Cloaked Shield

The Royal Court.

The night session of the royal court that is.

Annoying as it was necessary, yet somehow it was even duller as she had remembered it a thousand years ago.

Princess Luna usually didn't attend these as she often was out on diplomatic missions across the country and being used as a way of inspiring confidence in intercultural relations. But lately, things have been different. And things weren't going the way she or those of the nobles on the council wanted it to go.

But this was how important it was and always as it's been, for them to suck it up and work towards a compromise.

It was also crucial for Luna to not fall asleep through it either. Sure, it grated her gears, but she knew that without the royal court, Equestria would have collapsed long ago, society sunk to a desolate place of lawlessness and chaos all on its own without a single shred of Discord's input if he decided to leave the natural life of progress alone and let it take a natural course.

Luna bit back her tongue from releasing a sigh of boredom.

After revisiting the matters that were brought up or postponed for the iteration of the day part of the royal court, the dispatching of Night Guard patrols by Captain Greystone of the Night Guard, it came to that time of reading reports about smaller problems or projects requiring funding approval that would benefit pony society.

Luna thanked the everlasting stars above that this iteration of this month's court session was less than she had been expecting.

There was a total of two.

The first issue had been about land ownership; the other involved a program teaching advanced astronomy and possible advancement towards potential space exploration.

The first one was a straightforward resolve. A math problem that led to an error of a misplaced decimal point in the land boundary measurements. The second had been a no brainer and, alongside outstanding eager agreements to the idea by ten out of fourteen on the council, Luna signed off on the proposal.

With the court over and sitting on the cushion of her throne, Luna finally elicited herself a muffled yawn, and she shifted her gaze to one of the many batpony Night Guards standing at rigid attention about the room. She looked for any change in their demeanour. When having to see none to cause for her care, Luna bowed her head, and her horn began to glow.

Time for the real work to begin,

In a flash, her eyes turned solid white, and she delved into the dimensional realm of the dream world.

Luna immediately knew her sister wasn't asleep. The door to her dreams had yet to appear. And she knew why. Tia was probably still writing up of the tale of her out of body experience of becoming a dog and eventual violent ending she cried into Tia's wing.

Thinking of doors to dreams, Luna was curious when she found an entire hall of new doors of peculiar make in the realm. She was even more intrigued as all of them were locked tight. Even for her impressive experience and mastery of the dream domain couldn't gain access.

Fwip.

Huh?

Luna exited the dream realm to the waking world just in time to witness a scroll sealed with a blue cord, and a crescent moon symbol materialised in front of her face and land at her hooves.

Picking it up from the floor, Luna unfurled the parchment and began reading what the report said. Midway through, she let out an exasperated grumble.

Somepony had the gall to graffiti part of a historic railway bridge with a wax pencil. Said bridge was dedicated and remembrance to an old friend and acquaintance from long ago: D'Amore La Aurora. To Luna and Celestia as Amore, the first and former princess of the Crystal Empire.

And by somepony, it meant some rebellious griffon had done the tagging.

Even though Gryphons of the Gryphonian Empire mainly spoke Ponish as a second language to their national tongue of Gerphon, Luna recognised the graffiti was written entirely in their script of Gryffic.

Terrific.

Luna groaned and looked up.

To translate this into a language, she could read coherently; she needed to head into the Royal Archives on the other side of the palace. Go into the language section and under the Gryphonia section, look for the book that would translate what she was reading.

Or…

Luna performed a quick translation spell on the parchment, and the Gryffic script immediately turned into Ponish before her eyes.

'AW 56 I 206 WAZ HERE.'

Luna rolled her eyes, eliciting another exasperated groan. The graffiti was written in short-hoof and was utter gibberish.

Keeping the report aloft in the air, Luna summoned a quill and inkpot.

Dabbing the tip into the inkpot and putting the quill to the bottom of the report, Luna scribbled down in the space provided with her approving signature to proceed, then rolled up it up, and with a simple application of magic, the scroll vanished. Heading back for the incident room of cryptology.

"Still can't get my head around as to why they go and write their names into things only to be tracked and sent to jail, just because they think it's fun." muttered Luna aloud and turned to the nearest Night Guard, "Wouldn't you say?"

The batpony turned his head in her direction, giving a firm nod of agreement before returning to stoic attention.

If it was up to her and if it were before her thousand-year imprisonment in the moon, she'd throw those types of rebellious birds into Canterlot's dungeons. See how they'd like that compared to the comfy cells they're given.

...

What by the waning moon, are you thinking Luna?!

By the laws in the Criminal Procedure Act of Equestria Act XXI, that practice was abolished nine hundred years ago after your banishment to the moon along with the death penalty, and most of all Tia wouldn't like it very much if you dared try it.

Luna sighed and groaned as she sat down, hoof under her chin as she thought about it. Things had been so simpler back then. Cause trouble, stand trial before the two sisters, into the dungeons for a day or two if proven guilty or didn't have the bits to pay off the fine.

Luna stifled another yawn of boredom. By Tia's mark, she thought. I do miss those fugitives from justice pursuits.

BOOOOM!

The crash of lightning and the roll of thunder that followed rattled the windows and sent a slight tremor through the floor.

Getting up, Luna stretched her back and neck in a rhythmic of clicks and strolled over to a window as it began to be rain-streaked. She looked out through it, chin held up with a hoof on the window sill and watched mesmerised as lightning forked through the clouds while another ominous boom resounded through the night.

Oh, how I'd give a million bits right now for a chase, a challenge to remember for a lifetime.

The cockpit of Pelican G97H-TC: 'Ugly 404'.

The Pelican gunship burned through the night at a mere two hundred feet off the deck.

It was no cakewalk keeping the aircraft flying on course, especially in such winds and that two of the most intense interferences coming up was making navigating the hilly landscape ahead in the dark while at this low altitude challenging than it needed to be.

There had also been a change of objectives in the mission plan. Instead of going for the DZ as was planned, Command had them going to scout out the Spire first, then proceed to take out the Dark Zone Generator.

In the cockpit, twentieth and twenty-first-century music genre 'Old Rock' filtered in over the Pelican's cockpit speakers. Flying the dropship, the USE sangheili Ranger bobbed his head in time with the beat.

The genre was one of Ossis 'Relcam's favourites, much to the chagrin of his gunner and close friend Flight Officer Captain Elizabeth 'Liz' Allencourt's disapproval.

"Blessed be the Ancestors, we're sure are going to lose some connection on these for this one." 'Relcam commented. The interferences were cropping up now and again on the radar screen — one smear for both sides of the scope.

"At least these are just interfering with COMs this time and not hunting our electronic signature for Covie flak to find our faces," remarked Allencourt from the gunner's position down in front of him.

"Although the interferences could be a type of jamming we have yet to encounter; hiding said emplacements."

"Ehh.."

Pelican 404 suddenly plunged from the sky only to rise sharply up as it flew through another pocket of rough turbulence.

"Yee-haw," Allencourt jeered. "Ride 'em cowgirl."

The door to the cockpit cycled open behind 'Relcam, and stepping through in the opening came a grey and orange-clad Spartan. Voices of a heated argument from the dropship's cabin about using a specific phrase of a derogatory word in a game of Galactic Scrabble filtered in behind the super-soldier.

"... Common usage. That's the keyword here," a female voice was heard arguing.

"No. If it's not in the official USE and UNSC lexicons it hardly counts."

"It doesn't have to be in the lexicons!"

"It does have to be in the lexicons! Listen…"

Taylor gripped the back of 'Relcam's seat as the dropship gave another lurch. "With that fantastic atmosphere back there, are you at least trying to make two war veteran Spartans, two USE SpecOps, a Marine MWD handler and her BBDFF airsick as well?"

"I didn't think Nipper, the super search and defence woof that led my downed ass out of the fire on Augusta last year, would get airsick. That said... wanna know how I've done it to veteran Drop Shock Troopers?" Allencourt said jubilantly, looking up and over her shoulder for a moment to acknowledge Taylor before quickly returning to concentrating on the terrain ahead as it blurred past below them.

"... Touch my split-lip; I'll stab you, Xytas." 'Nrahom barked.

"You can attempt to. But expect no mercy from me." 'Dorvo scoffed in return.

"I'll take your silence as a yes. " Allencourt jerked a thumb over her shoulder at 'Relcam then at herself. "You can thank for tonight that you got two professionals who know what you're in for," she then pointed her finger forward. "As you can see, my good buddy has quite the time keeping this beast in a straight line because of the turbulence and this persistent freakin' lightning keeps threatening to wash out my NVDs."

'Relcam snorted. "Well, if it bothers you so much, why don't you switch over to forwarding infrared for the time being and I'll warn you if you're going to clip into anything taller than a tree."

Since the time they were paired together as flying buddies, it's well known throughout the task force's air wing that 'Relcam had built up a tolerance to Allencourt's antics, mostly in her line of humour.

"Oh, screw you, Ossis. It was one time, one time in a billion!" she adjusting her NVG sights to decrease the light gain.

"On a clear moonlit night, right Liz?" added Taylor.

Before departing for the hangar, Spartan Taylor had taken the time to download information packets on both pilots' service records and their backgrounds before and in service with the UNSC and USE respectively.

Brought up on her Heads Up Display was the overview of the incident report filed involving the so-called tree. According to the report, this so-called tree was once the head and main firing channel for a Covenant Type-27 Mantis AA emplacement in the Sinar Mountains. When the emplacement went up in smoke, the giant gun's firing channel tipped off the edge and settled at the bottom pointing straight up. Allencourt flew into it while transporting a team behind enemy lines using the canyon in question and tore some pieces of the right-wing off, including the dropship's second Anvil missile and the all-important sole radar/scanner jamming wing pod.

Allencourt groaned out in exasperation as she heard 'Relcam gave a gravelly hearty laugh along with the Spartan.

"How's navigation?" Taylor asked, turning serious. All traces of her humour now absent.

"Terrible. Frankly, it's up shit creek thanks to the interferences," muttered Allencourt in with disdain while looking down at a holopad in her lap and a crude sketched map she had made of the area. "We've been VFR ever since we began skirting those flux areas."

'Relcam grunted. "You could say that again. Just take a look at my instruments."

Taylor glanced over to see it was flickering every so often with the wrong flight input orientations.

The near muted music in the cockpit changed to a piece of 'Hard Bass' music but 'Relcam quickly hit the pause icon for the music on his secondary screen.

"Other than that, how's progress on the new route looking?" Taylor asked.

Allencourt sighed. "Well, Spartan, apart from the switched objectives, which is no biggy since that makes it all the better for us. So far, so good. About an hour more on our current heading to the third waypoint. Then bank this way…" she tapped a finger against her thankfully still working analogue compass for emphasis.

"Back whatchamacallit-ish up another valley for ten. And then from there, we should be there for the sixth waypoint near the ranges. After that, it's hauling ass time of a climb for the drop for the HALO jump. On another note, uh, how well can you swim?"

Taylor leaned forward. "Come again?"

'Relcam handed a datapad to the Spartan.

"Don't think that'll affect us much." Taylor said as she took the offered datapad, "Torrent rain and wind like that never disrupted our drops." she handed it back to 'Relcam when she was done downloading the information. "Especially against any Covenant."

Allencourt scoffed. "Still, I would give someone a thousand credits just to watch a Kig-Yar try to swim in this."

With a word, Taylor turned and left, shaking her head as she returned to the cabin.

'Relcam reached back and unpaused the music. Lyrics flowed from the cockpit speakers once more as the gunship gave a typical jolt of what was now considered by this point by both pilots as typical average weather for this hunk of liveable rock in space.

Ponyville. Golden Oak Library.

"Rainbow Dash? Isn't this a bit, well, excessive?"

"Whatta you mean?"

Crash!

Twilight Sparkle flinched, startled by the lightning that cracked through the cloudy night sky.

Twilight's tree home was protected by a magical lightning rod, yes. But for such extreme weather produced tonight by Ponyville's weather team just seemed, overdone.

'Overcharged more like it' was what Spike remarked when she had asked him earlier.

"That," Twilight indicated with a hoof up towards the ceiling. "The recent weather patterns for the past week. Are you or aren't you the leader of Ponyville's weather team?" she jotted the final words down onto a scroll before giving it to Spike.

"Yeah, I am to the first. But these pattern changes came from Downburst herself. We missed last week's scheduled downpour and have to make up for it."

There was another electrifying crackle of lightning with the accompanying crash of thunder, this time the ground gave a surprise jolt including Rainbow Dash.

"Buuuuttt, I see your point. I'll ask her some time tomorrow morning about toning it down."

"Thanks again, Dash."

"No problem,"

Twilight placed a book on 'Animals and Magical Creatures of the Everfree Vol. 6', back to its proper spot in this time alphabetically year of published ordered bookshelf.

"How's Fluttershy doing?" Twilight asked, turning around as she picked out and extracted the next volume.

"Better-ish," said Rainbow Dash, deeply still concerned.

Twilight shared the same concerned feelings for her yellow pegasus friend.

Fluttershy had been staying with Rainbow Dash for the time being until the Everfree Forest had settled down and returned to its "usual state" of creepy, deadly glory.

The Everfree Forest and the many animals that dwell within, dangerous or otherwise, have been acting twitchy and out of character over the past three weeks. And since Fluttershy's cottage rests on the border of the forest, it came to be of great concern to their friend as there have been some abnormal events that happened when she had asked to have at least somepony staying with her for the night. And so began the strange sightings and odd sounds in the middle of the night.

First to go over was Pinkie Pie, and she heard skittering and scuffling sounds on the roof.

Rainbow Dash heard a deep eery warbling whine, and when she got to the window, she swore she saw a bright shaft of light come from the forest's errant clouds and pan through the trees.

Rarity saw four pairs of parallel blue irradiant streaks in the overcast sky.

Then came Applejack's turn and by far was the creepiest. As she went down the stairs from the second floor, she saw, just out the window of the back door out in the field were at least more than a couple of pairs of bright glowing unblinking orange and one set of four hauntingly green eyes staring directly back at the cottage.

'T'was certainly no Timber Wolf's eyes I've ever seen, that's for sure.' Applejack quietly mentioned to Twilight and Pinkie when they came around in the morning to see how Fluttershy was.

Twilight's experience was haunting, and when both ponies woke up in the morning, Fluttershy found a strange pair of footprints in a bare patch of dirt in her vegetable garden. It went without saying anything about the guttural rasping noises heard during the rest of the night.

After that, Rainbow Dash asked Fluttershy if she wanted to stay the rest of the nights at her place until things cooled down.

There wasn't much of a discussion or debate of what Fluttershy's answer was.

Twilight levitated the sketch of what looked like an eagle's footprint but far more significant over to Rainbow to see as she put the next volume down on the desk with a thud.

"What do you think it is?"

"What do I think it is?" Rainbow Dash repeated as she looked at it for a scant second. "You're kidding, right?"

Twilight's brain whirred for a bit before it finally clicked. Oh, right.

"Ah, yeah."

She levitated the sketch over to Spike, who at the moment was carrying a pile of new books in his arms to be sorted out. As the piece of paper floated near his face, Spike put the books aside, out of the way as to not be a tripping hazard.

Rainbow Dash yawned, "Anyways, it's getting late, and I'd better get going. See ya tomorrow, Twilight!"

"Goodnight, Rainbow. Be safe. To the both of you."

Rainbow Dash gave a final wave, "You know it, and the same to you." and flew off before the door closed in her face.

Everything fell quiet as Twilight returned to her search, all apart from the drumming drone of the rain against the outside of the windows.

After close to an hour had ticked on past, Spike walked up to a window by the front door and peered out into the storming night outside and spotted something. He sighed. "There he goes, back at it again."

Twilight looked up from reading the text of the book and the next volume in the collection directly beside it. "Hmm?"

Spike just waved to her to come over and indicated out the window with a finger.

Twilight got up and walked over to Spike and the window in question and peered into the storming night.

Folding his wings and once again standing in the middle of the street, always on the dot of nine o'clock just like every other night, completely alone, and now in the pouring rain, happened to be a dark coloured stallion pegasus.

The pegasus was an odd one. Of a near charcoal coat, amber eyes, and a grey steel blue mane with a single blue cobalt stripe running through his tail.

"You have got to be kidding me…" muttered Twilight aloud in an exasperated tone.

Many ponies who live in or around town would call it Ponyville's luck. Others would say it's a curse. A scant few say the village had a mind of its own. Whatever the case, the town had the magical charm to it that attracted even the oddest of ponies that had or still have great trouble in their past to sort out at any given time. And just one of those ponies, the one standing outside in the downpour of rain, happened to be only one of those.

The pegasi's name? Eclipse Shadow.

An enigma come day or night that stumped even knowledgeable Twilight Sparkle.

Shadow wasn't just a mystery for Twilight and her friends; he was a mystery to even the entire town ever since he showed up out of nowhere one sunny day about a month or so ago.

As for why Shadow was a mystery, it wasn't because of what race he was and had an annoying habit of using the word 'we' in place of 'I' randomly when referring to himself, kind of like Princess Luna did after being returned from being cured by the Elements of Harmony, no pony knows. For all Twilight knew, he could've developed this manner of speaking because of his knowledge. And quite a deep well of knowledge that was.

To say he even could potentially meet Twilight's level in a knowledge duel and bypass it without flinching was a complete understatement. Twilight had a gut feeling she'd barely scratched the surface of what Shadow knew, because, in another friendly chat, led on more than he claimed to have known. She found this out for herself in another conversation with him of the start of last week about how to spot a changeling based solely on behaviour patterns.

In all honesty, after that specific conversation took place, Twilight had gone and searched for that information for herself. In the end, after an entire week of searching, it had boiled down to that there was information on spotting changeling behaviour, but all but a few scraps remained. The ensuing battle incinerated the rest. The one between Princess Celestia's loyalists and Nightmare Moon's cultists before the corrupted princess's banishment to the moon for a thousand years some short hours later.

After knowing that, Twilight believed that Shadow had to be a changeling in disguise.

Hashing out a plan to expose him, Twilight met Shadow the next day for the continuation of what they'd been discussing over a plate of hay fries, and she discreetly performed a passive spell; a type of magic that allowed only the caster to see a different colour aura around the targeted.

Twilight had learnt this ancient spell on a cloudless day with help from her sister-in-law Cadence, and Shining Armor, her big brother, in preparation in case of another changeling invasion like it did for the Royal Wedding.

The indicating colours of the magic were typical and easy to identify. Green: clean. Deep red with various tone stages of red intensity: warning and threat level indication. Blue mixed with white: conflicting results. However, the colours of purple and orange were a complete mystery. She had no idea what they meant, and neither did the book detailing the spell list anything about it.

The latter of which is what happened to Shadow when she used it on him halfway through their chat. The aura she had seen had gone to blue first, quickly switching to orange, then black, then back to blue, and before she had to get the chance to recast the spell, it went purple and remained that way.

All of that and he didn't once trigger Pinkie Pie's 'Welcome to Ponyville Newcomer!' routine either. Even when the two had practically walked into each other, and he mentioned directly to her, he was new and staying in town.

Best to get it over and done with, Twilight thought and steeled herself for what she was going to do next. Opening the top half of her door, she called out to him,

"Shadow?" she called, waving a hoof to him to come closer. "Why don't you come inside where it's dry, warm and out of the storm?"

There was about a five-second delay before he responded while he craned his neck up, like only now just realising he was standing outside in the falling rain.

"So it is," Shadow nonchalantly said, turned his attention back to Twilight. "But I'm quite okay as I am Princess Twilight Sparkle. There is no need for your concerned worry tonight. All is quiet tonight for now."

Both Twilight and Spike watched him turn to leave when something caused him to pause mid-stride walk off.

Shadow wasn't that good looking or well kept, nor was he ugly and steered clear of, and nor was he the type of pony that was interesting or annoying. He was just one of those types with that certain aura about them. An atmosphere that when you'd first met with one, you'd ignored most of what just transpired and forgot most about them entirely afterwards.

This understanding probably explained the whole strange event that played out when Rainbow went up to Pinkie Pie and asked about Eclipse Shadow right after her bump in with him about how he's new to town, to which Pinkie replied 'What to who's new in town?'

"Although taking into consideration that I am here, there is one thing we wish to ask of you," Shadow said, quite pleased.

Twilight had a gnawing feeling in her gut that he knew something important that she didn't realise, again.

"What is it?" Twilight asked, trying not to sound so flustered about it.

"We had heard through I that you found a peculiar footprint in your friend's garden, Fluttershy's, not a few days ago. Is it possible that we may see your drake's sketch of it?"

Twilight and Spike faced each other.

First off: That was bound to happen eventually, but she'd expected it to be quite a while before anypony else came around asking. And second: How by Celestia did he know it was a sketch and not a cast?

All of them; herself, Spike, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash had all been very cautiously discreet with the finding of the prints after Applejack erased them immediately when Spike finished compiling the drawing of the mysterious print. Nopony else knew. And she hadn't even broken the news yet to Princess Celestia or Luna.

So, that begged the question. How in Equestria did he find out?

Thinking quickly as to whether or not to tell or lie, Twilight made up her mind, and she looked at Spike. The look he gave said to Twilight he had come to the same conclusion.

"Come in out of the rain, and I'll show it to you."

Shadow nodded, "Thank you, Princess Twilight Sparkle." and walked through the rain for the door.

Twilight opened the rest of the door, and half turned. "Spike, can you get a towel for Shadow to dry himself off."

"You got it. I'll be back in a jiffy," Spike said and took off down the hall.

Twilight turned back to Shadow now standing in front of her.

"As I said back then, there is no need to for you to call me princess while I'm in Ponyville. Or bow, I'm not a princess of anything yet. It just feels too, unnatural."

"And as long as you're an Alicorn, Princess Twilight Sparkle," Shadow bowed, much to Twilight's displeasure. "There is no deviation from those rules established by those in the past that we followed by."

Spike came back as Shadow came inside, and handed him the towel.

Huh? What the?

Spike frowned as he offered Shadow the towel for him to dry off. The young dragon noticed the pegasi was already bone dry — his coat, his wings... everything. Shadow appeared as if he hadn't been standing out in the rain at all.

Shadow took the towel with a wing, patted his already dry face before giving the scarcely damp cloth back to Spike.

"Thank you, drake."

"Hmph," Spike grumbled in exasperation under his breath.

When Spike had met Shadow for the first time, the pegasus knew everything about him right off the bat. So right then and here, Spike at least expected his name used, but Shadow continued to use the name of 'drake' every time Spike was in earshot, ground his gears.

Looking back, Spike saw that Shadow was giving him a disguised sly grin only he could see.

What a-

Knowing if he had spoken his mind would get him into trouble, Spike took the towel back. But not before rolling his eyes while muttering something under his breath and turning on his heel to return to the kitchen where he got it.

Now with him inside and in the warmer glow of light, Twilight was able to get a better look at him. In the month to know him somewhat, he had the oddest habit of sitting or standing in the darkest possible spot imaginable, obscuring many features.

His coat was definitely charcoal black, but his mane wasn't as a white silver like she thought, it was more of a two-toned silver hue. Part blue the other light shade of grey, and by being this close, she was able to see his cutie mark more clearly and cleanly.

It was quite curious for a cutie-mark as she hadn't seen anything quite like it. In fact, in all her years and extensive knowledge, Twilight didn't think anypony had a similar mark in history that came anywhere near it.

The mark consisted of four separate grey-coloured fractured circles as rings. Each ring was spaced out inside of each other and each with at least a sizable gap at some point. It appeared as if it was some puzzle or maze. It was as if somepony had to turn the rings a certain way for their gaps to line up just right to solve it.

Twilight motioned calmly to Shadow come over to the desk she was working at and pointed with a hoof at the sketch.

"This was the footprint that we found in the garden,"

Shadow had barely glanced at it, and Twilight could already see he had something of an answer on the tip of his tongue as his ears folded back.

"Perosus latrunculus," Shadow said with a deep sounding snarl.

Twilight saw his dull amber eyes flicker the colour of green and red with a hint of purple briefly for a second before returning to normal. That was new seeing that about him… and very disturbing.

"You know what it is?" Twilight inquired.

"Yes. It's my task to know all. But I think you've come to your conclusion quite nicely." Shadow said, giving a shiver, ruffling his wings as he did so.

"And we've wished they weren't to be this far over here, but they are here now, which puts matters we have of others who prepared long ago into greater turmoil."

Whether it was involuntary or on purpose, Twilight couldn't be sure but what she could be sure of is that when he did, the temperature in the room around him seemed to drop by a few degrees and the sense of a heavy burden of dread weigh down heavily on her consciousness.

"Is that the reason behind why it's so bad about this print?" asked Spike.

"Well, it depends really," Shadow shrugged.

"Depends on what exactly?"

Shadow jabbed the tip of his left-wing at his chest. "And that there, Spike is the correct answer,"

Shadow's eyes ignited, and he began to panic. "That there wherein lies the complication. Even I don't know for certain anymore as to who I relay the info to right now. There is nothing else to gain any more by being near the capital or the Everfree for that matter. Her words made sure of that."

Twilight could see that Shadow was becoming more distressed the longer he ranted on, and after what she had witnessed in his eyes after the initial outburst revealed that he had been in contact with a vast amount of dark magic at some point of his life. She didn't want him to unleash it. Not here.

"But unless, unless if they… argh!" He rubbed his temples with his wings in frustration while beginning to pace back and forth.

Exposure to high concentrations of dark magic, like the way she saw in his eyes, could affect anypony and there were dire consequences because of it when the pony in question affected was not a unicorn or Alicorn for that matter.

Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder, "Okay, just calm down and come back to this," directing the distraught Shadow from his pacing back to the footprint. "You said you know what the creature this belongs to?"

"Hmm? Oh yes. That." said Shadow, his ears flicking back up and his nervous manner completely disappearing from how he was behaving just a moment ago. "This creature, the one you've been scouring many books for, the one this print belongs to, it will not exist in any volume collection of books that you have here or have studied elsewhere that I have on record. This creature that made it, it is a subspecies belonging to a saurian-like creature of the perosus latrunculus kind."

Twilight waited for him to elaborate.

"In Ponish it is a T'vaoan," Shadow grimly expressed as deep rolls of thunder rumbled overhead.

To Twilight's ears, he said the name with a quick and sharp "T" to begin with then "vow" for vao then "en" for the end. When it came out from his mouth a second time when she asked for it again, it rolled off his tongue so smoothly like touching silk, so when she tried speaking it for the first time, it sounded more like a swing and a miss.

"And these, ahh, teh-viv-an? t'vow-en? … t'vaoan?" Twilight asked, looking over at him for clarification when she pronounced it correctly.

Shadow said the third one was correct and Twilight smiled in return.

"These T'vaoan creatures, do they reside within the Everfree Forest?" Twilight inquired, jotting down the notes down onto a scroll. She'd make a note to search what the first name, perosus latrunculus he gave the footprint, the means for another time.

"No. Not in Equestria, its neighbouring countries, the Greater Gryphonia Empire, the Zebraconia Isles. Point is perosus latrunculus have never been native here. Ever. Although, if you are truly feeling adventurous and you, Princess Twilight Sparkle, wish to travel the distance. May I suggest looking towards the Y'Deio province?"

Twilight raised her eyebrows at that. "The Y'Deio province?" This new word was quite easy to pronounce than the other.

"No matter. I doubt you even have the planispheres required. And besides, nopony of your cycle would know; apart from the Guardians, the empress and both Custodians. That's not including a few hundred thousand others and me. Lynthia and the others would probably glue me to the ceiling if they found out that I had told you that." said Shadow, looking quite pleased with his answer while rubbing the tip of a wing against his chin. "Not that I overly enjoyed the time stuck hanging upside down in the sanctuary archives for the billionth time with a Custodian go about explaining why I shouldn't do what I did to me. It wasn't bad and still an enlightening experience until a certain annoyance showed up."

Shadow caught Spike just staring at him, jaw slightly agape and a confused expression. "What are you staring at, Spike? I'm convinced that it was his idea of discipline and not hers the last time arou–"

"My cycle? Sanctuary archives?" Twilight Sparkle said, on the edge of sheer giddiness and quite intrigued by what the charcoal pegasus had said.

Twilight had stopped writing what she heard as her eyes picked up on what she just wrote. She was looking up from the parchment over to Shadow with a dire gaze of wanting to know so much more.

Shadow's calm yet odd perplexing demeanour he had about him shifted back to that of absolute trepidation, and his amber pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks as he stared dead ahead. He was wound so tight it looked as if somepony so much as breathed on him, it would set him off.

"By Sun- I-I-I-ah-I… Oh crap," Shadow stammered out. He swallowed hard enough for both Twilight and Spike to hear before abruptly shouting, "Bye!"

As fast as a cragadile's jaws snapping shut, the front door was flung open with a loud wham and flew headlong right into the now hammering rain of the storm and fled.

Stunned in silence, Spike could only stare at the empty spot where Shadow had been standing just a moment ago thinking both how he'd dropped all of his mannerisms in one swoop and that the pegasus had used his name.

Meanwhile, evoking the same expression Spike had, Twilight could only think of what she saw about his tail when he turned and fled. Her mind was trying to make sure it wasn't just her eyes playing tricks on her.

She could've sworn that the stripe was cobalt blue when he came in and not a vivid yellow when he bolted out the door.

The cabin of G97H-TC 'Ugly 404'.

"...UCAV 7-5, 7-6. Redirecting flight to sector Alpha-Tango 1-5-1-3-0-0-"

Spartan Lorenski had listened to enough and switched from the Pelican's powerful long-range uplink over to squad COMs as the dropship climbed steeply upwards, clawing for altitude.

From what he had gathered from listening to radio chatter, somewhere where they had slipped in two squads of Helljumpers and their Mantis support mechs had uncovered a battery of Type-38 'Tyrant' anti-aircraft cannon emplacements located in an area uncomfortably close to their primary objective.

To make matters more complicated than they were, a sizeable armoured and mechanised Covenant division were protecting the guns.

Support came in the form of Joint Third Platoon, Human and Sangheili, in a couple of M12 Warthog LRVs and two Grizzly Main Battle Tanks, provided courteously by the Arkhangelsk.

Pulling at the many straps and belts of the pack Viago had strapped to her back legs, Lorenski then began tugging the occupied special carry harness strapped to her chest before moving on to the buckles keeping the disk-like ARGUS-type surveillance drone in place. Heading behind Viago, he triple checked the exceptionally compact black backpack.

The black backpack was a Falcon Wing Aerial Decent Unit, i.e. a ram-air parachute.

Lorenski made sure it was not going to come off anywhere when they jumped out the back of the perfectly good Pelican.

With a fifth check done, Lorenski gave Viago a thumbs up. "All set, Petty Officer."

Viago gave a thumbs up in return, "Great. How 'bout you, buddy? You ready?" she said, her voice coming muffled over the squad COMs as she breathed via a high altitude-breathing mask that was over her mouth. She scratched something that was strapped snug and securely long across just below her chest.

Despite being utterly strapped in and unable to move except his tail, Nipper wagged it enthusiastically in response as his master scratched him behind one of his ears to know if he was alright.

To Viago, it never was a dull moment with her little fur-missile buddy being around. He couldn't bark because he had on a special breathing mask-muzzle. Not just for more comfortable breathing on the way down, but for the protection of his muzzle when they jumped. Viago didn't want him to break his jaw if they came in for an awkward landing for whatever reason.

An alarm went off twice in the cabin while a call from 'Relcam came in over the bay intercom. "One minute!"

Taylor finished checking over herself and called over the radio as the cabin was enveloped in a red wash, "Right. Sound off. COM check."

One by one and in no particular order, the members of Roan came in crisply over squad COMs.

"Specialist Feyo, Roan 3. Link clean and clear."

"Spartan Michael, Roan 4. Link is green and clear."

"Specialist Officer Xytas, Roan 2. Link clean and clear."

"Roan 5, Viago and Nipper. Link clean and clear."

"Spartan Mia, Roan Leader. COMs check green and clear," said Taylor, turning to look over her shoulder and she hit the red ramp door button. The indicator light underneath turned green, and the ramp door rumbled open with a reverberating thrum.

The roaring wind from the outside rushed in along with the high-pitched drone of the pelican's engines. Outside were towering anvil-shaped cloud formations and below was a foreboding greying blanket of a powerful raging thunderstorm. The storm stretched far as the eye could see, complete with the ominous white blue flashes of lightning.

Without hesitation, Xytas leapt out of the Pelican first, plunging headfirst for the storm below with Taylor quickly following behind. Immediately jumping out next was a tandem Viago and Nipper, and finally Lorenski and Feyo jumping out last.

With the drone of the Pelican's engines gone, the only things Roan heard, for now, was the sound of the rushing wind past their protected ears and their steady breathing in their heads as they fell towards the grey storm raging below.

With a muffled crash of thunder, the flashes of lightning, the rain creating streaks across their faceplates and armour, Roan team entered the full embrace of the storm.

Hell

Hell on earth.

The fighting between the two sides was a frantic mess, and yet completely normal to a select few, given the circumstances surrounding their original mission.

Everywhere one would've looked there were signs of the hectic battle — smoking husks of M12 LRV Warthogs and burning Type-32 Ghosts. The crashed remains of Type-54 Banshee that had been shot down. The odd appearance of overturned Type-29 Shadows now acting as a cover for those who were once passengers and those who took one out, littered about the ins and outs of the ancient castle ruins.

Off in the distance to the north-west, three Type-38 Tyrant Anti-Aircraft Cannons. The massive ship-killing guns wrecked and engulfed by fire, burning fiercely like those Norse funeral pyres of old.

When the guns power cores went critical, the storm finally hit them with all its might. With the mission task complete, everybody fell back to the ruins for shelter, to regroup and resupply, and rest before setting about to prepare this place as a forward operating base.

Then the Covenant returned in overwhelming force.

Explosions cast shadows for brief seconds in the darkness, revealing Marines and friendly Elites doing their best against the Covenant onslaught. Everybody did what they could from their positions as the Covenant poured out of the woods and arrived by dropship from every direction.

The cries of assistance and reports of the enemy positions that came in over the COM were barely discernible from the explosions, the whine of plasma, and the chattering of gunfire continually ringing in his ears.

Brraaapp. Brraaapp. Brraaapp.

"…Marines! Call in-is twenty and up…"

"...Take that fifty and light up that sector left of the greenhouse! I said the left side of the greenhouse! At least five enemy squads are trying to force their way through there…"

"...Charlie down to three! I say again, I'm down to three men! We're folding in with Delta…"

Every surface of the ruins was basked and lit up with all kinds of colour. Blue, green, pink, purplish-red plasma intermixed with yellow and orange tracers.

"...Twenty and up for Alpha. Break. Be advised; part of Alpha-2 has re-positioned to the third and second floors in the southwest corner of the castle overlooking the divide. We are nil on AT. Say again; we have no AT. Pilums and Jackhammers are dry. Break. We've captured some Fuel Rod cannons and will be-"

"INCOMING!"

As he lay on the ground, O'Donnell watched as an M850, outnumbered and outflanked by Covenant, was being pounded by all kinds of hellfire. So much in fact by now parts of its hull had been turned into slag by an overwhelming barrage of fuel rod rounds and a strafing run of a couple of Banshees. The twin 120mm cannons of the Grizzly fired once more into a squad comprised of Grunts and Elites before something cooked off inside the tank and violently blew the turret off.

O'Donnell squeezed his eyes shut from being blinded by the terrific explosion and reopened them to see a Covenant Elite round the corner and run through a fellow Helljumper. "Dohmoh'Eenngahnehnn! Karumshurah ree chitakorru!"

The hinge-head was quickly put down by a hail of bullets from all around.

"-te..."

Different voices continued to filter in, sounding distant and muffled but to Nathan O'Donnell, he could've sworn he recognised one particular voice out of the others and a firm tug of the back of his collar. He reopened his eyes; everything was a mixed light show of constant blur and a shadowy black shape of someone above him, dragging him across the ground by the back of his collar.

"…BREAK! BREAK! BREAK! Grizzly 1-2 is gone! I say again, 1-2 Victor is gone! They just took multiple direct hits from T-58 LAAWs!"

"…rret round! Right side, right side!"

The flash of a plasma grenade somewhere nearby brought the figure behind and above, another ODST, helmet missing, into sharp focus.

'Nate. Come back to me, buddy!' Chris Vargo mouthed.

BRRRRRTTTTT

O'Donnell squinted down at his legs, one of them had a tourniquet and snaking away across the floor was a slick red blood trail. HIS blood trail. When did that happen?

The buzzsaw roar of a GAU-23 spewing 20mm from another F-99 UCAV thundered overhead.

He looked up back to Vargo, the team's designated medic, and saw he was now yelling at him.

Why was he doing that? What the hell happened to me?

A flash of blue plasma zipped past his face bringing him back into the harsh reality of the war zone raging on around him. The sensation of everything came back in a rush, with pain at the forefront.

"Nate, come on! Keep those goddamn eyes open! We need you!" Vargo shouted, ducking to avoid incoming plasma fire.

"Dammit, shit, Vi! You've got Elites coming in from the right, eight-ten! Two hundred bloody meters close!" He propped O'Donnell up against the wall and dumped a full mag from his SMG blindly out a gap in the wall, roughly in the direction of the incoming contact.

Covenant ducked behind cover as the stream of bullets wildly flew in their direction. When the firing stopped, the Covies fired back to where they thought they saw the muzzle flash had originated.

But either this Covie squad was confused by other similar muzzle flashes, or they were all greenhorns, a majority of their shots went wide and never got close.

"On it," Reynolds was heard over the radio.

O'Donnell's muscles burned. His body protested with pain as he tried to move his arms and legs to get up. Vargo shoved him back down by the shoulders.

Five distinctive cracks of a sniper rifle boomed over the sound of the raging firefight.

Downrange, the Elite Ultra and three Minors fell to the ground, dead. Each with holes through their heads. Those who remained stopped and lost their situational awareness of their surroundings and fired blindly back at what they thought was the source of their brethren deaths. They were shortly gunned down by the concentrated fire by a group of marines.

"Hostiles de-hostilized," announced Reynolds coolly over the COM.

O'Donnell let Vargo remove his helmet and take out an auto-injector from a med-pack. Vargo proceeded to stab O'Donnell in the leg. The adrenalin from the epinephrine coursed through his veins, and his hearing sharpened.

"Jesus. That's lodged way deep down in there," said Vargo, observing the mess O'Donnell was in with an indicating hand as he popped out the empty yellow band tube with a ftiz-ping! Replacing it with one marked by a green band.

"I can't believe you're still alive after that. And by the way, you look like shit."

A glob of spit mixed with blood escaped from the corner of his mouth as O'Donnell laughed, and immediately regretted that he did because of what pain was brought on by it. "Thanks. And so do you, mate. What the hell happened?"

Vargo laughed and peeled back O'Donnell's black-grey under the suit to get better access to the nasty leg wound.

"Vi and I both thought you died when that Wraith opened up as we were on the sixth-floor balcony — we got out, but you were still on it when it brought down the whole thing. Here, put this in,"

Vargo gave a mouthguard to O'Donnell to put in his mouth. He readied his combat knife. "Gonna need you to bite down on it; I'm not going to lie, it's gonna hurt."

"Iff ift havvn bvvn arvvarry. Unnnngggrr uuuuukkkrrr" O'Donnell grunted in agonising pain as he bit down hard on the mouthguard while Vargo slipped the combat knife into the wound and worked as delicately he could to remove the offending shrapnel.

There was a series of shouts in both English and Sangheili from down the hall. Vargo hardly noticed as a flurry of plasma rounds zipped past his head and impacted the adjacent wall. "Almost there buddy, almost... got the sucker!"

He readied his auto-injector again, a packet of Optican and his canteen. "Don't worry; you'll still have your two legs to walk on, I promise,"

O'Donnell spat out the mouth guard. He couldn't feel the offending object in his leg anymore, but at the same time, he couldn't sense much of anything else there.

"What of that Wraith? The one that took me down with the sixth-floor balcony? What happened to it?"

"Scrap," said Vargo plainly, giving a powerful painkiller to O'Donnell with the injector in the arm and flushed the wound with water. "Charlie 1-2 Victor blew it to hell."

"Good Ol' Boomer," O'Donnell noted, a yawn escaping from his mouth.

"Hey, bud! I need you to stay awake. We ain't out of the woods yet." Vargo warned, applying Optigel into the cleaned wound and handed O'Donnell a fully loaded M6H, including his helmet. "Just keep that barrel up and aimed that-a-way." he pointed down the hall.

O'Donnell watched as an exchange of tracers and plasma fire crisscrossed through the intersection and riddled with holes, the corpse of a Skirmisher tumbled into view.

"What you take me for?" O'Donnell smugly replied as he took the pistol and put on his helmet, "A snivelling Grunt?"

"Only if I let you remain in this condition." Vargo chuckled with a smirk, tightly wrapping a bandage over O'Donnell's leg wound just as the wounded ODST fired his pistol, drilling three Skirmishers through the head.

Fireteam Roan. Dirtside.

Standing in the pouring rain even up here, Spartan Lorenski dumped Viago's Falcon Wing aerial decent unit into a shallow hole and marked its location. Viago took her collapsible shovel and began heaping the dirt back to hide it.

"Roan to Ugly," Spartan Taylor called in over COMs. "We're boots on the ground and spotted a good vantage point to observe the Spire."

"Understood Roan," replied an unhappy voice of Flight Officer Captain Allencourt of Pelican Uniform 404. "Slight hitch to our plans. Our long-range COM gear and advanced flight systems are having a hard time cutting this crap. We're no longer in contact with Command ATC GCI, and navigating this mountainous area in wild weather is too dangerous with both instrument aids on the fritz. We've put down somewhere secluded to fix it hopefully. If you require assistance to take down something heavy, like Hunters or provide as a distraction of a couple of Wraiths, we'll be unable to do so until we radio back with an update on our status."

"Copy, Ugly. Let's hope whatever you've got is not too serious," Taylor turned her head to look behind her.

Lorenski stamped down the mound of dirt while 'Dorvo helped kick some loose rock around, scattering them over the dumping site.

"Fingers are crossed, Spartan. Well, happy trekking. Ugly out."

"Let's get this done. Xytas, you have Feyo and Mike at designation position two," Taylor indicated, pointing towards the SpecOps officer.

Both Crimson Blade Elites and Spartan nodded in confirmation before 'Dorvo headed off for a rock wall and started climbing with them in tow.

"Viago, Nipper you're with me towards position one." and looked to Viago. "Ready?"

"My pal and I are ready, Spartan." Viago happily announced, watching both Spartan and Elites reach the top of the rock wall and disappeared as they moved into the foliage up top.

Taylor nodded. "Good. Get the drone up and put it on auto. I want the tower scouted first, and then this entire mountain reconned and mapped."

Viago nodded back and reached for the ARGUS drone strapped to her lower back. With a grunt, She pulled it free. Gripping the drone like a Frisbee, the Marine flung it out into the storming night sky.

Canterlot palace north tower. Princess Celestia's bedchambers.

Notes and scrolls full of words and sentences stared up at Princess Celestia, as she couldn't put her mind to rest. Not after having gone through the ordeal of where her sister Luna had to go through again, the one where she went about recalling her dream.

After returning from her private study to jot down everything on a new record she had learned and gathered about Luna's dream, everything kept coming back to one thing: a lush landscape covered by a pine forest of perfectly straight trees and a ring of faceless ponies surrounding a crater.

Everything had been the same, except for the last bit. It was this new addition that haunted Celestia. The foreign words that her sister heard snarled to her in her dream were overly disturbing.

Celestia hadn't the courage to tell her sister that in a previous dream of her own, she too had something similar occur to what Luna went through.

Celestia shuddered from the thought as those words from her dream repeated. 'Rosoluguan mormeero. Dohmoh'Eenngahnehnn! Ree harg meri!'

Letting out a heavy-hearted sigh, Celestia carefully took off her head and chest piece regalia first, placing them onto a unique stand before kicking off her hoof guard protectors into a messy pile to the side. Celestia was too bothered by the early night's events to put them in proper order like she always did.

Curling up by the hearth, absorbing the warming fire crackling inside its confines in contrast to the of the cold pelting rain hammering outside against the windows. Celestia curled up on the quilt bedding, laid her head down on the silk comfort and closed her eyes, deep in thought.

BOOOM!

Celestia woke with a start.

Peering around with sleepy eyes, Celestia spotted Philomena sitting on her perch; her head burrowed into a wing and sleeping peacefully despite the now hammering rain on the windows from the storm outside. Moving her gaze on up for the clock on the wall she noticed the magic rune keeping the fire alive in the hearth had weakened to such a point that something so simple as somepony just breathing on it could snuff it out.

Celestia looked up at the time.

10 minutes to midnight.

She had nodded off on the floor. Again.

That's the fourteenth time she'd done that this month.

Stifling a yawn, Celestia stretched out her back with a series of popping clicks as she stood while listening for the rolls of the thunder outside to settle down before slowly making headway for the comfort of her bed.

With a little expenditure of magic, Celestia drew back the sheets back and was about to lie down on her bed comfortable mattress when her ears flicked, picking out a strange droning sound as the rumble of another roll of thunder went away.

The peculiar droning was like the vibration of a distant thunder roll but stuck on a loop.

Laying her head down onto the silk pillow, Celestia closed her eyes as she continued to listen when the odd sound suddenly came to a crescendo as a deep reverberating roaring that grated at her ears and-

SCHHHEEE - ROOOAAARRR!

Rudely awoken from her slumber, Philomena emitted a loud, startled screeching squawk and almost fell off her perch in the process. Meanwhile, Celestia grabbed hold of the closest bed pole as the very floor and windows of the room shuddered and shook.

As the tremor and rumbling abated, Celestia picked up another sound. A great many numbers of urgent hoof-falls accompanied by the sounds of armour shuffling about that was rapidly approaching from the hall that leads to her bedroom quarters door.

The hoof-falls cease, and a rapid knocking sounded on the door.

"Enter!" Celestia called out as she slid out of bed, levitated her regalia chest piece back into place. The doors opened just as she finished putting back on her hoof guards.

In the doorway stood her sister Luna and accompanying her were two guards. A batpony stallion from the Night Guard and a pegasus mare from the Royal Guard.

"Sister, I trust you heard that?" Luna said worryingly, coming in with a quick step. The guards stayed outside.

"Yes … and felt it," Celestia said, slipping on her golden hoof guards.

Luna stopped and looked past Celestia to the rumpled cushion in front of the fireplace, then back to her and sporting a sly smile.

"You fell asleep on the floor again, didn't you?"

Celestia looked over at her. "Whatever do you mean?"

Luna pointed with a forehoof to Celestia. "You have carpet marks all over your left flank."

Looking over, Celestia saw the strange pressure marks crisscrossing her coat. "So what if I did?"

"It's not good for your back." Luna teased, bumping her flank into hers.

Celestia bumped her back with a smirk crossing her lips, "and neither is sneaking early morning snacks before bedtime," she paused, "Woona."

Luna's sly smile vanished instantaneously.

"I thought you signed a personal decree for that childish name shall never be spoken of again?" she hissed.

Celestia couldn't help but snigger at her sister's outburst. "But you're so cute when you do that."

"Never again. Please," said Luna, breathing out and calming down.

"Yes, my little Woona," Celestia smirked, barely holding back her giggles.

Luna had all the right intentions to slap her sister across the muzzle as stated clearly in the written decree since she returned, but just the way Celestia said it caused her to burst out laughing instead.

Hearing the droning sound begin to build up again; this one an octave higher in pitch.

"I assume you're here to tell me you saw what caused the noise?" Celestia asked her sister seriously.

"I did not. But those two out there, however, did." Luna looked back to the closed bedchamber doors. "Both saw a sort of angular object that flew at terrific speed, zipping in and out of the clouds as they were on their rounds on the southern perimeter wall."

Celestia looked to the doors as well. "What were the names of these two?"

"One Private Nightshade and Private First Class Ebony Star."

"Hmm," Celestia frowned as she levitated her regalia tiara onto her head. "A batpony that has been rumoured true to have been born with a cutie mark. And a pegasus that has an acute sensitivity to sunlight, hence her temporary reassignment on night watch for a few less strained duties."

Luna scrutinised Celestia with suspicion, "I'm surprised that you know more of what I know of this, Tia."

"Where would Equestria be without our foresight... also eavesdropping on the guards who think they're in the clear helps too."

Horn aglow Celestia opened the doors, falling rain immediately sweeping inside. "Also, there are some things that eavesdropping royal guard gossip can reveal that other forms take very long to process. And the fact I always deliberately chose Ebony Star to be assigned to my security detail for any night-time occasions."

Both walked out into the drenched night with Luna following. The slanting rain hammering into their faces as Celestia closed the doors behind them.

Despite the intensity of the storm outside, the distinctive droning was still being heard, sounding as if it was returning, building up to its crescendo roaring to shake the palace as it had before.

The two peered into the distant murky gloom of the night, their eyes adjusting to the darkness. Meanwhile, the droning sound got louder and louder with each passing moment.

After a few more seconds of nothing when suddenly-

"Sister, there!" Luna exclaimed, pointing a hoof towards a patch of the storm covered the night sky.

"I see them."

Charging down out of a thunderstorm cloud bank like enraged phoenixes out of Tartarus came not one, but three of these alien spacecraft.

The first two were greyish white, resembling science fiction jets but more on the sharp-edged and ugly side. The third trailing in pursuit, however, was anything alike.

This alien aircraft had a more cetacean aspect to it. The craft sported a deep blue metallic sheen, curved features of an aquatic nature. The foreign aircraft looked like it should have been swimming in some deep ocean current rather than zooming through the sky.

One of the grey jets suddenly rolled near a perfect ninety degrees on its side and zoomed sharply upwards while spewing out spheres of white-yellow light behind it. It disappeared as it continued to fly upwards, knifing into the storm clouds.

While one had gone, there was still another grey jet left, and the aquatic looking craft was again approaching head-on, now even closer and threatening. Even though it was partly obscured by the grey one, the front of the blue one suddenly flashed with light of an even brighter blue.

In swift jinking responses, the grey one moved about, throwing itself across the storming sky while almost always turning and rolling at speeds only the most talented of pegasi flyers could in their wildest dreams be able to manoeuvre as streams of small blue orbs skimmed past around it.

There was no doubt the grey jets were being fired upon, attacked by some weapon that used blue-hued magical energy or something that resembled it.

After watching more jinking and gut-wrenching manoeuvres from both aircraft that made even Luna sick to her stomach, the grey jet snapped rolled sharply to the right. Barrel rolled over and turned going left.

Luna recognised the move.

It was an evasive manoeuvre taught in the Pegasus Corps of the E.U.P called a "split S".

Despite the tricky move, the blue craft stayed doggedly locked on the grey one's tail, and its fire began again scoring hits. This time a stream of thick black smoke belched from the rear of the grey craft.

As soon as the black smoke poured out was when the grey jet pitched its nose sharply up. The two alicorn sisters watched as the aircraft travelled vertically for a few seconds; nose pointing to space, ass pointing at the ground, and drastically losing speed in the process.

The blue craft couldn't match the desperate play-by-play move as it tried to stay behind it by doing the same thing.

But it was too little too late and overshot.

Going for the break it created itself, the grey craft pitched forward and levelled out, lined up on the rear of the blue one and let loose with something that detached from its wing and rocketed straight into the back of the blue craft.

One second it was there, the next it was gone. Replaced by a flash of bright white tinged electric blue and expanding falling debris of the aftermath of an explosion.

There was no doubt to the two princesses that these crafts, both appearing to belong to two parties of unknown superior technological advancement had engaged one another to do.

To kill or be killed.

With the falling wreckage of what remained of the other craft falling to earth behind it, the wounded grey craft still trailing black smoke lazily rolled inverted and blundered belly first into a cloud bank then to seemingly reappear without anything wrong with it now.

There was neither no smoke or damage to see.

Celestia squinted her eyes and had a feeling that they had been watching not one, but two of them. The one, she and her sister, had seen dogfighting the blue craft had a friend up in the clouds. This supposition was proven correct as of the one with the smoky tail reappeared, flew alongside its undamaged wingmate before veering at a right angle and flew off into the night.

With a sudden great beat from her wings, Celestia took off from the balcony and flew towards the undamaged for an intercept as it continued to soar towards Canterlot, much to Luna's surprise.

"Tia? Whereby Starswirl's Beard do you think you're off to?! Surely, you're not ser-" Celestia heard her sister shout before her words faded into the wind.

Celestia didn't question herself as to why she'd taken off, but deep down she knew this was the right thing to do. Entrap this thing in her magic, uncover who the individuals were piloting these things and put a stop to it.

She increased her airspeed, closing the distance with the incoming craft.

As she closed the distance, the boxy craft grew to size to that of a royal carriage and didn't look that boxy or sharp-angled anymore now that she was that little bit closer. Its body was futuristic and streamlined, and it's grey colours exotic and beautiful in a weird way. Although not that it mattered now.

Almost head-on with it, Celestia witnessed the craft roll on its side to avoid a head-on collision, but it didn't matter now.

Coming to a jerking stop in midair and surrounded by a soft golden colour, Celestia smiled with satisfaction with the successful catch.

Gotcha! Now then, let's see who you belong to…?

Careful not to exert too much magic into it all at once, Celestia channelled little by little bit into the spell to conduct a search of the craft and, more importantly, find its occupant. However, what she found instead astounded her.

Even though the cone-like front half, of what she initially assumed was the cockpit, large enough to accommodate an adult-sized pony if one was to lay down inside, no living thing was detected within to dictate its actions.

The entire thing was one big automated machine. From tip to tail, all the way down to the tips of its wings contained all kinds of strange internal components of wiring, crystal, some variation of explosive gunpowder, and a whole lot of other electronic bits and brass crammed inside that she had no clue as to what they were or even did.

But if it was all controlled by electronics, the commands of what it had carried out had to have come from somewhere, and more distressingly, someone.

As if the machine wasn't loud enough before, Celestia almost cancelled her containment field when two roaring white-hot cones of fire ejected from the alien craft's rear. While that happened, segmented flat pieces of metal, large and small, began to move up and down or side to side in a somewhat frantic manner on its wings and short stubby 'V' tailfin.

It took Celestia a moment to realise this was how the grey craft powered and controlled itself from crashing into the ground as it soared through the air.

Try as it might and free itself from Celestia's magic containment field, it wasn't going anywhere. Not without any air flowing over its fixed metal wings to keep it aloft, its actions were pointless.

The grey craft somehow learned that very fact, as all at once it fell silent. The blaring roar of its powerful engines died and flicked out. While at the same time its moving control surfaces froze, ceasing all movement.

"How curious," Celestia voiced as she heard the beating of wings and deep breathing behind her.

"You could've.. warned me. You... have waited for… some guards… to provide security…" said Luna, breathing heavily.

"I think that's a little late for that, don't you think?"

Chlunk!

A sizeable conical tube, tapering at each end with one pair of little stubby fins near its rear, detached from under the craft's innermost left wing. It tumbled end over end into the darkness towards the ground eventually somewhere below.

Celestia kept her eyes on the craft to see what other surprises it had in store when the tips of its wings and tail fins lit up suddenly with tiny white and red lights. All of which began to pulse in an unknown pattern.

Hmm…?

"Tia! Watch out!" Luna cried, horn surging with magical power.

With the grey machine still encased in her magic, Celestia turned at her sister's warning to look in the direction Luna had faced.

Swooping down from the clouds in uncanny grace due to their odd shape came three blue flying craft. On first glance, they looked like the other one that had been blown to pieces only far, far larger. Close to the size of a medium-sized dirigible yacht.

But it wasn't the case as they got closer and appearing somewhat flat, piscine, and teardrop-like shaped.

One of the teardrop-like crafts angled in towards the two Alicorns and the front of one blazed as a flashing blue. The blue bolts of energy tore through the air, with two striking her containment field.

Not wanting the grey machine exploding in her face, Celestia released it from her magic.

For its part, the grey craft, free of the princess's magical grip, plunged like a stone for a second before the shrill roaring noise of its engines returned and the aircraft shot forwards, away from them before going vertical and spearing into the clouds.

The trio of teardrop ships careened past, each showing off their twin articulated tails steering the purple-blue exhaust coming from their backsides. With a sluggish and graceless move, the trio of ships turned back around.

Celestia felt a primal fear rise deep from within her soul and screamed for immediate action.

Move! Move now!

Celestia barely began to move forward when a flurry of blue bolts of energy zipped around Celestia, but bizarrely none of them hit her. Shimmering from the recent energy bombardment between her and the incoming teardrop craft was a deep blue protective barrier. Luna's horn was aglow fiercely with magical energy.

In retaliation to this, the two other craft opened fire as well, adding their firepower and putting more strain on Luna as she concentrated harder on keeping it up.

A massive blue sparkly ball-like thing dropped out from the belly of the third teardrop alien craft as it passed low over them and impacted right in the centre of Luna's protective shield.

CRRRRAAACK!

An enormous explosion erupted against the barrier with tremendous force.

Luna's shield failed instantaneously, cracking and falling apart in a million fragments.

With the barrier down, the teardrop alien ships opened up on the alicorn sisters. Blue plasma stitched its way across Luna's side like a scythe.

From chest all along her flank, each bolt burned and blistered her dark blue coat and skin.

A horrific pained scream erupted from Luna's throat.

"Luna!" Celestia cried in shock as her sister fell uncontrollably from the sky.

Luna fell for a distance before splashing headfirst into a deep lake.

BRRRRRRTTTTT- Fwoosh!

The hull of one of the incoming teardrop craft rippled an electric bright blue and sluggishly, veered off from its attack run on Celestia.

The second blue craft that had joined behind the first was greeted in the nose by two bright orange explosions, knocking the teardrop blue craft off course but not destroying it.

Inverting out of the clouds above Celestia came, not one, but three of the sleek grey craft which included the one with the smoking tail.

Saved by the three grey aircraft that barrelled directly for the teardrop-shaped ships without hesitation, Celestia didn't linger around to watch, and she speared into the lake like a knife. A few moments later, she broke the surface of the water, gasping for air as she hefted her unconscious sister's head above the water and began paddling for the shore.

Back on dry land, Celestia checked and found Luna still drew breath, which was a good sign. It meant her sister hadn't breathed in any water while she was under the water and drowned. However, she could not get Luna to wake no matter how hard or what she tried.

To say Princess Celestia was irate before would be an understatement. She was furious; seething within from witnessing such a horrendous act of violence against her sister.

These blue teardrop craft had attacked and hurt her sister without reasonable cause.

Stepping away from her unconscious sister with tears of rage, she had to put a halt to this — all of it.

Celestia launched herself high up into the night sky, her horn and body encasing in a golden aura, her eyes turning white from the surging magic while her mane and tail turned to fire shining brighter than the sun she raised and lowered.

All the rain evaporated mid hydrant pour. Only the Everfree forest, Ponyville and the surrounding areas far off to the west unaffected.

With a murderous glare, Celestia encased the first teardrop craft she saw coming at her with the containment spell and threw it right back with a warcry at the two other ones that just blasted through the burning debris of the two autonomous aircraft.

The cockpit of Pelican G97H-TC Uniform 'Ugly' 404

It was like someone had come along and turned off the tap.

"That was... sudden," Relcam said intrigued, as he peered through the plexiglass of the cockpit as the drumming rain just receded midway through its hydrant like pour.

Allencourt peered through as well before opening the cockpit door and shook it off with a shrug, "Yeah well, just like the Intel said about this world, freak weather. C'mon, now since there's a break in this, let us see if we can't fix our instruments so we can fly on out of here in a straight line."

She patted 'Relcam lightly on the arm as she went by him into the cabin.

"Roan Leader to Ugly."

'Relcam watched as Allencourt went outside before touching the flashing COM icon on the nearest screen. "Ugly here, send it."

"Observation and scouting of the Spire complete. Trekking for the source of the dark zone. Shouldn't take long to destroy it."

"Roger. We've got the long-range uplinks back again, and we're forwarding your progress status back to Command. Be advised; we're working on basic navigation. Advanced navigation is offline. Check back in when you destroy the generator. We figure we'll be ready to lend you a hand on any clean up you might need before picking you up from the site. Over."

"Copy that, Ugly. We'll see if we can at least try to save something fun for you to do. Roan Leader. Out."

Allencourt's voice sounded over the COM in 'Relcam's ear, "Shall we get started?"

'Relcam nodded to himself and turned on the port side wing searchlight.

Fifteen minutes later the storm clouds in the sky began to break up and scatter, revealing the multitude of twinkling pinpricks of stars and a nearly full moon, its light illuminating their Pelican in a wash of soft bluish-white moonlight.

"Ossis! Is it still stuck like that?!" called a demanding voice of Allencourt over the radio.

'Relcam looked out through the cockpit canopy and caught a glimpse of Allencourt's shuffling combat boots sticking out from underneath the dropship's rotational nose gun-pod.

"Yes!"

'Relcam locked down in disgust by what he saw. Both his own and his gunner's flight instrument panels, including the backup analogue Attitude Director Indicator, were still giving false readings. This time both were indicating that the Pelican was upside down.

There was a chiming clinking of tools against one another followed by a hard clunk against the underside of the hull. "Hnngh. I tell ya what, Ossis. These interferences? They're great in a sense, blocking the Covies from getting an accurate ID hit on us from anywhere on this bizarre rock, but it's cursed enough that it has has a conscience as we flew back in the direction of where Roan 'll be, and decides to foxtrot both our systems to- ah, dammit. Hey! Mind tossing the arc thingy down here!"

'Relcam rummaged through the kit for the desired tool for a minute. When he found it, he tossed the black and blue bottle that landed next to her boots. "I understand. What is the human saying for this? Life's a hitch?"

"Bitch. Life's a bitch, Ossis," Allencourt strained with something. She stretched a leg out, knocking the soldering tool with a boot so that it rolled under the fuselage and up into her waiting open palm.

In the cockpit, 'Relcam began to hear intermediate sounds of a plasma torch cutting through metal coming from under the floor as Allencourt went into with whatever she had determined could modify and fix the problem that was plaguing their instrumentations.

The noises stopped, and a loud muffled cheer of mock jubilation followed. "Phew. Huzzah! … Okay, try it now! And don't forget to give it a good whack this time!"

'Relcam flicked switches and pressed buttons, rebooting the Pelicans flight systems. As the screens flickered on, he punched the top of the instrument flight control panel hard with a closed fist. One buzzt sound and hum later, any malfunctioning analogue aids and dials either flipped or spun back to show their correct display orientation. He pressed the test button for the ADI.

Allencourt turned her COM off and shouted from beneath the nose, "Well? What the hell happened up there? Did it work?"

"For now," replied 'Relcam as he rechecked the systems.

Allencourt grunted as she shimmied her way back out from working in the cramped nose of the Pelican.

When she finally squirmed out the soft moonlight was now poking through the clouds and illuminating her face well enough to see it splotched with grime and specks of green-tinted hydraulic fluid.

She leaned up on her elbows in the short grass and raised her visor up.

"I wonder how our drones' are faring with this shit in their guidance systems?" She said, looking up to see 'Relcam standing over her.

His mandibles arranged in what was the sangheili version of a wide grin. He held a hand out towards Allencourt.

"And wipe that off your jaws, Ossis. I know perfectly well what you saw, and it's not fair on me." Allencourt smirked as she was hauled up by 'Relcam. "That stupid scuttlebutt reasons why the stupid quote on the Gallipoli's bulletin board hasn't changed."

At this, 'Relcam rearranged his jaws into what passed for a smirk and started to laugh when there was a loud snap as something stepped on a twig or a rotting branch.

Both pilots spun, pistols drawn. All traces of their friendly banter was gone. 'Relcam put himself in front of Allencourt. She understood why. If Covenant were here to take them out, 'Relcam had shields to protect him. She didn't.

It wasn't a second later when-

"By Luna's-"

"Shhhh, keep it down. It's going to hear you."

"Corporal, don't you mean both?"

Clang!

The various voices ceased as the sound of something clad in armour collapsed on the ground.

'Relcam motioned to the dropship as he switched out his plasma pistol for his Storm Rifle. Allencourt palmed an access panel on the side of the dropship and switched off the wing searchlight.

The area plunged into soft moonlit darkness, 'Relcam primed his weapon. He winced as the faint whine of the rifle warmed up cut loudly through the still air like plasma sword.

Meanwhile, Allencourt flipped down her visor and night vision activated, turning her surroundings into a grainy green glow.

The hushed hissing voices came again,

"Hey, do you think they picked up on that?" questioned a new one.

"Jeez, what made you think that bat brain? We all saw that." answered another.

"What do we do now? The protocol doesn't say anything about this. Nothing at all."

"What are we going to tell the sergeant? That-"

"FREEZE! Hold it right there!" Allencourt ordered loudly enough to scare a Grunt into wetting itself. "Any sudden moves, and it's a bullet to your brain. Don't move, and you won't die. Or move and die with my bullet in your skull. Your choice."

If Allencourt was honest at that point with herself, it was damn near impossible to figure out as to what she was aiming at on the oddly shaped figure, but it had to be one of the species that made up the Covenant's ranks because whatever they were, all of them had just spoken in clear English.

First things first, it wasn't human nor sangheili, no fooling anyone with that. They were the only UNSC/USE team deployed this far out here. Most of all, if they were friendlies, Allencourt would have at least have their status and call signs displayed on her HUD in blue.

So, what were these things?

Unggoy?

Only Grunts were known to speak English over their native language. Mostly because it was fun and challenging; however, not all Grunts got the grammar right mind you; many of the gas breathers had a habit of mixing human language in the wrong order on occasion.

The shadowy figure stayed put, standing still and probably at a complete loss on what it should do next.

It occurred to Allencourt that something felt off about this, just the way it had paused. It reminded her of how a deer or an animal would have reacted if caught staring into the glaring floodlights of a Warthog. She immediately ditched the idea that it was a Grunt.

No. Not big enough and it didn't sound high pitched, scared or wimpy enough. Kig-Yar then?

Allencourt pointed, "Alright, you lot in the trees! What you're gonna' do is that you're going to walk towards me and only me. Flee to your buddies; we'll cut you down. Got it?"

The shapes in the dark seemed to take an even longer pause, presumably trying to figure out before slowly moving in acceptance in a beeline straight for her in compliance with her orders.

Nope. Not Kig-Yar. Not slender or birdlike enough. Then again, the Kig-Yar were known to be sly and crafty birds when a potential score is involved. Their Pelican would be worth a lot on the Black Market if they happen to kill them and steal it, and the shifty looking things slowly moving towards her through her sights appeared as if they sported some sort of quills on their heads. But what's with the perfect English then?

"That's it. Nice and slow, now."

Yanme'e?

…

Yeah right.

The shadowy Covenant figures emerged straight into the moonlight and Allencourt immediately recognised a problem.

They weren't Covenant.

Allencourt didn't flinch as a raindrop hit her squarely on the nose. She blinked rapidly, mentally shaking her head to clear it of any fatigue from what she was looking at exactly.

She began to feel sick when the realisation finally hit her like a swinging Hunter's shield to her gut.

Shit.

It was hard going, but Celestia knew what she was doing now.

Having figured out the teardrop-like alien craft had shields of their own of some kind protecting them from damage, Celestia found a way to drain the shields.

She found out that the longer she kept them contained within a magic field to fling them away in a different direction or hit them with powerful blasts of magic, the more the alien's shields weakened until they failed and exposed them to be inflicted by her attacks.

Celestia, with all her might, encased and flung around the second last of the teardrop craft directly into the path of the other remaining ship that began to fire on her for the seventh time.

The two ships met and blew up spectacularly, becoming a mixed ball of purple-blue explosive carnage that fell to the ground with a ground shuddering whumph.

All at once, the sounds of the night returned. Even the rain from the storm began to fall at a mere drizzle.

Letting out a long and collected deep breath of calm, Celestia finally relaxed. The intense magic surrounding her horn and the blinding golden aura around her disappeared. Her mane returned to its usual wavy four toned sights, and she flew back and landed next to where she had left her sister to lay.

As Celestia touched down lightly on the wet grass, Luna stirred.

"Luna?" Celestia said, kneeling in the wet grass next to her. "Sister? Are you alright?"

"Ugh," Luna groaned, groggily sitting up and putting a hoof to her throbbing sore head. "Tia? Wha- what happened? Why am I soaking wet? The last thing I remember was projecting a shield for us from those things, then Wham, there was a blinding flash-" she was immediately cut off by Celestia's wings as she brought Luna close in for a warming cuddle.

"Don't ever do that to me again."

"Ahhh… do what now?" Luna looked around noticing the twisted chaos of metallic carnage strewn around the area of the lake. The purple-blue fires that were burning from the wrecks bathed the lake's surface with a haunting blue glow.

Astonished and slightly put off by this, Luna pushed Celestia a little out of the embrace and looked into her eyes. "What happened while I was out? What did you do?"

"I'll explain what I can. Better when both of us will be warm and dry again. Can you fly?" said Celestia, examined her sister's wings as she stretched hers from the embrace.

Luna stood up and stretched her wings. Other than the few prangs of stiffness and an odd stinging sensation down her side, Luna otherwise felt fine.

"Stiff. But I can manage," said Luna with a smile.

Celestia smiled back and looked around herself at the damage she had created in her fit of protective fury. "We'll come back here in the morning when its day-light. But right now let's return home, stick to what we know and gathered so far."

"I like the sound of that, sister." Luna agreed, and both of them took off into the night.

Had the two princesses turned to look over their shoulders to look one last time at the strewn wreckage about the area before they left, they would've noticed a large piece from one of the Seraph wreckages shift before being booted away with considerable force.

Crawling out on its belly and eventually standing tall in the drizzling rain a little worse for wear, emerged a tall bipedal digitigrade creature, clad in dark blue-purple armour and with a sizeable crack running through its near-transparent blue face shield of its angular-like helmet.

Tightly grasping to both the hilt of its energy sword and plasma rifle, the Covenant sangheili growled out in frustration at its lost quarry.

It scrutinised the destruction and carnage strewn about him. With a final sneering growl it headed off, sprinting through the dark in the direction of exactly where the two princesses of this place would retreat too.

And there will be no place to hide.

Not 10 minutes later, both princesses returned to Canterlot without further incident from any other flying craft or rumbling droning sounds and landed back on the balcony they took off from in relative silence.

"But Tia, that spell," Luna said apprehensively, walking back indoors with Celestia, "After what you did, there is a reason why the last time we-"

Celestia put out a wing and pressed the tip up to her sister's lips. "I remember the dangers to the mind, dear sister. I wouldn't have asked you to do it with me in the first place if you didn't trust my judgement."

"So, where do you think would be a good place to do this? Doing this in one of our rooms is certainly out of the question. They would contain too much sentimental value if something were to go awry."

"The dungeons?" Celestia suggested.

Luna looked up in apprehension, "Just how much do you remember when we tried this last time, sister?"

"Not as much as I thought I did judging by your look. Then what is your suggestion for where it should be?"

"Well, definitely not the archives. Don't want a repeat of that. Hmm…" Luna said, tapping her chin in thought. "The throne room. Spacious, robust and importantly, not underground."

Celestia stopped over by the bedchamber doors and opened them to reveal the guards still on the entrance in silence that Luna had brought with her at the beginning of all this.

"Agreed."

Facing each other, the two sat on their cushions in the throne room and delicately touched the tips of their horns against one another.

"Right," Celestia breathed evenly and slowly, closing her eyes in preparation, "Deep breaths in and out. Slowly release and-"

There was a sharp crackle of electricity as both princesses magic started to intertwine with each other and flow down their horns.

It wasn't unlike experiencing the worst brain-freeze Celestia had ever had, but it was more akin to somepony driving an ice-pick deep into the back of her skull.

"What do you see?" she asked her sister, as she strained to keep the memory of the craft as stable as she could.

Luna increased the magical flow that, in turn, resulted in more clarity of the memory's quality.

"I see…? I see…? I see the nose, swept wings, those tail fins-"

Celestia cracked an eye open, "Skip that part, could you? Look for identifying features. Crests. Symbols. Markings… Things like that."

"Markings…" Luna briefly opened her eyes in triumph. "Huzzah! There, I see them, crests, three of them. One is occurring more often than the others."

"Describe them."

Luna furrowed her brow in concentration. "Uhh, let's see here…" and began to describe what she was seeing.

Of the first she described was of a symbol painted halfway up near the nose. It was an intricate and colourful circular crest emblem of black, white, and yellow that depicted a dark mountain range with what looked like the sun cresting between a gap, but the most attention-grabbing of the crest was that boarding around the outside like a ring.

"There are words... in a ring around it. Huh. Most of them are all in-"

But before Luna could go further in detail, there was a sudden feedback surge of magic, and both princesses violently convulsed.

Seeing the princesses in agony, the two Night Guards in the room rushed over to help.

"Halt! Stay back! Do not come closer." Luna commanded through gritted teeth, holding out a hoof to keep them from coming closer.

One of them didn't appear that convinced as Luna cringed as she heard the words, "Are you sure, Princess? Perhaps this can-"

"Stay your tongue! Do not interrupt us." Celestia snapped in a fury, horn still aglow with magic, from Luna's to face the insubordinate guard.

The intertwined magic that was once swirling around both their horns crackled fiercely before sputtering out.

Realising he had overstepped his bounds, the Night Guard fell back. His shocked partner quickly escorted him from the room to stop Celestia going off at him even more.

"Tia," Luna said in concern. "While he was indeed out of place, he does bring forward a good point. This spell doesn't react well to high stress and anger, remember? It was this very thing that caused it to go wrong last time. That is why it works best if those undergoing are well-rested and calm."

Celestia shot Luna a furious glare. "Those things attacked us without provocation! They injured you."

Well, not exactly. Hurt? Yes. Injured? Not quite.

Granted, both Celestia and Luna weren't expecting or prepared for this type of thing to happen, their physiology of being alicorns helped stave off that severe injury. Had they been something else otherwise, the injuries sustained by being hit with that kind of plasma would've been horrendous.

"I want to know why the automated aircraft didn't. It and its others had every chance and opportunity to attack us unprepared, yet decided instead to defend us. The sooner we know what those markings are, then the better we can understand what is going on."

Luna sighed as she re-lit her horn alongside her sister's; she knew what Celestia said was true. She wanted to go through this as much as she did.

Luna pressed the tip of her horn against Celestia's and re-entered her sister's mind straight back for the ringed words.

"Words and numbers. All in capitals in Gryffic and Equus" stated Luna.

That was quite surprising to hear that Equus, quite a very dead language and that was succeeded by what is called Ponish in Equestria these days, had been used. But even more so was the use of Gryffic.

Was this some technology the griffons failed to set forward to the table? Celestia thought to herself but immediately rejected it. No, if they did, they would've been boasting about their progression in that field long ago before the annual diplomatic talks. There was more to this than initially met the eye.

The sound of her sister's voice brought Celestia back to the situation at hoof."Unsc Gallipoli. Stalwart class. 2541, F-F-G dash 1915. Duty Ante Nos."

"Duty ante nos from Equus to Ponish is Duty Before Us," Celestia noted as she translated.

The next symbol Luna began to describe was located on the left wing, and it consisted of some two-pronged blade with two spread eagle wings behind it. This one still depicted as a circular crest, but it was smaller, less attention-grabbing, and was a complete light grey; almost blending into the wing of the craft.

"No. 507, unsc slash-"

"Unsc again?" said Celestia in interest, her ears picking out the word.

"Yes, sister. But perhaps I'm not transcribing this right. Maybe it's short hoof for an acronym of sorts. For what those initials that form it, though? I do not know,"

"What comes after the slash part before I interrupted you?"

"Use," Luna said.

"Anything after that?"

"Joint Expeditionary Strike Group dash 7, recon air and space wing. G-L-I dash 77."

Joint expeditionary strike group. A military force. Correction: an alien military force.

Celestia hadn't heard the term 'expeditionary' use in such a way since several hundred years ago. Going by what Luna had told, this joint expeditionary group was one of seven, and for all, she knew it was roaming about their world and Equestria somewhere given the description of the first symbol her sister described sounded like this aircraft came from a class of spacefaring vessel.

"And the last crest?"

"Just a second Tia. There's something I can see scratched in underneath."

"Be quick about it. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," Celestia muttered through now gritted teeth. "Those migraines, from last time? They're getting to me."

"Dormieris cum… uno oculo… aperta. Resurgence." Luna said, "'Sleep with one eye open. Resurgence.' Sister, I've never heard such an expression used before in our time, have you?"

Celestia had a good inkling as to what those words meant. She had heard the modern-day translation of that particular saying brought up by Shining Armor during a E.U.P. defence review a few weeks later after being promoted to Captain of the Guard in Canterlot.

"I do, but later," waving a hoof for Luna to hurry it up.

The last marking Luna scrutinised was the most prevalent on the aircraft, appearing more than three times. As she described it in detail, she probably should've started with this symbol first as to avoid beating around the bush as it answered what UNSC stood for.

The symbol was that of an eagle, its wings spread high and wide, and a shield in the centre with the word UNSC spilling out across it. Below that was a ribbon with the words 'United Nations Space Command'.

The intertwined magic dissipated from around their horns as the two separated.

"'U' 'N' 'S' 'C'. An acronym for United Nations Space Command." Celestia groaned, exhausted and rubbing her throbbing head. "Of course, it is."

"Tia," Luna started, "could this UNSC be the source of all the things that have happened over our land as of late?"

"Perhaps… But I have a feeling they aren't the ones responsible."

"How are you so sure?"

"I don't know." Celestia shook her head. "A feeling. And maybe it's because when those other crafts that attacked the UNSC automated craft, why did the UNSC drone come to assist me? Luna, there is something here that we do not see aside from these two forces fighting each other. And I can't shake the feeling that something drastic is going to happen. And when it does, neither of us is going to be prepared even if we try."

Luna went silent, not because she didn't have any response to that or the fact Celestia was right in that regard, but also because there was a clamour as a Night Guard suddenly burst in through the doors.

"Princess…" The earth guardspony began before noticing that Celestia was there and quickly corrected himself. "Princesses, forgive me for barging in such a manner. I bring an urgent report from Captain Greystone."

Celestia nodded to him. "Speak,"

"The Captain reports that there is a small thing roaming the sculpture garden hedge maze and that he requires your presence."

"Greystone requested that?" Celestia asked, surprised. "That's not like him at all. I'm sure there's some mistake on somepony's part with whatever he is dealing with... this small thing is."

"Princess Celestia, I- We… We've never seen or dealt with anything unlike it before. It's a grey flying machine of some sort, and it's been roaming from statue to statue. It is flat and disk-like, making a strange droning buzz sound like a bee or a wasp."

Celestia and Luna looked to each other.

Luna turned to the Night Guard and narrowed her eyes. "It wouldn't happen to have something like an eagle marking on it, would it?"

The guard looked as if he had been caught like a deer in the carriage headlights before giving an unnerved swallow and nodded in the affirmative.