gotten through the farm in less than half the time it took for their last applebucking season.

"Yeah... I think I will." He broke into a light jog as he headed up into his room, gearing up in his equipment, before walking off into the Everfree forest to meet up with Jayce.

================================================================================

"Orion. You get anything yet?" Jayce said, walking out into the clearing. Orion was kneeling, holding his omnitool close to the ground.

"Yeah... it's... strange. The Eezo's giving off different readings now."

"What? How is the fuck is that possible? Can Eezo just change it's own properties on the fly now?"

"Normally it doesn't, but it looks like this one does."

"Is it dangerous to us now?" Jayce was glad he was wearing his helmet.

"No. Well, not yet. Given how much exposure we've already had to it back home and here, I don't think we'll be dying from an Eezo overdose anytime soon." The omnitool beeped a few times, returning another negative scan for Orion. "Damn. Looks like nothing we'll get here."

"We can search the rest of the forest." Jayce nodded towards the treeline. "Maybe there's more of that shit just waiting in there."

"Wouldn't surprise me if there were. I killed some monster in there, though. That place is serious business. The damn thing was twice as big as a damn elcor, but thankfully, that's what I had the guns for."

"Think we should just head in now?" Jayce looked towards the treeline now.

"Nah. We should take a bit to prep. Say what, we'll head in about a week or two, then we can see just what kind of shit this forest hiding."

"Sounds good to me." He pulled out his Talon and inspected it. "I could do with some big game hunting."

"Don't be too eager. I'm not exactly looking forward to seeing what other kinds of shit is waiting for us in there."

================================================================================

A week passed by. Jayce killed time by helping the Apples work their farm, Orion by studying up on pony history and culture, with visits from the other ponies in between: Rarity was constantly trying to design new outfits for the both of them, Dash never seemed to cease her interest in Orion and Jayce's war stories, Fluttershy usually kept to her house, or stayed with Dash. It was fairly uneventful, aside from the occasional Pinkie Pie antics and helping the Cutie Mark Crusaders with their mad stunts in an attempt to get their cutie marks.

Strangely enough, Jayce had stopped receiving messages from Nightmare Moon, and Orion hadn't been contacted by her at all.

Then the day came. "Jayce, it's time to move out. I'll meet you at the forest edge." Orion flipped off his omnitool, fully equipped, Crusader in hand. He made for the door.

"Oh? Going somewhere?" asked Twilight.

"Yep. Going into the Everfree Forest to try to dig up more info on the Eezo."

"It'll be dangerous. Are you sure?"

"I think we'll be fine, we're both well-trained and heavily armed. If we don't come back, don't come looking for us."

"Oh. Okay." Twilight couldn't think of anything to say towards the sudden grim statement, as Orion walked out the door.

================================================================================

"About damn time." Jayce was leaning against a tree when Orion showed up. He tapped his Cerberus helmet. "You know where we're going?"

"Wherever the damn thing points us at." Orion detached his helmet from his strap, and locked it on his head with a hiss.

"Then let's head on in and fuck some shit up."

True enough, they weren't more than 100 meters into the forest when they encountered a manticore.

"What the fuck?" Jayce started firing his Mattock at it, his shots doing moderate damage, the hits hissing off the skin as it burned.

"Get back!" Orion charged the beast, slamming into it with force and staggering it. He sharply aimed his Crusader at the manticore's head, and the beast's body went limp as the shot rang through the forest.

"Sheesh. What other fucked up shit do they got in here?"

"Just keep walking, the reading's getting stronger this way."

"Sure..."

More walking, more killing. Jayce found it hilarious when he managed to blow off a cockatrice's head from long range.

"There's more this way... keep going..." Orion walked ahead, following the waypoint the omnitool charted out.

"You sure about this, man? It's getting really fucking dark now. I don't even think we've been in here that long, unless these treetops are as dense as shit."

"Uh... there! I can see some ruins up ahead. That's where the Eezo signature's the highest."

They carefully traversed a hollow log, which had fallen over a large chasm. The path on the opposite side led up to the ruins.

"Damn. The scan's going nuts. There must be some fucking good Eezo up there," Jayce said, landing with a thud as he hopped off the log.

They carefully walk towards the ruins, and notice a destroyed doorway. They carefully take up position on both sides. Orion gives a nod, and they both charge in, weapons sweeping the destroyed room.

"...there's nothing here." Jayce lowered his Mattock. "Get to scanning. I don't want to see what kind of shit comes out when the sun goes down." He started patrolling the area.

Orion walked around, scanning various rocks, but turning up nothing. When he walked over the center of the room, his boots made a scratching noise. Curious, he looked down to see that the entire floor was covered in small vines. He kneeled down, sweeping away the fading vines, and revealed a strange symbol. A crescent moon of some sorts.

"Jayce, I found something."

Jayce walked over and looked over his shoulder. "Isn't that the same symbol that Luna has?"

"Yeah. But we know how the story went. Nightmare Moon has a symbol very similar to hers."

"So maybe we should take a hint and just beat it. This place is giving me the creeps. That symbol might represent her prison or some shit. We should just leave it alone."

"Fools. You have fallen into my trap."

Jayce and Orion exchanged a look. "Find cover!" Jayce shouted.

The symbol started glowing as they ran outside, taking up their original positions at the door.

"Looks like she was expecting us!" Orion shouted, the shadowy cloud and wailing noise coming from within the ruins growing increasingly bigger and louder.

"Yeah, no shit! At least I can make good on my promise!"

"What's that?"

"I'm gonna rip her fucking spleen out through her fucking ass!" He peeked around and snapped off a few rounds with his Mattock, which didn't seem to do anything as it looked like the shots were seemingly absorbed by the darkness. The noise stopped, and the two noticed a new alicorn was standing in the center.

"Yes! After all this time, I, Nightmare Moon, have returned! And now I shall bring eternal night to the land! But, first, to deal with you two nuisances..."

"Fuck you, bitch!" Jayce stared firing in earnest now. His shots only seemed to ping off of some magic shield that Nightmare had up. He groaned. "Aw, seriously, fuck you."

She laughed. "Foolish mortal, your weapons have no effect on someone as powerful as I. I have seen what happened to Discord, and I assure you, I will not allow myself to be so naive." She walked towards the door, Jayce's continued shots doing nothing to damage her, slowing backing away.

She was halfway when Jayce stopped firing, his Mattock in cooldown.

"It would seem that your weapon is out of commission, human."

"Then I guess it's a good thing I have more," he said, drawing his Talon. "And one more thing, you bitch."

"What would that be? Last words?"

"You should really pay attention to your surroundings sometimes," he laughed.

"Wha--" She was cut off as Orion's fist slammed into the back of her head with a biotic strike. She went flying out the door and down the hill.

"Damn!" Jayce narrowly avoided being hit with her mass, firing a few shots of his Talon into her as she rolled down the hill someways. The shots connected and seemed to do damage to her, thankfully. But the realization was cut short as the wounds quickly regenerated.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me." He wheeled out his Mattock again. "She can regenerate faster than a fucking krogan?!" He ran inside, and took position again, firing off more shots.

Her laugh roared through the forest. "Lessers like you could never possibly hope to kill one as powerful as I am!" She opened her wings, the clouds blotting out the sky overhead, rain showering the trees, and lightning breaking behind her.

"Any ideas?" Jayce asked Orion, who was opposite him, who was looking at his omnitool.

"I don't know. Maybe... maybe there's something we can use against her... maybe I can spike the Eezo around her and destabilize gravity or something."

"Don't give a shit! Just do something! She's walking this way!" Jayce said, firing.

A purple explosion of energy manifested behind them. The Elements of Harmony stepped out.

"Twilight!"

"No time to talk! Celestia sent us! We need to use the Elements to seal off Nightmare Moon!"

They noticed that all the Elements were wearing an accessory of sorts, figuring that they were the Elements they used. Orion turned back to Jayce.

"Jayce! You and me pull her attention! Kick, punch, whatever, just keep them safe until they can activate the Elements!" shouted Orion.

"Don't need to tell me twice!" he said, his voice sounding like a krogan's through the helmet's voice filters. Jayce shouted back, pulling out his Talon, now dual-wielding it alongside his Mattock. "Ladies first!" He nodded his head towards the door.

"Real funny!" Orion immediately lunged into a biotic charge as he left the door, knocking Nightmare back down the hill again. Jayce had activated Incendiary Ammo, and ran out the door firing at her as she rolled. His shots made a hissing noise, barely heard over the roaring rainstorm.

Orion raised his fist, about to strike her on the ground, when another blast of dark-purple energy slammed him in the chest, throwing him back. He gave out a grunt before disappearing into the trees.

"Orion! You're gonna pay for that, you bitch!" Jayce shouted, running at her, guns blazing. All of his shots made contact, but they did nothing. The Talon hissed as it ran into overheat, and Jayce cursed, quickly holstering it as he moved his full attention to aiming his Mattock at her head, firing a Concussive Shot.

It seemed to work, as Nightmare Moon again stumbled, and wheeled around, slightly disoriented.

Orion came running out of the woods again, firing his Crusader. Twilight and the other Elements were floating in the air, with white light surrounding them, beginning the final stages of their ritual.

"Keep it up, Jayce! We almost have her!"

"Yeah, that's nice!" Jayce said, dodging bolts. He jumped to her side and fired.

"I tire of these games!" roared Nightmare Moon, her horn beginning to charge with unholy energy.

"Orion!" Jayce shouted. Orion, knowing what was about to happen, crouched down, preparing for another biotic charge. The light coming from the Elements was near blinding now. Jayce was knocked to the floor, his ominblade attack failed, as Nightmare Moon reared into the air, about to bring her hooves down on him, as she started to glow. Jayce pulled out his Talon again, and fired futilely into her underside.

A beam of light shot towards Nightmare Moon, connecting just as her aura reached full power... and just as Orion slammed into her with his charge. Jayce couldn't tell what happened next, but the resulting energy from all three of them impacting together produced a huge explosion.

Then everything went dark.

================================================================================

"Ugh... that makes twice now... fuck," Jayce moaned, picking himself up from the floor. He helped the disoriented Orion up, and looked around the spartan server room. It was clean, and definitely something from their world.

"So... back again," said Orion. His head shot up. "What about the ponies?"

"I don't know, man, we can't do shit about that now. No way back."

Orion sighed. "So where the hell are we, then?"

Jayce noticed a terminal sitting in the middle of all the servers. "Let me check, maybe I can--" He closed his mouth. "...shit."

"Jayce? What's wrong?" Orion asked, looking at the screen.

The Cerberus logo was floating on the screen, and underneath, it said:

WELCOME TO NIGHTINGALE STATION, CERBERUS NEMEAN ABYSS COMMAND POST.

Space Cowboys

Orion blinked. "Nightingale Station? I've never heard of it."

"Of course you haven't. You're Alliance. This is Cerberus. Like hell we're going to let you know where our stations are."

"So what is this place then? Where is it?" Orion looked around at the brightly-lit room.

"This place is what it says on the screen. We're in the Nemean Abyss." Jayce pointed at some coordinates on the star map.

"Nemean Abyss? That's pretty damn far from Council or Alliance space."

"No shit. Why else would we want to build a base here?"

"And no one's ever come across this place before?"

"Like hell they would. Most never find this place because Cerberus's anti-detection equipment is advanced as fuck."

"You kill intruders?"

"No shit." The sarcasm was evident in Jayce's voice.

"Right... well, see if you can get in and find anything."

"Will do. I know... knew the guys that ran this place. They just recently changed the codes before I left. If we're lucky, I think they'll still work."

"Access granted."

"Looks like they do," Orion said.

"Sweet. Now to dig through this... ah!"

"Got something?"

"Not yet. But Nightingale Station is here in the Nemean Abyss for a reason. It's an Eezo research facility. We've been harvesting the stuff from this place for years."

"Grab anything and everything on Eezo off the systems, if you can, then. Wait, won't they detect you?"

"Nope. Cerberus IDs are bound to individuals, but I jacked the adminstrator's before I left the last time I was here, duped it, and gave them that one. To the other people on the system, it just looks like I'm the admin himself looking through their research notes. Well, if anyone is. It looks like there's no one on," he said, typing on the terminal.

"How'd you get high-ranking clearance like that? I thought you were just a grunt, you shouldn't be able to walk into the adminstrator's office without someone seeing you."

"...and done." The door to the room locked and the windows fogged themselves. "We'll be safe for a while. And to what you said, I worked for the Illusive Man for a long time. Let's just say that we were on a first-name basis and I got access to all facilities as one of my 'perks'."

"You're Cerberus elite?"

"Yeah, I am. Well, was. I blew up several of their research stations as my resignation. Never felt better."

"Damn, man. How much training do you have?"

"If I had to guess, I'd wager just about as much as you N7 types do. Cerberus ain't exactly lacking on the resources department, and they even have their own training academy," Jayce shrugged.

"Just another reason to take them down a notch. They're too dangerous."

Jayce wasn't paying attention, being too focused on the screen. "I've got everything loaded onto my omnitool." He scrolled past a bunch of video feeds, stopped, backtracked, then brought one up. "Wait..."

"Isn't that--"

"Kai Leng..." Jayce nodded. "...shit."

Orion's stomach sank. If Kai Leng was here, then there was some serious business going down. "We need to get out of here. Now."

"Not before I get to kick his ass."

"What?"

Jayce zoomed in on the video feed. Leng was standing in a hangar bay, from what Orion could see, full of Atlas mechs and Cerberus troops and transports.

"Let's just say we have a rivalry that goes way back..."

"How far back?" Orion was a bit curious that he'd heard of Kai Leng, but not of Jayce.

"When I first enlisted. You always read the reports about Leng, but you never read the reports about me, because I like being thorough on my missions like that, and I paid the proper authorities to keep quiet on it. Leng was always the go-to guy for the Illusive Man if he wanted it done a little bit messier than my style, usually to send a message. Still pretty good, but I'm better."

"You mean you can fight toe-to-toe against Kai Leng?"

"That boy scout? Fuck yeah. Those damn cybernetic enhancements don't work for shit if you know how they work. I should know, I stole the plans and uploaded the countermeasures into my suit."

Orion shook his head. "We should avoid fighting if we can. We need to get out somehow."

"I see your point, and--wait, what's this? There's some research here on some new type of Eezo."

"What's it say?"

"...supercharging biotic abilities? My god, this shit is... absolutely crazy... and this profile on hand matches with the Eezo signature you gave me! This shit can turn biotics into walking death machines!"

Orion nodded, confirming his suspicions. "Have they started using it? It could be a problem for the Alliance if they did, and if so, I need to warn Hackett about it, and this place, before we lose more men."

"Nah, the Illusive Man dropped all his shit towards anything other than Reaper research. The project's on a standstill, and besides, Cerberus's indoctrination leaves biotics docile and incapable of using their powers. Their fucking loss."

"What else is there?"

"They moved Nightingale into orbit around a planet, where they were excavating the Eezo from. They've got the planet out of sight with anti-detection countermeasures like this station. From the looks of it, they have a few bases down there and a comm array. Maybe we can get down there and broadcast. I can't do it from the station, it's way too risky."

"Rip the data, then purge the systems. We can't risk letting them continue the project."

"You sure? If I purge, there's going to be a station-wide alarm, and then we'll have a real shitstorm on our hands."

"Do it. We can find our way to the hangars and get out through there."

"Fuck yeah! Party time!" Jayce whipped out his Mattock and slammed a button. The terminal cracked with electricity, then exploded. Warning bells went off. The servers were lit on fire and started exploding randomly as the fire sprinklers vainly tried to extinguish the increasing flames.

"Alert: Full system purge activated. Origin of broadcast location: Server Room 4E."

"Get ready!" they heard a voice shout from behind the locked door. A hiss sounded as they saw a blowtorch begin to cut through it.

"I'll be damned if we get out of here alive..." Orion shook his head, pulling out his shotgun.

================================================================================

Twilight opened her eyes. Her friends lay around her, slowly beginning to wake up. Then she gasped.

Nightmare Moon! Orion! Jayce!

Nightmare Moon was unconscious, her body sealed in an aura of white, a large explosion crater around her. But the two humans were nowhere to be found.

"Oh, no..."

================================================================================

The door exploded as Guardians poured in. Orion made short work of them using his Shockwave, as Jace threw a couple of grenades. The initial following wave of assault troopers was easily dealt with as the two specialists fought their way towards the door.

"Fucking cakewalk!" Jayce shouted, putting two rounds through the chest of an assault soldier in front of him.

A whirring sound could be heard through the smoke coming from the door.

"Take cover!" shouted Orion. The duo dodged out of the entranceway, taking cover behind some server blocks. "They've got a turret!"

Jayce readied his last grenade. "Let me deal with that. We need to take down the shield."

Orion readied his Saber, peeking around the corner, the gun's custom scope revealing the silhouettes of enemies: one Engineer, more assault soldiers... and the turret.

He moved the scope to the Engineer's head, keying for the Incendiary Ammo for the armor damage that would follow... and fired three times in quick succession. The engineer dropped to the floor. Then Orion quickly turned his aim to the turret, squeezing out the remaining five rounds, knocking out the turret's shields and critically damaging it.

He whirled back into cover to reload, gunfire from the assault soldiers pouring down the hallway.

"Frag out!" The beeping of the grenade went into the billowing smoke, and exploded. Then silence.

Orion peeked around the corner again. "Looks clear."

"Don't get too happy yet. We're at a command post, and from what I saw on the screens, they've got a full detachment here at this facility, and that's a lot of soldiers."

"Any suggestions for dealing with them?" Orion asked.

"Yeah. Kill 'em all."

"One that doesn't involve us getting killed."

They walked out the door, scanning the hallway for threats. Jayce made for a door, Orion following. The grenade had taken out a rather large group of assault soldiers lying in wait behind the walls.

"Set the station to blow, then beat it. We can head down to the planet and broadcast to Hackett. I'm sure he'd like to know about this place."

"Sounds good," Orion said. "How come you weren't hurt? I thought you were wearing the same armor as those soldiers back there?"

"Nope. Those fucking pansies get the cheap and flimsy mass-produced version." He slammed an armored fist into his chest. "This here's the real deal." They continued for the door when a shrill noise rang throughout the hallway. The PA system.

"If it isn't Wade Jayce, space cowboy," a voice crackled through the intercom.

Jayce gave a loud snort. "How's it hanging, Leng? Still sucking the Illusive Man's cock, you ninja boy scout?"

"You were always second best! You and I both know it, and so does the Illusive Man!"

"Only reason why you got the position is because I don't bend over and take it up the ass like you do."

"You'll pay for what you did to me!"

"Come and get me, then, you fucker. I beat your ass then, and I'll beat your ass now. You should really be thanking me, you know, after my little retirement stunt got you all that pay raise, the head honcho's favor, and top-notch jobs, so maybe now you can go up against a real fighter," Jayce said mockingly. "You still fight with that pussy sword of yours?"

"This sword will end your life, Jayce!"

"That's what you said last time, too. Then I beat the shit out of you with my bare hands, bound you up like the good little boy scout that you are, and threw in the back of my shuttle before I left you in some back alley on the Citadel for the Illusive Man to find you, crying like a little girl. I'm surprised he didn't just kick your sorry ass out of Cerberus for that."

"I remember that, and I WILL make you pay for what you did." The intercom went dead.

Jayce looked at Orion, then laughed. "Who needs N7 training when you got an ex-N7 who wants you dead?"

The explosion from the server room broke them out of their humorous mood.

"You know what, forget blowing this place up, that can come later," said Jayce. "I want to kick Leng's ass, so the hangars it is."

================================================================================

Following several massive firefights and several hundred corpses later, involving one destroyed electrical conduit, one fuel redirection pipe, and an unused Atlas in disrepair that Jayce used to fight them, Orion and Jayce make it to Hangar D2. Whether or not this was the one that Leng was in, they didn't know.

"There's fucking hundreds of these hangars in this place. He could be in any one of them."

"Let's just hope he's not in the one we need." They'd chosen D2 specifically because it had fighter aircraft, and they needed them to land on the planet to reach the comm array.

Another louder, even shriller alarm pierced the station's airspace.

"Warning: Facility self-destruct activated. All personnel, please proceed to escape transports."

"What the fuck?" Jayce shouted.

"Let's see you fight your way out of this one, cowboy. I'll be down at the comm array, if you can prove that you're worth fighting me."

"Heat up some tea, boy scout, 'cause I will make it out alive, and when I get to you, I am gonna KICK. YOUR. FUCKING. ASS."

Two Atlas came out of hidden wall hatches in the hangar, as dozens of soldiers flooded the room, readying their guns at them.

"Shit," Orion muttered. "Any smart ideas for this one, Jayce?"

"Yeah. I got one. Follow me." He grabbed Orion by the shoulder and led him back through the door they came back in.

"Huh? What the hell are you doing? Are we heading to another hangar?"

"Shut the fuck up and watch. Did you forget I still had high-level clearance?" The door closed behind them as gunfire pinged off the metal.

Jayce keyed a few buttons on his omnitool. The door lock turned red.

"Warning: Hangar vent in process. Please stand by." The telltale sound of air vacating the room could be heard beyond the door. Then, nothing.

"Hangar vent complete. Pressurizing."

"Jayce, you crazy son of a bitch."

"Yeah, it's hard to be down-to-earth when you're as fucking awesome as I am. No autographs, please," he laughed.

The door lock turned green, and they passed through to find a completely empty hangar bay. There were several fighters sitting in the bay, and the pair opted for the closest ones.

"Meet at these coordinates on the ground," Jayce said, punching in coordinates for Orion. "Don't be late." His canopy closed.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Orion responded, his fighter's engines whirring to life.

================================================================================

"Spike? Spike! We need you, Spike!" Rainbow Dash crashed through a window in the treehouse.

"Uh... huh, what?" Spike groaned, annoyed that he'd been woken up from a restful sleep.

"I need you to take a letter!"

"...huh?"

"NOW!"

"Okay, okay!" he said, scrambling out of bed, trying to find a quill and parchment. Ready!"

"Tell Princess Celestia that we couldn't banish Nightmare Moon! She's trapped in some weird magic field!"

"Okay! Is that all?"

"And tell her that Orion and Jayce have disappeared!"

================================================================================

"Nice to see you haven't lost your space wings," Jayce laughed, as Orion fell into formation with him.

"It's only been, like, what? A couple of weeks?"

"Yeah, yeah. Watch yourself now." They passed by a couple of Cerberus cruisers.

"Why aren't they firing at us?"

"They must think we're from the team that was on the station. Stay frosty."

"Seriously? Didn't they see all the soldiers and equipment being vented?"

"Hard to see shit in the darkness of space, man. And there were no comms up, so no one knows."

"Squadron, identify yourself." Shit, one of the cruisers was asking for clearances. If either of them talked now, their cover would be blown. And if they didn't... their cover would be blown. Damnit.

"This is Squadron Epsilon." A Cerberus trooper voice? From where?

"What the fuck? Orion?"

"Shut up, I'm working my magic," he responded over the comm. He cleared his throat. "We have orders to help Agent Leng secure airspace around the comm array."

"Copy that, Epsilon. Will be notifying control tower, over."

"Uh, looks like I have engine malfunction in left wing. Request for docking bay assitance planetside. How copy, over?"

"Copy, Epsilon. You land in Docking Bay A1; will allocate crash teams, just in case. Be careful down there."

"Roger. Epsilon out."

"Holy fuck, man, I can't believe that worked."

"Neither did I."

"How'd you do that?"

"Figured that ripping one of their voice filters was going to come in handy eventually. It's easy work when they all talk the same."

"You think they bought that?"

"We're not dead. I suppose there's that."

"I would have never thought of that, though."

"N7 teaches you to be prepared for anything, Jayce," Orion chuckled as they broke through the atmosphere, heading towards Docking Bay A1, located conveniently close to the comm array.

"Slow speed, Orion, I'm not sure about this."

"Yeah... those point defense guns are pointing at us."

"Maybe they think we didn't notice, either."

"Watch out for the docking bay, they'll probably have guns waiting on the ground for us."

"No, wait. I have an idea."

"Yeah?"

"Just before you land, gun the jet and bail out. Send it flying towards whatever."

"Yeah. Ready?" They were coming in close to the bay now.

"NOW!" Just before they landed, they opened their canopies, and gunned the jets, hopping out. Sure enough, two more Atlas came out, but realized too late that the jets were flying straight towards them. They couldn't move fast enough as the jets crashed into them, producing an explosion that sealed off the door the Atlas had came from with burning wreckage.

"Looks like you were right," Orion said, helping Jayce to his feet. "Good thing you saw that coming."

"Don't thank me yet. I still need to kick Leng's ass and you still need to get your message to Hackett."

"Right. Which way is it, then?"

"Thankfully not that way," Jayce said, pointing at the wreckages. "Come on."

================================================================================

The pathway up to the comm array station was mysteriously devoid of any resistance. No one at all.

They found Kai Leng waiting for them in the control room, which sat directly below the giant curving dish of the array. The walkway had no railings, and was the only thing on a massive expanse between the facility and the dish, dense jungle far beneath them. Kai Leng hopped out of the station and landed on the walkway, impeding their way.

"I've been waiting for this day for a long time," Leng said, drawing his sword.

"I'm gonna enjoy beating you to a pulp," Jayce responded, mashing his fists together in anticipation.

"What about me?" asked Orion.

"You stay back. I'll deal with him," said Jayce. "This is personal."

"No weapons, cowboy?"

"I'm not a pussy, boy scout. I can take you on just fine with my fists."

"You will not win this time."

Jayce was sure he would. The last time they fought, Jayce didn't have the countermeasures, and still won anyway. "Bring it, asshole."

The two charged each other across the empty walkway. Leng went straight for a decapitation cut, which Jayce cut off by blocking with his arm, and kicked Leng in the chest. The assassin did a backflip and crouched down in a defensive stance.

"You won't win this time."

"Try me."

He started doing strange flips, or what Jayce perceived as some asinine kung-fu bullshit. Then the flips were directed towards him, and Jayce found himself blocking Leng's kicks or swings. He activated the new countermeasures in his helmet, and they displayed the methods Leng was using to fight, how, and most importantly: how to counter them.

Immediately, Jayce started blocking Leng's attacks with startling precision and began to deliver counter blows to the small assassin's frame. After a seventh time, a hard punch from Jayce knocked him backwards. Leng had to kneel down and cough up blood.

"Ergh... how did you...?"

"Even with those fancy robot parts, you really are a useless piece of shit."

Leng's head shot up towards Jayce. "How dare you--"

"I'm getting tired of you, you prick. I hope Shepard himself sticks a knife in your gut." Jayce was now towering over Kai Leng. He grabbed him by the neck, kneed him in the groin, and threw the screaming Leng over the walkway into the dense jungle below. The drop must have been deep, because Leng's scream didn't end abruptly, but rather, faded away as he fell further.

"He's probably not dead, you know," Orion reminded him.

"Yeah, I know. He's tougher than that. But unless he can fly, he won't be coming back up."

Satisfied with the answer, Orion just shrugged and followed Jayce into the facility.

================================================================================

The control room was rather sparse. There was a holo-pad for 3D communications, and a comm terminal for outbound transmissions. They stepped towards the terminal when the holo-pad whirred to life.

"Wade Jayce. And here I thought I'd never see you again," said the Illusive Man.

"Hello again, boss. Miss me?"

"You were a very useful asset to Cerberus. It's a shame it had to come to this."

"Really now? I thought my resignation letter was pretty damn hilarious, don't you?"

"You're a liability now, Jayce. You have outlived your usefulness."

"And I see you're still a fucking idiot, as usual. How's that Reaper research coming along? I'm sure one day you'll be able to achieve your dream of being able to sleep in bed with one of them."

"I am trying to control the Reapers. Controlling them will end this war and make humanity stronger!"

"Yeah, sure, whatever. They killed humans, you fucking 'tard. They don't get the privilege of becoming your pets, they get the privilege of dying like the pieces of shit they are."

The Illusive Man shook his head. "You didn't understand then, and you won't understand now. You were always an insufferable ignoramus, Jayce. Goodbye."

"Go fuck yourself, you narcissistic shit."

The holo-pad's lights dimmed, and the Illusive Man disappeared.

"Well, that was... smooth," said Orion.

"Better than most. He's just jealous 'cause I'm more badass than he is. Now get your ass to that terminal while I rewire the control panel."

"Right." Jayce ripped out a panel under the main terminal, and stuck his head in.

"Here and here, and... done. Just punch in those frequencies and you'll be good," said Jayce, pushing himself out and hopping to his feet.

Orion punched in the frequency for Alliance High Command. The screen cracked as a face came through.

"This is Hackett."

Orion saluted. "Sir, N7 Lieutenant Matias Orion. I don't have much time. I'm transferring you these coordinates to an Eezo mining facility on an unmarked planet. They're owned by Cerberus, and I thought I should give you the heads up."

Hackett looked off-screen, then frowned. "That's in the Nemean Abyss, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir. But I assure you, there's a lot of Eezo here. Any material you can get for the Crucible would be useful."

"Interesting. Thanks for the heads-up, Lieutenant. I'll be sending strike teams through to retrieve the Eezo and anything that can be used for the project. Stay in touch. Hackett out." The screen closed.

"Well, that's that," said Jayce. "Now what?"

"We try to get back to Alliance Command."

"That would work."

"How so?"

"Those Cerberus cruisers in orbit? I caught a transcript. They're being called action by the Illusive Man. He wants to increase attacks on human-controlled colonies."

"Is he insane?"

"Like I said...."

"Think the Alliance can hold their own against Cerberus's offensive?"

"They can handle themselves."

"We should try to head back to Earth, or the Citadel, if we can."

"But what about Equestria? The ponies? Nightmare Moon? I still have to rip her spleen out through her ass, you know. I never go back on my promises."

"We can't do anything about that now," said Orion. "We don't even know how we got back here in the first place."

"I don't know. The last thing I remember seeing is Nightmare Moon glowing with some freaky shit, the lights from the Elements hitting Nightmare Moon, and then you appeared like a walking wall of barrier. And then things went dark."

"So a large energy transfer could cause that? Interesting."

"Hey, uh, you know Cerberus is gonna be here soon, right? We should leave."

"...not this time."

"Well, shit, I guess the boy scout isn't such a pussy after all. Survive that fall, Leng?"

"No... thanks... to you. I'll end you... one way... or another. So try this on for size: I've rigged the Eezo reactor that's powering this array to explode. You're going to die... here, Jayce... and I'll still be alive.

"Can't fight me mano-a-mano, so you're just going to take the easy way out? Pussy."

There was no response, and then the line went dead. Jayce threw up his arms in frustration.

"We should get to that bomb."

Jayce's head sharply turned to Orion. "What?"

"We should get to that bomb," Orion repeated. "If what I think is true, I have that new Eezo in my system. If I can somehow use the energy release from that bomb to get us back, we won't die, and we'll also be back in Equestria."

"Can't we just run?"

"If the bomb is what I think it is, then running won't do anything. We don't have anymore fighters, and the only way out is to walk through that jungle way below us, which won't work because the blast radius is way too large. We have to use the bomb."

Jayce stood for a moment, then sighed. "Fine. But if we die, I'm going to kick your ass."

================================================================================

"Well, this thing's a real piece of work." The so-called Eezo bomb was actually a reactor that was nearly two stories tall, and sat in a chamber directly below the array control room. "So how the fuck are we going to do this?"

"Simple. I hit the reactor with my biotic charge at full force just as it's about to explode."

"This is fucking crazy. Can't we just defuse the damn thing?" Jayce asked, looking around for wires or a panel to smash open, but found none. As far as things were concerned, this reactor was completely devoid of any extrusions, save for coolant pipes, which they definitely did not want to break. "Fine. Fucking fine. I'll go stand over there and read down that nice little countdown the fucking boy scout left for us."

"Right. Let me know when it hits one second. I can smash into it in a blink of an eye."

"This is fucking crazy," Jayce muttered. "It's got 2 minutes on the clock."

"So we wait then!" Ten seconds passed.

"Hey, Orion!" The reactor's whirring was growing louder, making it hard to hear.

"What?"

"Didn't you ever think about that? Talking ponies? Fucking really?"

"Of course I did! This universe is already a fucked up place, so talking friendly ponies sounds really nice right about now!"

"You think Shepard is going to bail all our asses out of this one?"

Slight silence. The countdown read one minute, ten seconds.

"I'm not holding my breath!"

"One minute!" Jayce held up one finger to indicate. "Yeah, neither am I! These Reapers fucking us up on all fronts!"

"At least we had a good one, right?"

"No regrets!" Jayce laughed. "At least I got to beat the shit out of that boy scout again!"

"You think he got away?"

"That fucker always has a plan when it comes to running away! Fourty seconds!"

Orion laughed. "Man, I must be fucking crazy. I mean, seriously, running into a bomb? Not one of my better ideas!"

"You tell me, man! It's been one fucking crazy ride! Thirty seconds!"

"Oh, man. This is craaaaaazy." He felt butterflies in his stomach.

More silence. "Twenty seconds! And Orion?"

"Yeah?"

"If this really fails, and we die, I'm going to fucking kick your ass."

================================================================================

"Princess? Is it working?" Twilight asked.

"I am trying to dispel this... aura... around Nightmare... Moon... but it won't... let me..." Celestia grunted. They'd brought the paralyzed Nightmare Moon to Canterlot Castle, and were now trying to dispel the aura so they could re-banish her again, properly. There were four times the normal amount of guards on duty this particular day to ensure protection.

"What's causing the disturbance?"

Celestia gave a sigh before she gave up, looking down at Nightmare Moon's frozen shocked face. "I can't remove it, Twilight. There's something there that prevents me from dispelling the aura. And what of the two humans?"

"The last thing I can remember is Orion using a charge on Nightmare Moon, just as our spell connected."

"Interesting. So perhaps his abilities could alter the effects of the spell somehow?"

"I don't know, Princess."

"Then it would seem that we cannot do anything about Nightmare Moon until they return?"

"Return? Your Majesty?"

"Yes, you have heard me correctly. Return. I know they will," Celestia smiled.

However, she had heavy doubts. The aura, she could tell, was only temporary. The Elements of Harmony were exhausted in using the abilities to stop her the first time, but the two humans were quite powerful in their abilities if they could hold their own against Nightmare Moon. And from what Celestia recalled in her dreams, she needed them to return.

She didn't want to think what would happen if they didn't.

================================================================================

"Ten seconds!" Jayce held out a closed fist towards Orion, readying a thumbs up when it hit one.

"Seven!"

Orion ducked down into a lunge stance. It was now or never.

"Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" Jayce's thumb shot up.

Orion focused his mind and could feel himself pull forward. The last thing he recalled was the reactor exploding in a giant ball of white-purple energy, and then everything went dark again.

================================================================================

"...ion... ayce... awake... them!"

Orion's eyes popped open. Voices. He was hearing voices. He was staring at an expertly-crafted arched ceiling. And then he noticed two glowing purple eyes looking through his helmet visor.

"Orion! You're back!" Twilight smiled.

"Ugh... yeah... I guess I am..." he groaned, sitting upright. Jayce was spread out on the ground some distance away from him.

Applejack went over to him. "Sugarcube? You all right? Can ya hear me?"

Jayce clumsily swatted his arm at her. "I'm fucking awake, just let me... lay down... for a bit." He rolled his body over, facing up, and threw an arm over his head. "Remind me... to never... do that again... you crazy... ass."

"We're... ugh." His shoulder was beyond sore; he raised his other arm to move it and was met with a rather loud cracking noise. "Damn. We're back, at least."

"And in one piece. Guess I won't have to kick your ass, after all."

"You're all back!" shouted Pinkie Pie. "Yay, now we can have a welcome-back-to-Equestria party!" She hopped in circles around Orion.

"Later, Pinkie," he said. He noticed Nightmare Moon lying on the ground in the middle of the room. "I thought you guys banished her?"

"It didn't work," Twilight said, shaking her head. "Your charge did something that changed the effect of our beam. As it is right now, she's unconscious, but once she wakes up, you two and the guards will have to deal with her."

"Ugh, fucking fantastic," muttered Jayce, getting to his feet. "Damn. Feels like we've been gone for months."

"You were only gone for a few hours, actually," Rainbow chimed in.

"Seriously?" Orion said, incredulous. "We blew up a station and an entire base while we were gone!"

"What?! Hay, I wish I was there!" Rainbow groaned in frustration.

Orion stood up, standing with Jayce looking at the unconscious Nightmare Moon.

"Anybody got any ideas as to what we do with her?" asked Jayce. "What with the Elements being all out of commission now, and all..."

Nightmare Moon's eyes shot open, her form exploding with energy as her body slowly lifted. The guards in the room jumped to attention and dived straight for her, holding her body to the ground. "I awaken! Bow mortals, tremble and despair before the presence of Nightmare Moon! I shall bring the eternal night to this land and--"

Her speech was cut short as Jayce walked up and delivered a solid kick to her face with his armored boot, knocking her out again.

"Fuck you."

"I c-can't believe that... worked..." whispered Fluttershy.

"I won't rip her spleen out through her ass, but I'll be damned if I don't get to put her through hell before we send her back where she came from." The implication of such violence made Fluttershy nearly faint.

Nightmare Moon's form started to slowly melt as it turned into liquid shadow.

"What the--?!" shouted one of the guards. "She's getting away!"

The liquid then seemed to shrink until only a tiny speck was left, and then it disappeared.

"Psh. Figures. Fucking coward," Jayce mumbled.

"We have to take this time to prepare," Orion said, to Jayce and the Elements. "We need to be ready for when she returns. I want to convene another meeting this afternoon in the library to discuss the subject. Until then, I guess we'll be staying with the ponies again."

"True to that. I had myself a strange hunger for apple-related food," said Jayce.

"Well, sugarcube, don't flatter yourself! You know mah family's gonna be happy ta oblige, what with yer help on the farm and all!"

"Heh. Thanks, Applejack. I'm starving," he said.

"Come on, Orion! You should join us for lunch! Tell us--er, me, all about what happened while you were gone!" said Rainbow Dash, her face inches away from Orion's faceplate.

"And we should have another PARTY!" Pinkie hopped up and down.

"Sure. Come on. I'm pretty hungry myself. I guess blowing things up is a lot of work," he laughed. He left the room with the group, listening to Rarity talk about cleaning his armor and new color schemes, Twilight about discoveries of new magical spells, Spike about doing 'grownup' stuff, as the guards left searched the room for traces of Nightmare Moon.

But Orion couldn't help shake the feeling that he'd missed something. Something very important, that was present before, but not now.

================================================================================

Princess Luna was hiding in her room, trembling in the corner.

"N-no! You were supposed to be gone! You can't! You shouldn't be here! The Elements banished you!" she screamed.

"I have need of you again, Luna. You again... shall become Nightmare Moon. And together, we shall bring the eternal night... once and for all..." The evil entity, a pool of shadow, slowly began to swallow Luna's body, herself powerless against it.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

Heart Of Darkness

"Wait... something's not right..." Orion said, stopping in the middle of the hall as the ponies gave a questioning look.

"What's wrong, sugarcube?" Applejack asked. "Did you hurt yourself somehow?"

"No, it's just... where's Luna? I mean... I didn't stay here for long, but I noticed how she and Celestia were together a lot..."

"You're freaking out over nothing, man," Jayce said as he tapped him on the back of his shoulder. "Come on, maybe a shot of something good for the soul ought'a keep your mind in one piece."

"Come on, Jayce. You've seen it, too."

"What? How the two Princesses are practically joined at the damn hip?"

"Yeah. It was strange. You'd think Luna would want to be present at the event of Nightmare Moon's demise."

"Well, we didn't see her out here, either, Orion," Spike mentioned. "In fact, we didn't see her at all today, even when Celestia was around."

That still didn't sit right with Orion. "Fine, you guys go ahead, but I'm going to go check."

Jayce looked to the ponies. "Fine, you... ponies... can go ahead. Orion and I will go check."

They hardened their gaze and Applejack returned a look at Jayce. "Nuh-uh. If Orion's thinks there's trouble a-brewin', then we ain't leaving nopony behind."

"I agree!" Twilight said. "If Luna truly is in danger, then we all should be there!"

"Then it's settled then. We'll all go see Luna," Orion said. A murmur of agreement and they were on their way.

Thankfully, Orion had the ponies to lead them. The castle was full of turns and tumbles that would have gotten any inexperienced visitor lost quite a lot. It took them a while before they finally happened the great double doors that led to the chambers of Princess Luna.

"There's no guards here..." Dash said. "That's not good... they're usually, well, everywhere."

"Then we'd best get moving." Orion quickly opened the door to the hall and noticed a smaller set of double doors at the end. "Is that the Princess's chambers?" he asked, pointing.

"It is, but--" Twilight began, but Orion ignored her and ran straight for the door.

He noticed the tiniest wisps of shadow coming from beneath it, and he put his head up to the door as quietly as possible and heard... sobbing. Faint sobbing. His eyes widened at the realization of what had happened, and turned quickly to look at Jayce. He quickly tugged on the door, only to find that it was somehow locked. He could only guess why.

"Jayce! Prepare to breach!" he shouted.

================================================================================

Orion kicked the door open to the room. He wondered why he didn't see Luna at all, and now he knew why; the shadow had almost completely enveloped Luna's trembling and sobbing form, making Orion do a double-take before he realized that the blob was Luna. Thank Celestia for his hunch.

"Luna!" He instinctively charged straight for the mass of shadow, and planted a biotic fist straight into it. The other Elements had quickly rushed to Luna, Twilight putting up a barrier around them.

"Holy shit, you were--?" Jayce said, running in with his gun primed. "You! Got you now, you slimy prick!"

The pool of shadow gave out another shriek and recoiled from Luna's body, fleeing towards the balcony. Twilight and the others rushed to Luna.

"Don't let her get away!" Orion shouted, throwing a line of explosive shockwaves at her, but missing and knocking over a table instead. Jayce started firing at her, but to no avail as the rounds seemed to do nothing. He let out a cry of frustration at his preferred method of combat having no effect.

"Fuck! Hit her again with the biotics, Orion!"

"On it!" Another charge, another punch, another shriek, as the shadow continued darting around the room to avoid the closing duo. "I think I have her on the ropes!" Orion dodged around a slash from a shadowy tendril, and stood between the form and the balcony door.

"Then finish her off!" Jayce shouted. He continued to fire his gun at the quick shadow on the ground, regardless of effect. "Damn this gun..."

"One more!" Orion's fist glowed with energy, but then the shadow ran behind a table, and disappeared.

"That goddamn..." Jayce sweeped the area, under, over, and around the table. "She's gone. Damn it. Orion, check the window, maybe she slipped out." He walked around the room, surveying the furniture as Orion inspected the balcony. Their searching seemed to turn up nothing.

"I got nothing," Orion's voice piped. "I'll keep looking, maybe she's hiding under one of the potted plants out here or something."

"Roger. I'll keep looking in here," Jayce said, looking behind a painting of a night sky on the wall.

Fluttershy was comforting Luna, who was trembling hard. "Shh, shh, it's okay, Princess. We're here now, we'll protect you."

Luna closed her eyes. "Please. Please don't let her take me back."

Rainbow gave her a hard smile. "Don't worry about it. We only have two awesome humans here to protect us! I mean, yeah, I guess I can do it, too, but they're pretty awesome. You should have seen how fast Orion ran when he realized you weren't with us!"

Twilight was scanning the area using her horn. "Yeah, it was actually pretty surprising. I didn't know humans can run as fast as pegasi."

"We can do a lot of shit if we put our minds to it," Jayce said, looking behind a nightstand, then sighed. "Still nothing." He walked towards Luna, examining her. "Well... at least she doesn't look like she's been affected, maybe--"

The ponies had shocked look on their faces. "Behind you!" shouted Rarity.

Jayce wheeled around, gun ready to fire, only to get jumped on the face by the shadow. It reared its form into a head with a mouth, with sharp teeth, and attempted to snap at Jayce's neck.

"Fuck!" he said, grabbing the tendrils and pushing it back. He broke his right hand free, and in a fit of desperation, picked up his dropped Mattock and slammed it upside the head with the rifle stock. The monster shrieked again. "So that's how it is, huh?!" He dropped his Mattock again, and in feat of pure strength, broke through the tendrils with his left arm and grasped the entity's neck with a hard grip.

"Find anythi--Whoa!" Orion said, walking back in.

"I got this motherfucker!" Jayce said, rolling and tossing with the flailing shadow Nightmare Moon. He raised his right hand, balling it into a fist, and activated his omniblade. "Chew on this!" He brought down his fist, repeatedly smashing into the form with repeated thrust attacks with his omniblade, the monster shrieking in intense pain as the glowing blade pierced its body.

The form slowly dissipated as it shrank away from Jayce's body.

"Oh, so firing at it doesn't work, but beating the shit out of it does. I can do that," he said.

"I will return!" Nightmare Moon still had more in her, it seemed. "And when I do, all the ponies shall suffer, and the coming eternal night shall be a sign of my rule for eons to come!" Luna had covered her ears, shaking in fear. "And I shall have you again, Luna... I shall..." the voice faded as it laughed.

"N-no... please... don't..." she whispered.

"Don't you worry, Princess," Jayce said, again picking himself up, and grabbing his Mattock. "I will mess that bitch up in as many ways as possible. She won't even want to think about walking anywhere near here after I'm done with her."

"And you! Insolent fool! You shall be the first to die after I return to power!"

He scoffed. "Looks like the boy scout has a rival now. I'm gonna enjoy kicking your ass." The shadow said nothing as they heard the sound of wind going out the window. Then, silence.

"Right, looks like she left. Looks like muscle's the only way to solve this one, huh?" asked Orion.

"We can do that," Jayce grinned. "Beating the crap out of something is probably the simplest solution I've heard in a long while."

"Is she gone?" Orion asked Twilight. She shook her head.

"From what I can gather, she's only retreated from the castle. I'll ask talk to Princess Celestia and see if she can help."

"I am here, Twilight." Celestia stood in the doorway, apparently only having just arrived, accompanied by guards wearing golden armor on both sides. "Please, guards, see to it that Luna has protection. I shall be increasing the guard patrols in the castle, at least until this matter with Nightmare Moon has been dealt with."

"So much for that dream," Orion said. "I have a feeling this is going to take a long while."

Jayce gave a hearty laugh. "Unless we find her first, and I drive my fist through her face."

"Maybe we should just work on trying to mod your guns."

"Yeah. They're all just paperweights now." He holstered his Mattock, and drew his Raptor. "Maybe something with more punch should do it."

"So she can regenerate faster than a Krogan on steroids, and in her shadow form, she's invulnerable to everything except direct physical contact... or maybe... Eezo!"

"What?"

"We need to mod your rounds to use Eezo, Jayce."

"How the hell's that going to work? I'm not a fucking biotic, Orion."

"Not yet, you aren't. Still got that research from Nightingale?"

"Yeah. You aren't seriously going to try to turn me into one, are you?"

"With this new Eezo, I think anything is possible."

"First time for everything? I don't think I like the idea putting Eezo in myself, but I guess with the amount of vanguards, adepts, and sentinels we have running around Council space, I don't think it'll be much of a problem."

"It's going to take time to get used to it, you sure?"

"The way this shit is turning out, we've got all the damn time in the world."

"Right, so it's agreed, then. I'll talk to you more about it later, but for now..." Celestia had joined the other ponies and the newly-arrived Spike in comforting Luna.

Spike looked at Jayce. "Whoa. What happened in here?"

"Shit hit the fan, that's what. Now we've got a psychotic evil pony running around out there, and we have no fucking idea where she is."

"Oh, no... Luna looks like a wreck."

"Nothing like what Nightmare Moon's gonna look like after I run her through," Jayce shot back. He felt abnormally flustered at the thought of Luna crying like this. He shrugged it off. "Like hell I'm gonna let someone... somepony walk after almost beating me."

Celestia could say nothing as her sister continued to sob. She turned her steely gaze towards Orion and Jayce.

"I am assigning both of you to Luna's personal guard."

"Agreed," Jayce immediately responded. "If she's gonna come back, I'm gonna be waiting for her. And next time, I'll really kick her ass."

"I also accept," Orion said. "If Luna's the one that Nightmare Moon wants to go after, then you can rest assured that she has our protection."

"I thank you both. Now, everypony, let us leave. We have much to discuss in the library. Guards, please see to it that Luna stays safe." The two guards nodded wordlessly, and took up position in the room, taking special care to keep an eye on the balcony and the door.

Orion quietly closed the door as they left. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

"Yeah, no shit," Jayce said. "Just one more thing after the other, like a freaking rollercoaster. Ah, well, we've got our work cut out for us, at least." He shrugged.

"If Nightmare Moon is truly a greater threat than we had originally anticipated, we must prepare everypony to be able to deal with her," Celestia said. "Starting with you ponies, the Elements of Harmony. Given what had happened in the Everfree Forest, it was quite miraculous that you had not all been killed."

"There was no way to expect that it would have turned out the way it did, Princess," Orion said. "The Eezo on this planet has a catastrophic reaction exposed to a large increase in energy. I think it would be for the best if I could properly instruct everyone on how to deal with my abilities before we continue any further."

"I agree," Celestia said. "Then we shall proceed immediately to the library."

================================================================================

Luna sat on her bed, and sighed. That was a terrible ordeal. She laid her head down, her mind trying to properly make sense of what had just happened. The guards stood at silent attention, maintaining their wordless vigil.

Nightmare Moon was back. Luna was terrified that she was. She had no intention of becoming Nightmare Moon again, and what had happened when she was banished tormented her, even up to this very day. She broke down just at the mere sight of her... she was...

She didn't want to think about it. Just trying to remember what her time was like back then made her head hurt. She couldn't stand up to Nightmare Moon. She felt so powerless; all she could do was tremble and cry.

She gave another sigh in frustration. But there was that one human... his name... Jayce, was it? She was piqued by him. Never before had she met someone so vulgar and terse such as himself. But his enthusiasm of making sure she remained unharmed... lit a spark in her. He was so confident and determined in everything he did, and definitely charismatic, if not somewhat violent.

It was like he had no regrets. Luna blinked for a few moments. But everyone had regrets.

How did the human deal with his? She would have to ask sometime.

================================================================================

"Wait. You mean you knew about this supercharged Eezo?" Jayce asked Orion. They had sat down at a large table in the library again, and Orion relayed their lucky findings on Nightingale Station to Celestia and the others.

"That I did, Jayce. Exposure to this planet's advanced Eezo is what allowed me to get us back here."

"That was one hell of a gamble. So you have this new Eezo in you now?"

"Sort of. I did preliminary scans on my body, and it turns out that this new Eezo is capable of subverting our old Eezo. In short, given time, any biotic exposed to this new Eezo will have their nodules eventually completely converted to this new one."

"What else does it do? Is it like red sand?"

"No. It's something else entirely. This Eezo can actually modify and enhance properties of the human body. The research notes didn't say much else. There was so little of this type of Eezo harvested that they ran out of samples just by running a single test."

"And you're saying that with this new kind of Eezo..."

"I can do a lot more things now, and I'm a lot more powerful."

"And you're trying to put that shit into me."

"So you can kick Nightmare Moon's ass."

"Well, no complaints from me about that. It's... going to be harmless, right?"

"I haven't found a method of transferring it to you yet, Jayce. But the most I expect will happen is that I just materialize the Eezo from the air and shower you with it. Just mere exposure to a sufficient concentration should do the trick."

"Bathing in Eezo. Great."

"Uh, you two done?" asked Applejack. "We got more important things tah talk about right now."

"Yeah, we're done," Orion said. "So now on to the issue of Nightmare Moon..."

"We haven't been able to locate her since she escaped the castle. The most we can do is be on our guard and wait for her return. Unfortunately, the rest of us have things to tend to back in Ponyville. I'm sorry, Orion, but you'll have to make do without us. But send a letter our way, and we'll be here in no time flat," Twilight said.

"Nothing we can't handle. It's not like you... pff, ponies, are in any shape to deal with her anyway. Didn't you say something about having to let your elements recharge or something?" Jayce said, still dealing with the shift in nouns.

"That's correct, Jayce. Our elements need to take quite a while to recharge, and we aren't as hardy as you or Orion are, so you'll be the only ones that can deal with Nightmare Moon if she shows up again. I'm not even sure if the guards can do much against her. Orion did say his biotics could do permanent to Nightmare's form," Twilight continued.

"So all of you ponies are heading back, then?" Orion asked, receiving a nod from all of them in response. "Very well then. We'll do our best to protect the Princess while you're all away. Do come visit us sometimes."

"Oh, you can count on it," said Dash.

"But I haven't finished designing your wardrobe yet!" moaned Rarity. "We still have to make more outfits for every occasion! Oh, what will you do without me? And in Canterlot, no less!"

"We'll manage," Orion smiled. "I don't think we'll be needed out there, at the very least, so you don't have to worry about us mingling with... the Canterlot elite."

"Wait. You mean there are rich folk up here?" asked Jayce. "You mean all those houses out there are for rich folk?"

"Yes."

"Oho, this ought'a be good. Just keep them away from me, and no one ends up going home in a body bag."

Orion raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I don't mix well with rich people," he shrugged. "I... instigate altercations, and let's just leave it at that." He took a sip from his cup. Apple juice again. Huh.

"Duly noted. Aside from that, everypony, I don't think there's much else we can do. Just sit, and wait."

"I agree," Celestia said. "I will inform you if anything drastic happens." She looked to the Elements of Harmony. "Take care, and stay safe, my little ponies." She stood up and walked out of the library, off to tend to her court and other issues pertaining to the kingdom. The ponies said their goodbyes, and followed suit.

The door shut behind them, leaving the two humans left in the massive library.

"Well..." sighed Orion. "Who goes first on guard duty? You, or me?"

"I guess I'll go first," snorted Jayce. "Although I don't really think it matters who does."

"You know, after all that stuff you pulled on Nightingale..."

"What?"

"You a human krogan or something?"

Jayce let out a hearty laugh that rumbled through the library. He had to hold his sides, laughing for a couple of minutes before he composed himself. "Oh, man, that's a good one. Yeah, I guess I really am a human krogan. Even by human standards, other people tell me I'm a goddamn beast. Not that I mind, of course. I guess you're... uh, I don't know, a human salarian? You sure aren't lacking, that's for sure."

"I think I'm just a regular human, about as smart as anyone else. But you, Jayce, you're a walking tank."

"What can i say? I'm a hard motherfucker to kill." Now that Orion had time to actually notice, Jayce was certainly built like a tank; his muscle mass was larger than any average N7 soldier Orion had seen, and Orion had seen many. "Lots of assholes have tried and dug themselves an early grave."

"I hear that. Come on, we should head over to Luna's quarters." The two, still armor-clad, made their way through the sprawling castle's hallways until they reached Luna's door.

They were stopped by two guards. "Halt. I have a notice that Princess Celestia wishes to give you."

"Go ahead," Orion acknowledges.

"Princess Luna has her own section here in the castle, among which are several guest rooms. One of them is being used as a temporary barracks by the two guards within, Star Bolt and Gold Aegis. They are your partners in this task until Nightmare Moon has been dealt with. The other two rooms closest to the Princess's personal chambers are to be used by each of you. That is all."

"Thank you." Orion nodded to Jayce. "Let's head on in."

================================================================================

The two proceeded into the inner hall. There, they ran into one of the guards, who was patrolling the hallways.

"Er... and you are?" Jayce said.

"Royal Guard Star Bolt, at your service, sirs. It's an honor serving under knights appointed by Princess Celestia herself!" He gave a quick salute. Orion and Jayce returned it.

"Er... knights?" Jayce asked Orion.

"Must be something Celestia did without us knowing. I'll ask her about that sometime. In any case, it's a pleasure to meet you, Star Bolt. This is Wade Jayce, Jayce for short. I'm Matias Orion, Orion for short. We've been personally appointed by the Princess Celestia to guard Princess Luna's chambers."

"Yes, sir. Not a lot of the guards know what happened, and Her Majesty wishes you to keep it that way. Gold Aegis and I were just the only two guards at nearest available call to go with Celestia, and that's how we ended up with this post."

"Doesn't she have her own guards?" asked Jayce.

"Well, yes, but..." He stopped for a moment. "...I'll let Gold Aegis explain it to you. He knows more about it than I do."

"I see. Carry on then."

"Yes, sir." Star Bolt continued his patrol back down towards the entranceway.

"We should check on Luna," Orion said, as they continued towards the door.

They reached the large double doors, and Orion gave a knock. "Who is it?" asked a male voice.

"Orion and Jayce."

"Ah, the two knights. You may enter."

Orion and Jayce entered the now-reorganized room, noticing another guard standing immediately to their right, who gave a salute.

"Royal Guard Gold Aegis, at your service, sirs. I've been ordered to guard Princess Luna and her room, and ensure no threats come to harm her."

"Shouldn't there be like, I don't know, more guards?" Jayce's helmet clanked as he shrugged it against his armor.

"Normally, there would be. We of the Royal Guard happened to mostly be away when the incident happened. Incidentally, it was shift change time," Aegis said.

"There are only two of you assigned to this?" asked Orion.

"...yes."

"Isn't that a little low on the guard count for a royal princess?"

"You have to understand, sirs. Most people look to Princess Celestia as their figurehead, and as such, she stands out more. The Princess rarely, if ever, chooses to leave her quarters, and so it was seen fit that she did not need many guards. And you must understand, since what had happened with... Nightmare Moon... the ponies of Equestria are not so quick to forgive her. Having more guards than what she has now would raise concern."

"I see. Carry on then, Aegis."

"Sir." He returned to his guard stance, head staring intently at the balcony door, but occasionally scanning the other parts of the room, as well.

Luna had been intently paying attention to the two as soon as they had entered.

"Princess Luna," Orion said.

"Yes, Orion?" She made no movements and held her gaze as her mane waved in the air.

"I'm sure you've heard the news..."

"Yes. My dear sister has appointed both of you to me as personal guard. I am grateful that you have decided to aid me."

"Yeah, and when that Nightmare bitch shows up again, she is so dead," Jayce said from over Orion's shoulder.

"Jayce..." Orion said.

"What? It's just me being me, just chalk it up to that. A few words never hurt anyone. And you know she's got it coming to her."

Orion sighed. "Princess, I'd like to hear the story of Nightmare Moon, from your perspective. Tell us what happened."

Luna bowed her head a bit, and then cleared her throat.

"It all first started over a thousand years ago..."

The following hours were filled with Luna's recollection of the events that had happened: her fall from glory, her corruption, her banishment, and her rescue by the Elements of Harmony. There was an undertone of shame and sorrow in Luna's voice that both Orion and Jayce could pick up, but didn't point out. Aside from the occasional exchanged looks between Orion and Jayce, and a few questions, the story was presented quite clearly from Luna's point of view.

The sun was setting by the time Luna finished.

"I'm... very sorry to hear that, Princess," Orion said.

"Do not feel sorry for me. I have already paid for what I have done."

"But you're hurting," Jayce said plainly. "You think no one notices that you're walking around wearing your pain like a fucking cross on your chest?"

Luna could say nothing as the words cut deep. "I must go raise the moon now," she quickly deflected, standing up and walking towards the balcony door.

Orion and Jayce quickly followed her, as did Gold Aegis, who opened the door for them.

There, the three watched as Luna channeled her powers, bringing up the mass of the moon beyond the horizon as Celestia's sun began to set beneath it. The moon was bright and clear, and soon enough, the skies turned dark and began to glitter with the crystal lights of the stars. The process must have taken a lot out of Luna, on top of the day's events, as she started to lean left and right. Orion caught her before she fell.

"I... I thank you. Please, I must... retire to my quarters... I feel... exhausted." Orion carefully led her back to her bed, Jayce in tow, and Gold Aegis closing the door behind them. The light of the moon shown through the balcony door, painting the room in a dim light-blue glow.

"Sleep well, Princess, and thank you for telling us your story. We will leave you to your rest now." Orion looked at Jayce, then thumbed towards the door. Jayce stepped out as Orion stopped to talk to Gold Aegis.

"Keep her safe, Aegis. Jayce will be out in a few hours to relieve you."

"Understood, sir. Good night."

Orion slowly closed the door behind him, the form of the sleeping Princess Luna being the last thing he saw before the door closed shut.

"Get some shuteye, Jayce. You're going to need it," Orion said, opening a door and checking to find that it was empty. "It's going to be a long night."

"I hear ya, don't get your panties in a bunch. I'll be up in three hours. I'll make sure my omnitool reminds me." He waved the glowing arm accessory in the air.

The two closed their doors, their rooms across the hall from each other, and just directly outside of Luna's room. The hall was silent save for Star Bolt's footsteps up and down the hall.

================================================================================

Jayce awoke to beeping from his omnitool. The time read afternoon, though Jayce knew that since he couldn't sync it, he just had to use the skies as an indicator for time; not too unfortunate, as the sun and moon were quite clear in this world.

He took a few moments to strap on his armor, and made sure all of his weapons were with him. He looked out the window for a moment, admiring the sky and the quiet, before putting his helmet on. He walked outside and noticed that Orion had taken over Star Bolt's patrol in the hall. They gave each other a silent nod before Jayce quietly opened the door to Luna's chambers.

"Aegis. You there?" he whispered.

"I am, sir."

"You're relieved. Get yourself some sleep."

"Understood. Thank you, sir." The pegasus quietly shuffled out of the room as Jayce walked in, taking his spot.

He looked around the room. The moon was even further in the sky now, and the room was now painted in a healthy light-blue glow. The entire chamber was filled with an eerie quiet. Luna was seemingly muttering something in her sleep, and fidgeted quite a bit.

Jayce could tell this was going to be a long shift...

================================================================================

Luna didn't remember how she got here. Was this a dream? It felt too real to be a dream.

She awoke at the end of a dead-end hallway. The entire hall was painted in some sort of glowing black, like an oozing darkness. She couldn't see anything else.

Then she heard it. That voice. That laugh. Laughing. At her.

Luna was terrified. She knew who it was. She ran through to the other end of the hallway, only to find it made a sharp turn. And that one led to another turn, and another, and another. It was an endless maze of madness, with the voice of Nightmare Moon endlessly mocking her as she ran.

Then the maze started to collapse as she ran through it, revealing a yawning darkness, fumbling at the pieces of tile that fell. Her fear intensified as the tiles collapsing behind her started to catch up. She could feel the shadows barely grasping at her legs. Then it was too late. The tile behind her hoof dropped, and she lost her footing. She could feel the tendrils grab her, and pull her into the darkness.

"You... are... mine..." laughed the voice.

The tendrils pulled her down into the darkness, screaming, until she could not see any more. Pure darkness.

Then shaking. There was shaking. She could not tell where it was from.

"...ake up, sweetheart... wake up... come on now... you're better than this... some stupid nightmare..."

It was a voice. A male one. It appeared to be speaking to her. She closed her eyes and continued to listen as she was pulled down into the void, while the shaking intensified.

"...rincess...? Princess? Come on... real funny... Wake... up now... WAKE... UP!"

A final strong shake woke her mind from her frightful slumber.

================================================================================

She gasped as her eyes shot open. She was panting and covered in sweat. Jayce was crouching next to her bed.

"Well, shoot, Princess. You looked like you were having one hell of a dream there."

"It... it was..." she coughed.

"Must have been pretty damn crazy. I'll bet it was about that Nightmare Moon, right?"

"..." Her lack of a response only confirmed Jayce's suspicions.

"Well, shit. Was it that bad?"

Luna closed her eyes. "It was."

"Well, uh... want to talk about it?"

"...what?" she said, still trying to catch her breath.

"It does you good to talk about this sort of thing, you know. No good having it all pent up inside you." He stood up, his dark grey armor glowing like obsidian in the moonlight, the red glowing lines on his helmet the only other trace of light in the room.. "You up for it?"

"I... I will allow it. Please, take a seat. I will tell you of my dream."

Jayce grabbed a nearby stool and sat down as she began her tale, the moon still rising into the sky.

The Lonesome Starry Sky

Luna took a deep sigh. "Before I was banished, I was not on... good terms... with my sister. As opposed to her, I was not as well-received among our subjects, and wished deeply for acceptance among them, acceptance of our night sky."

"So... what exactly did you do?" Jayce asked, having taken off his helmet. He squinted a bit as his eyes tried to adapt themselves to the darkness. He shifted around on his seat to find a comfortable position, the armor rattling as he did so. "All of this stuff I hear about this whole banishment thing is like speaking about something taboo."

"I led myself down the path of darkness. I wished for acceptance, yes. In the beginning, it was harmless, just a minor fret that was but a drop in my cloud of thoughts, but eventually, the means I wished for it to happen were... violent and manipulative... so to speak. My sister and I had spent so long ruling together, but I had seen how they viewed her as opposed to me and... I felt... ignored."

Jayce said nothing, which Luna took as a sign to continue.

"When I attempted to gain the favor of our subjects, the result was less than favorable. In most cases, I was simply ignored, or shunned. Or simply, there were not enough that cared to stay long enough to visit me."

"Visit you? Just what exactly did you do?" Jayce asked.

"I... put up a notice wishing to hear from my subjects about my rule, about the night sky, about the moon, and asked that they visit during the Night Court. The turnout left me... despondent, to say the least."

"And that's what started this whole mess? Not being accepted compared to how loved your sister is?"

"Yes. I began to think that I was due... or rather, entitled, the endearing loyalty of our subjects, who had shown none to me so far. The darkness in my heart began to grow, until it was as if I was merely known as Luna in name only. My mannerisms changed, I became more reclusive, more confrontational. Even my loyal Night Guard were helpless to stop me as I continued to descend even further into the madness."

"Wait. Night Guard? What happened to them? All I see around here are the guards that your sister has." Jayce had only seen the guards wearing gold-plated armor, obviously an indication of Celestia's royal guard. There was no mention nor sight of Luna's.

"Well, it's been a very long time. My sister had probably dissolved the guard and perhaps assimilated them into her own. I did have my own for a time following my return, but it was considered a formality, and eventually deemed unnecessary as my sister assured me that her guards were more than enough."

"Hmm, I see. So what exactly happened? Just what did you do to get yourself banished to the moon?" Jayce leaned in. He found himself actually quite intrigued about Luna's story. "I'd imagine banishment is the only solution for a substantially serious crime around here."

"You didn't talk to anyone about this? At all? Not even your sister?"

"Well... I... we didn't agree..."

"You didn't get it out in the open and cleared it up, and it snowballed until it became something too big to ignore, and too big to fix." Luna nodded. "With all due respect, Princess, in all your years and wisdom, I'll have to say that was pretty stupid."

Luna blinked. "I will not disagree with that point."

Jayce paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts before continuing. "Where I come from, being a soldier is a grueling line of work. You do a lot of things that most normal people only ever hear about. You always hear in the news how it's always this battle won, this planet defended, this army defeated. But they never tell you about what they do. They don't tell you about the explosions, the screaming, the cries for medics, the bullets whizzing over your heads."

"But what does that--"

Jayce lifted up a hand. "Let me continue. It eventually builds up into a problem, a trauma that soldiers continually shoulder and build up throughout all their tours. Eventually, you don't stop hearing the explosions, the screaming, and the bullets. That sort of thing would drive any normal man to insanity. That's why it's always important to be able to talk about and get treatment for that sort of thing. Consider it an analogy of sorts, that you should always seek to find help from those that care about you before it gets out of hand."

"The analogy holds more water than you hold it for, Sir Jayce."

He laughed. "It's 'sir' now, is it? I don't do formalities, Princess, just call me Jayce. But, yes. You of all should know how much your sister cares for you. Never think that it's weak or unwanted of you to want to solve your problems with some help. God knows I've already seen too many bad cases..."

"I see. That... puts me at ease... thank you... Jayce."

"And I apologize for interrupting, please continue." Jayce cleared his throat, the obvious departure from his more unhinged attitude having an effect on him.

Luna sighed. "During the time shortly after our fall, I turned into Nightmare Moon--"

"You were Nightmare Moon?" Jayce interrupted.

"Yes, it is a facet of myself. A dark, dark alter ego, so to speak. But in time, it manifested itself into an entirely different form, a wholly unique being from myself. But I digress. As Nightmare Moon, I sought to do terrible things to our subjects and to Equestria. I sought to bring about an eternal night so that all would not dare to deny the greatness of my sky, and used evil means to do so. I raised an army of creatures and attempted to overthrow my sister. Needless to say, the conflict did not go well."

Jayce whistled. "Raising your own army. I have to say, despite the situation, that's... pretty damn impressive."

"It took much power to be able to accomplish such a feat. Are you familiar with the Everfree Forest, the one beyond Ponyville?" Jayce nodded. "That is where I created my army, one with creatures of darkness and evil and malice. The ensuing powers used created the Everfree Forest, where magic could not rule neither land nor weather. We marched towards the location of where the original royal castle stood, deep in the Everfree."

"So that's what those ruins were..."

"Yes. My sister has told me all about what had happened during your eventful trek into the forest. That was where the final battle between my sister and I ended."

"I would guess that you got your ass handed to you?" Luna gave a surprised look at Jayce at his rather crass response. "What? I'm just saying it like it is. You tried go up against your sister, and you lost."

"Yes. And in the aftermath of events, she banished me to the moon, where I resided for a thousand years."

"I'd imagine it must have been one hell of a thousand years. That's practically a whole library's worth of events and happenings back from where I'm from."

"Indeed, such a long time gone from the world did cause me problems. But it would have all been for naught had the Elements of Harmony not stopped me when I had made my return. At the time, I can honestly say that I would have most likely have relapsed into continuing what I had done prior to my banishment."

"Yeah, but you didn't relapse, and they stopped Nightmare Moon, and now you're Luna again. I'd say everything turned out fine."

"That does not mean that I still do not hold regrets about what I had done during that time. I am one of the two royal alicorn sisters. I should have not fallen prey to such petty desires and evil so easily. I still strive to make up for what I had done to our subjects, and to atone for my past. Even today, our subjects still speak ill of Nightmare Moon, even with the light-hearted nature that the holiday Nightmare Night provides. And from that, I feel as if they are speaking of... me."

Jayce chuckled. "You're looking into this a little bit too much, Princess. Nightmare Moon is Nightmare Moon, which, might I say, we will kick her ass, and Princess Luna is Princess Luna. Seriously. Don't overthink it too much, it's bad for your health. Your peop--ponies know that you're back, and while some of the... rumors might still be floating around, you should try just to win their hearts over. Go out there, be more social. Maybe ask your sister to take some of your moon-rising shifts for you so that you can talk with your subjects during the day." He scratched his head afterwards, unhappy that he was still fumbling around with the difference in terms.

Luna smiled. "I appreciate your advice, Jayce. Perhaps all that I needed is to get acquainted with our subjects. I'm sure my sister will have advice for me on the subject."

"See? Tackle the problem head on, and you'll have it dealt with in no time," Jayce smiled back.

"But I have been meaning to ask you something, good knight."

"Sure. What do you have in mind?"

"May I ask about your past?"

Jayce's brow furrowed as the sudden change in topic. "Well, yeah. Not that much of a problem. What do you want to know?"

"How do you deal with your regrets?"

Jayce had to suppress a laugh, being somewhat surprised that it didn't pertain to his shady occupation or his past. "Well, Princess, everyo--er, everypony... makes mistakes. You can either spend the rest of your life moping about it until you're dead, or you can pick up your ass, fix what you fucked up, and then move on your way. Either that, or just drop it and move on."

"Did something happen that you... regret?" she slowly asked.

Jayce took a deep sigh, then stood up and started walking around. He stopped just short of the balcony window, staring outside towards the night sky and the glittering stars. "I'm sure you're well acquainted, being as powerful as you are, that you can't save everyone." Luna said nothing and watched the armored figure look out the glass panels of the door. "There was one time. Once."

"...and what was that time? What happened?"

Jayce paused for a moment. "...I don't even know why I'm telling you this."

"It is as you said, is it not? That you should be able to talk about it and deal with it directly, yes?"

Damn. She had him there, otherwise she might just nag him endlessly about it. "Yes... well, it was a while back. Well, I think it's best that I start from square one. There's a lot about me that most people rarely ever hear about. And, hell, if I figure I have to tell someone my life story sometime, I guess an immortal alicorn would be a safe place to start," he laughed. He had to drag himself through Orion's cultural familiarization lectures, but it seemed to have paid off now.

"So, then, how does your tale begin?"

"I... am Earthborn. It's a term given to those who were born and raised on humanity's homeworld, Earth. Around this time, we'd already begun colonization efforts into the stellar expanse, and being an Earthborn was considered somewhat of a badge of pride as opposed to those born elsewhere."

"Your kind was capable of... a new kind of travel?"

"Yeah. Specifically, travel to other worlds. That was how we established our colonies," he said bluntly.

"How fascinating," Luna whispered. To think that a race could be capable traveling to the stars she saw in her night sky... it was unheard of to her until now. "Oh, please continue."

"I didn't really get along with my parents when I grew up. Mostly ignored by them as they worked their shifts, and I went to school; can't say I really miss them much today, was never really attached to them in the first place. I was actually a pretty smart guy back then, read a lot of books, got good grades, even a few awards. Kept to myself most of the time, didn't like starting trouble where it wasn't needed."

"That... sounds like a direct contradiction to what you are now. No offense, Jayce," Luna said.

"Yeah, well, shit happened. Got bullied a lot in school, took it in stride most of the time, just figured I'd graduate, get a good job, and leave those idiots in the dust. But... things didn't turn as expected. Guess it turns out that if you get beat up enough, it starts to really screw up your life."

"And then this problem 'snowballed', as you called it?"

"Yep. I was starting to get pretty damn tired of being on the shitty receiving end of my peers. So I got angry. I started working out like mad, trying to get more strength. I kept my progress hidden by wearing a jacket most days. And then one day, when I finally got fed up with it, I snapped, and I beat the shit out of all the guys who'd been picking on me."

Luna gasped. "And just how many did you fight?"

"About seven or eight. Beat 'em all up badly enough that they all got hospitalized. Claimed self-defense, and I stayed in school. Nobody decided to make fun of me after that."

"So what happened next?"

"I continued my workout, seeing how much it helped me. They came back, with more people. I put 'em in the hospital again for a second time, and in even worse condition than before, since they didn't get their lesson. After that, I think I got the message pretty clear across."

Luna frowned at Jayce's seemingly brutal way of dealing with his problems. Thankfully, her face was obscured by the darkness. "And through this, your... mannerisms changed?"

"Yep. I was no longer Jayce the book-reader. Now I was Jayce the ass-kicker, and anybody who wanted a piece of me always ended up biting off more than they could chew. Focused on my studies, graduated out of high school, and enlisted directly into the Alliance military. Ascended through the courses and ranks pretty quickly. Didn't like the whole notion of following orders and stuff, though, I preferred doing things my own way, and not because I was usually right most the time."

"You have spoken of this 'Alliance' before. Is that not what Orion is part of?"

"Yeah, it is. He's still officially enlisted as a soldier. I'm a... well, I received an honorable discharge and was allowed to leave of my own accord, so I'm not longer with them."

"How curious. Why did you decide to leave?"

Jayce paused for a moment, again looking at the moon, now high in the sky, before returning to his seat. "Like I said. I didn't like following orders, and I thought humanity was being a little bit too soft on the intergalactic stage. Made it pretty far, about as far as Orion's elite training began before I dropped out. I ended up joining Cerberus, an organization that was dedicated to forwarding humanity's influence and power on the political stage."

Luna found it a curious name for an organization, remembering about the gargantuan beast that guarded the gates of Tartarus in Equestria. "This 'Cerberus', what did you do while you were in it?"

Jayce chuckled bitterly. "I think it was more of a question of what I didn't do while I was in it; I did spend a little over half a decade being the best of the best in there. Standard soldier fare, assassinations, political espionage, shakedowns, playing bodyguard, and more. A lot of shady things and a lot of things I'd rather not remember. I won't lie, I sort of regret what I've done, but I just consider it all a really big learning experience. I wasn't as open-minded as I was back then. You sort of get a better view of yourself and everything else after you've spent enough time traveling through the galaxy a bit."

"And then this... specific incident that you spoke of. What happened then?" Luna asked. Her midnight-blue mane sparkled with miniature stars as her sharp eyes blinked, clearly visible even in the darkness.

"I became... disillusioned with Cerberus' mission. Yeah, they were pro-human and wanted their best interests at hand, but the means they used were... a bit disgusting, I eventually realized. Threats. Bombings. Assassinations. Mostly all the stuff I'd did to get up the ladder was justified: pirates, slavers, terrorists, and all that stuff, but eventually it started being things like killing innocents to make a point, and other things like that. Thankfully, when I reached the top rank, I could easily just pick my share of missions and just head on off. But being in the good graces of the top man himself meant that you had to work to keep his favor."

"So you were given a a mission..." Luna started.

"Yep. I know he realized that I've been trying to skip over missions. Strange how a killer like me can develop a conscience after being in the business for so long." He laughed. "So he gave me a mission... to make a point to a politician."

"And just what did he require you to do that made you... rebel?"

"Kill the politician's family. Now, I'd only done this a few times in the past, mostly corrupt dirtbags who wanted a little more money than they could afford to want, and usually involved killing the politician or his associates. But this guy, I knew. He was a politician, helpful and loving family guy, hit it off with him during a few events when I had to go undercover. I was supposed to kill his family. He had a wife, and a newborn child."

"But why didn't you refuse to do it if you knew what he was asking of you?"

"Because I didn't know at the time; he'd held the info back on me while telling me to take this mission with a gun to my had. The only way out of Cerberus is through a body bag, and I wasn't about to put my trust with the top man on the line just so I could keep a paycheck for a bit longer. That was a mistake. He sent me in with a whole team of soldiers, just to deal with this one guy..." He stopped, clearing his throat.

There was a tense pause before Jayce continued.

"We hit his compound, expecting there to be a whole guard contingent up against us. No one. We walked through the house and courtyard, checked the whole place. No one. We went in using explosives, so we were pretty sure that anyone who was still there must have known that we were coming. And we were right."

"...what did you find?" Luna asked.

"His wife and child. In the master bedroom, the mother holding the child, crying. Must have been terrifying, seeing all these soldiers standing before them. At that point, I realized full on just what kind of mission I agreed to take. And that was the breaking point."

"...so... did you...?"

"No. I was the one given the orders to... shoot them. I argued against it. Said that this was unneeded, overkill, that we could have done something else instead, maybe just bribe someone else or pull some strings elsewhere. I said that I wasn't about to shoot a harmless mother and child."

"But you did?" she asked, horrified.

"No. I didn't. But that was when I realized who he had sent in after me: Kai Leng. That goddamn cock-sucking boy scout. He was the second-in-line agent after me, a bit of an asshole and killed in cold blood without a second thought. Perfect if you needed someone to kill harmless civilians. It wasn't a mission to send the politician a point; it was a mission to send me a point. That if I didn't do my job, I would be replaced."

"And this... Kai Leng... he..." Luna was lost for words.

"Yeah. He killed them both before I even had a chance to react, with that fucking sword of his. I flew into a rage, beat the crap out of the squad that was sent in with me, and beat the crap out of Leng and threw him out the window. At that point, I knew my time with Cerberus was over. I only barely managed to escape the rest of the soldiers by hijacking the escape transport."

"And what happened after that?"

"I hitched rides using favors that people owed me, through various sectors and the Citadel--er, that's where the hub of all intergalactic politics takes place. I knew where all of the Cerberus bases were at, that's one of the perks for being at the top. Got a ride out by sneaking on one of the supply transports for a number of research stations in the Attican Traverse, out beyond Alliance-controlled space. Ran into a coworker, worked them them and blew all the stations up, and spent a year and a half on the run. Then shit happened, and I ended up... well... here."

"I... see... and do you regret not being able to save the two? The mother and child?"

"I do. But I don't lose sleep over it. I managed to shoot some mail down the politician's way. Never got a reply back, but I like to feel that he's still alive, hopefully. And I'd like to think I've paid the blood back ten times over with all the Cerberus goons I've killed. And I still intend to pay back with more if I can."

"Do you not consider it excessive that you might possibly be... killing potential allies within your own organization?" Luna asked curiously.

"My former organization. And, no. Whatever those soldiers are in Cerberus now, they're not human. They... did things to them. Things that made them not human, turned them into... something less than humans, like drones that do nothing but follow orders. They're too far gone now. Anybody who had a good head on their shoulders began to defect shortly after my little incident. What happened, happened, and there's nothing else to do but to keep moving forward."

And stay alive, Jayce thought to himself.

Luna sat in quiet contemplation for a moment. The moon shone brightly now, casting a column of light down the center of the room. They sat in silence for a while before Luna spoke again.

"Thank you... for having this conversation with me, Jayce. It has lifted a great burden off of my shoulders to be able to finally converse with somepony else about this. Sometimes, I just feel... alone, when I try to relate to others."

"Yeah, well, don't think too much of it. Everyone has problems, and I guess I'm honored that you decided to talk about them with me," Jayce said. He stood up, locking his helmet back on with a click. "Get yourself some sleep, Princess."

"As should you. You have done much for me this night. I shall permit you to sleep."

"Whoa, now, Princess. I can handle going without sleep for a while. Being on the run means that you learn to sleep and wake on a moment's notice. I can deal with this." He walked back to his guard position by the door. "Good night, Princess."

"Good night, Jayce." She laid her head down and closed her eyes, letting her mind drift off to a more happier sleep.

Jayce sighed before looking around the room again. The moon was still up, albeit starting to lower now, and he still had the whole night shift to look forward to.

He could tell that this was going to be a long shift...

================================================================================

The alarm from Jayce's omnitool had woken him up. The sun was shining brightly in through his window, though given the temperature, it was still fairly early in the morning. How had he ended up in bed?

He sat up as he tried to recollect the events of last night. There was the conversation, and then an hour or two of waiting. Aegis woke up early to cover your shift. Turns out that the Princesses only needed night protection, but could otherwise be left alone during the day. Nonetheless, Aegis had petitioned for more guards for the night shift, since it was plainly obvious that just four guards would eventually leave a toll of fatigue between the four of them.

Orion had been patrolling the hall the whole night, even after Jayce exited Luna's chambers to find him walking towards him. They shared another silent nod before Jayce had retired back to his room.

And now it was morning. Jayce cracked his neck with a grunt, and sleepily looked around. Now that he thought about it, this was a fairly well-furnished room. And even stranger was the fact that the bed he was sleeping on could fit a human. He figured it must either be a custom-made request, or a luxury afforded by the more wealthy ponies. Nonetheless, he was glad to have a really large bed to sleep in.

There was a knock on the door. "Who is it?" Jayce asked.

"It's Orion."

"Come on in. You're up early."

Orion opened the door, looking around the room before closing it. He was already decked out in his armor and gear, but had his helmet held off to his right. "I see they spared no expense for you, too."

Jayce stood up and started to walk around, stretching. "Yeah, well, can't say I'm complaining about it. That's one big fucking bed. Slept like a damn log."

"I heard you had a heart-to-heart with the Princess?" Orion laughed. "I didn't figure you to be the soft type, Jayce."

"Hey, as far as things go, no one else fucking knows. That's between me and her only, and she needed to have a talk about it. I know you probably heard our conversation in the hall. Nobody. Else. Knows." He started to equip his armor, taking the various armor plate straps for his arms and legs and locking them onto his limbs. "Aside from that, who knew that immortal alicorns have deep-seated problems?" he said sarcastically.

There was more silence as Orion waited for Jayce to finish gearing up. "So... how do you deal with oral hygiene?" Orion blandly asked. "I can imagine things would be tough without a toothbrush..."

"Water with a swig of mint," Orion said, putting on his chest armor. "Does the job pretty well."

Orion looked at him with an amused expression. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. They didn't teach you basic amenities in N7 training?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't figure the whole mint and water thing..."

Jayce laughed. "The book doesn't teach you everything, Orion. Now come on, I think I've spent enough time without some food in my stomach." He walked over to the mirror, tapping his chest armor and flexing, and picked up his helmet from the nightstand. "I see my face is still in one piece. One hell of a ride so far, huh, Orion?"

"And what a ride it was, Jayce." There was another knock on the door, which Orion responded to. Awaiting on the other side were Star Bolt and Gold Aegis. Orion and Jayce didn't notice it at first, given the short notice they were called on, but Bolt was a unicorn, and Aegis was a pegasus. It would seem that the ponies came associated with their own fur color: Bolt's was grey, and Aegis's was white.

Jayce looked over from the mirror. "Something important?" he asked, equipping his weapons. He pulled out his Talon from underneath his pillow. He always kept a sidearm underneath his pillow when he slept. Could never be too sure, after all.

"No, sirs. Just wanted to say that Luna has specifically arranged for a breakfast cart to be brought here to this room, and she told us to join you," Aegis said, entering the room with Bolt following. "She said that you two could perhaps use the company."

"Oh. Well, her orders, can't complain about it," Jayce shrugged.

They heard the telltale noise of one of the great double doors opening and closing, and then a cart rolling down the hall. The white-clad chef came rolling in with the cart, and parked it next to the table at the center of the room.

"You got eggs in that?" Jayce asked. Seeing as how he couldn't eat meat, he was lacking in protein. The chef nodded before putting the four plates and various dishes on the table. He bowed curtly, and then left, cart in tow.

"Fantastic. Let's eat," Orion said. The four sat down on the seat cushions before consuming breakfast. Thankfully, Equestria didn't use chairs, but rather cushions instead. That made it much easier for Orion and Jayce to actually 'sit'. There was a helpful complement of various foods: hash browns, eggs, and something that resembled quiche. Neither of the two humans were in a position to complain of such a hearty breakfast.

"Ohoho, man, this is good," Jayce said, practically wolfing down the food. "Real damn food, and it's sort of like the stuff we have back on Earth! My stomach is going to be one happy camper after this."

"Ugh, yeah," Orion said. "I can't recall the last time I had a breakfast as good as this one. I mean, the stuff they had down in Ponyville was fine, but this really hits the spot."

Bolt and Aegis ate quietly, but kept eyeing the two from time to time.

"Questions, you two?" Orion asked. "Don't be shy, we're all in this together, now." He took a sip from his cup, and found milk inside. Even better.

"That armor of yours, sir--"

"No 'sir' around us, we're about as much guards as you are," Jayce interjected.

"Right, er... Jayce. The armor that you both wear are unlike anything we've ever seen before."

"Wouldn't be surprised. This armor is made for serious heavy-duty combat. Custom-built by myself, and take a huge beating before the shields go out."

"Shields?" Bolt asked. "So your race can cast barrier spells?"

"Well, sort of. It's a technology that we developed towards defensive protection. No magic, but energy," Jayce said. "For mine, I can only cast a basic type of shield, known as a kinetic barrier, mostly used for direct confrontation against projectile and various sorts of damage. Orion over there has different kind. It utilizes his affinity for his element to create a slightly different version of shields which he can actually use offensively."

"That's amazing. I'm sure you both must have seen a good deal of combat, compared to us guards here at the castle," Aegis said.

"You've never seen actual combat before?" Orion asked.

"Uh, no, well, not really. The royal guards have a strict entry training regimen, and we stay on top of our training every day, but I don't think many of the guards have seen actual combat before, at least nothing like what you two have seen."

"And your weapons, they're definitely unlike anything from the royal guard armory, that's for sure," Bolt said.

"Yeah, we use a multitude of weapons to deal with enemies in our world. And Orion has a definite no-holds-barred weapon of mass destruction, but I'm sure he'd rather not use it. Speaking of weapons, Orion, I'd like to see the fighter later," Jayce said.

"Well, what for?" he said. "The damn thing is out of commission, and we agreed that we couldn't do anything with the salvage."

"Well, agreed that the junk would have been useless then, yeah. But give me some time, and I can whip up something nasty out of those old junk scrap. The fighter's still loaded, right?"

"Yeah, it came with two standard-issue fighter cannons and a small payload of missiles. You aren't seriously thinking about using those, are you?"

Jayce shrugged, having finished his meal already. "I'm no egghead, but I am definitely a gearhead. A good soldier knows how to keep his weapons fixed. A lethal soldier knows how to make new ones from what he has. Just give me some time and I'll scrounge something together. The field repair kit still on that thing?"

"Yeah, it is. You're going to use it?"

"Just the welding torch and the soldering tool. I'm pretty sure I can scrounge up a lot of nice shit from salvage as useful as a fighter. Thrusters, weapons, electronics, and lots more. Can't really use the engine unless you want to power something, which is kind of pointless around here, or use it as a bomb. I'll keep you in touch with what I make. I noticed they brought in our lockboxes this morning, that'll be useful for storing any new toys I make. Anything else we can keep within the fighter storage room... what was it, storage room 4?"

"Yeah, room 4."

"Good. I'll make sure they keep it locked. Well, not like they can be used. I'll just render the weapons inert until I interact with them using my omnitool. Now, if we're all done here..." Jayce gestured towards everyone. "...we should probably take our leave. I'm sure that Bolt and Aegis need to get back to their duties, and Orion and I need to go over our plans for dealing with Nightmare Moon."

Bolt sat for a moment. "Oh, no, we don't have to guard her anymore. For now, at least. We still have to hold our guard patrols, though."

"Say what?" Orion asked.

"During the day, the Princesses are mostly active. In most normal cases, they don't even need sleep. As such, most of the time, they only have a barebones guard detail during the day. The rest of us are on standby for emergencies or special events."

"Then why the hell were we guarding her last night?" Jayce said.

"The Nightmare Moon thing, Jayce," Orion said. "Must have taken a lot out of her."

"Oh. Right. Well, we've wasted enough time. Let's head on out. Bolt, Aegis, be seeing you soon."

The two guards nodded and exited along with Jayce and Orion, making for their guard patrols, as the two humans left Luna's chambers for the throne room.

Dark Tidings

"So, what's the plan of attack, Princess?" Jayce asked. They had approached Celestia in the throne room, but were quickly redirected to the library when they learned that she wasn't present. Within the library, there was a newly-placed table with a map of Equestria. There were a number of cities on there: Cloudsdale, Las Pegasus, Manehattan, Ponyville, and Canterlot, among other places.

"I have my guards on alert and have deployed advance elements to various cities and towns throughout Equestria. I have allocated a number of pegasus guards to begin searches within and around the Everfree Forest as well as guarding the roads," Celestia said. "We have not created a plan of attack yet, but we will most likely have a rapid-response system in place within the week to hold off Nightmare Moon should she arise."

"And that's where we come in?" Orion asked. "It's going to be a bit of a pain for quick deployment since we don't exactly have wings..."

"I will have royal chariots waiting for you on standby. In addition, you will each have a platoon of royal guards under your command."

"With all due respect, Princess, I don't think throwing more soldiers at her is going to end well." Nightmare Moon did have a lot of reach in her shadow form, and Orion considered it lucky that neither he nor Jayce had taken serious damage from her. And he wasn't really willing to find out what more damage she could do. "It's probably best if we can just deploy with just me and Jayce, and the Elements to deal with her. The guards can stay back until we give them the signal to attack."

"That would be wise. Nightmare Moon will most likely be gathering more power in the time following her disappearance. We must be prepared for her when she rises again."

"Speaking of which, where are the Elements right now?" Orion asked.

"I have seen fit to send them back to Ponyville for the time being in order to recuperate."

"I see... any other recommendations?" he asked.

"What about Celestia?" Jayce asked.

"You know she has a whole nation to run."

"Oh, right, forgot about that." Jayce tapped his chin. "Opinions on heavy weapons?" he asked cautiously.

Celestia blinked. "What sort of heavy weapons do you have in mind?"

"Just some... explosives. Missiles, actually. Mostly missiles. And a certain WMD that Orion has..."

"Nope," Orion immediately said. "Too dangerous, and I don't want any political fallout if I just so happen to... well, miss. And in somewhere inhabited, no less."

"Ugh, fine. Maybe just the missiles. And anything else we can scrounge together before then."

Orion thought for a moment. "Authorized... but if she decides to show up in a city, we might have to hold back on it. On top of that, we don't know whether she'll show up in her shadow form or an actual physical one. Depending on which, we might have to change up our method of attack."

"Yeah, speaking of that shadow form..." Jayce began. "...you should probably juice me up with that eezo."

"Well, that was sort of food for thought... I don't think anyone's ever been able to successfully... and artificially... create a biotic through the sheer infusion of eezo caused by another biotic. Just trying to do something like that is trying to force an insane amount of eezo into a person in a relatively short amount of time. It'd induce a huge deal of strain, and could even kill you."

"That's true... but humanity didn't get anywhere by sitting on their asses and wondering what life would be like if they did something. Gotta try something. I'm a soldier, I have the training, I can take the pain."

"And I don't think there's ever been a single biotic in the history of the Council that could handle that much eezo. I'm certainly not eager to find out." Orion did have a point: taking a huge amount of eezo and just shoving it into someone could have rather... gruesome results.

"Okay, you know what? We'll start off small then. I can just take in a little bit at a time, and we'll go from there."

Orion rolled his eyes. "You also need training to use your biotic powers."

"Alright, alright, we can do that, too," Jayce nodded. "I'll just... spend some time... lifting things... or something. Or doing charges?"

"You don't have the implants for those. You don't have any biotic implants at all, Jayce. The most you'd be able to do is just punch things with a biotic fist."

Jayce smiled. "And that's all I need. I mean, being able to do charges would have been fucking great, but I can deal with slamming biotic fists into things. Anything to up my combat potential against that bitch. You thought about trying to juice up some of the guards with eezo?"

"Absolutely not," Celestia said. "I will not have my guards subject to experimentation just to see if they can use your... powers."

"Okay, so that's that, then," Jayce said.

"I don't think it would have worked, anyway..." Orion said. "The ponies have been around here for a long time, and exposed to this stuff for generations. I think they'd have built up some sort of resistance to it. As far as I see, the usage of eezo among ponies is almost non-existent. How you actually do magic is... well, beyond me."

"Whatever. I'm sure we can take her on with just the both of us," Jayce said.

"Perhaps you would consider adding another to your group, Jayce?" said a voice at the door. Luna stepped in and began approaching the center of the expansive library, where the table was located. "I... took some time to ponder what we had spoken about last night. I wish to join you in your fight against Nightmare Moon."

Jayce huffed. "Going to battle against your own evil alter ego? I'm impressed, Princess."

"Yes, well, save the celebrations until after we defeat her," she said. "I see you have already begun making plans about how to deal with Nightmare Moon." There were a number of blue blocks on the map denoting royal guard deployments. "Where will I be able to fit into this?" she asked her sister.

"I will give you command of your own pegasus guard platoon, and you can be the spearhead of the rapid-response teams should Nightmare Moon show herself. If you cannot best her, you can at least hold your own until Orion and Jayce arrive with reinforcements. I have much faith that you will not be easily overcome, Luna."

"A most excellent idea, sister," Luna said, looking at the map. She turned to Orion and Jayce. "I look forward to fighting alongside you in battle."

"The pleasure is ours, Princess," Orion said. "With any luck, hopefully things will stay contained and we can deal away with her quickly."

"Indeed," she responded. "Is that all, then?"

"Yep," Jayce said. "I was going to have Orion try to amp me up with some eezo sometime later, and, right now, I was thinking about trying to scrounge up some new weapons from that old piece of scrap fighter we have in the storage room."

"Really?" she asked. "May I come along?"

"Well, I don't see any harm in it," Orion said. "Just... make sure you don't touch anything when we're dealing with the parts."

"Whoa. Yeah... this is good. I can use those over there... and these here... and that there... oh, man, you definitely won't be flying this thing anymore," Jayce said, inspecting the inner engine block of the fighter.

"Why's that?" Orion asked.

"The stabilization gyros are all shot to hell. Unless you want to fly this thing straight into a mountainside, this thing isn't flight-worthy anymore. Ooh, that looks useful." More clinking noises as Jayce poked at things using his wrench. "Now this I can definitely use... aw, what?"

"Something wrong?" Luna asked. Jayce pulled his head out of the block, covered in engine oil.

Jayce wiped the oil off his hands and head using a nearby rag of cloth, turning to Orion. "The fighter's cannons are built straight into the fuselage. Unless we're aiming to strap these guns onto a Mako, I don't think we'll be bringing them anywhere with us." He leaned in to look at the various workings of the upper engine block before sticking his head back in.

"Can't we just take 'em and strap them onto something we can pull around?" Orion figured that the cannons could be dragged around like the machinegun emplacements he'd seen on a few missions.

"Yeah, sure, we can. But it would take a lot of time and resources to be able to make something like that. And I'd rather focus on trying to get the most out of this fighter right now, not trying to figure out how to make a damn cart to pull around a big gun." Jayce's voice echoed from inside the fighter along with even more clanking.

"I see. Maybe sometime later, then?"

"Yep. Oh, hey, you should let me mod your boots later," Jayce said, looking over his shoulder. "Cerberus soldiers have standard issue jet brakes on their boots for suborbital drops. You Alliance types should really work on trying to get those. They're damn useful, especially if you have to jump off a fucking cliff or something. At least it leaves the option open for you. The fighter's primary landing jets should do the trick pretty well."

"I'll think about it. Maybe later. Think we can put the sensors to use for anything?"

"Maybe, maybe not... ah, now that's what I'm looking for." He pulled out what seemed to be a large rectangular block of metal.

"What's that?" Orion asked.

"The springs for the emergency landing gears. Useless now... but useful for a projectile delivery system. And we're going to need one for those missiles. Mind if I take a look at the computers?" Jayce asked.

"Go ahead. I don't think they work, though."

"Yeah, I know. Don't need the screens, I just need the computers. The targeting computers, actually. The missile launcher's going to need something to lock onto before it'll fire. That's the downside of using fighter missiles instead of something like an ML-77 or an M-560. But these things pack a much bigger punch, at least." He heaved with a grunt as he lifted off the rectangular block to the side of the room. "Damn," he panted. "Going to need to strip a lot of crap out of that thing to make it light enough to carry."

"These are such strange weapons of war you speak of... and the way you speak of them, it's as if your own species has many."

"See, that's the thing about us, and everybody else in our universe, Princess," Orion said. "We... uh, never really run out of inventions to kill each other with."

Luna balked. "That sounds... absolutely horrible. Who would want to live in a world where killing each other is commonplace?"

"It's... the way of the universe, Princess. Either kill or be killed. Not everyone's going to agree with you, and you're not always going to get what you want, so sometimes... you just have to take it by force," Jayce said.

She frowned. "While I may not agree with how well the denizens of your universe get along, I must ask about how... effective these weapons are at dealing destruction. Especially against something as powerful as Nightmare Moon."

"Well, I know my guns don't do much against her in her shadow form, or even her physical form, really. She just regenerates way too damn fast if we're trying to hit her using conventional methods. The way I see it, only biotics can seriously hurt her, using powerful magic like the Elements, or... more firepower. Speaking of which, we should probably get around to that eezo," Jayce said. "But maybe later. I want to take stock of what we have at the moment."

"Agreed. I'll also need to do more research on how to manipulate this new eezo. Don't want any surprises now," Orion said.

"I certainly hope you won't end up injuring yourself before we go to battle," Luna said.

"Yeah, we hope so, too," Jayce laughed, now poking through the fuselage again. "We're just starting off small, don't worry. I won't die... I hope."

There was a knock on the door, which was strange, because usually there weren't that many visitors to the storage rooms.

"You may enter," Luna called.

The door opened and there stood Star Bolt and Gold Aegis. "Hello!" Bolt said.

"Hey, Bolt, what's going on?" Jayce said nonchalantly, still pulling out various bits of metal and screws from the fighter.

"We've been assigned to you two as your platoon leaders!" Aegis happily said. "I'm in charge of the pegasus platoon under Orion's command, and Bolt here is in command of the unicorn platoon under Jayce's command."

"You two ever led a platoon before?" Orion asked.

"Yes, we have. Both of us have some leadership experience. Mostly, everyone is equal rank in the guards, and all answer to the Princesses. But sometimes, when there's a greater threat on the loose, we're split into platoons and deployed to deal with it. Bolt and I have led some missions before, and we've been given command of our old platoons to help you in your mission."

"That sounds swell," Orion said. "We'll be on standby for the time being. At least until Nightmare Moon shows her face."

"Understood!" The two guards saluted. "We'll be seeing you both later, then," Aegis said, as Bolt left. "Oh, and, uh, I think there's something you should know..." Bolt stopped just before the door, and turned to Aegis, frowning.

"Yeah?" Jayce asked, having unlocked the ordnance panel for the fighter. He pulled out a large rack of missiles, still intact. "Oh, shit... hot material on the deck, keep away." He began inspecting each of the missiles before sliding them back in , and slammed the panel shut. "Well, the eggs are all unharmed and in the basket."

Aegis continued. "You have to realize, all the guards aren't as accepting as the Princesses, Bolt, and I are. For the most part, our platoons don't really care, but... there are a good number of guards that don't really like you being here. Talk about playing favorites to the aliens and things like that. I have to apologize for them beforehoof, they just also happen to be the hotshots of the royal guards. Don't like the fact that you two showed up and got the knighted by the Princess."

"Tell me who they are and I shall deal with them," Luna coldly said.

"Er, no, Princess," Orion said, holding up a hand. "It's fine. They can talk all they want, but we're here to stay."

"We have your backs," Bolt said. "Don't worry about it, you also have supporters, too."

Jayce had properly cleaned up the junk around the fighter, and moved it all into a box, which he laid down next to the landing gear. "Hope they can fight as well as they can talk." He wiped his hands on the cloth. "I'd like to see just how good that royal guard training comes in for."

"Jayce, the last thing we need right now is a fight," Orion said. "Keep the hands to yourself, and play nice."

"Fine, fine. But if they try anything stupid, all bets are off. And the same goes to you, Orion." He turned around, muttering to himself while re-equipping his armguards, which he'd taken off to tinker around in the fighter. "Damn shit-talkers, same thing in every goddamn place in the universe..."

By the time they'd left the storage room, the sun was nearing noon. Luna retired to her quarters, citing battle preparations, and Jayce left with Bolt and Aegis to eat at the cafeteria and to "meet the platoons". Orion was left alone, with nothing to do, and certainly nowhere near as hungry as Jayce supposedly said he was.

So he figured he would try to familiarize himself with the new eezo. He found a quiet spot in the gardens, right next to the royal guard shooting gallery. He took a tiny stone, slightly smaller than his palm, and put it on top of a bench. He narrowed his eyes, feeling his body starting to rise with biotic energy, as he slowly drew in the eezo into his body. Most abilities only required a split-second of concentration, but this was different. He was trying to infuse the rock with eezo.

A little beyond ten seconds, and Orion's body felt like it was on fire. No wonder why no one bothered trying to amass eezo like this, it was like trying to swallow fire. He held up his arm and pointed at the rock with his hand, and saw the stone begin to glow. It was working. The energy flow was constant now: his body still burned, but it didn't increase, as the energy was now flowing to the rock. It took a lot for him just to maintain his concentration. But the rock was glowing ever more brightly, and was clearly floating above the bench now. He could do this, just...

The rock exploded, the bits and pieces flying everywhere, several just ricocheting off the ground in front of him.

"Damn!" he shouted, before quickly looking around to see if anyone or anypony had heard his outburst. He sat down on the bench and caught his breath. Just trying to channel eezo felt like mentally trying to crawl up a mountain with a starship chained to your back; physically, it felt like your body was on fire and your limbs were about to be ripped from their sockets. Even now, he was still sore from the backblast of trying to channel.

"It would appear that your efforts to experiment have not turned out successful," a voice said behind him. He slowly turned his head and found Celestia watching him from just a few meters away. "I see that it was wise of me to deny you the privilege of doing such a thing to my guards."

"Well, that's not what I..." Orion stuttered. "I didn't mean that I would do that to them, I just wanted to test their resistance to eezo, that's all."

"Yes, but to do so, you would have had to do something like that," she said, gesturing towards the bits of stone now strewn about the garden walkway. "Do you consider the test successful, though?" she asked curiously.

"Yeah... at the very least, it proves that eezo infusion is at least somewhat possible. The effects are highly draining, though. It felt like I was being pulled from all sides and lit afire. Just trying to focus on trying to keep the flow to the rock was nearly impossible. I'm surprised I was even still standing at all," he quietly said.

"And to do the same thing on a scale as large as another being..." Celestia said.

"That would take... a lot. But it's only minute. At the very least, I can just develop the nodules he needs in order to use basic biotics. That's all he needs, and that'll be enough for him."

"Hmm..." Celestia hummed. "You should be careful not to hurt yourself in the process. Your entire body was shaking while you were trying to channel your energy."

"That's the best I can do. At least until the... breaking point. There was a lot of eezo in that rock right when it exploded, just enough content, I could feel, to make up a basic biotic nodule network. That's what I'm trying to go for. I know I can make it now. But practicing on a few more rocks couldn't hurt."

"Very well. You know more about this than I do, but I urge you to practice caution, Orion. You have been good to Equestria, and it would pain me to see you meet your demise like this. Especially with Nightmare Moon on the loose, no less."

"Don't worry, Princess," he laughed. "I don't think I'll be dying anytime soon."

The two exchanged a few more pleasantries before Orion set himself back to infusing more rocks. Celestia watched on with interest as the garden's pleasant green backgrounds were disturbed by a glow of violet-blue purple from time to time, observing Orion's struggle as he tried to complete a link with rocks. Every time he tried, he managed to focus out the pain better, knew when to resist, and how to control the flow to the rock. After the sixth rock or so, despite the pain not lessening, he managed to fully infuse a rock with eezo without it exploding.

The floating rock, now glowing purple, merely sat in the air as it slowly rotated above the bench. The stupid rock, which had taken close to the total time taken of an hour to perfect, was now sitting before his eyes.

"Well, that's progress," Orion said, catching his breath yet again. "That's probably the... best damn progress... I've seen... so far..."

"Very impressive, Orion. You managed to outdo yourself, and in such a short time, too," Celestia smiled.

Orion slowly moved over the rock and held it in his hand. He felt a smile grow on his face. "This... this is proof... this is visible, tangible proof. Jayce needs to--"

"Your Majesty!" shouted a guard, running down the cobblestone walkway towards them. "Quick! The cafeteria! A fight has broken out!"

Celestia and Orion exchanged a look. Orion's grip tightened on the rock.

"Jayce..." Orion groaned. The two quickly followed the guard back into the castle proper.

"What was that, you punk-ass bitch?!" they heard a voice shout as they approached the entrance to the cafeteria. There was a huge amount of royal guards standing outside, chatting amongst themselves as the sounds from the brawl within echoed with the shouting.

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention," Celestia said, sternly, to the guard who had brought them. "We will deal with this."

"The Princess!" another guard shouted. "Clear the way!" The crowd at the door quickly cleared a path into the cafeteria, but not far, as the entire hall was clustered around something. Celestia and Orion could only barely see what the commotion was beyond the crowd's helmets. In the middle, with all the tables knocked over and forming a crude ring, stood Jayce, standing off against what clearly appeared to be eight royal guards. Bolt and Aegis were off to the sides with looks of horror on their face, which only amplified when they met eyes with the Princess and Orion, who were standing directly opposite from them on the ring.

"Damn it, Jayce! Stand down!" Orion shouted, but he was drowned out by the shouts from the other guards watching the fight. Celestia also shared the same look of shock plastered over Bolt and Aegis's faces.

Jayce brought his arms up to his stomach, easily blocking a direct buck by a guard straight into his chest with the loud clack of his armguards. He grabbed the legs of the hapless stallion, and threw him into another two, before bringing his elbow around to axe another charging guard in the neck. The afflicted guard crumpled to the ground without a noise as the shouts grew louder.

From there, Jayce began to use his fists, directly brawling with the guards now, dodging their rather pathetic buck attempts and slamming them in the sides of their bodies and faces with his armored hands. By this time, there were only five guards still standing, the other ones seemingly knocked out purely through blunt force trauma. Jayce was clearly an inhuman monster, capable of incapacitating three guards within the short span of less than thirty seconds. It certainly would have been a lot worse if he had intended to kill instead of maim.

"Is that all you got?!" Jayce shouted, taunting the remaining guards. "I've fought corpses tougher than you!"

Orion began to shove through the crowd, Celestia following behind him but failing, trying to get to the edge of the ring.

The remaining five quickly surrounded him as they all charged simultaneously. However, Jayce deftly dodged by... rushing into one of the charging guards and kneeing him directly into the face, causing the guard to smash into the ground, face first. The poor stallion didn't get up. Jayce retaliated by kicking closest of the four remaining guards in the side, and then simply beginning to beat up the remaining guards with his fists. They quickly became disorganized as the grey-clad juggernaut simply beat the living lights out of them in extremely quick succession, until...

Jayce brought his fist up again, ready to strike, only to find a hand grabbing his arm. He did a double take to see Orion holding it, then received another armored fist clutching what seemed to be a glowing purple rock to his face in turn, knocking him to the ground. Orion stood over him, huffing.

"ENOUGH!" Celestia shouted, having just fought her way to the edge through the ever-shifting mosh pit of guards. The guards immediately hushed; the ones closest to her had already tried to sneak out, while the others were too preoccupied with the fight and noticed too late. "All guards are hereby ordered back to their barracks immediately! And all parties involved in the fight..." She gave a death glare to the fighters in the ring, broken or otherwise bloodied. "...will be given proper disciplinary punishment! Dismissed!"

The guards quickly and effectively exited the room in orderly fashion. At the end, only Bolt, Aegis, Celestia, Orion, and a number of doctors tending to the eight wounded guards remained.

"Just what the fuck were you thinking, Jayce?" Orion said. "I thought we agreed that you'd keep your damn hands to yourself."

Jayce sat up on the ground, wiping away the trickle of blood coming out of the corner of his mouth. "They started it! First, they started mocking Bolt and Aegis over there, mocking their whole damn platoons. They had to hold me back just from ripping their assholes a new one. But then those damn assholes began making fun of you..." he said, pointing at Orion, and then gestured towards Celestia. "...and her! Said she might have gone soft for letting us in. Like fucking hell I was going to just let that slide."

"I appreciate what you tried to do, Sir Jayce," Celestia said, her voice barely containing the rage that lay underneath. "But such violence was never needed nor encouraged. You have critically wounded eight of my royal guards," she said, looking over at the stallions being carried away on stretchers. "And you have put my military forces in unneeded harm prior to a battle with a more important threat!"

"Yeah... yeah... fine, I admit it. I was... wrong for doing that," Jayce said, nodding. "But I sure as hell am not going to apologize for what I did to those assholes. I let a lot of things slide. Making fun of my friends is not one of those things."

There was a palpable silence that followed. There was nothing save for Jayce's intense breathing.

"So... in what accordance of law should I deal with you?" Celestia said.

"Listen, Princess..." Orion said. "I'll deal with this." He swiftly kicked the sitting Jayce in the face, earning a gasp from Celestia and a wince from Bolt and Aegis. "I fucking told you to keep your damn hands to yourself!" he shouted. "And then, you do what? You do this!" He waved his arms around at the empty-but-blood-filled boxing ring. "Damn it, man, if we're going to work together, then I need to trust you to keep your word. You fucking understand that? Stop trying to stir up shit! Words are just words. You could have told me. Or Celestia. Or Luna. And we would have done something better about it."

"I'm not one for waiting on a court-martial, Orion," Jayce said quietly. "I ended it there and now, once and for all."

"Yeah? No shit, Jayce. I'm not going to keep playing Mr. Nice Guy forever, you better damn well know that. At least do me that freaking favor of just letting everything slide now, okay? Holy hell, man. What the hell am I going to do with you? This whole goddamn mess..."

"I'll fix it, yeah. Just wanted to shut those guys up."

"Yeah. And I guess I should thank you for that. But you did a really serious number on those guards."

"I know. I absolutely promise I won't do it again."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely sure. Scout's honor," Jayce said, holding his hand up to the weathered Cerberus logo on chestplate. "You have my word." He and Orion stared off for several minutes until the latter sighed.

"Well..." Orion sighed. "You didn't use your guns. I guess there's that."

"Said I'd take them on myself. Told them to bring however many they wanted. No wings, no magic, no tricks. All training and muscle," Jayce said, spitting out another round of blood. "Guess I'm still the meanest motherfucker around here." He grinned through bloodied teeth.

"You know if they had their wings and magic, you would have stood no chance," Orion said as a matter of fact.

"I have jet boots, man. I can get myself some distance with these babies before they'll even realize what hit them. And it might have been useful if I could get out of a magic bind, too."

"Are the both of you done?" Celestia asked, annoyed.

"Yes, Princess," Orion said. "I'll make sure he doesn't do anything this rash again."

"Yeah... I sincerely apologize, Princess," Jayce nervously laughed. "No, really. I really am sorry."

She blankly stared at him. "See to it that it doesn't happen again, Orion. Please don't make me regret allowing the both of you to stay here," she said, before turning around and walking off.

Bolt and Aegis approached them.

"That was absolutely... insane..." Bolt said. "Where'd you learn how to fight like that?"

"You learn lots of tricks when you get into as many fights as I do," Jayce said. "It sort of... comes with the territory of being a fugitive. Of sorts. And where the hell were you, Mister 'I Got Your Back', huh?"

"We... uh, didn't think it would have been a good idea to get involved, so we... held back a bit. Besides, you handled yourself pretty well back there, hehe..." Bolt said.

"You're a fugitive?" Aegis asked apprehensively.

"I was. Came with the territory of wearing this--" He pointed at his Cerberus insignia. "--wherever you went. I also got into a lot of bar fights where I'm from... got banned from a lot of clubs for that. I really need a drink." He looked around the cafeteria now. The janitorial staff were busy righting the tables and cleaning up the mess on the floors. "Aw, shit..."

"Yeah, 'aw, shit' is right, Jayce. Can I get a mop over here?" One of the unicorns hovered one and a bucket of water over to him. Orion grabbed them and handed the broom to Jayce, sliding the bucket towards him. "Get cleaning. Now."

"Yeah, yeah..." Jayce said as he started mopping the floor.

"Well, we'd best be getting back to our barracks before our platoons start getting worried. We can talk more later, okay?" Bolt said as he and Aegis left the dining hall.

"...so... how long am I going to have to do this?" Jayce asked.

"Until you're finished with the whole damn room. And I'll be here watching you for the whole damn time."

It was a pretty big room. "Damn it..." Jayce muttered.

It was closing in on evening now, and Jayce was still swabbing the floors. There was the occasional guard that passed by to survey the devastation, but other than that and the ever-present cleaning crews, it was quiet. Orion sat on a bench the whole damn making sure that Jayce cleaned every inch of the floor alongside the crews.

The moon had just begun to rise as the other ponies packed up their things and headed off. The room was restored back to it's original state before the fight had begun, and was pristine.

Jayce gave a huge sigh and then sat down across from Orion. "Finally... done..." he groaned.

"Good. Now I have something to show you," Orion said.

"Yeah?"

Orion held up his right hand, fingers closed and palm up. Then he opened it, and a glowing purple rock started to lift off from his hand. "See that?"

"No fucking way. What the hell is that?" The purple light glowed off of Jayce's confused face.

"It's an eezo-infused rock," Orion said.

"Wait, what? You mean, you actually honest-to-God put eezo into this damn rock?"

"Yeah. It took me some time, but I managed to do it."

"So does that mean it'll work on me?"

"Well, it's a pain in the ass, and it feels like I'm on fire when I try to do it, but I don't see why we can't try."

"Can we do it now?" Jayce blurted.

"Hold on a moment!" said a voice from the door. There stood two guards... which just so happened to be Bolt and Aegis, now carrying weapons with them.

"You two again? What's going on?" Orion asked.

"Princess Celestia has given us official orders to keep a watch on Sir Jayce at all times," Bolt said in a military fashion. "He is not to be let out of sight except during sleep and bathroom times."

"Yeah... I guess I sort of deserved that. But, whatever! Orion, you seriously gotta juice me up right now," Jayce excitedly said.

"Fine, but we'll need to do it someplace contained. The first few rocks I tried this one... exploded, and if that happens to you, I don't want the... ugh, mess... getting all over the place. You aren't scared of blowing up, are you?" Orion asked Jayce.

Jayce sat for a few moments... then he smiled. "Nah! That adds some risk. I like it."

"So where would be a good place to do it?" Orion asked.

"The storage room where the fighter's at might be a good place to start," Aegis said.

"So, remind me again what I'm supposed to do?" Jayce asked.

"You just stand there and do absolutely nothing while I infuse you with eezo. If things go like I expect it to, you'll probably end up feeling the same fire feeling that I do. Just bear with it," Jayce said.

They'd moved to the storage room now, and Jayce was standing in a clear area next to the fighter across from Orion. Bolt and Aegis stood by the door, observing this strange experiment.

"So, ready?" Jayce asked.

"Here we go," Orion said. He started to glow as he built up the eezo within his body, then aimed his arm at Jayce. A flow of purple energy connected them, and Jayce began to be surrounded with a violet-blue aura.

"Whoa..."

"Don't... get excited... just yet..." Orion gritted. The inflamed feeling was beginning to kick in.

"Huh? What are you--gah! Holy... shit..." Jayce responded, his face shrinking in pain. "God... damn... that... hurts..."

"Just... hold on... for a while..."

The transfer process took nearly half an hour to complete. It completed when the aura around Jayce faded.

"Whoa! Ha... haha... wow... whoa... look at... that...!" Jayce was lying on the floor now, but held up his hand and noticed a rush of purple energy around it. "Holy... shit... look, Orion, I can totally use it--" Jayce was cut off as he looked to Orion.

Orion was also kneeling over the floor. But his energy was still there, completely surrounding him. He was grunting in pain. He tried to stand up but let out a shout of pain, falling to the ground.

"Whoa, Orion!" Jayce shouted, running over to him. "Oh, shit, shit, shit. What the hell do I do, man?" He looked over at Bolt and Aegis, their faces in shock. "Uh, uh... Aegis! Go get Luna! Uh... aw, shit, man..." Aegis immediately opened the door and flew for Luna's chambers.

Jayce immediately reached out to Orion's kneeling body. "Gah, fucking hot!" he said, drawing his hand back. "Oh, shit, shit, shit..." he said, as the light around Orion began to glow even brighter. "Maybe playing with this eezo wasn't such a good idea, after all..." The light began to glow even brighter. "Oh, shit... Bolt, out the door, now!" Jayce said, running for the exit. Aegis made it out before him. Orion began screaming in earnest now as his body couldn't even be seen in the glowing ball of light on the ground now.

Jayce quickly closed the door, and began running for the stairs up with Bolt just as Aegis walked down them with Luna.

"Jayce? What is going on? I received news that you needed my assistan--" Luna said.

"Orion! It's! He's! I don't know!" Jayce sputtered.

"He was--ball! Light! Body! Bad!" Bolt coughed.

There was a deep explosion from the storage room that shook the basement floors, causing dust to spill down upon them. Jayce's eyes shot wide open, as the four slowly turned their heads towards the door. Smoke was spilling from the bottom of it. The four quickly ran over and slammed the door open. A quick spell from Luna cleared the smoke out of the small room. From there, they quickly surveyed the damage: the fighter was still intact, mostly unscathed as the fighter had heat-resistant material, some boxes had been knocked over, and the salvage that Jayce had was all over the room... but there was a burnt circle at the exact position where Orion once was.

"Oh... shit..." Jayce said.

Preparations

Orion could hardly believe it. Not one moment he was on the ground in pain, and after what felt like an eternity, he found himself swinging through the air of some world, one that he didn't recognize. He could barely make out the snow that covered the entirety of the ground as the purple barrier blinded his eyes before him.

His HUD was flashing red as the alarms beeped that his barriers were out. But that was impossible: he was staring at the damn wall of purple right in front of him! Just what happened? He figured he didn't really have time to think about it as he was falling towards the ground at terminal velocity.

Cursing to himself, he activated his barriers, hoping that whatever state his shields were in could help protect him from the impact... for what good it might do.

"Holy shit. You see that one?" The Alliance marine pointed at something in the sky, appearing just a little beyond the crescent of the outlying moon. Another one walked up behind him, trying to make the best out of the strange object in the sky as the snow continued falling.

"Just what the hell is that thing?" the second one asked.

"I don't know. But you'd best warn the boss. Like, right now," said the first one. The second nodded and ran off into the building.

The lone marine continued observing as the strange purple comet fell from the sky and crashed in the courtyard of Corsica Communications Relay Station.

"...is he... what could he... N7...?"

"No idea... purple comet... damn sky..."

"He's moving... coming to... buddy... hey, buddy... you hear me?"

"He's completely out of it... might have some serious trauma..."

Orion stirred. Those damn voices. He opened his eyes to find three Alliance marines standing over him. Two were standing away from him, and one was crouching directly over him. His barrier systems were beeping like mad. The noise pained his ears.

"You think he's alive? I mean, you saw the impact. He was practically... floating or something. Like something caused by a mass effect field, right when he hit the ground!" said one of the standing marines. "That's some really bleeding-edge tech if he can completely nullify a terminal velocity drop by putting a mass effect field in front of him! Check if he's still alive, maybe that impact still did him in."

The crouching marine nodded. "Hey! Hey, buddy! You awake in there?" He tapped Orion's faceplate. "Yo, N7. You alive? Just... uh, do something, I guess." The marine looked over to the two standing behind him. "I don't think this guy's alive, boss. I mean, he practically just fell out of the sky just now... I have no freaking clue how his barriers managed to do something like that, mass effect field or not... this guy should be a pancake right now."

Orion groaned and tried to move his arm. Alliance marines? Just what the hell were they doing here?

"Whoa... WHOA! He's coming to! Goddamn it, this crater is huge..." shouted one of the standing marines, scrambling towards him from the edge of the crater. "Whoa, now, just stay down. I'm a medic. You took one hell of a beating there, uh..."

"Orion... Lieutenant Orion... N7..." Orion said.

"Right. Well, El-Tee, I'll get you patched up in a jiff. Just hold back and let me get in some medi-gel. That was some pretty crazy stuff you did back there. Some new N7 drop method?" The medic laughed as the gel filled his life support weave, administering painkillers. "No broken bones, just some bruising. That's amazing. All you N7 types will be dropping out of the sky like angels of death before long, though it looks like you still have some quirks to iron out. Well, that looks good. Let's see if you can stand."

The medic and the other marine helped Orion to his feet and helped him out of the crater that he'd made with his impact. He stepped around groggily as he tried to get his bearings.

"Where... am I?" Orion asked.

"Whoa, now. They send us reinforcements, but this guy doesn't even know where we're at? He must have hit his head harder than I thought," said the marine. The medic punched him in the side and gave him a look.

"You're in Corsica Communications Relay Station, Lieutenant Orion." The third marine stood in front of him, arms crossed. "Come on. Let's head on inside so we can talk. Don't want to freeze in this damn snow."

Orion sat down in the waiting lounge and took off his helmet. He looked around. Alliance blue and the familiar triangle-and-three-stars insignia of the Navy hung around the walls. He blinked for a few moments as his head throbbed. What was he doing beforehand?

There was... the eezo... and Jayce... and Canterlot!

He straightened himself. Just a damn perfect time to get teleported again. He didn't even know how long he'd been out, or if there was some sort of temporal distortion between their universes, not to mention the problem of Nightmare Moon still being on the loose. He deliberated on staying at Corsica, conflicting with his thoughts on how the Equestrians would deal with Nightmare Moon without him. He ultimately decided that the Equestrians needed his help more, what with Shepard and his merry little organization of fleets going around and winning victories, and began to think of a way to get back, until the sound of an opening door broke him out of his trance.

"Welcome to Corsica, Lieutenant Orion." The familiar voice of the third marine came up from behind him. He walked to the seat across from Orion's and sat down, and took off his helmet, revealing a familiar face to him: a youthful, but grizzled face, smiling. "Hey, Matty. Been a while since the academy, huh?"

Orion squinted, then blinked. "Who... Will? William Dempsey? From E-Class at the Academy?"

"That's Chief Engineer William Dempsey to you, Matty." He held out his hand and Orion shook it. "Man, when I heard they were going to be sending reinforcements, I didn't think they send in a one-man army to help me deal with this shit."

"Wait... what? Reinforcements?" Orion asked.

"Yeah, reinforcements! Shepard's rallied the whole bunch from all the Council races, and now they're going around kicking some serious ass. They said they'd be sending a whole group of Alliance and turian reinforcements our way!" Dempsey's smile disappeared as he noticed Orion's confused look. "You're... not reinforcements?" Orion shook his head. "Damn. I guess the reports were right, after all."

"What's going on, Will? This place is... what's with the talk of reinforcements?"

"They were ambushed en-route from a deployment order from the Crucible. None of them made it. How the hell did you get here, then?"

"I... don't know. One minute, I was trying to... use my biotics, and then another minute and I'm falling out of the sky and hit the ground. I'm lucky I'm not dead. That impact definitely would have killed someone."

"So it wasn't some crazy new N7 stunt?" Dempsey raised an eyebrow at him.

"No."

"Hmm," Dempsey had a hand to his chin in thought. "Well, since you're here now, we need your help."

"Yeah... what's going on?"

"Reapers. That's what's going on. Corsica's been our primary communications relay for all operations for four entire operational sectors. We did a good job on trying to keep this place a secret, but it was only a matter of time before they found us. And they did. I'm going to lay it out straight for you, Matt. They're sending a Destroyer our way."

Orion could hardly be surprised. Reapers here... like they were everywhere else. "What makes you so sure it's heading here, to Corsica?"

"Because it wiped out our advance guard elements of the 124th Alliance Marines and the 5th Turian fighter wing. We're up in a bad place, Matt. We need all the help we can get. I'm not going to bother asking how the hell you fell out of the sky like that, but I need your help. We're getting in trickles of survivors from our various observation posts, and our numbers aren't looking good."

"Well, what's so dangerous about this one Destroyer?" Orion asked.

"What isn't? It's been stonewalling every major offensive we've tried to pull in this sector for over half a year. It's stalking our men across the continents and now it knows where we're mobilizing from: here, at Corsica. It's not going to stop until either it is dead, or we are. We're lucky it's just one Destroyer. It's like the goddamn Reapers just left this single asshole just to mock us since they know we don't have any fleet support. Well, we've had enough. I've made a direct appeal to Admiral Hackett, and he's sending the Alliance cruiser Barcelona here, in secret. We'll trap that sucker and then we'll bomb it to pieces."

Orion couldn't follow. "I don't think the Destroyer's just going to stand there and take the hits. You guys thought about using an uplink laser painter?"

Dempsey shook his head. "No, the interference is just too damn crazy. I'm in charge of this whole operation, you see, and I argued against them that we couldn't just set up a goddamn trap on this freaking icebox world. But Command wouldn't have it, and, well... here we are."

"Any ideas, then? Otherwise, we're all walking dead men."

"Yeah, just one, but it's pretty ballsy. You might have heard that Shepard brokered a truce between the quarians and the geth, right? Well, the geth dropped us some pretty damn useful tech. Specifically, a gravity tether that was used to hold asteroids in place for mining. We'll lure the Destroyer right on top of our trap, spring the tether and lock it in place, and then sit back as the Barcelona blows that son of a bitch to pieces from orbit!"

"And what's just stopping it from blasting the tether and stomping us all?"

"Simple. We placed the tether to activate right on top of the old array socket. See, we already relocated the array weeks in advance. It's still going full power, just in another sector, and this whole operation is a big trap. What we plan to do is to lure that sucker in from the northwest through the valley, trap him on top of the socket, and then blast him to bits while he's on there. It'll also destroy the hatch on top of the socket, which means it'll fall straight in and be a sitting duck while we hit it from orbit."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But what about the tether?" Orion was quite sure that a Destroyer's beam could cut through most things after the feeds from Earth came in...

"The geth have loaned us a special anti-Reaper shield, designed specifically to protect from an instantaneous large power transfer via dark matter, specifically, a Reaper weapon. That means that we have no worries so long as the army that the damn thing is bringing with it doesn't get too close. I'll have soldiers guarding the tether through the operation."

Orion figured it very handy that the geth had been researching anti-Reaper technologies since before the advent of the war. "What's the army composition?"

"If anything, they're bringing in the whole nine yards for this one, Matt. Banshees, brutes, cannibals, and husks, among other things. I don't know if my Alliance boys will be able to hold the line, but we have you here. You've fought these things dozens of times. Maybe you can advise us on how to deal with these assholes. I can tell you right now that we have a huge ordnance stockpile ready to be used on this operation since we've been expecting this for months."

The answer was plainly simple to Orion. The soldiers here weren't N7, and were probably green at worst. "Use any and all ordnance on any banshee when you see them, same goes with the brutes. Cannibals and husks we can deal with at range. Make sure the front line soldiers have assault rifles and shotguns, they're going to need them for the husks. Do you guys have any advanced training?"

Dempsey shook his head. "Sorry, Matt. Everyone here is just 100% Alliance grunt, and the Turians hold the air, with whatever's left of their fighter wing. No biotic firepower here... well, except for you, of course. We do have some extra vehicles we can put to use, though, about three Makos and two Hammerheads. Most of the area around the array is snowed-in forest. We can take the advantage there."

Orion looked out the observation window as the sky grew slowly dark, the snow being the only visible thing beyond the glass. "Keep the Makos around for station defense, and have the Hammerheads deploy in the forest with some infantry units to stem the flow. Use hit-and-run tactics."

"Shouldn't we build up defenses in the forest, just mow them down as they come?" Dempsey asked.

"No. We put up entrenchments and the Destroyer will just mow them down. We have to keep mobile, use the tree cover to our advantage. If everything goes right, the damn thing won't be able to get in range of the station, but I'm damn sure the goons coming along with it will. That's why we need some soldiers and the Makos here." According to the view Orion had before entering the station, the array socket was around two miles away from the relay station, and around the corner of a mountainside, which would keep it out of view of the soon-to-arrive Destroyer.

"I'll tell my men to get ready, then. Let's hope all those Hydra launchers will come in use... Best get those defenses ready, intel says that thing will be on us in around a week. With any luck, we'll be prepared for them," Dempsey said. He slowly stood up, and gave a quick look out at the nighttime snowfall before nodding to Orion and leaving.

Orion merely waved him off, laughing. "Trust me, Will, if you've fought a banshee, the last place you want them to be is right next to you..."

Jayce's makeshift welding mask glistened in the dark storage room as he fired together two pieces of metal underneath the landing gear block, creating an impromptu handle. He'd been working through the past three days nonstop on trying to complete the missile launcher.

There was a knock at the door. "Jayce..." Luna said, peeking her head in. "I do believe you should get some rest." She walked in and continued watching as Jayce welded metal to metal through a line of white-hot flame.

"I can rest when I'm dead," he responded. "Orion was our trump card in this battle, and with him gone, I don't know how things will turn out. We need as much firepower as possible, because I don't want to find out what happens if we're under-equipped."

His apprehension was not unfounded: Orion, as the only trained biotic there, was the only one capable of seriously harming Nightmare Moon. Jayce could still barely manifest a proper barrier field around his fists, and could only manage to crack boulders with some minor damage; he would need more time, but with Nightmare Moon ready to appear at any moment, he figured he'd rather take his chances with the missiles instead. Additionally, Luna was facing off against her alter ego, and was most likely on even ground, assuming that Nightmare Moon hadn't already become more powerful in her absence.

"Please, Jayce..." she said pleadingly. "You need sleep."

"Yeah, yeah... I know. Just... let me finish up here." The crackling of the flying sparks broke the silence as Luna waited for him to complete the day's round of tinkering. "Well... I guess that's going to require some testing, and it definitely won't pass any weapon certifications any time soon..." He dropped the mask on top of the table, taking off the heavy apron and industrial oven mitts he had appropriated to fend off the heat.

"Hey, you done?" Bolt said, coming in. "Oh, my apologies, Princess, I didn't know you were here."

"It is fine," Luna replied. "You need your sleep, Jayce," she said, turning to him.

"Uh... what?" Jayce said, rubbing his temple. "Oh, yeah... I'll head back now. What time is it?"

"It's been several hours since I've brought the moon up, Jayce." That meant that a good number of ponies were already sleeping, or about to go to sleep. And he'd been up for the past three days straight. Even though he'd had a lot of experience working with as little sleep as possible, three days of working coupled with an ongoing stress of an evil entity lurking somewhere out there actually put Jayce on an edge that he'd not felt for the longest time.

Then again, having only C-Sec and bounty hunters on his ass would work very well for a good night's sleep right about now.

"Whoa, Jayce, you don't look so hot," Bolt said.

"Yeah, I know, I fucking get it," he growled quietly. "I need my sleep, and I'll just head back to my room now to get some, alright?" He walked out the door as the two ponies followed him out, Bolt locking the storage room as they left to prevent any curious pony from checking out the human equipment and possibly blowing themselves up.

Once they reached Luna's chambers, he bid Bolt and Luna good night, and found himself trying to fall asleep on his bed to no avail. The fatigue was coming too slowly, and he could hear his heart pumping blood as it rushed through his ears. He began to recall the events following Orion's disappearance.

Celestia had mobilized all the royal guard units into overtime training, with one General Steelshard at the helm. Jayce hadn't personally met the stallion, but the way the guards were being shaped into an actual coherent fighting unit that actually had some semblance of tactics and strategy indicated to Jayce that they might not be dead in the water, after all. They began stockpiling arrow-based weaponry, some of it actually high caliber, to prepare for the impending battle, as well as creating provisional retreat centers for population centers that might be affected by the attack.

Luna had specifically requested several pegasus guards be put aside for her reformed Night Guard, and Jayce was one of the eleven newly-appointed members of Luna's personal guard, led by one Captain Blackwing. He had his own authority as a Knight of the... well, Night Court, and was given operational freedom to do as he liked, unchained by the limits of command, which Jayce amusingly recalled being similar to his time in Cerberus. Blackwing seemed a competent enough Captain, and got along well enough with Luna's personal knight. Jayce was just content with having teammates he wouldn't have to drag around or infuriating enough to warrant kicking their asses.

Celestia had told Jayce that Orion was supposed to have been formally knighted her own Knight of the Day Court, but given his absence, it made sense that they could really do nothing except hold off on his formal induction until after he returned... if he returned. That son of a bitch better have not gotten cold feet, or he'd personally go back to Earth and kick Orion's ass with Shepard as his witness...

Jayce fell into a snore as the moon began to rise above him, his mind having been calmed by falling back into his usual crude antics.

"That's it? This is all we're going to get?" said Alliance medic Caroline. It had been several days since the reports of the Destroyer's breach through the last remaining outer fortification had come in. Once it broke across the mountain pass that guarded Corsica, it would be upon them through the valley, where the array socket was located.

"Fuck..." Dempsey swore, standing in front of Caroline and Orion, looking out the observation bay window. They had only a paltry number of a little under two hundred men, now gathering in the courtyard as the remainder of the reinforcements came in. Most certainly not enough to hold back a Reaper tide, let alone one that had a Destroyer.

"Yeah, that's not good..." said Corporal Melendez. The three were present at the time of Orion's arrival, and they'd quickly gotten acquainted with the N7 operative as an adviser on Reaper combat. And they would most certainly be requiring his expertise in the battle to come. Unfortunately, the extent of the tactics used against Reapers had essentially been 'don't get killed', 'big guns work wonders', 'distance means survival', and 'shoot the damn thing in the face until it's dead'.

"What's the ETA on the Destroyer?" Orion asked.

"Since the winds and snow are particularly bad this week, I'd wager it'll be around five days, seven days tops, until we see the top of that ugly ass walking out of the mountains," Melendez said. "I suppose that's one good thing that's come out of this icebox, I guess. They can't advance too fast or else they risk freezing in the gale-force snowstorms all over the place. Thank god this valley's surrounded by mountains, otherwise we would be freezing our asses off, too."

"And what about the soldiers?" Orion continued. "What's going to be the split between here and the forest?"

"Some of these guys have seen some decent combat. Those that can handle the run-and-gun tactics will be sent out in the forest along with the Hammerheads; I'd wager that's about half of them. The rest of them are either too fatigued or too wounded to continue moving. Those that can still hold a gun will hold the walls, and we'll have the Makos provide heavy defensive support," Dempsey said.

"Any more defense we can soup together, boss?" Melendez asked. "I mean, short of covering the whole damn valley in proximity mines, I think this is the best we'll get out of what we have. I mean, sandbags, walls, tank traps, and all that. Corsica's only got one route up the hill to this place, so it's going to be a gritty fight."

"Then we'll just have to make do. Will, who do you have on tether duty?" Orion asked.

"I have Echo Squad on it. They're the only squad remaining that still has all their members in stable condition. They number around six, and they'll be in charge of protecting and activating the tether while the rest of the forest units try to hold off the Reapers."

"Good. And me?" Orion hadn't been given a particular role yet, but he figured it would be something well-suited to his talents.

"Simple. You hold the entrance to the station, at the bottom of the mountain between the forest and the beginning of the road. If worst comes to worst, we can divert you to help the units in the forest, but otherwise, you'll just be helping the guys on the roadblocks hold off the oncoming tide," Dempsey said. "No contact from the Barcelona yet, but according to Alliance datanet, it's just a single sector jump away."

Orion nodded, accepting the task. With any luck, the units in the forest will be able to fend off the Reapers while Echo Squad holds the fort down at the tether. Some of the Reapers will most likely divert from the forest, or break through it, and attempt to disrupt the support and coordination allowed by the relay station, which is where Orion will be providing his support at.

"So, about those Hydras..." Orion said.

"Don't worry. Every squad that we're sending into the forest will have at least one Hydra on each of them. If those banshees are as dangerous as you say they are, they won't have any problems mowing them down. Goddamn asari and their inherent biotic abilities..."

"Any air support for when the operation begins?"

Dempsey nodded. "Just a single fighter group left. The turians will do their best to give as much support as they can, but I doubt it'll do much. At most, I suppose they can do strafing runs, because going up against that Destroyer is suicide. We keep the fight going on the ground, and hope that the Barcelona shows up on time."

"And now we wait, tend to the wounded and see if we can't crank out some battle-ready men before the Reapers show up," Melendez said.

Jayce looked upon the courtyard where the lines of guards stood at attention as their commanding officers barked off instructions at them. Another day of waiting meant another day of training, and Celestia had been adamant in maintaining the daily drills, at least until the threat was dealt with.

The groups then dispersed into pairs to practice hoof-to-hoof fighting. Most of it revolved around bucking and dodging the opponent's attacks. Jayce had to suppress a smirk, remembering just exactly how well that training had worked against him. Unless they were going to cover Nightmare Moon in a giant mass of royal guard, he figured that they'd most likely be mulch.

"Think this is going to be enough?" Bolt asked, walking up with Aegis. There were too many guards training at Canterlot now, so the platoons switched every other day. Bolt's and Aegis's just so happened to be on their off day.

"We've been putting the guards through the wringer," Aegis said. "I hope we have something to show for this when everything's all over."

The rest of the guards, or at least those that had arrived at Celestia's call to arms first, had completed their relocations at the various towns throughout Equestria, from Ponyville to Appleloosa, from Manehattan to Las Pegasus. It went without saying that this time, the population definitely knew that the stakes were higher, following Celestia's official statement just a few days back regarding Nightmare Moon's return. A lot of the press nearly had to brought out on stretchers when they realized that Nightmare Moon wasn't going to put on a show at a party this time to get her point across.

At this point, Jayce had nearly finished configuring the missile launcher. Putting the damn thing together was an easy task, but to get it working properly with the confounded targeting system to work with the weapon was a pain in the ass. And equally annoying was the load system as the missiles were easily as large as his arm fully extended, with a weight and bulk to boot. He'd probably need a helper with that to carry the extra ammunition around.

He'd looked into Orion's suggestions about using the fighter cannons, but like he already explained, they were integrated into the fuselage, which made removal extremely time-consuming, even more so since Equestrians didn't have anything on hand that could easily cut into metal, unlike machine shops back on Earth. If by some miracle of chance, Orion ended up bringing back a cutting laser from wherever he was at, Jayce would be thankful.

In addition, he'd met with Shining Armor, another Captain of the Royal Guard, albeit one of the more well-known ones. They'd discussed guard deployment schedules and plan of attack in dealing with Nightmare Moon's attack. He'd shown good knowledge in how to deal with threats, and it pleased Jayce to know that at least there was someone competent in charge of the royal guards, or at least a good number of them, judging by the number Shining had under his command.

By this time, deployment to the smaller settlements like Dodge Junction had been accomplished, with checkpoints on the roads connecting cities and towns and a consistent pegasus patrol pattern to make sure that Nightmare Moon couldn't show up anywhere without being seen. Even with all the security on the road, the sheer number of royal guards still present at the Canterlot castle astounded Jayce; that there were even enough unicorns and pegasus guards in Equestria to fill the entire courtyard and castle was no small feat.

"Well, I think I've wasted enough time here. I'm off back to put together that damn weapon of mine," Jayce said, waving to the ponies as he left.

"Don't overwork yourself now!" Bolt shouted as Jayce rounded a corner. With any luck, Jayce would have the computer fully operational by the end of that day. Hopefully. Electronics liked to be flimsy like that.

"Enemy sighted in range of the valley! It's the Destroyer!" shouted the comms tech on the PA system. "This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill! All hands to full alert! Reapers inbound!"

Orion jumped to his feet and snapped on his helmet as he ran outside to meet Dempsey, who was directing the wounded-but-combat-capable soldiers to the walls. The rest had already been deployed to the forest a day prior in advance to the estimated arrival time, and there were already sounds of gunfire coming from the forest.

"Will!" Orion shouted, running out into the courtyard. "Sitrep!"

"They've just made contact at the outer forest edge! Stop screwing around up here and get your ass out there, Orion! I have to get back to the station to command this damn mess!" Dempsey said as he ran back into the station. The skies roared a single group of Turian fighters took off to aid the forest squads in their defense.

"What about the Barcelona?" Orion shouted.

"She's on her way! Just one more FTL jump and she'll be here! We just gotta hold out till then!" Dempsey said, as the door closed in front of him.

Orion nodded and proceeded out the gate alongside the last of the road defenders. He made his way down the hill as Alliance soldiers took up position behind various metal wall-offs placed in leapfrog patterns down the hill as stockpiles of Hydra launchers were littered all over the place. The communications were alive with the sound of orders, gunfire, explosions, and static.

"...Delta Squad pinned down at west forest..."

"Alpha Squad proceeding to Kilo Squad's position! Banshees sighted...!"

"Hammerhead Anvil One initiating contact with Reaper forces, brute sighted..."

"Bravo Squad here, holding the line! They're coming in hot, but we'll try to hold 'em off as long as we can!"

"Sniper team Gamma reporting Reapers advancing down west flank to the tether! We need support down here now...!

"Copy that, sniper team Gamma, Hammerhead Anvil Two moving to engage, over."

"This is Delta--holy shit, they're all over the damn place! We're pulling back! Gamma, cover our ass!"

"Contact! Contact at base!" shouted a marine crouching behind a metal barrier, as Orion continued down the hill. The sound of rifle fire and the explosions from the Mako cannons began popping up all around him. He continued sprinting down the hill, hoping the marines at the first line of the road defenses could hold out until he got there.

"There we go... and that goes with that... link that... and done!" He pulled up his welding mask and observed his new piece of work. He activated the targeting systems using his omnitool, and the diagnostic scans read all green. He hefted the heavy launcher on his shoulder, and tested the firing mechanism, which reported with a loud 'thwack' as the projectile launcher worked just as intended. "Now to just test this thing..."

He went over to the ordnance hatch for the fighter, and wheeled out the missiles. Orion never had a chance to use the fighter in combat, which meant that the missiles were mostly intact. Jayce had thought that the initial damage and unsteady landing would have at least damaged some, but all thirty missiles were in mint condition.

Unfortunately, it meant that he had to use one of the missiles to test the weapon. No point in bringing it out to battle with all its weight if all it ends up being is a really dangerous paperweight. So with that, he carefully removed one of the missiles, loaded it into the launcher and sealed the load hatch with a heavy click, and closed the ordnance hatch on the fighter, and with some difficulty, exited the storage room.

As he locked the door with his key, Bolt walked up to him, having been curious to his progress. Jayce had the launcher, which was roughly about 5/8ths of his size, strapped on to his back, carried in the same weapon slot where Orion usually had his M-920 Cain.

"Whoa! So you finally managed to put it together?" Bolt asked. "...are you on your way to try it out?"

Jayce smiled. "Can't call this a proper weapon if we don't know if it works yet, right?"

"Should I go set up a training area in advance?"

"If you can spare it. Oh, and make sure there's a lot of room. And I mean lots of it."

"Understood." Bolt quickly saluted and headed back up the stairs as Jayce slowly walked up behind him with the launcher impeding fast progress.

There was a chatter outside as Jayce exited the basement stair doorway and entered the courtyard proper. Bolt had apparently set aside half the grassy grounds for testing, leaving a giant rock at the end for Jayce to fire at. Bolt was arguing.with some instructors over the sudden denial of the grounds for training. Jayce quickly approached them, pulling the large launcher intimidatingly over his shoulder.

"Excuse me. I had Bolt here cordon off this area for me. Hope you don't mind." The instructors closed their mouths as they saw the bulky human standing before them carrying a weapon as equally fearsome as himself, and moved aside. "Thanks."

Jayce took a knee and aimed the launcher at the boulder, which was pretty far downrange. There were murmurs as guard platoons broke out of training to see what exactly the human had in mind. He even noticed Luna out of the corner of his eye as she stood at the entranceway leading back into the castle, interested in seeing what the weapon was capable of doing.

"Here goes nothing..." he said to himself. There was a shrill beep as Jayce set the target to the boulder, and then a series of shorter beeps ticked along until the lock was achieved with a single high-pitch beep. "Target locked! Anypony out there, clear the range, I repeat, clear the range!" He looked behind himself. "And move your asses, you don't want to be behind this thing when I fire." The guards standing there quickly scrambled out of the way as the single long beep held the target lock. "Firing!"

With a single pull of the trigger, Jayce could feel the launcher pull back as the missile exploded out of the barrel with explosive force, and a giant puff of smoke obscured the backblast. It flew directly towards the boulder, then slammed into it, exploding with a force that shook the entire castle grounds, causing most of the guards to flinch and some to fall to the ground in panic, and what few who hadn't been paying attention to turn their heads towards the noise.

There was silence as the smoke cleared and the sound dissipated.

"I guess we can call that a success," Jayce said, letting the magnetic locks on his combat armor hold the weapon as he dropped it on his back.

"I'll say. That's certainly something you humans have got there," Bolt said, shock prevalent in his voice.

"Unfortunately, that cost me one missile to do. And I don't have an infinite amount of these damn things... but I sure as hell wish I did. At the very least, I suppose it'll give Nightmare Moon something to cry about. You available for some help, Bolt?"

"Sure. What do you need?"

"I need someone to help me load the missiles onto a mobile pallet so I can move them to the field. I expect to be using all of the missiles, but I guess we'll see about that."

"Right. Let's head on back then, and I'll ask around to see if we can't make something that can hold some missiles."

"That would great. Let's go."

Jayce and Bolt exited the crowd of stunned guards, who were fluctuating between watching the human leaving, and the destruction he had caused with his new weapon.

"You think that's bad?" Jayce laughed, walking up the stairs with Bolt. "You should see what Orion's big gun can do."

"This is most excellent, Sir Jayce," Luna said, appearing before him. "It would seem that your weapon is a success."

"Well, I can't say this is going to win the battle in one fell swoop, Princess. But I'll be damned if it can't at least do some serious damage."

There was the sound of quick running as a pegasus guard ran up to Luna. "Your Majesty!"

"What is it, my subject?" she asked.

"I-it's Nightmare Moon!" he huffed. "Sh-she's been sighted... out over near... Dodge Junction! Just a few miles out from it! She's... already approaching the town... and we've evacuated the civilians! Another guard has already sent word to Celestia, and we're already mobilizing!"

"Thank you," Luna said, turning to Jayce. "I shall prepare transportation, and arrange a large chariot for your weapon's needs. It shall be awaiting you at the northwest tower balcony. Now I must rally my guard. Do not tarry, Sir Jayce."

"Don't you worry, Princess. I wouldn't miss this party for the world." Jayce looked at Bolt. "You and me, to the missiles, right now." They had a lot of packing to do.

Mini-Codex (OC SPOILERS)

Hi, and welcome to Vanguard! This is my first fanfiction (or fimfiction, as I like to call these, aside from being the site's name), and I hope you enjoy it. Before we begin, I'd like to just drop some details for those who may be unfamiliar with my character, and other little tidbits, as well.

Element Zero:

Element Zero, or Eezo for short, is the primary element substance found in starship drives and biotics. When charged with electricity, it produces a mass effect field that can alter gravity, allowing ships to travel at FTL speeds. Biotics are beings that have Eezo nodules in their bodies that can be activated using electric signals, allowing them to use their abilities.

Eezo will have a pivotal role in this story, reasons for which will be explained in the story proper.

Matias Orion:

Ethnicity: Caucasian
Pronounced "Ma-tee-us Oh-ry-on"
Age: 28

Orion himself is an Alliance N7 Vanguard, one of the most elite soldiers the Earth Systems Alliance has to offer with the equipment to boot. Vanguards have an inherently high-risk-high-reward fighting style that involves slamming the enemy up close with shock tactics and using their other abilities or weapons to finish them off.

Orion is a spacer, meaning that his parents were both in the Alliance military, and as such, he grew up transferring from one Alliance post to another; through that, the appeal of the Alliance rubbed off on him. He enlisted right out of high school and went straight for his N7 stripes. During the events of Mass Effect 1, Orion had already graduated from the N7 program with flying colors and was operating on the fringe of the Terminus Systems, guarding Alliance colonists and fighting against batarians smuggling illegal weapons tech.

His personality follows a merciful-but-hardlining mentality: in most cases, he will accept people with open arms and give them second chances, but cross the line, and it's over for you. He is overall a nice person, but isn't afraid to get dirty when he needs to. Commander Shepard, to him, is a role model to look to and the last bastion of humanity, especially after displaying bravery for ordering the Arcturus fleet to save the Destiny Ascension and destroying the Collector base. He's fairly laid-back compared to most of his N7 comrades, and can quickly adapt to changing situations, a skill that comes in handy when he ends up in Equestria.

His armor, if you've played ME3, is practically a spitting image clone of James Vega's, minus the wolf inscription and the designation on the chestplate, replaced with a Shepard-style N7 insignia where the designation is. The colors, however, are the same, but Orion prefers to maintain a double-sided Alliance-blue stripes down his left and right shoulders and arms. He does NOT wear the Death Mask like in multiplayer, however, and instead wears a standard Alliance rebreather helmet.

Orion's Weapons:

All of Orion's weapons are pulled from N7 stock; the best weapons the Alliance has to offer.

Naturally, with the Reapers becoming increasingly dangerous, and denying resources to the war effort, thermal clips became a commodity. So the Alliance R&D techs decide to retrofit Orion's weapons with the old-style ME1 heatsinks, which have infinite ammunition, but have to be cooled down the old way. This allows Orion to operate indefinitely without fear of needing to resupply.

The M-920 Cain requires no explanation. It's the Alliance's man-portable heavy ordnance railgun, with homing-tracking capabilities.

The N7 Crusader shotgun boasts a rather large 4-shot capacity before requiring cooldown. It's Orion's weapon of choice, highly accurate, and perfectly suited for a precise Vanguard like him.

The M-99 Saber is a heavy-hitting semi-automatic rifle, sharing much in function with the M14 of real life. It has a 8-round capacity and hits harder than, arguably, most sniper rifles, with the iconic boom noise to boot. Matias himself, though a Vanguard, has found time to practice with this weapon quite often. It is armed with a medium-range scope.

The M-5 Phalanx is a standard heavy pistol with a laser sight. It's Orion's trusty sidearm; he won't be found in any combat situation without it.

Finally, as a Vanguard, Orion's biotics are extremely strong. With his L5n implants, he is capable of producing an extremely deadly charge that uses his own barriers to strike the enemy with lethal force. In addition, he has ample experience with his Pull, Shockwave, and Nova abilities as well, on top of using different ammunition types. His heavy melee biotic strike is capable of flattening most foes in a single blow.

Orion's Fighter:

Orion's fighter is a standard issue Alliance Navy fighter that's been geared towards stealth and infiltration. It has light armaments and armor, but boasts sophisticated stealth suites and anti-detection equipment. It's also equipped with an experimental FTL drive that allows Orion to travel quickly between star systems as if he were using a mass relay, which you can imagine how useful it could be.

Wade Jayce:

Ethnicity: Caucasian
Pronounced "Way-de Jay-suh" (His last name rhymes with mace).
Age: 30

Jayce wears Cerberus assault armor.

Jayce is an ex-Cerberus shock trooper with a considerable amount of N-level training. He was a dropout, opting to go loose cannon working for Cerberus rather than stay in the Alliance, and eventually found a rival in Kai Leng, which eventually evolved into an openly-hostile rivalry as they repeatedly attempted to kill each other; Leng being ex-N7, and having stolen his training manual, Jayce easily surpassed most N7-level training requirements. He was helping Miranda Lawson sabotage the Sanctuary facility on Horizon before he was caught in an Eezo explosion that brought him to Equestria.

He has a rather brash personality, loosely using vulgarities and preferring to do his own thing rather than follow someone else; this is also reflected in his direct and somewhat brutal honesty. Despite that, he still feels he has a duty to protecting humanity, and just feels that there are some people who need to get their hands dirty to do so: him included. Following his dropout from the Alliance military, he has somewhat of a disdain for them, especially for ignoring the repeated warnings that Commander Shepard left for them.

His sentiments are further fueled by humanity's backburner position at the end of the First Contact War. He dislikes seeing humans being thrown around and often has gotten a bad streak of being misinterpreted as xenophobic because of it; he's permanently barred from many clubs on the Citadel for instigating fights.

Jayce's Weapons:

Most of Jayce's weapons are pulled directly from the Cerberus arsenal.

Jayce himself hated having to use thermal clips, believing that a reliance on limited ammunition capacity was a sure recipe for disaster, much preferring to wait for a cooldown than run out of clips and die, and opted to have his own equipment also retrofitted with old-style heatsinks.

The M-96 Mattock is a hard-hitting semi-automatic rifle. It's a commonly-used weapon among Cerberus soldiers.

The M-13 Raptor is a semi-automatic sniper rifle with a decent kick, most commonly found in the hands of Cerberus Nemesis snipers.

The M-27 Scimitar is a decently powerful semi-automatic shotgun with a good clip size. It's the only non-Cerberus weapon Jayce has in his arsenal, picked up on the Citadel.

The M-358 Talon is a Cerberus handgun that operates very much like a handheld shotgun. It's powerful in close quarters, and is intended to be used as a last resort, making it a useful weapon for Jayce.

Finally, as a Soldier, Jayce is equipped with special ocular implants that can enhance his adrenaline to seemingly slow down time to line up shots and close distances quickly. On top of that, he has access to the Concussive Shot and Frag Grenades (though given his situation, his supply of grenades is extremely limited), and can use an extremely wide variety of ammunition types. His Soldier training also makes him extremely tough and formidable compared to Orion, so he can hold his own quite well in combat. His physical strength makes his melee attacks brutal and his omniblade is capable of tearing most foes a new one.

Equestria and the Mane 6:

I'll lay it out for you, even with all my time with the show and other fimfictions, I still feel like I don't have a proper grasp on the Mane Six's personalities, and especially the history of Equestria, which I feel is extremely important. If anyone's willing to drop me some advice down this lane, I'd much appreciate it; don't get me wrong, I'm already doing tons of research to getting it right, but mistakes happen.

Aside from that, though, I feel that my work is fairly well-written and easy on the eyes, and I hope you enjoy.