The Chief accepted the chip and reached back to slot the device at the back of his neck. Meanwhile, Twilight was amazed at the details that popped up on the eyepiece, with the names of the humans which she could see tag them, and details about the devices they carried. When she looked at Keyes, the screen put an outline around him, with the tag: “Keyes, Jacob, Captain, UNSC Navy” She turned to face the Chief, and was awarded with “Spartan 117, Master Chief Petty Officer, UNSC Navy”

The Master Chief saluted and began to leave the bridge, motioning for Twilight to follow him. Then, much to her surprise, Cortana’s voice came out from directly in her ears, where one of the wires of the screen was connected to.

“Hi again, sorry to scare you. Just wanted to catch you up on some important details that will be essential for you.”

“How are you talking to me when you’re not here?” Twilight asked, confused. “And can you actually hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you. The headset you’re wearing has its own radio, so we can talk to any other UNSC personnel within range. Let’s keep talking while we move out. The Chief will clear the path ahead.”

Twilight walked on, moving out of the command deck, disturbed by the louder sounds of fighting.

“Now, the screen displays a Heads Up Display, or HUD for short”, Cortana explained. “It allows you to identify anything that we have information on in our databanks. It also has the benefits of providing an IFF tag, that is Identification Friend or Foe, which will mark you as a friendly to UNSC personnel…”

“UNSC?”

“The United Nations Space Command, the military wing of the United Earth Govenment, humanities main political body. As I was saying, the IFF will mark you as friendly, meaning you won’t get shot at by any UNSC forces, unless they pull the trigger by accident of course.”

“That’s encouraging”, Twilight mumbled.

“However, first things first, you’ll need to learn how to operate a weapon.”

“A weapon?!” Twilight stopped in her tracks. “I can’t use a weapon. That’s against everything I was taught by…”

“I understand that, but wouldn’t you rather you survive to get back to your home?”

Twilight fell silent at that, but nodded. “Yes.”

“Good, then we’ll start with the basics. Most of our weapons are guns, imagine them as crossbows that don’t have to reload after every shot, and uses explosives to shoot out of a barrel. Each weapon model has its own unique amount of rounds that will need to be refilled after using them all up.”

“Your HUD will identify any weapon you see.” Twilight nodded at this, as she entered a corridor that she had entered previously, horrified to find it now littered with bodies, both human and the other aliens. At the end of the Corridor was the Master Chief, who aimed his smaller weapon at an unseen target, and fired three times. After each shot, Twilight heard the scream of one of the smaller aliens, and a thump as a body fell to the ground.

With bile threatening to overcome her, Twilight trotted over to the Chief cautiously, pearing on either side of the corridor. She saw the three bodies of the aliens on the ground, their heads now decorated with their blood and the hole in their foreheads. It was a tremendous test of will that she did not puke at that very moment, though she knew she could not hold it off forever.

She noticed the Chief looking down at her, though she could not tell his emotions from his helmet. She breathed out and nodded at him, signaling to him that she was ready. Then, she heard Cortana’s voice again, though it was directed at the Chief. “Those Marines could use some help, Chief! Do what you do best.”

They entered the cafeteria again, though it was now a battlefield, with the humans fighting off the numerous Covenant forces. Twilight instinctively ducked behind the Chief, though she did keep an eye on the Covenant aliens. As she looked at each alien, a small tag of the species’ name came up on the eyepiece, with the smaller aliens with the methane pack called ‘Grunts’ and the larger, shielded aliens titled ‘Elites’. Twilight then surmised that these names were the official nicknames of the species, not what they call themselves.

The Chief charged the closest Elite, firing what the HUD identified as a MA5B IWCS or an Assault Rifle, shredding its shields and a final round cut through the chest plate, into a vital organ. The Elite slammed into the deck and died as the Chief moved on into mowing down the remaining Grunts. His appearance seemed to rally the humans, who cheered at his kill, and rushed out of their cover to help mop up the Covenant forces.

Twilight could not help but be amazed and horrified at the chaos that was ensuring in front of her. After a couple of minutes of a brutal firefight, the humans finally drove off or killed the Covenant in the Cafeteria. Immediately after, the Chief moved onwards, with Twilight following close behind.

The pair ran into a trio of humans fighting an Elite. This time however, the humans and the alien were surprised to see the Elite’s weapon be surrounded by a purple aura, and flew out of the Elite’s grasp, allowing the humans to easily kill it. The Chief looked back at Twilight, who held the weapon up to her eyepiece, pretending not to notice the death she had just caused.

A trio of grunts appeared to the side, firing a volley of plasma shots at the alicorn, who had to flee to cover behind a metal plate. She spotted a small human gun on the ground and instinctively reached out with her hoof to pick it up, and was surprised to see that she held it in her hooves without any of the human ‘fingers’ keeping it in place.

“That’s...new”, she stated out loud, attracting the attention of the Grunts. She yelped as another volley of plasma fire flew towards her. She covered her face as parts of the metal shield sizzled and melted slightly in certain areas.

The humans weren’t standing still while she was being attacked. The Chief had become occupied with another Elite and squad of Grunts from an exit hatch. He and the other humans were finishing off that group while she was forced to deal with her trio of Grunts.

She grimaced as she looked at her weapon, with it being identified as a M6D Magnum by her eyepiece. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she then got out of cover, aimed the front of the pistol at a grunt, and used her magic to pull the trigger, just like how she saw the Chief do with his hands. A single shot rang out, the recoil of the shot causing her aim to be ruined, and the bullet fly into the shoulder of the Grunt. Ignoring the voice in her head screaming about what Celestia and all of her other friends would think, Twilight, compensating for the recoil, fired again, killing the Grunt through a headshot.

The fallen Grunt’s companions growled in anguished and opened fire with more zeal, but the plasma bolts impacted on a magical shield that Twilight constructed. While the remaining pair starred with their wide eyes, Twilight deconstructed the shield and fired another two shots at one of them, eventually killing it. The last grunt was killed by the Chief, who had snuck up behind Twilight, startling her with the blast sound from his own magnum.

She turned around as the Chief strode to her. Cortana’s voice came on the radio. “You learn fast, for someone who just arrived.”

Twilight shrugged, both sheepish and horrified at the truth of her statement.

“Let’s move out”, the Chief said, his voice also coming out of the radio, “we have an objective to reach, and the Covenant are slowly but surely over running our forces.”

“Right”, Cortana said. “There should be an airlock close by. If there is still an escape pod, then our job will be done. For now.”

With that statement, the trio, along with the armoured humans, who Cortana then described to Twilight as ‘Marines’, trekking along with them to the airlock, though Twilight wondered what it was and why it was called that. It was at this point that the ship shook from an impact.

“What the hell?” one of the marines said. “Did something just hit us?”

“Move it! Back to the other airlock!” the other marine exclaimed. The humans started to quicken their pace, with a sense of dread emerging within Twilight.

As they approached it, Twilight noticed that it was a set of doors, one of which was guarded by two humans. The doors then unexpectedly exploded, sending the closest humans flying, and Covenant soldiers emerged from the door. A firefight soon broke out, with the humans coming out on top.

The Chief went through the door, along with Twilight, who found a jarring change in architecture. Instead of the grey, white and metal setting she had been in before, this ‘room’ was purple and more organic in nature. Much of the lighting and visual effects were similar to that on the Covenant weapons.

“They’re using our lifeboats airlocks to attach their boarding craft”, Cortana exclaimed over the radio. “We go out and they come in! Clever Bastards…”

The trio soon left the marines and the airlock behind, and traversed more corridors and rooms, many of which had to be fought over from the Covenant. They soon ran into a group of Covenant, this time led by a black clad Elite. This one directly targeted the Chief with a passion, going so far as to overwhelm the shields of the Chief.

“Keep your head down!” Twilight heard Cortana shout as she herself dealt with the grunts near the Elite. “There’s two of us in here now, remember!”

Confused at this statement, she watched as the Chief finally broke down the Elite’s shields and smashed the butt of his rifle into the face of the Elite, causing it to fall to the floor with a loud ‘clunk’.

The Chief quickly reloaded his rifle and moved on through a hatch, with Twilight following close behind. He was impressed with her tenacity, but worried that her mental state was in a more unstable manner now that she had killed a living creature. From what Cortana had gotten out of her, Twilight was barely coping with everything. Now that it was his mission to protect both her and Cortana, this would become a liability.

He may have to actually teach her the basics of surviving and killing another living being in order for the odds of her surviving to increase significantly. This irked him somehow, until he finally connected what he was thinking of doing to what Doctor Halsey did to him and his fellow brothers and sisters in the spartan program. Twilight was like a child to all of this. He would be no different to Halsey, though he had never held what she did to him against her. It is because of her that he is the soldier he is now.

His thoughts were interrupted by Twilight, who had a expectant look on her face.

“What did Cortana mean when she said that ‘there’s two of us in here’?” she asked.

Chief paused for a brief period, trying to find a simplistic manner to explain everything, when Cortana answered for him.

“Did you notice how the Captain gave the Chief a chip before we left the bridge?” Twilight nodded. “Well, that chip is like a container where I am inside. It’s a house, and since the Chief inserted into his neural link, I am inside the Chief’s mind for a lack of a better term. We now both share the same body, and the same fate.”

The Chief noticed the shocked look on Twilight’s face as the meaning of Cortana’s words became clear in her head.

“If he … gets hurt…” Twilight stammered out. “You also get hurt?”

“Yes”, Cortana replied. “However, rather than dealing with a very heavy mental burden right now, why don’t we reach a lifeboat and escape the ship?”

With that in the air, the Chief moved forward, and into another firefight. This time, there were five Grunts and two Elites, one of which was clad in red, a major. Deciding to focus on the major, the Chief expertly aimed a trio of bursts at the Elite, taking out it’s shields, swapped to the magnum, and put a single shot through the head, killing it instantly. Meanwhile, Twilight had disappeared in a flash of purple light, and reappeared behind the remaining Elite, announcing her presence by bucking with her two rear legs, and kicking it a far distance away, taking out the shields. The Elite had no chance to get up as a marine strode forward and sprayed a burst of bullets into the chest. The grunts were mopped up fairly easily as they began to individually flee in terror.

‘She’s got quite a big punch’, the Chief thought. ‘She could be even stronger than me, in armour.’

These small firefights would increasingly come about as the pair moved out to find an escape pod. They soon arrived at a large, open room with a staircase leading to a higher deck. Once again, it was a battlefield, and the Chief and Twilight were forced to divert their efforts at helping the marines and crew repel the Covenant troops.

Many of the marines faces here were those he knew or were familiar with. Thus, the Chief was able to easily coordinate the counter attack against the Covenant. It took only a moment for the initial Covenant forces to be wiped out before reinforcements arrived. A third species was with them this time: avian like birds, called Jackals, that carried hand held shields. Twilight immediately looked to the Chief for answers.

“Jackals”, he growled out, flanking one of them and killing it with a single burst of his rifle. “Protected at the front by their shields and are very fast and accurate. Go for either their weapon arm or the sides.”

Twilight nodded at this, and teleported to the other Jackal side’s, blasting it with her magic. The Jackal screeched as it fell, then died.

With the Covenant forces in the room eliminated, the pair moved on upstairs to reach another airlock, though all of the escape pods had already launched. With their options now limited, the Chief had no choice but to lead Twilight through a series of maintenance corridors that led to another airlock.

However, the corridor ended early, and they emerged near the observation centre of the Cryo bay that they Chief was in. Making his way quickly to the door of the centre, he found it open, with the sides melted by plasma. Dreading what he'll find through the door, he walked through and saw the dead bodies of the two techs who were stationed here, their bodies mangled by plasma fire.

His blood boiling, the Chief barely noticed Twilight's horrified reaction to the bodies as he approached the huge window that beheld the actual bay, with the three Elites in it near his open Cryo tube. They soon spotted him and attempted to kill him, though their plasma bolts could not burn through the reinforced screen.

Now ignoring the Elites, the Chief turned to Twilight, who had gone off to the side and emptied the contents of her stomach out on the floor. Going up to her, he knelt beside her and asked "Are you good?"

Twilight looked at him with tear filled eyes and nodded, though the Chief could tell that she was not fine at all. He put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner.

"You can't do anything for those who have fallen", he calmly told her. "You can only keep on going and finish the fight. You'll make it out of this and find your way home, but for now, it is the time to move on, not to mourn. That comes later."

Twilight started to cry slightly, but wiped her eyes and nodded. "Thank you" she whispered, though the Chief could hear her clearly.

The Chief was about to reply, until he heard the roar of an Elite nearby. Raising his rifle, he motioned for Twilight to follow him and together, they exited the room and saw the Elite standing at the end of the corridor. It soon saw them and started to charge them until a nearby section of the wall exploded, sending the burnt body flying.

Undeterred, the pair moved on, finding another set of maintenance corridors, though this time it was patrolled by a pair of Grunts, which the Chief quickly dealt with them before they could give out their location. They swiftly exited the corridor near another airlock, though it was being contested by the Covenant.

"Hurry Chief, the lifepods are launching!" Cortana urged on.

With this, both the Chief and Twilight broke into a sprint, but the Chief felt a bolt of plasma collide into his back, forcing him to stop and turn around. His assailant was a Grunt, with his plasma pistol glowing with charged energy. The Chief ended its life with a short burst, but was soon grabbed by a trio of Grunts.

The situation would have been laughable at best, but then he felt their hands reaching towards the bottom of his helmet and started pulling at it. The Bastards were trying to take off his helmet, so they could put in the plasma grenade a fourth grunt had just activated. He reacted with a simple shake, throwing the grunts holding him down off of him before grabbing his rifle and firing at the grunt armed with the grenade, whose eyes widened with fear as it seemed to realise that it’s plan just fell through, a single burst ending its life. He fired at the other grunts with more anger than usual, an anger that quickly faded once the deed was done.

He ran to the lifeboat, where Twilight was waiting for him. One unfortunate marine tripped on his way in, with the Chief picking him up and throwing him in the lifeboat. After both he and Twilight entered, the doors of the lifeboat shut and the Chief turned to face the pilot. "Punch it."

The pilot replied and the Lifeboat shot out into space. Twilight was having trouble trying to get into one of the available seats, so the Chief assisted her and strapped her in. As he did this, Cortana's voice came directly to Chief and Twilight.

"I managed to slice into the Covenant battle network for a brief period, and found some interesting data about our destination. The Covenant view it as a religious object in their beliefs, and call it 'Halo'."

They were interrupted by the Lifeboat being passed by a burning Pillar of Autumn as it entered Halo's atmosphere before they did. While Cortana commented on "the Captain manually piloting" the Chief turned to face Twilight, who was looking at the human cruiser through the front viewport with a open mouth and a stunned look.

"Was that the ship we were just on?" she asked. The Chief nodded and grabbed the overhead railing as the Lifeboat entered the atmosphere itself.

"Hang on tight", he told Twilight, who was obviously startled by the fiery exterior of the lifeboat.

Author's Note

Hi Everyone.

Finally finished the segment of the Pillar of Autumn. Next time is landing on the ring.

Please put any errors you find in the comment section.