Halo: Equestrian Campaign

“Twilight, something horrible has happened!” Applejack burst into Twilight’s Library. The purple unicorn spat out her tea in surprise as the orange pony ran through the front door.

“What? What’s going on, what’s happened?”

“It’s my sister! She said her and her two friends saw something in the apple orchard. When I asked her what it looked like, she said it was two large monsters covered in black that stood on two legs. Twilight, it’s just like what Zecora saw! Those...things are real, and they’re moving closer to our homes!” Twilight froze for a moment. She had no idea what to say. There were more than one of those things that had attacked Zecora, and they were bold enough to get as close as Sweet Apple Acres.

“That’s… not good.” stuttered Twilight. “We know they’re dangerous, i don’t want to think about what they’re planning to do. Is Applebloom alright? was she hurt?”

“Fortunately, no. Nopony was hurt, but one of the things got really close to them and tried to touch my sister. When she screamed, it ran away towards the Everfree.”

“Well, that certainly confirms where those things are hiding. Applejack, make sure your sister and her friends are on the next chariot out of here. I’ll let the others know what’s happened, and make sure they spread the word. Hopefully that’ll kick this evacuation into gear. Celestia willing, we’ll get everypony out of here before those aliens come around here again.”

“Alright, I’ll get on that right away.” With that, Applejack sprinted out of the library, and back to her house. Twilight remained in her home for a moment longer, taking time to collect her thoughts. Taking a deep breath, Twilight got to her hooves and walked out the door.

“No time to panic. If I want everything to work out, I need to move fast.”

Slowly, you and three other ODSTs stalk through the dense forest. You’d been following the five ponies from the village for about an hour or so now, taking note of their behaviors. It was by chance that you and Chris happened to cross Tyler and Brendan while they were hunting. Or maybe it was luck. If you hadn’t run into each other,the other two might have ended up hunting and killing the horses.

The equines spoke with each other like other sentient species did. Fully comprehending them was hard, however, as their language was quite disorienting. It was structured like english, and used english words as well. However, it was almost like they were only half speaking english. Some words sounded nothing like anything you ever heard of, and that was especially disorienting when one whole sentence was made up of something completely foreign to you. Fortunately, you were at least able to understand what they were doing out here. It seemed your crashed Pelican had caused a bit of a stir in the local town, and this group had volunteered to go out and find your ship so that they would know exactly what it was.

The five horses had gotten pretty close to where the ship had crashed. They found the trees you had knocked down and had followed the damage to the river, now they were following the stream up, and would arrive at the submerged ship in a few minutes. You and your soldiers followed close by, using the trees and foliage for cover.

“Ser, I’m getting something on my Comm.” whispered Chris. “It’s full of static, but  i’m getting bits and pieces of it. Sounds like Calvin and Dan are trying to get our attention.”

“Patch them to me.” you reply. “Calvin, can you hear me? I’m boosting my signal now, you do the same.”

“Do you hear me now?” buzzed his voice.

“Yeah, reception isn’t perfect but I read you.” You glance at the ponies walking away from you before crouching down and giving your full attention to Calvin.

“Good, now listen. Dan and I got more food from the apple orchard. However, we had an encounter with some of the local wildlife.” You had a bad feeling this wasn’t going to be good, but you kept quiet and let Calvin continue. “Three small animals approached us in the orchard. They were about twelve inches tall, had big eyes, and each one was colored differently. When we approached them, one of them let out a high pitched scream, like one you’d hear from a kid. After that they ran and hid. We didn’t stick around to see if anyone would come to investigate, and made our way back to the forest.”

“Calvin,” you cut in. “Those things you described aren’t animals, we think those are the civilians of that village we saw earlier. Everyone else is with me, we’re tracking five bigger ones through the forest.”

“What makes you think they’re the locals?”

“They’re talking with each other.”

“Talking?”

“Yeah.”

“Guess that’s a dead give away. Explains how that smaller one screamed.”

“You probably scared the hell out of that thing. We’re heading back to camp now, once we get back we’ll need to figure out what we’re going to do. The locals are already on edge because of our crash. We need to contact them sooner than later to avoid making them more nervous.”

“Alright, Calvin out.” You click your come off and turn to face the ODSTs.

“Looks like Calvin and Dan had a run in with the locals. We’re heading back to camp now to discuss what we’re going to do about that. Move out.” You only manage to take a few steps before a loud noise freezes you in your place.

*ROOOOAAARRR*

You spin on your heel to the direction the sound came from. You couldn’t see the source, but it seemed to come from further up the river. The same place those five ponies were walking to.

“What the hell was that?” asked Tyler. “Ser, should we investigate? The locals might be in trouble.”

“You’re right,” you shoot back. “Ready your weapons, we might have a fight on our hands.” You and your three ODSTs arm yourselves and run further up the river to where the horses were going. It doesn’t take long to find the source of the noise as well as the locals. On the river bank, right next to where your ship crashed, were five ponies and a massive creature you had never seen the likes of before. It was huge, covered in thick scales, and had three heads. It roared again, even louder this time, and struck at the ponies. What appeared to be a unicorn, as well as one regular horse, were struck by it’s massive claws and sent flying into the murky river. You needed to act before the others were hurt.

“What the hell is that thing?” shouts Brendan.

“Doesn’t matter!” you scream back. “Whatever it is, it’s going to kill the locals. Chris, hang back and use your sniper rifle. Brendan and Tyler, you’re with me. We need to get that things attention!”

“Yes Ser!” they all respond. You flip the safety off of your assault rifle and charge forwards towards the monster. Once you get close, you raise your gun and fire a long drawn out burst at one of its’ necks. Most of the bullets are deflected off of it’s scales, but a few manage to punch through and lodge themselves in the beasts hide. The animal lets out a surprised screech before turning its’ attention towards you. Before it can make a lunge at you, two more bursts fire from your squads’ weapons. Again, most are deflected. However, it is obvious that certain areas of scale are beginning to chip away.

“Focus your fire on one spot at a time!” you shout as you unload another hail of bullets at the animal. “Work together to take out each head, direct your fire to the middle one first!” The other two streams of bullets switch to all fire upon the middle neck, just below the head. The beast raises it’s right forearm to protect it’s center neck.

“Solus, watch your nine!” shouts one of your soldiers. You twist your head to the left and then roll backwards to avoid one of the other heads striking at you. When you get to your feet, you are immediately knocked sideways as the other head whips around. It only takes you a moment to recover. Your shields are dropped, but your metal armor had absorbed the rest of the blow. Unfortunately, you had dropped your automatic rifle, and are forced to switch to your pistol. The smaller caliber rounds do a lot less damage to the scales, and the smaller clip size isn’t helping either.

The thing was beginning to advance on you and your men. It was growing bolder as it’s wounds grew more severe. The head to the left made to strike at you again. You turn to face it and brace yourself for impact. The head dives at you, it’s mouth opened wide. At the last second, you reach out and grab its large fangs with both hand. With some effort, you manage to wrestle the head down to the ground, and then pin with with your knee. Quickly, you draw your pistol and fire several rounds directly into it’s eye. The other two heads scream as the other one goes completely limp. The head to the far right makes to strike at you before you can recover. However, before it can reach you, it is turned into red mist as Chris hits it spot on with an armor piercing round. The center head goes limp mere seconds afterwards as the two other ODSTs finish peppering it with bullets. You take a step back and recover your breath. There was little time to examine your handiwork, as there were some locals in need of your assistance.

“Chris, keep us covered. I don’t want this things mate catching us by surprise. Brendan and Tyler, you look for those two that were thrown into the river, they may have been washed downstream a bit. I’ll check on the other three.” You jog over to the three relatively unharmed ponies huddled together. You slow as you approach them, and get on one knee. You reach your hand out to them and reassuringly saw “Don’t worry, we’re here to help.” The ponies seem a bit apprehensive to go to you, but it seems to be more from shock than fear. You can understand that, though. You did just save them from a gargantuan armored monster.

“What..the hell...are you?” whispers the foremost stallion. Fortunately for you, he kept his speech basic. If both sides did that, the chances of a misunderstanding were a lot less likely.

“I’m a human, a warrior. My people call me a SPARTAN III.” The ponies seemed to understand the basics of what you said. Slowly, they relax and approach your outstretched hand. They seem a little skeptical of you still. To make sure all future relations were going to be good, you had to get them to trust you. “Your friends were hurt, and they need help. Will you let us? We can take care of you.” All three exchange glances with each other before looking to you and nodding in agreement. “Good.”

“Ser, we found the other two.” Tyler’s voice buzzed over the weak comm link. “They’re alive, but in pretty bad shape. We might be able to patch them up if we make it back to our camp now. If we take too long, they’ll die.”

“And you’re certain we wouldn’t be able to get them to the settlement?”

“We could try, but our camp is closer. If we try to get to their village, they’ll go untreated longer.”

“Alright, take them back to our camp. Make sure Chris goes with you. Brendan and I will follow you with the other three.” You cut the Comm and turn your attention back to the three ponies before you. “We found your friends. Stay close to us, and we’ll make sure you’re safe. Our camp is not far from here.” Again, the ponies just nodded in agreement. “Ok, let’s go.”