Halo: The Interlopers

Mark stood in the Ponyville Public Library, doing what he did every month: taking inventory. It was dull, mundane work compared to what he used to do, but it wasn’t all bad.

He didn’t have to smell blood, sweat and smoke anymore. No more artificial thunder, no more screams of dying men and aliens. He didn’t have to worry about the responsibilities of being a leader anymore. No more wetwork and morally reprehensible activities. Just a quiet peace.

After finishing inventory, he took a seat next to Twilight Sparkle, and she kissed him on the cheek. They’d been together for a few months now, and with Spike and Scootaloo they’d become a sort of multi-species family. They ate breakfast and dinner together, watched movies together, and generally went about life.

Having fled from his past, Mark kept no weapons or emergency supplies. He’d lessened his exercise routine to almost nothing and put on a thin layer of fat.

A blink later, he saw Jason and Ethan dead. Another blink and the Eagle Sword fleet was burning. A changeling ripped out Scootaloo’s throat. A hunter turned Spike into a puddle of semi-organic matter. A Mamba contractor brutally raped and beat Twilight before shooting her.

He was unable to blink. Unable to breathe. He couldn’t move his eyes. He couldn’t move his body. He was helpless, ineffectual, useless.

***

Mark awoke, sweating profusely. Reflecting on his nightmare, he concluded it had little meaning.

Except that my subconscious hates me.

He looked around, and found he wasn’t in the rebel camp; this building looked ancient. It was a stone temple of some kind, similar to the ones seen on the Delta Halo.

After he sat up, he shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he realized he wasn’t wearing the modified ODST armor anymore; he was wearing his set of MJOLNIR armor. A glance at the HUD his implants displayed revealed that less than three hours had passed since he’d gone to sleep.

His implants were tamper-proof, precluding the possibility that he was being duped. A quick glance suggested the suit was indeed his armor. Every scratch, scuff and scorch was as he remembered it. Hesitantly, he put on his helmet, and it interfaced with his CNI implant to once again confirm it was his.

There’s still one more test…

Mark opened the hard-case on his left thigh and reached in. One of the few things he kept in the compartment was a small golden cross, given to him by the foster parents who’d raised him before they died in the Covenant invasion of Biko. He’d kept it through his SPARTAN-III training, and through every mission up until he was given his current suit of armor.

When that happened, he put it in there for safekeeping, a sort of reminder of his life before the Covenant. Almost nobody knew he had it. Only Jason and Ethan knew, because he’d asked them to send it with him if he died; whether he was ejected into space in a capsule, buried, or cremated, he wanted that sole memento of peace with him.

He felt around for it, and when he found what he thought was it, he withdrew his hand. There in his palm was the trinket inscribed with his name. He stuck the item back into the hardcase and sealed it. This was his armor.

A golden field enveloped him, blinding him and giving his motion tracker all kinds of presumably false readings. Mark felt a brief period of blinding pain before he found himself in a different room. Panting, he looked around.

“Have a seat, take your helmet off, relax,” A voice echoed hypnotically. Reluctantly, Mark obeyed, resting on a couch. By now, his sweat had evaporated, and he felt that familiar feeling of his second skin return. He was missing his weapons, he didn’t know where he was or how he got there. He was flying blind. But at least with his armor on, he felt almost safe.

An elderly unicorn cantered in, and Mark recognized him immediately.

“Star-Swirl,” He hissed.

The stallion sat down, completely calm. Mark was unable to move very far from the couch he sat on before an invisible wall halted his progress.

“Calm down, Colonel. I’m not going to torture you today. I just want to talk. You can ask me anything, and I’ll answer honestly. But you only get one before I get to ask several, so choose wisely. And you will answer truthfully; you’re in a magical field with that very effect.” He seemed benign in his attitude, even though Mark knew that was an illusion.

“How did you get my armor?”

A soft chuckle. “Ask the easy one, why don’t you. It was in storage on Equis, and one of my agents liberated it. I thought it’d be better if you felt at home, and I concluded that the best way to do that was to give you your armor. Now it’s my turn to ask you some questions.”

Mark expected something involving Eagle Sword’s security. Something Star-Swirl knew he wouldn’t answer normally.

“Do you think you’re going to Heaven?” He asked almost nonchalantly.

“Yes.”

“Really? Someone like you, with the blood of over a hundred innocents on your hands? With thousands of lives taken by you? With all the torture you’ve performed, cruelty you’ve inflicted, violence you’ve dealt out? It doesn’t seem very Christian to me. Of course, I could be wrong.”

No. He’s right… You suspected it years ago. You probably sealed it yesterday.

You’re going to Hell, and you know it.

“No…” He muttered. Star-Swirl seemed to catch it however, as he seemed satisfied.

“Next question, and this is for the camera, because Twilight Sparkle’s watching right now, from a room in this very structure.”

“Hit me,” Mark said defiantly.

“Do you love Twilight?”

His heart began to pound against his ribs as he struggled to lie.

Just a little white lie. You can do it.

“Yes. And I know I’m not good enough for her. I don’t deserve her. She deserves someone better than me. She deserves everything I can’t give her.”

***

“Do you love Twilight?”

The mare in question was stuck in a room, alone. Her only company since Argus removed the transformation spell he’d cast and revealed himself to be Star-Swirl the Bearded had been these screens. All of them showing Mark.

She wanted to feel disgust at what he’d done and to an extent she did. She wanted to no longer be in love with him after she saw him kill all those ponies. Innocent civilians. But the tortured inflection of his voice, the clearly agonizing nightmares he suffered, the obvious regret he showed at completing an objective he had little choice in completing; they all indicated he wasn’t a heartless monster. Were that true, he'd have accepted the collateral damage that masked his presence and moved on calmly.

But part of her still mocked her emotional side.

Princess Celestia was right, Part of her whispered. You’ve fallen for a monster. A man with no reservations for killing or maiming or torturing. Maybe he’s even the fabled Beast, who could just as easily destroy Equis as save it.

I can save him. From himself. He just needs something to hold on to.

“Yes. And I know I’m not good enough for her. I don’t deserve her. She deserves someone better than me. She deserves everything I can’t give her.”

Twilight Sparkle began to break down.

“If you could, would you drop everything to be with her? Assuming you could give her ‘everything she needed’, as you put it.”

“Yes. No question about it.”

***

“So you’d stop being a SPARTAN to be with her?”

“Yes.”

“And you think that given that chance, you could change?”

“Yes, I do.”

Star-Swirl nodded, and closed his eyes to think for a moment.

Mark clung to that hope. It was all he really had, a hope for a better future. He knew he wasn’t the best person, and he probably was going to Hell. But he still felt he deserved to be happy after all he’d gone through in his life.

Constant loss. Physical, mental and emotional pain. Endless conflict and strife filled his existence, with few escapes. A handful of close friends. The occasional movie night onboard a UNSC starship to escape from his taxing life. A life he hadn’t even chosen.

The call of duty would always be there, but its grip on him hadn’t wavered in the slightest since he was first inducted into the UNSC. And now, the realization that even in the afterlife there would be no end to his agony had shattered that. Surely he deserved something in return for everything he’d sacrificed, everything and everyone he’d lost?

Star-Swirl spoke up.

“It might surprise you to know that I'm quite keen on human comic books, especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero; Superman. Not a great comic book, not particularly well-drawn, but the mythology; the mythology is not only great, it's unique.”

“Now, the staple of the superhero mythology is; there is the superhero and there is the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spiderman is actually Peter Parker; when that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spiderman and it is in that characteristic, Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent, his outfit with the big red 'S', that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes.”

Where’s he going with this?

“What Kent wears; the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume; that’s the costume that Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views humanity, and what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s meek, he’s unsure of himself, he’s naive. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race, somewhat like SPARTAN A-217 and Mark Thompson.”

Ah. So the point emerges.

“You would wear the costume of Mark Thompson, a civilian who goes about his life quietly and unassumingly. But you were raised SPARTAN A-217, and every morning when you wake up, you’ll still be SPARTAN A-217. ”

“Are you calling me a superhero?”

“I’m calling you a killer,” Star-Swirl answered, amused. “A natural-born killer. You always have been, and you always will be. Living in Ponyville, working as the librarian’s assistant. Reading next to her by a fire. Checking out books. That’s you, trying to disguise yourself as a worker bee. That’s you trying to blend in with the hive. But you’re not a worker bee. You’re an extremely efficient killer bee. And no matter how much alcohol you drink, or civilian food you eat, how out of emotionally attached you might get, nothing in the universe will ever change that.”

And with that, Mark Thompson’s last hope was shattered. His past and present were covered in black ink. And now his future was revealed, ironically to be censored with more of that ink.

The quiet hope that someday his sacrifices would be repaid had consoled him for the longest time; it shored up the traits that defined him alongside his perseverance and his sense of duty. Without it, his sense of duty and mental resilience remained intact and as unshakable as ever, but everything else became fragile. He'd said it before, that the only meaning in his life was the mission, but now he felt it was finally true.