“What do you mean, ‘The Flood reeled back’?” Twilight asked, the first words she had spoken since John had explained what he experienced within her mind.

They were currently in the third generator room, having teleported there after Twilight made the decision to avoid any more confrontations with the Flood. Upon arriving, the pair had to deal with a half dozen Sentinels before finding the generator exposed, along with a weapons cache, comprised of weapons that John was unaware of being in the Autumn’s weapon compliment. He acquired a DMR and gave a Twilight two M7 Submachine Guns and full ammo capacity. He made sure to stock up on ammo for both of his weapons as well.

He answered her question with another as his shields finally recharged from overloading the generator.

’ONI will have my head for this, but she deserves to know. Especially after that ordeal.’ “Would you like to know my past?” John asked.

“I would, but you still haven’t answered my original question.” John could see her demeanor improve at the prospect of learning about her friend.

“My story started on the human colony of Eridanus II. It was a fringe world, so it was far away enough from Earth to be filled to the brim with Insurrectionist activity.”

“Insurrectionist?” Twilight asked.

“Rebels”, the Chief stated, his eyes narrowing slightly within his helmet, “who aim to have many of the outer colonies free independent from the UEG and the UNSC. Before the Covenant, they were the main threat of Earth and her colonies.” John paused, “I was originally created to combat the threat they posed.”

“You were created?” Twilight asked. “But I’ve seen you bleed.”

“I was born on Eridanus II to George and Nichole Laarson. At the age of six, I met a woman named Catherine Halsey. A month later, I and One hundred and Fifty other candidates were kidnapped by ONI agents.”

The two were interrupted by Covenant weapons fire coming from the corridor behind them. ‘How did they get… Most likely a dropship which must have tracked our teleportation signature.’ He raised his DMR as four Elites charged in, with numerous Grunts and Jackals behind them.

“Cortana, what’s taking so long,” John shouted over shots from his DMR,”I thought you said you’d be in the teleportain grid by now!”

“I would if snowglobe hadn’t locked me out.” Cortana spat back. “Just be glad we came across this weapons cache when we did, because you are going to need all the ammo you can get.”

John and Twilight continued to fight off wave after wave of covenant forces. Twilight fired off a fresh volley of rounds from her newly acquired SMGs, several colliding into the shields of an Elite, subsequently dropping them. John finished the Sanghelli warrior off and was about to reload when Cortana spoke up.

“I’m going to kill that glorified christmas ornament the next time we meet,” Cortana said with an exasperated sigh, “But I found the Captain. He’s alive!. And the implants are intact.Teleporting you two now.” And with that, the unlikely team was whisked away, John barely noticing a pile of Flood corpses in the corner of the room.

Twilight found herself in a familiar looking corridor, though when she had seen this type of architecture before, it was pristine, well maintained, and functioning. This wasn’t the case as the corridor was on fire, sections ripped out of walls, blood everywhere and everything happened to be on the ceiling.

‘Come to think of it, I feel pulled to the ceiling’, she thought to herself. Just as she realised everything looked upside down, she felt gravity pull her to the ceiling, or more accurately, the floor.

She landed with a light, even graceful ‘thud’, while Chief next to her collided with a heavy ‘clank’. They both groaned as they got back to their feet

“Oh!” Cortana exclaimed. “The coordinate data needs to be-” Twilight watched Chief smack the back of his helmet which elicited an apology from the AI.

“So,” Twilight started to say as she looked around, taking in the damaged interior with a growing sense of dread, expecting the flood to leap out of every shadow to attack her. The memories of pain came back, causing her to take a step back before taking a deep breath. “What happened to this…”

“Twilight, Chief. . .Don’t be fools. . .Leave me.”

“That sounded like the captain!” Twilight stated excitedly. “Cortana, can you pinpoint his location?”

“According to my readouts, he’s right on the other side of this wall,” Cortan said, “but reaching him is going to be tough considering the Flood have captured this vessel. From what I've been seeing on the Covenant battlenet, they’ve sent several strike teams to retake the ship, so be prepared to potentially run into them as well.”

“Understood. Twilight...”, Chief started to ask, “Can you teleport us to his location?”

“I can try,'' she replied, already drawing the energy in. With her horn lit, she visually pictured them on the other side and made the spell.

Just as she activated it, she heard Keyes shout out “Twilight...don’t do…”

The warning came too late however. As she began to teleport them both, images of the flood flashed across her eyes, and she and Chief landed in the canyon below.

‘That wasn’t supposed to happen.’ Twilight thought to herself.

“Yeah, no kidding.” The Master Chief stated.

She immediately gave a scream of surprise as she felt her back hoof in a very cold, liquid like substance, taking it out of a green fluid. She gave a sigh of relief when she realised that it wasn’t anything Flood related, rather it was flowing out from ripped out sections of the Covenant warship above them.

“What is this stuff?” she asked Cortana directly.

“Coolant. Keeps the reactors cool enough to function without blowing up the ship when the stress and heat is too much”, Cortana explained. “Both us and the Covenant use it, though theirs is a different type.”

“It looks like the coolant is flowing from holes in the cruiser caused by internal explosions. The Covenant must really be fighting hard to keep it out of Flood hands.” Twilight stated.

“Do these canyons look familiar to anyone, by any chance,'' Chief asked.

Twilight cursed to herself as she realised Chief was the only one who had been looking at their immediate surroundings, not being distracted by the coolant. She took a closer look at the structure of the canyons, which she definitely had seen before and after a moment realised where they were.

“We’re under the Truth and Reconciliation”, she stated, with Chief nodding at this.

Before they could discuss the meaning of where they were, the sounds of fighting suddenly appeared to their right. The two of them raised their weapons as an Elite appeared from behind a canyon face, backing away from an unseen foe, firing its plasma rifle. Twilight guessed correctly that the assailants were a pair of combat forms, who appeared a few seconds later and broke the shields of the Elite.

Knowing that it was about to die, the Elite decided to go out in a blaze of glory, priming a plasma grenade and managing to stick it onto one of the combat forms as it skewered him with an elongated blade made of bone. Seconds later, the area was showered in blood, guts, and pus.

Twilight winced, but was thankful that the shield she had erected managed to protect her from the explosion of viscera. The Master Chief however, was not so lucky.

He looked down at his gore coated armour and sighed. ’Thank god this suit has its own life support.’ John thought to himself.

“C’mon Chief, don’t make me jealous.” Twilight wined.

John was about to make another remark when his eyes widened and both he and Twilight
looked at each other in shock.

’Did she just hear my thoughts?’

’Did I just hear his thoughts?’

The fact that Twilight’s voice echoed through his brain without her mouth moving was very unsettling. From her facial expressions, John could tell that she was just as surprised as he was.

“Cortana?” John asked, “What’s your take on this?”

“I can’t be sure,” Cortana stated, “but whatever you did in Twilight’s mind to free her from the flood must have created a mental connection between the two of you.”

John looked at Twilight and tilted his head.

“It’s happened before.” Twilight said. “If I remember correctly, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are mentally connected to an extent, though they could not hear each other's thoughts. If they were able to, it would have stopped a lot of pain and suffering.”

“I think this may have more to do with the Flood itself than with you, Twilight”, Cortana stated. “I have a hypothesis that the Flood shares a sort of hive-mind, one that may allow all of the infected to share the knowledge of the infected hosts and to coordinate efforts and infect more people.” The conversation was interrupted by a brief firefight with another group of covenant. “If the Flood created a separate mental link with you to… attack you Twilight,” Cortana continued, ”then the Chief may have accidentally inserted himself into that connection and broke the Flood’s own connection. Thus, you too have your own personal mental chat, to which I’m not invited. Not that I’m annoyed or anything.”

“Well, you are in my head in a way,'' John stated in a manner of fact tone as he reloaded his DMR, “so I don’t see you having a need to complain.” He heard Cortana humpf over the radio.

“So…” Twilight started to say out loud, but her face was filled with doubt and reluctance that stopped her from speaking, but John heard her unfinished thought anyways. ‘What are we going to do about this situation?’

“For now, nothing,'' John said. “Right now, getting back aboard the Truth and Reconciliation and
rescuing the Captain is our top priority.”

With that in the air, the pair moved on to find the Gravity Lift just like the first raid. Due to the Covenant Forces actively engaging the Flood in almost every area, casualties high on both sides, so John and Twilight were to pass by several encounters mostly undetected, except for an encounter where John had picked up and used a sniper rifle to kill a couple of Elites and was then forced to use the sniper against an ambushing combat form. The encounter was nothing like what he had expected, for the sniper round simply passed through the combat form, doing absolutely nothing, except cause a disgusting scene.

After finally killing it off with a small volley of DMR rounds, John dropped the sniper and picked up the combat form’s discarded shotgun. He then led himself led Twilight to the open space where the Grav Lift was located. On the top of a considerable hill, a squad of Covenant were fighting off seemingly endless waves of combat and carrier forms, with a mixture of plasma rifles, carbines, needlers, even a fuel rod cannon. Despite all their efforts, it was clear to John that it was a last stand, and the Covenant knew it.

He’d been there countless times, against the Covenant, yet this almost made him have a brief sense of camaraderie with them. For about a second, he stood there, silently respecting those individuals before remembering that he’ll have to kill them to get back up into the cruiser.

So he rushed ahead, breaking through the horde of flood, killing dozens upon dozens. He heard the sound of SMGs behind him, informing him that Twilight was close behind. He saw an infection form about to take out an Elite, and after a microsecond of deliberation, he raised his DMR. The Elite turned around as the infection form leaped, but was surprised when it got torn to the side. Turning to face the shooter, he was surprised to see that the demon had saved him, and was even more surprised when he found himself and his squad aboard the flagship of his fleet, The Ascendant Justice. He stood there, stunned, before immediately activating his communicator, with the intent of reporting this incident to Supreme Commander Thel ‘Vadamee.

John, after seeing Twilight teleport the entire Elite squad somewhere, now focused on killing the rest of the flood nearby. It took a minute of constant fighting with no breaks, but there was finally a pause in the flood reinforcements, allowing John and Twilight to finally reach the peak of the hill. He quickly reloaded before stepping into the beam of light and was pulled upwards into the cruiser.

Twilight gasped in horror at the state of the gravity lift chamber, where many of the vehicles and consoles lay in ruin, smashed or burnt. Blood covered the entire room, and corpses of various shapes littered the floor. Several infection forms were crawling about, seemingly ignoring the pair. Oddly enough, The parasite appeared like it was busy preparing something as the infection forms darted to several corpses with the intent of converting them.

Twilight snarled as she fired a short burst from her SMG at the closest infection form as it attempted to attach itself to the chest of an Elite. The pop hadn’t even registered in her mind as she swivelled on the spot, taking out as many infection forms as she could.

After finishing off the last of the infection forms, Twilight stood there shaking in anger and fear. She again had tears streaming down her face. Her eyes were wide open this time however. In what had become a frequent occurrence, memories of the traumatic experience flashed before her eyes. She tried to ignore them as she wiped away the tears. She noticed the Chief waiting for her at the only door that was open. Well, open was a very loose term as the door had basically been ripped open and was covered in both Covenant blood and Flood gunk.

She walked over as one of the huge bay doors opened up, revealing a group of combat forms, along with a single, augmented infection form. She snarled as she brought her SMG to bear at the infection form, ready to fire. That is, until the infection form attached itself to a combat form. Twilight felt a sense of dread from Chief as the other combat forms surrounded the flood mass. She wondered what he was afraid was going to happen. That was until the small group of Flood collectively began to dissolve and break down.

She shouted in both surprise and horror, her anger now forgotten, replaced by fear as what was the group of combat forms started to merge and grow something. She looked to her side and saw Chief slowly backing away, DMR raised, his hands gripping the weapon tightly. It was like he knew what was about to happen.

Her suspicions were proved correct when he simply muttered “not again” as the growth started to take a more unique form. She could only look in horror as a new flood form was born through the flesh, bone and fungus of the infected, the final remnants of individuals finally wiped away, absorbed by the flood in a horrific manner.

‘Is this my fate’, she wondered to herself as the flood form’s growth seemed to slow down and finally stop, the final product being a large, bulky humanoid like thing with a huge sack on the top and really long tentacle like arms.

“What...is...that?” she whispered.

“An Abomination”, Chief replied, “I encountered one when you were being… used.”

“Don’t even think about using magic against it”, Cortana stated, her voice similarly quiet to her own. “The one we encountered was able to use your own telekinesis and magic bolt magic. They are also quite resilient to most weaponry, especially plasma weaponry.”

“How did you be…AAHHH!” Twilight screamed as the Abomination suddenly leapt at her and used its arms to throw her to the wall behind her. The force of her being thrown was so great that she broke through multiple walls and internal machinery until she landed three or four corridors away from the grav lift room.

She got back up onto her hooves and flew straight back into the fight, using her magic to blast the ceiling above the Abomination, resulting in chunks falling on the lumbering beast, with her not noticing her magic beam starting to wane when it got too close to the Abomination. They did nothing to harm it, but it proved to be a good distraction as the Abomination momentarily raised its hands to protect its head.

Using that chance, both Twilight and Chief attacked. Twilight ripped a support structure from the wall and threw it like a spear right into the abdomen of the Abomination. Chief, at the same time, ignited a plasma grenade, aiming at the sack section. Unfortunately, Twilight’s attack did nothing and Chief’s grenade was intercepted by the left tentacle before it could land its mark.

‘Shit’, Twilight heard Chief say in his mind as they both witnessed their attacks miss their mark. That was before the grenade detonated, amputating the arm, sending it flying. Twilight gave a quick, silent “Yes” before telekinetically grabbing the support structure embedded in the chest of the Abomination and used it like a knife, cutting upwards, slicing through the body until it was launched out of the sack, spewing out gunk everywhere.

The two of them breathed a sigh of relief as the Abomination collapsed. Its body began spasming as flesh, bone and fluid was spat out of newly formed holes at an increasing rate causing the flood form to slowly dissolve. As Twilight walked into the corridor behind Chief, she realised that, other than fear, horror and anger, she was also feeling...pleasure. It was as if she downright enjoyed something from the fight.

As she reviewed her perspective on the fight, she found the time where she felt so much jubilation and pleasure: the Abomination being cut in half by her own hoof (well not really, more like her action). Seeing the flood form be destroyed so brutally and slowly, made her realise she wanted to see similar things to any flood form, making her a monster in a way. This should have been frightening, but what was truly frightening was that she realised she didn’t care.

John walked steadily through the corridor, shotgun raised. Behind him, Twilight had her head lowered in thought, though John could hear what she was starting to think, how she was becoming a monster from enjoying killing the Flood.
Before she could start to tear herself apart mentally, John decided to intervene.

“You’re not a monster,” he stated to her as he paused in the middle of the corridor, with one eye on the motion tracker, seeing the small red dots on the edges, knowing that an attack was inevitable, but not happening at the moment. He turned to face Twilight and knelt down so his visor was almost in line with her eyes.

“You think that because you hate something with such passion and that you want to see it burn makes you into something evil.” The slightest movement of her head to the side and her eyes now looking away from his face confirmed his words. “But you have to remember why do you feel this way.”

Twilight looked back at him and he didn’t need to be able to hear her thoughts to know she was confused at his statement, or where it was going.

“What the Flood have done to you, and to those on this ring, is horrifying. The things I have seen them do are horrific compared to what the Covenant have been doing to humanity for the past three decades” he sighed quietly as he tried to push the memories of seeing his fellow Spartans being killed out of his head. “So I hate them more than the Covenant already.”

With his fist clenched, John continued on. “Just like you, I’ll do everything that I can, sacrifice anything and everything in order to stop the Flood from leaving Halo and end them for good. I can guarantee that every human and Covenant are thinking the exact same thing on this ring. Does that make us monsters? No! We’re only thinking that so those we fight for back home will never, ever see what the Flood is even remotely capable of. If they never even find out about the Flood and never need to is a victory. Those are some of my reasons for wanting the Flood gone.”

“But your hate for them is more personal. They did something that I cannot imagine to you and you want… the only word I can use is vengeance. They hurt you and not only do you want to pay them back, but to stop them from doing it to your people back at your home.”

“I know that feeling because I’ve felt it before, several times when the Covenant began this war,” John paused before continuing. “It’s natural, given everything. You may think that it may be monstrous due to the culture you’ve been brought up in, but in this situation you can’t help it.”

“The Chief is right”, Cortana added, also set on helping Twilight. “When you first arrived, you were horrified by all of the killing and having to kill yourself. And to an extent you still are. That’s not a characteristic of a monster.”

It looked like their words were having an effect on her, since John could hear a lot less self hatred in Twilight’s thoughts now. He knew that one talk wouldn’t convince her entirely, but he was satisfied to a least abate it a bit.

‘The only thing that could convince her completely would be chatting with her friends and family back in Equestria’, John surmised to himself, before Twilight suddenly said, “I can still hear you, Chief.”

He briefly smiled at her slightly lighter tone before she asked something out of the blue: “Are we going to make it off of this ring at all, out of the hoofs of the flood?”

“We’ll make it”, he immediately replied, turning back to face the end of the corridor and started walking again. For now, they had a mission to complete. Personal issues, especially ones that have been mitigated slightly, would have to wait.

“Cortana, can you use the Covenant Battlenet to calculate the quickest route to Captain Keyes?” John asked Cortana.

“I’m already on it”, there was a brief pause. “The Covenant Battlenet is a mess, Chief. I can’t access the schematics for the ship. However, my records from our previous incursion indicate that a shuttle bay should be…” a waypoint appeared on his HUD, in the distance “here!”

“Acknowledged”, John stated, trying to keep his disappointment from his voice. He wasn’t surprised with how badly the situation was, but he would still like to have as much intel as possible. Fortunately, he still remembered part of the route he took to get to the brig from the last incursion, so he had an idea of where to go.

They passed the corner of the first corridor, entering a firefight between a small squad of Covenant and a seemingly endless horde of flood, who were jumping down from a hole in the ceiling. The corridor was too narrow to go around the fight, so John and Twilight were forced to shoot their way through, with John focusing on the flood while Twilight had her attention set on the Covenant. This proved to be an excellent strategy as the Covenant proved to be especially vulnerable to Twilight’s magic, and John could kill the flood forms in any way without worrying about boosting them like Twilight would.

As the last of the current enemy combatants fell to the ground, the pair rushed forward, barely avoiding the carrier form that dropped down from above. As the carrier form expanded to blow up, they sprinted past it, getting out of the range of the blast radius, while turning around and throwing a frag grenade to kill the newly birthed infection forms.

As they got closer and closer to the hangar, more and more Covenant seemed to be showing up, as if they were finally gaining the upper hand for the moment. This was a bittersweet realisation, though, since the Flood being fought off by the defenders meant more Covenant that both he and Twilight had to fight.

As they reached the hatch, a message came in from the CNI link that Cortana was following, one from Captain Keyes. The message conveyed a weak and slurred voice.

“I gave you an order, soldier, now pull out!”

“He’s delirious”, Cortana said, “in pain. We have to find him!”

The hatch opened, revealing the first level of the shuttle bay. On a raised platform connected to the first level was a shade turret, manned by an elite minor, along with two other elites and a jackal sniper. The sniper called out a warning, alerting the elites to the presence of Twilight and John.

The shade turret turned to face John, but Twilight quickly gripped the gunner with her magic and threw him off of the turret. John fired a single shot with his DMR, killing the jackal with a headshot before it could target either him or Twilight with its particle beam rifle. The two remaining elites ran towards the main section of the floor, off of the exposed platform, where Twilight teleported to greet them.

Twilight dodged to the side avoiding the strike by the closest elite, a minor if she remembered the ranks correctly. She blasted him with her magic blast, easily punching through the energy shield and blowing a large hole in the chest area.

Even as the body of the elite went flying, Twilight turned her attention to the remaining elite, a major, judging from its crimson armour. She became more weary, the slight bruise on her face reminding her of what happened the last time she underestimated a major.

This one didn’t have an energy sword like that one, but it did have a longer, more rifle like plasma rifle. The major fired several bolts of plasma, ones that were larger and more powerful than the regular ones, at her, all of them colliding quite quickly, the force sending her back a few steps. She growled in annoyance as she felt the plasma slightly burn her fur under her magic shield.

The major didn’t seem to be fazed at how his shots didn’t get through the shield. Instead he took out a purple ball from his side, pressed a button on it that caused it to turn into a blue ball of plasma and throw it at her. Twilight teleported to the side, far away from the elite as possible and watched the grenade explode in an explosion of blue and purple energy and heat.

Twilight then teleported the new plasma weapon out of the major’s hands and fired back at him with it using her telekinesis. The elite’s shields were shredded quite quickly, but inaccurate aiming caused many of the plasma bolts to miss vital parts of the body. The major leapt to the side, rolling to cover. Twilight continued to fire, not noticing the heat building up in the weapon before it finally started to slow down, red marks appearing on the side of the weapon. Twilight looked at the weapon, feeling the heat with her magic.

Using that as a distraction, the major rushed out of cover, pulling out a needler, before he was stabbed with a knife that Chief had produced from his belt. Deciding to distract herself from the gory way Chief was killing the elite, Twilight decided to try to release the heat on the Covenant weapon, looking for the button to do it.

“I guess I know now why the Covenant only fire for a short amount of time,” Twilight commented out loud, attracting Cortana’s attention.

“Much of the Covenant plasma weaponry build up overheat at a rapid pace,” Cortana explained through Twilight’s earpiece. “If the heat is too much, there is a chance that the weapon might explode. So all handheld plasma weaponry, such as the plasma repeater you’re holding, have a safety feature, where the weapon, if it gets up to a certain temperature, opens up heating vents to cool off, preventing the weapon from firing further.”

“So, it does it automatically?”

“In most weapons. The plasma repeater actually doesn’t. You have to open the fins manually, but it has the unique feature of continuing to fire, albeit at a slower pace.”

“You two can chat later,” Chief said, already on the other side of the hangar. “Captain Keyes needs us.”

“Right,” Twilight said, throwing away the plasma repeater, pulling out her smg and teleporting to Chief before he entered through a hatch leading to a corridor leading upwards.

They fought through two levels of the shuttlebay and the surrounding corridors before finally arriving in front of the hatch that lead to the area outside the control room. Then, they heard Keyes scream over the radio.

“The Captain!” Cortana shouted out, alarmed, “His vitals are fading! Please...Chief, hurry!”

Twilight’s eyes widened. They were so close to the control room, yet there was a chance that Keyes may die. Hearing his screams was horrifying, but she had to keep on going. If only to stop a fate worse than death to someone kind, not to mention a person who helped her and was more than kind to her. She didn’t need a mental connection with Chief to know that he felt a similar, if not much more stronger and personal, way, but the connection did help her realise that the Captain and him go a long way in the past.

The hatch opened, revealing a firefight in motion between several Covenant in black armour and numerous flood forms. The Covenant in the fight seemed to be more skilled than the ones Twilight has seen previously, judging from how easily they were taking down combat forms one by one. However, there were a lot more combat forms and the bodies on the ground showed that several Covenant had already fallen.

“Those are spec ops covenant”, Chief stated as he brought out his shotgun and killed three consequtive combat forms. “These guys are some of the most specialised and experienced covenant soldiers you’ll ever encounter. Be extremely careful.”

Twilight nodded, half distracted by the fighting. She fired a continuous, fast burst at a combat form, watched it fall down and aimed at the closest elite. She fired the rest of the ammo in her mag, eyes widening as the elite’s shields proved to be stronger than most she’d encountered, having remained intact despite the amount of bullets she put into it.

The elite retaliated by aiming the two plasma rifles he held in his hands and fired. Her shield was hit multiple times, each hit causing more agony directly to her. She instinctively raised another shield in front of her, but the elite simply sidestepped out of the way, punching her in the face. She tried to blast him, but he grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the bulkhead.

‘Fuck, they are tough’, she thought to herself as she landed on her wobbly hooves after gravity took her from the mini-crater she created. As the spec ops elite threw away his rifles and pulled out an energy sword, she turned her back towards him, deliberately. He rushed forward again, only to have his skull crushed by Twilight’s back hooves as she timed a well aimed buck.

Somehow, Chief managed to close and seal the door that was letting the flood come through, soon leading to the flood being annihilated by both the covenant and the pair. After that, Twilight used her wings to hover in the air, dodging plasma bolts and needles before firing her own magic bolts that burst through energy shields easily. The grunts accompanying the elites were easily killed, though one had a weapon that reminded her of a rocket launcher, except with green projectiles. This grunt managed to blow up several combat forms, and almost hit her before Chief finally killed him, dropping the weapon.

Twilight, expecting Chief to pick up the weapon, was startled to see him move backwards at a rapid pace, away from the weapon which was now glowing. She realised why after a few seconds, when the weapon exploded.

“What in Celestia’s name was that?” she asked.

“Dead’s man switch”, Cortana explained. “Some variants of that weapon, the fuel rod cannon, have a device that will overload the ammunition stored inside when the user is…”

She paused just as Chief opened the hatch and entered the control room before saying “No…”

Twilight felt her heart stop beating as she realised what Cortana was talking about, but didn’t want to believe it. To distract herself, she entered the control room, and found Chief staring at something attached to the main platform.

That something was clearly flood, a new bulbous, immobile form, which seemed to connect itself next to the controls and had tentacles extended to all parts of the room. It didn’t react when the pair moved closer, in order to see what the Flood form was and to follow the CNI signal.

“No human life signs detected,” Cortana said, then added in a remorseful and regretful manner, “the Captain’s life signs just stopped.”

Twilight felt a tear run past her check as she heard Chief ask about the CNI, with Cortana replying that it was still transmitting. Then she saw Chief clench his fist. However, she noticed that it was only a moment after Cortana had spoken, and that he was looking at something on the flood form. She followed his gaze, and looked upon the partially absorbed and decayed body of Captain Keyes, grotesquely distorted and covered in the sickly flood skin. Despite being mostly fixated on the agony on Keyes’ face, Twilight spotted the remains of many other faces, human and covenant, scattered all throughout the surface of the flood form.

“The Captain!” Cortana said, shocked, “he’s one of them!”

‘No’, Twilight thought as she processed what she was seeing. ‘He can’t be… he can’t be dead like this…’

Chief was now shaking in anger and hate as he too stared at the remains of Keyes. Then she heard him mutter, “I’m sorry, sir, for being too late.”

“Chief, it’s not your fault”, Twilight heard herself say in order to comfort Chief, but he ignored her, unmoving. She took a step back, lowering her head, not noticing the sliver of magic starting to emit from her horn and float towards the flood form.

“We can’t let the Flood get off this ring!” Cortana said desperately. “You know what he’d expect… What he’d want us to do.”

Chief finally reacted, nodding at Cortana’s words. That is, until he noticed the stream of magic.

“Twilight, your horn!” John shouted, unnecessarily, but he was so much in shock and anger that he couldn’t help himself.
Twilight didn’t complain however, as she looked at her horn and put her hooves to her mouth in shock.
“I’m not doing this!” she shouted back. “I haven’t even activated my magic.”

“Get away from it, now!” Cortana urgently demanded, with Twilight complying, the stream becoming more and more diluted as she went further and further away from the flood form.

John looked back at the Flood form, knowing what he had to do, both to stop the flood form from absorbing Twilight’s magic, as evidenced from how it was now expanding in some areas, lighting up, and to honor Captain Keyes. He drew back his arm and plunged his arm into the face of what remained of Keyes. He punched his way through momentary resistance until he finally felt his hand enter the partially dissolved brain. He then felt for and found the implants that Keyes used to hold his codes.

He pulled out of the wound, making a disgusting popping sound, ignoring how Keyes’ face was now just a hole. After shaking his hand to get the spongy gore off of the implants, John slipped the implants into some spare slots in his armour.
The Flood form seemed to stop sucking Twilight’s magic, but the glow coming from within told John that it was not dead, only wounded.

“It’s done,” Cortana said somberly. “I have the code. We should go. We need to get back to the Pillar of Autumn. Let’s go back to the shuttle bay and find a ride.”

John nodded, before turning back towards the destroyed body of Captain Keyes and saluted. ‘Thank you Captain.”

Then, every door opened all at once and a host of Flood poured in, as if summoned by the unmoving creature. Comprised of a variety of flood forms, made up of combat forms, carrier forms and infection forms, three of which were augmented. One of them began to form an abomination as the rest lead the horde towards John.

“Twilight, get off of the platform!” John shouted, firing his DMR while the flood were not too close yet.

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” she replied, flying into the air, firing her smg at a bunch of infection forms. However, none of the flood paid her any attention; they were all focused on John.

John backed away quickly as the Flood ran at him with such fury that he was overwhelmed. By chance, he stepped off of the platform and plummeted to the deck below, landing in one of the channels on the side, giving him time to switch to his shotgun and fire three rounds, killing numerous flood. However, the break was over quickly as the flood was quickly either jumping off of the platform as well or just going round it.

He saw a trio of flood get hit by multiple rounds from Twilight’s smg, but the flood still had its attention on him and him alone, as if the creature on the command deck demanded vengeance.

‘There were multiple faces on the surface of that thing, and there were several bodies dumped together all throughout the flood controlled areas of this ship,’ John thought to himself even as he put out enough firepower to significantly kill much of the flood in the room, but the flood kept on flooding in and the abomination had finally formed. It was now stomping towards John, tentacles twitching.

He primed a grenade, waited until the Abomination was near the middle of the horde and threw it, hoping to damage it. He was not expecting the entire horde to be caught in multiple explosions, some of which were from plasma grenades. Once again, luck was on John’s side as most of the combat forms had grenades on them, which were ignited by John’s grenade, causing a domino effect. The Abomination was torn apart by the number of sheer explosions, ending the threat.
“You all right?” John called out to Twilight, fearing that she may have been near the explosion.

“I’m good!” Twilight’s voice came from behind him. He looked back and saw her hovering in the corner of the room, firing at some of the remaining flood.

There were still a considerable amount of flood still in the room, but they were soon engaged by a group of covenant spec ops, both elites and grunts. What made the spec ops group significantly more dangerous than the remains of the flood horde in the room was the fact that every grunt was armed with a fuel rod cannon, and were blowing up everything they saw.

With them distracted fighting each other, John took the time to reload his shotgun, exchange his DMR, which only had three rounds left in it, for an assault rifle and met up with Twilight, who had landed, horn lit up.

“What are you planning?” John asked, recognising the facial expressions on Twilight’s face as her concentrating on something.

“I’m doing an experiment that I don’t want to see the results of, but have to anyways,” she replied as she shot a bolt of magic at a grunt, barely missing it. Somehow, it didn’t notice as it was too busy melting a carrier form down into fluid. She fired a second bolt, this time at a combat form.

The bolt of magic, when it closed in, started to diminish, as it was starting to be absorbed by all nearby flood forms until it hit, dealing a lesser degree of damage than it might have.

Twilight then teleported, and arrived in front of the flood form on the platform.
“Aahh!” John heard her scream as she ran off of the platform. From where he was, John thought he saw miniscule tentacles reach out after her to a degree.

Twilight ran to John as he ran towards her, her face terrified.

“I...I didn’t aim to teleport there,” she stuttered.

“Then how did you…” John started to say, but then stopped. He lowered his weapon slightly as he saw an augmented infection form scramble to the lethargic beast and jump into it, becoming part of the body. Then the beast started to grow a few more appendages and expand slightly in some areas. What was the most eye catching was that it was starting to glow and John could see the aura of magic that was beginning to surround the beast.

He brought up his rifle and fired a single burst, all the shots colliding with a magical barrier. The flood form rippled slightly, as if amused.

‘The beast is using Twilight’s magic to grow the creature and empower itself at the same time,’ John realised, ’while the flood is collecting bodies to add it to the creature, or use as hosts. If there are no more victims left, do they all form more of this beast, or add to it and form something worse?’

“Oh, no, no, no”, Twilight muttered after trying a few spells. She looked at John with a distraught expression. “I can’t control my magic. It’s doing stuff that I don’t want happening. It’s like its…”

“Obeying that,” John finished as they both looked at the flood form.

“The Flood must have done something with your magic, made it under their control,” Cortana confirmed. “This complicates things greatly. I wouldn’t recommend using your magic near large groups of flood anymore, Twilight.”

The battle near the hatch had finally ended, with the spec ops covenant victorious, only to be blown up by a fuel rod cannon overloading next to a dead grunt. John and Twilight waited for the resulting explosions to end before they walked cautiously to the now broken hatch.

“Wait,” Twilight said, stopping. “What are we going to do with that thing… and Keyes?”

John looked back at the thing, aware that there were no heavy weapons he could use to blow it up.

‘Perhaps I don’t need one…’ he thought as he noticed how a section of the ceiling was damaged from a stray fuel rod blast. Coincidently, it was also just over the flood form. He threw a captured plasma grenade onto it. As it blew, the beast seemed to shudder in what appeared to be rage before it was crushed under a huge pile of rubble, the entire creature sending gore everywhere.

“That solves that,” Cortana commented. “I believe that we may have just slowed down the flood considerably and released Keyes from that existence.”

“Let’s go”, John said, moving towards the hatch, with Twilight following him. Going back the way they came, they fought through numerous groups of Covenant, mostly spec ops, and flood, making their way back to the shuttle bay.

When they finally reached the door leading to the first level in the shuttle bay, they were greeted by an elite in the black spec ops armour, wielding a carbine. He roared at John with such fury, yet with a touch of respect in its tone before throwing away the carbine and pulling out two energy swords, one of which was deactivated.

“What’s he doing?” Twilight asked, her tone suggesting confusion at why the spec ops elite wasn’t attacking, even as two more elites arrived from the hatch. John knew what was going to happen, lowering his shotgun and quickly raised his left hand to grab the hilt of the sword thrown to him. Dropping the shotgun lightly on the floor, John placed the hilt in his right hand and activated it, the unfamiliar sword type uncomfortable in his hand.

As soon as the spec ops elite saw the blade ignite, he charged John with merciless intent, slashing the blade towards his head. John parried with an uneasy effort, knowing that he was disadvantaged in this fight. However, he would rather fight one on one against a spec ops elite than against three of them at once in such a close space. This way he had a slight chance of maneuvering the duel out into the shuttle bay, giving him the environment Twilight needed to take out the spec ops elites easily.

The spec ops elite once again attacked John, this time with a stab to the chest. John moved his body to the side, but was caught off guard by the sweeping kick from the Elite, who had anticipated his move. He still managed to block two more strikes from the elite before noticing that they had swapped positions, with John’s back now towards the hatch to the shuttle bay. He needed to get past that hatch, and the Elite was giving him the perfect opportunity, being on the offensive, pushing him backwards.

He backed away, blocking as many strikes as he could, though one managed to break through his energy shields and slice the side of his shoulder piece, not penetrating enough to deal major damage or compromise the suit. However, it did bolster the elite’s confidence and moral. As they entered the shuttle bay, the elite paused its attacks and began to chuckle.
“You are mighty, demon,” he spoke out in a semi-practised english, pointing the sword at John. “But I will be the one to slay you, and end your rampage, for the honor of my ancestors and the Covenant.”

“That’s not going to happen,'' John responded by sliding to the side of the elite, taking him by surprise. He sent off a few blows before grabbing the elite’s sword arm and pulling it away, leaving the chest exposed enough for John to plunge his sword into it. The elite looked down at the visor of John’s helmet with a shocked expression on its face. ‘Overconfidence. Gets anything killed’, he thought to himself

“Sorry, pal.”

As John withdrew the energy sword, the elite fell to his knees, but simply had a content look on its face.

“Then...I die with hono...” were the last words the elite said before finally collapsing entirely and died.

John breathed a sigh of relief before he saw the shade turret at the end of a platform in the middle of the bay swing to face him, the elite gunner roaring with murderous glee.

“Shit”, he swore as he noticed his shields hadn’t fully recharged yet.

Twilight could only watch in concern as she saw the Chief activate the energy sword. The two other elites that arrived were too close to Twilight for her to intervene without the risk of being killed on the spot. Though her enigmatic magic shield was powerful, somehow, she doubted that the energy sword wouldn’t penetrate it, or at least cause a fatal amount of kinetic energy to sweep into her.

Despite this, she still readied herself, horn lit, magic primed. The other black clad elites themselves activated their energy sword, with one holding a plasma rifle in the other hand.

“You will not interfere, apostate”, one spoke out, surprising her with how it spoke equestrian/english.

“You understand me?” she asked in reflex, not able to stop herself.

“Indeed, I understand and speak this… abominable language,” the elite growled out. “Now, remain where you are.”

“Why even have this duel?” she asked, causing the elites to take a step back in shock, then shake with anger. She ignored this and continued pressing on. “What is the point of it? This is war isn’t it? You’re ruthless, killing innocents and those who are simply fighting for their lives en masse, yet you do these duels that suggest honour?”

“I will gut you where you stand, vermin!” the other elite shouted, before the first elite simply held his comrade back. She looked past them, and saw Chief and the dueling elite pass into the shuttle bay.

The first elite looked back at Twilight now, his face contorted in what Twilight surmised to be a fierce expression, one which suggested that she had just insulted him.

“The humans deserve only eradication. Their heretic beliefs and ignorance of the gods, even as they trample on their creations, must be punished by death.” The elite’s explanation, nor his vicious tone, did nothing to warm Twilight up to their point of view.

Then the elite’s expression turned more respectful, though his eyes glazing to the side suggested that it wasn’t directed at her.

“But their warriors are strong, capable, truly respectable. Those who fight well deserve only the best death: An honorable, swift ending to their ignorant lives. None more so than their ‘Spartans’, the demons that have plagued the Covenant for too long.”

“Now, all but one are dead, turned to glass on the planet we freed from heresy, following your human vessel here, to Halo. Now, the true demon shall perish by our blades, under the eyes of the Forerunners.”

“And so will you!” the other elite shouted, running up to Twilight.

She teleported away, trying to appear behind them, but instead she appeared in between them. She cursed as she ducked to avoid being decapitated by an energy sword. Her magic was definitely not working for her now, even with that flood beast dead. She tried to buck the one holding both the plasma rifle and the energy sword, but he leapt backwards with such agility that it was startling.

He fired a volley of plasma at her, causing her to back away, only for the second elite to try to stab her from behind. She used her magic to materialise a sword, only for it to break with the first impact against the energy sword. As the first elite approached her, rifle raised, and the second elite was on the other side, swiping at her with his sword, Twilight noticed that she was trapped between the two of them.

Deciding to try something new, she used her magic to send out a shockwave that sent both elites flying a small distance. The elite to her left, the one with the rifle and sword, got up on his feet quite fast and barely dodged her magic beam. The second one had only just got up on his knees when Twilight aimed her beam at the ceiling, causing part of it to fall on the elite, killing it.

The remaining elite roared in anger, throwing away his rifle and brought out a plasma grenade. He threw it in front of Twilight, who raised a shield that broke from the force of the explosion. She retaliated by telekinetically activating all of the grenades he had on his belt. She expected him to explode, but instead he quickly removed his belt and threw it towards Twilight.

Once again she teleported, but this time it went right and she teleported behind him, while also having teleported the fallen elite’s sword to her. With a lucky guess, she found the button on the first try and activated it, the sword piercing through the shields of the elite and his chest.

As the elite fell to the ground, dead, Twilight heard the sounds of a shade turret firing. She ran out into the shuttle bay and saw Chief take a shot to the chest.

“NO!” she shouted, throwing the turret off of the platform before rushing to Chief.

She sighed with relief as he got up onto his feet, his shields broken and a huge burn mark on his chest plate, some of it slightly melted.

“You all right?” she asked him, to which he nodded.

“Yeah. Shields hadn’t recharged fully yet, so the shade wore them down extremely fast before part of the final shot that it fired broke through and hit me in the chest. My armour’s still functional, so it’s nothing.”

“Phew. You had me worried for a second there,” Twilight said with a slight smile.

They were interrupted when they saw a banshee fly in to the hangar, land and open up, with the elite pilot getting out, unaware of the two intruders looking at him.

Both Twilight and Chief looked at each other, thinking the same thing.

The next second, the pilot had his neck snapped after Twilight teleported Chief and herself behind him. Twilight flew into the air while Chief got into the banshee. Together, they exited the shuttle bay and into the night sky, avoiding the plasma rounds fired at them.

Author's Note

Hi everyone, dalek117 here,

So, another mission is complete and a character has met an unfortunate death. RIP Keyes, you'll be missed. But thankfully the Proto-Gravemind has been killed.

Thank you to Crossman Legacy for writing the introduction of this chapter.

Please leave your thoughts and criticisms in the comment section below and have a great day.

regards, dalek117