Halo:battle for Equis

Rescue in Maris and Truth or Dare

October 16, 2552

Over Maris, Prance

Rusty and Parker were in a pelican that's taking them to Maris, the ponies’ version of Paris, to rescue a princess whose name is Mi Amore Cadenza or Cadence. The two soldiers were about to have the time of their lives, well except Rusty since he doesn't know how to interact with females intimately, when Colonel Anders contacted them to head to the command center for a mission.

The two were approaching the city, they got their weapons ready. Once the pelican landed in a forest near the city, the two left and started to run to their VIP's location. But when they got near, they had to stick to the shadows, since they saw slavers in the streets. The two then proceeded to head to the hotel that Cadence was at until they heard artillery fire and gunfire coming towards them.

Knowing that they were now on a timer, the two ran to the hotel and entered an alleyway. Rusty and Parker saw a ladder going up to five floors under the VIP. Rusty decided to go through the hotel and kill any griffons so they don't have to deal with them later on. Parker started to climb the ladder as Rusty entered through the front entrance of the hotel.

With Parker

Parker was climbing to the tenth floor when he started to hear gunfire and the griffons screaming in pain and agony. He was trying his best to ignore the screams as he continued to climb up to where he needs to go. Parker was about eight floors up, when one of the ladders broke, forcing him to drop down to the platform under him. He entered a window, more like breaking through the window, as he looked for a stairway. He noticed the lack of griffons, since most were dealing with Rusty or dead.

Parker was looking for the stairs, he couldn't help but listen to what sounded like tank treads moving along the road, but he remembered that ponies aren't that advanced to build something like that. Before he could think of anything else, he heard the tanks firing at another building. He started to run up the stairs to get to Cadence before the tanks decide to fire at the building he and Rusty were in.

Parker saw some griffons that stayed behind as he got closer to the VIP floor, so he grabbed his knife and killed each of them quietly, one by one. Once he reached the floor, Parker heard a loud pounding in one of the hallways. Parker investigated the noise, only to be greeted by a dozen griffons with a war hammer, trying to open the door to Princess Cadence’s room. Parker grabbed his rifle and whistled to get their attention.

The griffons turned towards Parker and immediately opened fired at him, forcing him to get behind a wall. Since it was close quarters, Parker had to make his shots hit so he doesn't risk killing any civilians.

He took his rifle and aimed at the first griffon, who was bashing in the door to Cadence's room, and fired two rounds. The first one hit his arm and the other round hit his neck, causing him to bleed out quickly.

Two griffons dropped their rifles and went hand to hand with Parker, forcing him to pull out his ODST blade and stabbed one in the arm. The griffon screeched in pain as the 8" serrated blade went deep into his arm.

Parker used his pain to his advantage as he used him as a shield when the griffon teammate went for a throat, but instead killed his own by accident, making him spray blood all over him.

He then felt a blade shoved into his heart as Parker killed the rest with his rifle. Once he was done, Parker radio checked to see if Rusty was alright, but heard heavy footsteps behind him and turned to see a bloody Rusty, who was holding his gravity hammer.

"Don't even ask," Rusty said as he kicked the door open, only to see a surprised Cadence that was naked. Parker couldn't help but blush at her 'assets' she had that made Zecora’s body look small.

"Who are you and what do you want?!" Asked Cadence as she backed away.

"Lady, we were ordered to get you out of here, now," Rusty said as he looked through the window and saw a burning Maris. Tanks were rolling through the streets and griffons were everywhere.

"We don't have much time. We have to leave now," Parker said as Cadence got dressed and they left the room, only to face an unknown armored figure. It was eight feet tall and carried two serrated swords and a minigun.

"Shit, run!!!" Parker said as the three ran up the stairwells to the roof, whereas Rusty stayed behind to give them more time.

Rusty ran as fast as his augmented body could and tried to smash with his hammer and succeed in destroying his minigun as he dodged the bullets from the minigun and swung it again, only for the armored figure to stop the blow with one hand, which shocked him since only a Spartan 2 could only do that.

Rusty pulled out his molecular cutter, that was made before the Covenant attack on Harvest, and went to slash at him. But not only did the armored figure stop it completely, it grabbed it out of Rusty's hands, and kicked him as well.

The figure tossed the molecular cutter away as Rusty stood back up, only to be grabbed by the throat. He was then hoisted into the air as the figure pulled out the blade from his back. As the figure was about to stab Rusty, an ominous sound of a handheld railgun was heard as a round went through the armored figure’s head, blood spattering all over his helmet.

"You know Rusty, you could have asked for help," the Spartan on the radio said on a smug tone.

"Shut up. How's the VIP?" Rusty asked.

"She left about three minutes ago. Also on the other hand, how well are you telling families what happened to their husband?" Viper asked.

"Why?"

"Because Mr. Cake, Mrs. Cake’s husband, was found here in an alleyway with a slit throat," Viper said as he held a wedding ring.

Rusty didn't say anything as he went to the rooftop for exfil. Once he did, Rusty saw that the griffons nearly destroyed Maris. Most of the buildings were destroyed, ponies and griffons bodies littered the streets. It wasn't a pretty site. He heard the sound of a Pelican heading towards him. Rusty sighed as he entered the pelican.

Meanwhile in Canterlot

The Entire Royal Guard was in panic, since one of their bases in Prance went dark. Most thought it was a UNSC attack, but that went out of the window when they didn't see their ships over Equestria.

Celestia was knee deep in paperwork trying to find out who was responsible, since Prance was a major exporter of goods they need to keep their economy afloat.

Celestia prayed that it wasn't the UNSC who did this, because the nobility of Canterlot was on edge with them and didn't want to go to war with them.

Back at the base

It's been two hours since Cadence’s rescue and right now, but a situation was about to break out.

Rusty pulled out the "Tenderizer" and pointed it at the mare. "So you're the mare that’s going to marry that genocidal bastard who likes murdering defenseless women and children! Particularly newborns!" he nearly shouted with rage as several ODSTs and few marines , including Viper, Marcus, and Callie began to restrain and hold him back from doing something reckless and stupid. Cadence was shocked at the grave declaration being made about her and her about to be husband, Shining Armor.

"Arachnia can't sleep at night no more thanks to your fucking husband and his god damn vendetta against changelings! She cries, almost every night for her mother and her hive that was butchered by that… that jackass!" the Spartan II's voice was now filled with an unadulterated hatred that was now rivaling the one that he had for ONI, the griffons, and the Covenant,

"Quick, someone get a sedative NOW!" yelled Viper as they started to lose their grip on Rusty.

"AAAAAAARGH! I FUCKING HATE YOU!" he screamed, trying to raise his Gravity Hammer at her, only to feel more restraints and bodies holding him back before feeling  the sharp prick of tiny microscopic needles entering his flesh within his Miljorn IV Battle Armor, then darkness.

"Watch out!" shouted a corpsman as the massive Spartan II fell to the ground with a large resounding thud *THUD!* that shook the ground and nearby tents and trees.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!?" came the scream of a young hard feminine voice.

Agent Talaway, suffice to say, was not in a good mood at the moment as she approached looking rather pissed as she surveyed the scene with a critical yet cold and calculating eye.

"What the hell happened here, Lieutenant!?" she snarled. "And why the fuck is one of four of our surviving Spartan IIs lying on ground and being unresponsive to commands?!"

Talaway glared at her subordinate for a minute before fixing her cold steely eyes upon the frightened alicorn mare. "You!" she snapped in an icy voice as she pointed to two ODSTs. "Take our prisoner to one of the  holding cells aboard the Banshee's Call and keep her there till I question her myself alongside with the admiral," she ordered. "And as for you, Viper, why wasn't I notified about her capture or arrival to this F.O.B?"

For once in all the soldier’s life, Viper talked back to her, much to everyone’s fear.

"Because, you fucking bitch, she is the only thing standing between us and Celestia. So unless you have another fucking solution, stay out of this. You ONI spook," Viper said with venom in his words as he walked away and ordered the two ODSTs to release Cadence

"Belay that, and do as I had ordered first," she snapped at the two troopers. "Call the Admiral, I think we got ourselves a shit storm brewing in the ranks," Corpsman Fitzgerald said to one of his fellow marines.

"Commander, I'm ordering you to stand down NOW!" the ONI agent yelled as they began to argue back and forth until she pulled a pistol out and pointed it at the pink alicorn.

"Agent Talaway, as the commanding officer of the base, I'm ordering "you" to STAND DOWN NOW!!" yelled Viper. This shocked every one of them since he never pulled rank before.

Talaway looked at him before saying with a smug tone, "Fine then, Spartan three." she left the outside camp to go back inside the base.

Viper stood there, like someone grabbed his daughter and slit her throat in front of him. Viper tried everything to keep that secret under wraps, but now it was out in the open.

Six hours later

Viper eventually told his team about Ackerman lying to him about giving him Spartan 2 augmentation. The team knew that being an S-II was a huge responsibility, but accepted the facts, albeit they didn't talk to him for two hours.

Viper and the other Spartans, along with the Centurions and their respective marefriends were in the rec room with an empty bottle of beer and was sitting in a circle until Viper spun the bottle.

"What are we playing?" Rusty asked, eyeing the bottle carefully.

"Truth or dare," Viper said as the bottle stopped on Nightmare Moon.

"I refuse to play!" the Spartan II announced, trying to move out of the room only to be stopped by Arachnia and Trixie.

"Come on, can you stop being a hard ass once and a while?" Marcus said to the Spartan.

"I SAID NO!"  he snapped causing all the mares in the room to flinch in pain and fear at the sound of his voice. "Mi'lord please calm yourself," Arachnia said softly as she gently touched the Spartan's hand.

Trixie too followed her fellow herdmate's moves and grabbed his other hand. "Trixie says it's alright. This game is fun and no one will get hurt playing it," she said, hoping her words of comfort and encouragement would placate and ease the Spartan II into a better mood to play.

While this was happening, Viper knew that something would get out of hand so he had a little vial filled with a sedative meant for Spartans, since regular sedative on a Spartan is like a 9mm round against a Scorpion tank.

"And you!" he said turning to look at the Spartan III. "You just stay the hell away from me!"

"Jesus Christ, Rusty, remember last time you lashed out on someone. You nearly put fourteen ODSTs into the medical room," Callie said.

"How about this, you play with us for an hour and after that, you can leave, ok?" Viper said.

Rusty pondered upon the deal presented before him, option one: he could go along with it and just play nice and make his girlfriends as some would say happy for a change, or option two: he could just try and leave which would only end up with him being sedated and placed in stasis until he was calm and ready to be a "respectable member of society" as Agent Talaway put it when he snapped the last time.

"Fine," he said, going with option A. "One hour and then no more."

"Ok then. Nightmare Moon, truth or dare?" Viper asked his marefriend.

"Dare," she answered with a toothy grin.

"I dare you to... sit in Blake's lap until your next turn," Viper said as Nightmare Moon blushed at the thought of sitting in another man's lap.

Nightmare Moon then walked to Blake and sat in his lap and since they had their armor off, Blake immediately blushed from Nightmare Moon’s tush being on his crotch.

"Okay then, my turn," Nightmare Moon said as she spun the bottle. The bottle spun till it pointed at the young changeling queen, Arachnia.

"Truth or dare?" Nightmare Moon asked Arachnia.

"Truth," the white changeling queen answered.

"What is the most embarrassing name you ever gotten when you were a filly?" Nightmare Moon asked.

The young queen could only blush as she tried to remember what some of her hive and others from the other hives would call her when she was presented to the outside world when she was but a nymph.

"They… they would call me… pony freak," she said a bit meekly.

The entire room was quiet until a certain Spartan went into rage mode.

"Who the hell called you that!? Tell me their names so I can slice their heads off their neck!!!" Rusty said as he brandished his energy sword.

"Nighty night, Delta," Molestia said as Nightmare snuck around behind the enraged Spartan II and stuck him with several sedatives.

"Well, since he's out of the way, shall we continue?" Viper asked as they all agreed.

Trixie backed out saying that she was going to keep watch over the knocked out Spartan. Arachnia agreed with her herdmate's decision and followed after her, helping the light blue unicorn carry the Spartan II back to their lodgings.

Nightmare Moon decided to take Arachnia’s turn and spun the bottle and it landed on Brandon.

"Dare," Brandon said without Nightmare Moon saying anything.

"I dare you to eat a bug," Nightmare Moon said, internally smirking.

"What kind of bug?" the Spartan III asked.

"This one," Nightmare Moon said as she conjured up a scorpion. This freaked Brandon out.

"AAAAAAAAAAH!" came the high pitched scream of Spartan III Brandon. Brandon ran out of the room, hoping that the scorpion doesn't follow him.

"That wasn't nice, Nightmare!" Chrysalis snarled angrily at the mare.

Nightmare Moon shrugged. Viper decided to step in before all hell breaks loose.

"Okay, obviously since he's afraid of scorpions or anything with more than four legs, he has a tendency to high tail it out of the area. So please, don't do that again?" Viper asked his marefriend.

"Just enough with the bug jokes and insults," the green maned changeling growled. "It's bad enough that Arachnia has to share something so dark and vulgar about her past… just no more"

"At least she knew her parents longer than seven years," Luke said as he drank his bottle of beer.

"We've all got skeletons in our closets, but he's got demons in his" Samantha said, pointing to the knocked out Spartan II.

"Actually, I have demons in my closet as well," Viper said as everyone looked at him. He ignored it as he spun the bottle.

"Yeah we know, but him, Viper, he's got some real issues with ONI and the UNSC," Samantha said, looking at the Spartan II with both sympathy and fear.

"Yeah, but his is big amongst some of us. Hell, that big guy over there was forcefully taken from his family for the program, and he watched as ONI spooks put down his family to boot. "

"At least he doesn't have a twenty five consecutive life sentence over his head," Viper said as the bottle stopped on Callie.

"Truth or dare?" Viper asked her.

"Don't know Lt, but I do know that ONI's got you both on their watch list and hit list. Hell, I bet Paragonsky is just itching to sign the order to have you both…" she made a slit throat gesture. "And truth," she replied, taking a swig of her bootleg whiskey.

"What team were you assigned to before joining us?" Viper asked as he grabbed a bottle of apple cider that was taken from a farm outside of the forest, and chugged the whole thing down.

"Gamma squad aka ‘The Magnificent 7’," Callie answered

All of the Spartans and Centurion choked on whatever drinks they had as they heard her answer.

The three mares stared at the group of soldiers confused. "The what?"  Chrysalis asked

"They were an elite team of Spartans who would operate outside UNSC jurisdiction and every mission they had was one hundred percent completed, until they were all killed," Andrew said.

"Not all. Only one survived, and that's me," Callie said with sadness in her voice as she remembered her fallen squad mates and friends. "Paragonsky ordered that we're too dangerous to be kept around.  Thought that our rebellious rogue behavior would start to rub off on the other Spartans, so he signed the order to have us put on a god damn suicide mission deep into Covie held territory without support and minimal equipment"

Everyone was quiet, until Ryan looked at Viper and noticed his eye colored changed to a blood red.

"You alright Lt?" the Spartan three asked  as he noticed the Spartan III's eye change form it's normal blue to red.

He then calmed himself down as his eyes went back to blue. "Sorry about that. It's my mutations I got from the augmentation," Viper said.

"That's never happened to any of us before, Lt," Callie said showing her eye color was still the same blue.

"Because it's very rare to get mutations. But enough about that, we should get back to the game," Viper said as Callie spun the bottle. For the next three hours, many truths were spilled and many dares taken, like when Alex was dared to shave his hair into a Mohawk and Brandon had his chest waxed. When Marcus spun the bottle and it landed on Viper.

"Truth or dare, Lt?"  Marcus said.

"Truth," Viper said as he drank his fifteenth bottle of apple cider.

"Who are the other ponies that you like?" Marcus asked, making Viper to spit out the precious alcohol.

"He's turning red!"  Callie shouted with a hysterical laugh.

The entire room continued to laugh until Viper started to talk, unfortunately no one heard what he said.

"Oh lighten up, my love," Molestia cooed as she snuggled up to him, her big white soft bosoms pushed into his arm and side.

"Fluttershy, Big Macareina and Nursery Rhymes," Viper said as he chugged the bottle of apple cider.

The two mares stared at him. "And who said you could start adding more mares to our herd!?"  Nightmare Moon snapped, showing her enlarged canines.

"Says the person who killed more Covenant than Celestia has eaten in cakes," Viper said as he grabbed another bottle of apple cider.

Meanwhile in Canterlot

Celestia was eating a slice of cake when, all of a sudden, she sneezed on it since she felt someone saying something about her and her addiction to cake, before tossing out the cake

Back at base

"My turn," Viper said as the bottle spun. Unfortunately, he used his magic to spin the bottle and it instantly became a flying projectile as it hit the wall.

"Well, there goes that game," Chrysalis said giving a deadpan look.

"We could play five finger filet," Viper said as every gun in the room was pointed at him immediately after the words came out of his mouth.

"How about punch a grunt?" Callie added.

"Yeah how about no," Viper said as he ran out of the room as his team started to chase him.

Ten minutes later

"What's punch a grunt?" Molestia asked as she snuggled up to Viper in his bed.

"It's when a team chooses someone to punch until they submit or run away," Viper said after losing his team.

Meanwhile in Ponyville

All of the citizens in the town were sleeping and no one left outside, except for two.

The two figures were outside of the town with only one thing they were ordered to do.

Kill Twilight Sparkle.