Twilight sat unsteadily in the seat, her equine form not suited for being positioned this way on a human seat. Her back ached and her adrenaline was starting to fade away, leaving her tired and worn out. It didn't help that she was also thinking about how many aliens she had just killed in the last hour. Granted, they were trying to kill her and her human protectors, but she wondered what Princess Celestia would think of her if she was able to return back to Equestria.

Again and again, the sight of the headless Elite would flash before her, causing her to always gasp in fright and horror. Talking about that Elite, she looked down at her wounded wing. She tried to move it so she could get a better view of it, but the searing pain overcame her so she left it be.

'What have I gotten myself into?', she asked herself in her mind. 'Not only have I encountered four new alien species never seen before by a pony, but they're locked in a brutal war that I've been swept into. I've killed to protect myself, my wing has been hurt badly by plasma so I can't fly at the moment, and now I have to ignore all of the potential knowledge I could get from most of these aliens in favour of safety'

She took a quick glance at the Master Chief, who was still holding on to the rails on the ceiling. It was still a mystery to her why the Chief was larger than most other humans she had seen on the Pillar of Autumn, and why did he have different armour compared to them. In fact, his armour's function was more similar to that of the Covenant Elites. She would have thought he was the equivalent of an Alicorn, but he obviously took orders from the smaller humans. So, that begged the question: what was he?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a large boom and the lifeboat shuddering and moving all about. It was as if something had just collided with the lifeboat.

"I can't control it!" the pilot shouted, extremely frightened. "Brace for Impact!!"

Twilight looked ahead, seeing the ground coming up really fast to them, and poured much of her magic into a shield barrier surrounding all of the occupants of the lifeboat. It took a lot of her remaining energy, but she managed to achieve her goal just as the lifeboat collided with the ground.

Flung into the air for a moment, the lifeboat then skidded across the lavish, green landscape before halting just before a cliff face. Crew and Marines were thrown of their seats and the Chief slammed into the ceiling, but fortunately, due to Twilight's shield, everyone on board was only shook up or had bruises.

All except for Twilight, who almost fainted in her seat. The crash had broken the straps, so she began to fall to the ground as her vision started to blacken out, only to be caught by the Chief.

"Easy there", he said as he carried her out of the lifeboat. She felt herself be lowered gently onto the ground, muddy from the lifeboat's impact.

"I...I'll be fine...in a bit", she managed to get out as she closed her eyes for a moment. "Too much magic with a lot a fatigue ends badly for many."

"I could tell" Cortana spoke out through the radio. "From the sensors on the lifeboat and Chief's armour, when you made that magic shield, your life signs and energy fluctuated significantly, as if it was being drained."

Twilight's eyes shot open at the last word. She struggled to her hooves, though the Chief and a nearby marine helped her up. Her mind buzzed at what she had just heard.

"Drained?! That's...that can't happen. Why would it..." she stopped as realization dawned. "I'm not on Equiss anymore, so my magic must be affected in someway, drawing energy from my own life source to power powerful spells."

"So using magic is now killing you." Cortana stated flatly.

"Only if I'm very tired and haven't had a good rest or regained some energy from food and water" Twilight corrected. "Which I am right now. I'll be fine. If it didn't kill me when I did the spell, it won't now."

She began to take a look around where she was, and gasped. It was beautiful! Trees, hills, mountains and meadows were everywhere where the eye could see, with large cliff faces and rocks placed randomly around the place in a manner that felt...natural. A light flashed in the distance, flowing upwards into the sky. In the sky, Twilight could see the inner part of the ring swoop upwards to complete itself.

"What is this place?" a marine asked as he too looked at the wonderful sight.

"I would love to stay and find out", Cortana began, with a hint of urgency in her voice. "but the crash triggered a lot of Covenant radio traffic and it's my guess that the welcome wagon is on it's way."

Twilight was shook out of her amazement, and looked to the Chief for guidance.

"Grab any weapons, ammo and supplies you can carry", he ordered to the assembled survivors.

"Warning", Cortana spoke again, the urgency now alarm, "I've detected multiple Covenant dropships on approach." This caused everyone to look around, trying to spot the dropships first.

"I recommend moving into those hills. The Covenant will know that everyone would have survived the crash from the lack of bodies, so its best that we get a head start on them, and fast."

"Acknowledged", Twilight heard the Chief say over their private comm channel.

The group began to move out across a narrow bridge that was metal and felt quite familiar to Twilight in terms of the architecture, though her head was still not all there and recovering from her magic spell.

When they passed the bridge and started to make their way up the hills, they saw a fork-shaped ship fly over them and hover near the crashed lifeboat. A pair of smaller ships, that announced their presence a mile away, flew to circle around the fork-shaped ship, which Twilight's eyepiece labelled as a Type 25 troop carrier, or Spirit. The smaller ships were called Banshees. From the sides of the Spirit, doors opened, revealing a squad of Grunts and an Elite.

It wasn't long before the Banshees had spotted the small group of humans, and had started to initiate an attack run, throwing out a massive volley of plasma fire, causing an unfortunate marine to be almost disintegrated from the amount of plasma fire he took. Fortunately, the human's Assault rifles were powerful enough to damage the flying craft and the Chief used up an entire magazine before Twilight watched one of the Banshees explode. She herself used telekinesis on the remaining Banshee, throwing it at the squad of Covenant, both destroying the Banshee and killing the Covenant troops.

With the immediate threat over, the remaining group continued their walk over the hill, running into another group of Covenant. Twilight noticed how the humans dealt with the Covenant forces, with the Chief focusing almost exclusively on the Elites, while the rest deal with the Grunts and Jackals that accompany them. A wise move, considering how resilient the Chief is compared to the other humans.

Twilight decided to not do anything this time, due to her exhausting herself more with her telekinesis beforehand. Though Twilight didn't say anything about this, Cortana seemed to read her mind. "Keep yourself safe and get your strength back. You've done more than enough for now."

It was over in a moment. The Covenant squad was wiped out, and the group went down a small drop with rocks creating some large stepping stones. It was when they finally past the rocks when they heard the familiar sound of gunfire in the distance. Twilight both took hope and dread from this, due to it meaning that there were other survivors off the Pillar of Autumn, but they were being attacked and potentially killed.

The Chief obviously agreed, as he started to rush forward, rifle at the ready.

They turned a corner and found a large, U-shaped structure with a platform near the bottom, that had lit off a bright light pulse, which raced into the sky. The pulse was just like the light Twilight had seen before, so it must have come from the structure. She also saw the Covenant dropship landing and deploying troops to combat the defending marines there.

Twilight was about to follow the humans in to help their fellow comrades when she finally recognised the architecture of the structure and the bridge beforehand.

It was the same as the ruins on Equiss.

Dumbstruck by this revelation, she didn't notice the jackal sneak up on her or the purple shard that flew towards her. All she got was the pain caused by the impact of the weapon, causing her to fall to the ground, the shard sticking out of her flank.

Forcing herself to move, she turned around and saw with tear filled eyes the Jackal get shot several times by the Chief as he, along with a dark skinned human, came to her aid.

Unable to contain the pain, and her self restrained, Twilight started to wail on and shout.

"For Buck's sake..." was all she could let out before the shard exploded, sending her blood and pieces of her flesh everywhere.

The Pain! The Pain! That was all she could think about as she rolled on the floor, screaming louder than she ever had, until she fell unconscious from the pain.

"Twilight's in trouble!" Cortana shouted in his ear as he finished off the last Elite in the area. By then, he had found out the leader of the human survivors at the structure was none other than Staff Sergeant Avery Jr Johnson, an old comrade and friend of his. They had just arranged to call for an evac when Cortana just interrupted him.

The Chief spun around, saw Twilight fall, and ran to her, firing his pistol at the jackal as he ran, with Johnson following close behind.

They reached her just as the purple needler shard imbedded in her flank exploded. Both humans instinctively raised their hands to protect their eyes, though both stopped after less than a second, and arrived at Twilight's still screaming form.

"Medic!" Johnson shouted out

Fortunately, the wound was not fatal, or that severe. Blood was flowing freely, and the Chief could see a lot of her muscle tissue. However, he knew from seeing other soldiers getting ripped apart by multiple needles about how painful and dangerous one could be. Twilight must be in hell.

'That was the second time she was hurt while I was supposed to protect her', he thought to himself, silently cursing outloud. 'What kind of a guardian am I?'

Fortunately she would recover, but as the medic said as he brought a med pack and patched her up, the flesh at her flank would be scarred for a good, long while.

The Chief, Johnson, the medic and another of Johnson's marines, a man called Jenkins, carried her up to the structure. There they placed her softly and the medic used some bio foam on her.

"The...same...architecture...", he heard Twilight moan softly in her unconscious state.

'The same architecture?' he thought as another Covenant dropship entered view. 'What could she mean by that...' He then remembered an earlier conversation between Twilight and Cortana on the Autumn that he had overheard before the ship was boarded.

'So, these structures, and Halo, were made by the same race that built the ruins on Twilight's planet. If that's so, then why didn't she teleport onto the ring itself, instead of on the Autumn?'

A good question, a question for later, after he gets Twilight out of here. But to do that, he'll have to deal with the Covenant.

A grim need for revenge tried to come out of him, but he repressed it. Yes, the Covenant had not only hurt Twilight, but the countless human lives lost to them, as well as the lives of his fellow brothers and sisters in the Spartan program needed to be avenged, but not by unguided sense of vengeance. He would need to be calm and smart to deal the greatest amount of damage to the Covenant and complete his objective.

With that, he walked away from Twilight, his rifle at the ready, on the way to kill the Covenant forces that had just left their dropship.

After the Covenant forces had finally left the humans alone, Chief and Cortana were soon contacted by a welcome voice.

"This is Pelican Echo 419. Can any UNSC forces here me?"

"Echo 419, this is Charlie Company. We'll need extraction out of this mess."

"Copy that. Additional Warthog on route as well."

As Cortana continued the conversation with Echo 419, the Chief made his way back to Twilight, whose breathing had steadied, and seemed less pale then before. He looked at the medic, who was shaking his head.

"This pony is amazing", he stated, "not even twenty minutes after, and she's already starting to heal. She'll still have a scar afterwards, but the main flesh and muscle will repair itself." As he said this, the Chief could already see small parts of the wound repairing itself in a speedy manner. "In fact, I won't be surprised if she wakes up soon."

With the Pelican flying close by, the Chief looked up, and saw three fiery streaks in the sky, indicating more lifeboats landing close by. If he had seen them, then the Covenant would have too, so they would need to be found and the survivors extracted before they are killed by the Covenant.

Cortana realised this too, so she asked Echo 419 to drop off her warthog for the Chief so he can find the lifeboats. However, first he'll have to get Twilight on the Pelican for evac to...

"Cortana, where is the Pelican going after all of the marines and Twilight are on board?"

"To Alpha Base. Major Silva's Helljumpers had taken a secure and fortified butte from the Covenant, and is now serving as the UNSC's main headquarters on Halo. They have set up an adequate medical facility there as well, so it would be best for Twilight to go there. She can't stay out here in the open just yet, though she will have to."

The Chief accepted this. Though he didn't have any time to meet the commander of the Autumn's ODST contingent, his record was quite clear of any red flags, except for a specific date did jump to mind as it was the date he came out of surgery for his augments. What Silva had to do with it, he had no idea so far. However, communications from him and his staff had shown Silva's hostility to the Spartans, so the Chief wasn't all that friendly with him.

As the Pelican swooped in and landed, Chief slowly walked up to the bay of the dropship, carefully holding an unconscious Twilight. Johnson was walking next to him, simultaneously smoking on a cigarette that he brought along with him, and holding his MA5B, all the while putting out a casual stance, though his eyes showed the cautiousness and experience of the aged sergeant, darting across his surroundings in order to find any threat that may be lurking.

"Get going Chief", Johnson said as the both of them finally reached the dropship, with the Chief strapping Twilight in. "I'll look after her for you until you return." He put his hand on the chief's shoulder. "She'll be fine."

The Chief nodded at this, accepting Johnson's word. "I'll be at the base shortly, after I bring home some marines."

"Glad to hear it." Johnson said, shaking the Chief's hand before they parted ways. The Chief stepped off the lowered dropship bay doors and made his way to the parked warthog with a gunner waiting for him on the machine gun, while Johnson closed the doors after all of the survivors were on, and the Pelican flew off into the distance.

Author's Note

Hi everyone.

I must be very cruel to Twilight by having her get hurt badly not once, but twice, at the hands of the Covenant. But don't worry, major physical harm will not happen to her again for a while, so she'll be relatively safe. Mental harm, on the other hand...

I also took on the new lore from the latest Halo novel: Halo Silent Storm, with the Chief having already met and befriended Johnson from the beginning of the war.

Next time: Alpha Base, something from the novels