Elementary, my dear Twilight

When Will opened his eyes again, all he saw was lying down in an endless expanse of white.  He got to his feet, and looked around.  In every direction, it was the same thing: White, white, and more white.

He cocked his head in confusion  Where was he?  This certainly wasn't Twilight's library, his house, or anything that he'd ever seen.  And after all of the things Will had seen throughout his life, that was saying a lot.  He continued to gaze out into the colorless area, when he heard a voice that was chillingly familiar.

"Welcome, warrior."

Will whirled around and about 20 feet away from him, where before nothing WAS there, stood...something.  He shivered in revulsion at the sight of the thing.

The creature looked very strange and exuded an invisible aura of death and utter dread.  It stood on two legs at 10 feet tall, but its legs looked like rotting human legs clothed in Marine BDUs.  In fact, almost every part of its body seemed to be rotting flesh.

Its left arm was built like a mace: Big, muscular, and the part where a hand would usually be was a massive bulge covered in bone-like spikes that looked very deadly.

The other arm was a completely different story.

The creature's right arm was much more humanoid in size and appearance  .However, the flesh seemed freshly mutilated and just stopped bleeding, while a long, curved, scythe-like appendage replaced this arm's hand

.

Its wings, the only limbs that didn't look like they were about to rot off, were shaped like bat wings and the material between the wings bones were almost invisible.

But it was the face that really made Will recoil in horror at the creature.  Not that it was the worst part-far from it-but how it was so recognizable it was.  The human head dangling off a shoulder, the gaping hole in its chest, the trio of red, feathery-tipped appendages from that hole.  This creature was, without a doubt...

"Flood..." Will breathed involuntarily.

The creature chuckled in amusement.  "Very astute, warrior.  Yes, I am a part of the Flood, as your race so aptly labeled my race."

Its-his-voice was just like any other Flood's voice: deep, echoing(literally), mysterious.  Yet somehow it was different.

This Flood form's voice wasn't nearly as intimidating as the others Andrew had heard; it was borderline soothing.  He wouldn't have guessed that the voice's owner was part of a sentient, parasitic race utterly hell-bent on infecting every other sentient being in the universe.

"What are you?" Will asked.

"Hmm?" he questioned.

"I mean, what form are you?  I know that the Flood has a lot of different forms, but I've never seen one with wings, much less one like you."

"Ahh, yes." the Flood form answered.  "I am a unique form of Flood.  You could say I'm 'one-of-a-kind,' as you humans would put it."

"You may call me Acolyte.  I am the Ultimate Form of Flood."  Acolyte said with a dramatic flourish

"Acolyte..."  Will repeated.  "Let me guess, your master is the Gravemind?"

Acolyte looked confused.  "I beg your pardon?"

"Well, the word 'acolyte' means 'student,' or 'apprentice.'"  Andrew explained.  "And since you're the Ultimate Form, then I should be correct in assuming that the Gravemind is your master?"

Acolyte just stood there and stared at Andrew for a long time, obviously caught off-guard on how sharp he was.

"Why...yes.  Yes I am." he eventually replied.

The two of them stood silent for quite some time while Acolyte stared off into the distance, deep in thought on something.  Will shifted awkwardly.  "So, erm...why are you here, in my dream?"

The question snapped Acolyte out of his torpor, and he drew himself to his full height.  "I was sent by my master to teach you how to harness your newly-acquired powers."

Will just gave Acolyte a blank look that said What the fuck are you talking about?

He sighed in exasperation, then elaborated.  "When you were transported to Equestria, the natural magic that permeates this land interacted with your brain, causing the entirety of it be activated...permanently."

Will kept on staring, though this in shock.  Only about 10% of the human brain is used to carry out all of the activities we perform throughout our lives.  Geniuses like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking used merely 1-2% more than that.  To have 100% of the human brain at Wills disposal...

Acolyte couldn't help but feel a sense of amusement when he saw Andrew's face light up in realization.

He continued, "From what I can glean, all of this new brain capacity, combined with Equestria's magical haze over the land and its inhabitants, has given you the ability to conjure and perform anything that you see, hear, taste, smell, feel, or even remember."

Will was in awe; All of the things he could DO with this power, and...His train of thought was halted when a question popped into his head

"Wait," Will said.  "How did your master know EXACTLY how I got these powers, and how did he know to contact me through my dream?"

Acolyte "looked" at the white floor--he didn't have any eyes as far as Andrew could see--and shuffled his feet.  "Well...my master didn't exactly send me to train you--I decided to take that task onto myself."

Acolyte explained to Will that his race was fighting another after-life, parasite-like race, called the Necromorphs...and were losing.  The Necromorphs accidentally stumbled into this universe after a malfunction with their Shockdrive(Dead Space version of hyperdrive), then immediately decided to take it as their own.  The Flood fought valiantly to fight off the so-called "Walking Plague," but it was all for naught.  Acolyte's master, the Gravemind, sent him and a fleet of their remaining ships to protect the MLP world of Equestria.  Apparantly they were guarding a Precursor weapon called Sol Invictus, which would allow the Necromorphs to force all living things in the universe to obey their will.  So when Acolyte sensed Will's immense life-energy, he believed that this new, unexpected player in the game could tip the scale of the war into the Flood's favor, big time.

Will listened intently throughout Acolyte's entire story, showing absolutely no sign of emotion to any of the news.  When the latter was done, the human just crossed his arms and calmly contemplated what he just heard.

"...You're not even fazed?"  Acolyte asked, stunned by the human's lack of reaction.

"Hm?  Oh, yes I am."  Will replied.  "Believe me, if you told me any other time, I'd probably have a heart attack before you got halfway through your recounting."  "But I guess that new brain power you mentioned earlier is already starting to kick in, since it's really subdued."

Acolyte was taken aback.  Less than one hour after acquiring such phenomenal cosmic powers, and Will was already mastering and harnessing it all.

"So, to sum it all up, you need me to defeat the Necromorphs and protect Sol Invictus from being activated.  Is that it?"

"I-I guess so, yeah." Acolyte replied.

"Acolyte, I'm just wondering..." Will asked.

"Hm?"

"How do I know that you and your brethren won't turn on me and activate Sol Invictus when the Necromorphs are defeated?"

Acolyte looked offended.  "Why would my brothers and I try to kill you??  Your race was our ancestor's greatest creation."

Will's stoic facade was shattered at Acolyte's declaration.  His mouth fell open and his arms dropped to his sides.

"Your ancestors' greatest...creation?"  He repeated weakly.

Acolyte nodded in confirmation.

"See, the Flood are the descendants of another, extremely ancient race.  The real name of their race is forgotten, even by us.  However, we came to calling them the "Precursors."  The Precursors were unimaginably advanced beings, able to design and build physical roads connecting star systems, manipulate entire galaxies with relative ease, and accelerate or slow down the evolution of species."

"But by far the Precursors' greatest achievement was making their whole race transentient, meaning when they die, they're reincarnated in a new body, but remember all of the experiences of their previous life/lives."

Acolyte went on like this for a long time(again), explaining to the thunderstruck Will how the Precursors had decided to create a species with the ability to overcome any obstacle in its way, just because it was said species' nature.  They ended up spawning TWO new races instead, one of which was exactly what they wanted:  The Forerunners and Humanity.

"Ohhh, now I get it."  Will said.  All of the jumbled pieces in his head suddenly came together.  "Humanity was created by the Precursors, the Foreunners didn't like being treated with less respect than a seemingly inferior race, and got revenge on their creators."  He paused.  "But how do you, the Flood, fit into this all?"

Acolyte sighed.  "When I said that the Flood are descendants of the Precursors, we didn't attain that status in the ahh...normal way."

"A few survivors from the Forerunner's massacre on the Precursors built a device in the hopes of being artificially reincarnated so as to escape it all with their lives, the device malfunctioned somehow, and..." He hung his "head" in guilt.  "...the first Gravemind was born with all of their memories and experiences."

Will couldn't help but feel sorry for the sickly-green, horribly misshapen, Flood.  He was revolted that he was part of such a hated race and wished that he could be accepted by one of another species.

Despite himself, Will walked over to Acolyte and placed a hand on his shoulder, making him raise his head from the touch.  Will had to suppress a shudder at the sight and st of him up close.

"Hey, don't beat yourself over it.  It's not your fault, so there's no reason to be feel guilty about it.  From the sounds of it and based on what I already know afterwards, that happened MILLIONS of years ago, so why're you still angry over it?"

If Acolyte wasn't surprised before, he was utterly floored now by the human's actions.  Every sentient being that had seen him face-to-face that wasn't Flood immediately screamed and sprinted away from him in fear.

Now, this mere adolescent was doing the exact opposite--and a human, no less--: Tolerating his presence, even going so far as to comfort him.

It all was getting Acolyte overwhelmed.

The two of them stood like that, until Will remembered why they were here.

He cleared his throat, snapping Acolyte of his revelations.

"Um...you do remember why you came here, right?"

"Oh!  Oh, yes.  I apologize for that, it's just..." He trailed off.

"No one's ever been kind to you?"  Will finished with a smile.

The Ultimate Flood nodded.  He stuffed those emotions to the back of his mind and focused on his task.

"Now, going back to your power, I'd like to see what you can do."  He said.  "Though, given that you've already gotten the hang of controlling your emotions with it, I guess we've already completed that part."

"What do you want me to try first?"  Will asked.

"Start out with something like conjuring a physical object, like a sword."  Acolyte suggested.

Will nodded.  He closed his eyes and concentrated on a single image from memory among all else.  He doubted it would be good if he was distracted while he did this.

He held out his hand like he was ready for something to drop into it.  Sure enough, a ripple disturbed the space above it.  The ripple slowly solidified into the outline of a sword, with a two-and-a-half blade, and a gem of some sort set into its pommel.

Then, the sword itself appeared with a tiny pop, and it fell right into his outstretched hand.

The sword was breathtaking: Its blade glinted iridescent blue and shined in such a way that it changed into different shades of blue wherever you looked.

The crossguard had intricate waves and designs delicately carved into it, and the sapphire-blue gleamed with the same intensity as the blade.

Will smiled.  It worked.  He took a deep breath, then shouted "Brisingr!"

Accompanied by the sound of rustling branches, the blade was engulfed in a blue, smokeless fire, traveling from hilt to tip.

Acolyte was speechless: THIS is the first thing Will had decided to conjure, and it was successful on the first try?!

What else can this human do?

Will extinguished the fire, then turned to Acolyte.  "Anything else?"

The latter didn't immediately respond, still reeling from the sword's appearance and subsequent ignition.  Then he weakly shook his head.  "N-Not that I can th-think of..."

Hm!  That was a short test.  Andrew thought.  Must've far exceeded his expectations.

Something caught Will's attention; a flit of movement just at the corner of his eyes.

He turned and saw a simple, brown door sitting there with a red sign saying "EXIT" on it.

Acolyte saw it too, as he said "Well, looks like my time here is up."

Will responded in kind.

"Well, better get going.  Don't want to keep the outside world waiting."  Acolyte said jokingly.

Will chuckled.  "Nope."  He turned back around to face the Flood creature, then held out a hand.  "Until next time?"

Acolyte hesitated, then held out his scythe-appendage and they shook.  "Until next time."

Will faced the door again, took a deep breath, then walked to it.

He opened the door and walked through it, then he heard multiple voices, all feminine and very familiar.

"What is that thing?"

"How should I know, Rares?  All I know is that he's a human."

"A human?!  You're kidding, right?"

"I wish Spike, but he looks just like--"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Twilight.  How do you know it's a HE?"

"Because earlier he spoke, and its voice was way too low to be female."

"It SPOKE?!  Darling, I understand that this is a really big event for you, but how do we even know that confirms that this...ape-thing is a male?"

Will opened his eyes and saw that he was still in Twilight's house, only laying on a couch and looking at the Mane Six, who were all deep in conversation on the rug in front of him.

"Maybe it's because I AM a male."  He spoke up in amusement.