Twilight.

Twilight sat in front of the magical mirror, a look of curiosity, fear, and intrigue upon her face. Celestia, for some reason, was sending through a pair of royal guards with Twilight, along with the captain of the Crystal Empire's royal guard. Princess Celestia trotted over to Twilight and sat beside her.

"Are you ready, Twilight?" she asked, staring at the portal with a sad look upon her face. Twilight nodded hesitantly. If she was totally honest, she was nowhere near ready. She wanted to stay in Equestria, to get away from that crazy alicorn. As much as Twilight didn't normally back down like this, when she fought ponies like this, she had her friends by her side, which meant support, using the elements... But they wouldn't have the elements, nor would Twilight have her friends. Though, she was able to acquire some information on her 'mission.'Twilight, from "accidentally" eves-dropping into a few conversations between Celestia, Luna or Cadence, she learned some things.

This "Sunset Shimmer" was Celestia's pupil. She was amazing with magic, and she, if she would've only learned the ways of friendship, she would've ended up ascending to alicornhood... She would've been the princess of something, but, according to what she's heard, Twilight found out that Sunset was learning about ancient ways of war, and dark magic. The scary part was, she could handle it, and retain her sanity... she was a wielder of dark magic, which could've been quite... harmful to Equestria and any of their allies. Twilight could see the headlines now.

"Equestria's Military Contains A Dark Magic Wielder, What Else Could They Be Hiding?"

That would kill Equestria and their ways of life. Celestia, though, couldn't bring herself to even remotely hurt Sunset... She was like a daughter to Celestia. So, Celestia said she needed to step down as her pupil, and pursue her studies outside of Equestria's borders... Sunset, instead—with the knowledge of it from the books she'd found in the restricted sections of the library—used the mirror-portal to leave Equestria... According to Celestia, that was supposed to be forever. The world she had found with Starswirl The Bearded, was a world of war and poverty, a hellish place that even Tirek wouldn't let stand. He may have been evil, but he at least had a semblance of good in him.

Celestia had to live with the fact that she had very possibly sentenced one of the few people she was close with away... to their certain death. Were it not for Twilight saving Luna, Celestia would likely have stepped down from her place as ruler, and would've likely killed herself... or worse. When Celestia saw Sunset as an alicorn, she feared the worst... especially when she found an abundance of darkness in her. Not just dark magic, but darkness... as in a void. She attempted to look into her soul, and she saw almost nothing... A speck of light at the end of the tunnel, nothing more. If it were up to her, she would've at least harvested, or copied a few memories from her mind, so she could at least brace Twilight for the horrors she may have to face in the other world. She had no such luck.

Twilight nodded to Celestia.

"I-I think I'm ready." Celestia smiled softly and gave Twilight an affectionate nuzzle.

"Stay safe, my student." Twilight nodded and got to her hooves. She watched the portal for what felt like hours, until she slowly moved one hoof in front of the other, and inched toward the mirror. She stepped onto the pedestal which bestowed the mirror, and stared at her reflection.

Now or never... she braced herself and carefully slipped into the portal. Her vision faded to black.

Harmony, September 5th, 2551. Insurrection-Controlled Mining Town, Wolves Den, 0230 Hours.

Twilight groaned as she emerged into a state of consciousness. She looked around, and felt that something was very wrong. She felt... tall. Abnormally tall... she felt much... how to put it... different, in many ways. She sat upright, and looked down at herself. Twilight held back a scream.

She was some sort of bipedal creature, wearing some form of clothing, which Twilight couldn't remember—or didn't know—the name of. She saw Spike beside her.

"S-Spike! I t-told you to stay behind!" Twilight reprimanded, shakily. She spent the next few minutes—maybe more, time seemed to fly by—working on how to move around with her new body, and using the items around her. She picked up rocks, tools, or other items that she recognized, vaguely.

Pickaxes of metal, hatchets, and shovels. Twilight looked herself over, pulling off a backpack that rested upon her shoulders. She opened it, and found a variety of the items she'd packed, and a few she didn't.

She found a strange metal device, with a trigger and a barrel, it was big, but fit in her hands nicely. The other, was a pair of golden-visor-ed glasses, and a syringe containing some weird blue liquid. She was tempted to taste the liquid, but stopped and placed it back in her bag. She heard voices down the tunnel.

Twilight forced Spike into her bag, who was still unconscious, and zipped it shut. The voices grew closer, and she saw the source.

There were two bipedals walking down the tunnel, holding strange gray-and-black objects with designs drawn into them... blood was splattered over them, as well. They were wearing this strange uniform, with bulky pieces of armor attached to sections of it, along with helmets, and the same golden glasses that she had found in her bag on the face of one of them, a strange gray mask with a short, cylindrical tube sticking out of the cheek, and two glowing, cyan goggles. Their armor was painted red.

"Hmm. Maybe they can help us." Twilight's knees wobbled as she tried getting up from her place in the dirt. She eventually succeeded, and walked over to the two people.

Maybe they're the royal guard of this world...

"Hello, sirs—" Twilight was briefly pushed into the wall, both of them yelling in a strange language at Twilight, she cowering in fear. The one on the right violently pulled Twilight's bag off and threw her to the ground.

"Ow, that hurt!" she turned onto her back, to see she had scraped her knees, and they were now bleeding. The one "guard" placed the rubber and metal shoe on his leg onto Twilight's chest, and she felt the air leave her lungs. The other guard flipped her onto her back and put some sort of restraints on her wrists. She screamed, and Spike poked his head out.

"Twilight!" he growled and climbed out, watching the two "guards" point their strange bricks at him—

Bang! Bang Bang! Tch-Tch-Tch!

The guard on top of Twilight slumped down onto the ground beside her, blood leaking from his chest and head, while the other guard's helmet was broken, and his head leaked from a large hole. Twilight scrambled back, and turned away. She vomited, then cried at the sight of the two dead people.

Spike looked up, and saw a giant bipedal creature in a cloak, and black armor, with a single, glowing red eye underneath. He whimpered and ran over to Twilight, while a shorter person walked over, holding a strange gray brick. Twilight calmed down momentarily, then freaked out and sat up, quickly scrambling back away from the short bipedal.

"Hey, hey, hey... It's alright, we're not here to hurt you, niña." the bipedal creature said, sliding the weapon on her back. She held her hands up in surrender. Twilight heard a bunch of loud bangs in the background, her eyes shrinking to pinpricks, as it seemed to be getting closer.

"Saffron, we gotta go!" a bipedal yelled, backpedaling over to them. She had on a black leather jacket over her armor, which looked pretty beaten up.

"You must come with us, niña. It is not safe here." 'Saffron' said, holding her hand out. Twilight took it, and was swept off her feet as Saffron began running. A giant bipedal followed them, a long gray brick in his hand. There was a telescope mounted on the top, with the glass painted sage-green. Twilight winced at the loud cracks and bangs that followed them, along with speeding pieces of metal that flew past them.

"Damn it, Nikki, detonate the charges!" the one in the leather jacket yelled. That voice, she knew it somewhere... Twilight realized she had no idea where Spike was and began panicking, when the tall bipedal in black armor and a cloak placed him in her arms.

"Here's your dog, ma'am." Twilight was unable to respond. He had to be at least seven feet tall.

"Nikki, look out!" the tall bipedal suddenly disappeared, sliding behind a box.

"Nikki, what're you doing?!" the bipedal in the jacket halted.

"Covering your asses. Now get moving. You've not got long, before this all goes to shit. Good luck!" the jacketed bipedal went to go back, when a taller one without a helmet scooped her up and carried her.

"No!" she struggled, but the taller bipedal held her firmly.

The rest was blurred to Twilight, she fading in and out of consciousness occasionally.

Twilight finally awoke, lying in a cot. She was dressed in some sort of uniform, made of a fabric that Twilight doubted she could identify.

"Ah, you're awake." Her. That was that voice. The one wearing the jacket. Twilight went to sit upright, but Sunset pushed her back down.

"Stay down, Christ. You're gonna open up the wounds." Wait, what? Twilight looked down and saw dots of red blood beginning to poke through the uniform. She looked up at Sunset.

"B-But, C-Celestia said you were-" Sunset tilted her head.

"General Celestia?" Twilight frowned and shook her head.

"No, princess Celestia!" she replied, getting a laugh from Sunset, who in turn, then held her side and flinched.

"Gah, fuck..." she mutters, holding a white pad that was tightly held to her side. Now that Twilight could get a good look at her, she looked much different than her Equestrian-form.

She had a large burn-scar that went around the right side of her face, going over her eye and cheek. There was a long scar that went down the left side of her head, starting at her temple and moving down to the back of her head. She currently wore a black T-Shirt, along with cargo pants that were winter-camouflage-patterned. She had a muscular build, and she had tattoos that went up her arms. They mostly were just images of those bricks, or bones, or other such weird things that Twilight didn't understand. Over her shirt, she wore that black leather jacket. Her hair was at a medium-ish length, barely reaching the base of her jaw, colored in a pattern that made Twilight hungry for bacon. The scar-covered eye had a red pupil, the rest black, whilst her left eye was normal-ish. It was cyan-colored, with something of a glow to it. Not very noticeable.

"W-Where's Spike?" Twilight asked.

"The dog? He's under the bed, probably asleep." Sunset answered, standing up and stretching. She sat back down, pulling out a leather-bound book. It had the image of Sunset's cutie mark on the cover, Celestia's on the back.

"W-What's that?" Twilight asked, carefully easing herself into a semi-upright position.

"It's a sketching journal. I draw things when I get bored." Sunset showed the various pages to Twilight. She just looked in awe at each one.

The interior of some sort of ship, intricately designed as several metal beasts began to levitate off the ground, bipedals climbing into the few still touched onto the ground. It was drawn to the very last detail. A few were graphic, muddy trenches, broken down buildings covered in flame, people in varying states of bleeding out. Others were quite nice. A picture of a few bipedals huddled around a fire, laughing or talking, a picture of an open grassy field among rocks, along with structures that jutted out, all in black and gray coloration of a pencil. It, in the sense of the term, was beautiful.

"You're a good artist..." Twilight complimented. Sunset chuckled and sat back on the chair she was in.

"Not really. I think I took a few classes when I was off-duty, but I don't really remember much from those times..." Twilight furrowed her brow.

"H-How old are you, S-Sunset?" Sunset gave a confused look at Twilight, then answered with hesitation.

"Twenty-Eight... How'd you know my name?"

"A better question is, where is my crown?" Twilight asked, accusation plaguing her voice. Sunset laughed.

"Oh, that old trinket is somewhere safe. I'm not going to just give it back to you, though. I think it's use here is far more than for you." Twilight growled.

"Whatever could you possibly need it for?! Your own devilish plans to take over this world?!" Sunset was now on her knees, crying with laughter.

"I... Oh, god, give me a minute..." Sunset calmed down a bit and sat in the chair.

"I... I honestly don't know. My superior told me to jump through a portal, grab that crown, and come back. Y'see, when your entire species' existence is on the line, you don't begin asking those questions." Sunset replied, her voice, and facial expression taking a more somber tone.

"Entire species' existence is on the line?" whatever could that mean? Twilight pondered this for a few minutes, before deciding to prod at the subject.

"W-What do you mean?" Twilight asked. Sunset gave her an 'are you serious' look.

"The Human-Covenant War. It's been raging on for what, thirty fuckin' years now... Humanity is on it's last legs, and we don't intend to go out, and sure-as-hell not quietly at that." Sunset stood up.

"I've lost too many people today... I'm going to get a drink. Probably something strong. You're going to stay here while your wounds get to healing. Good. Bye." Sunset walked out, and Twilight sighed. Spike climbed up onto her lap, and she smiled.

She pulled her backpack out from under the cot, grabbed a book, and read for a bit. She fell asleep not too long afterward, setting the beginning of her journey to a close.

Author's Note

A/N:

III-T: The Hive.

Whenever you see a chapter number, plus -T, means it's in Twilight's perspective. I'll write a mirroring chapter beside it, in Sunset's perspective, with all the military-y aspects of this story, such as stating the proper names of things, or having a more dark tone to things... Well, more-or-less without that last bit. I'm not that good at writing "happy" scenes. It stays dark, or sad most of the time.

They were wearing this strange uniform, with bulky pieces of armor attached to sections of it, along with helmets, and the same golden glasses that she had found in her bag. The armor was painted red.

I've got no idea if I was able to accurately portray the armor, but for those who care, picture the UNSC Marine BDUs from Halo 3, with the armor (the sage-colored pieces, mostly) painted red.