Friendship In The Void

There lay the four ponies and Isaac on the soft outlines of the pond. Isaac was just laying there breathing heavily; Rainbow assumed that Applejack had kicked him pretty hard. Silence and the scent of the dead Manticore filled the air. Until, that is, Isaac broke it.

"So..." he sat up and turned her way, "What's your name?" Rainbow could tell he was trying his hardest for it not to be awkward. She had just attacked them after all.

"Rainbow Dash. What's yours?" she asked him back. She had been a little annoyed for the last five or ten minutes. A bit of dried blood was stuck in the corner of her mouth and it was driving her insane.

"Isaac Clarke." more awkward silence trudged into the conversation they were trying to have. He had tried a few times to lighten the mood, but nothing was seeming to work.

He sat there for a second, taking a look at his surroundings. It was a rather small meadow. In the center was the shallow body of water where they resided. On the other side of it was a tree, accompanied by a backdrop of a shrouded forest. It had gotten a little misty outside. And gathering from that, he assumed it was early in the morning. Isaac turned his attention back to the pegasus tied up beside him.

"What are you, anyways?" he tried yet again to start a decent conversation, "I'm a human."

"Why are you being so nice to me? We just tried to kill you." she looked up at him with an eyebrow raised.

"Hey, you aren't the one who tried to kill me. She is." he pointed menacingly at the orange pony beside her, "The bitch kicked me so damn hard it broke one of my ribs. Though, I shouldn't be complaining. All kinds of shit has tried to kill me in the past. All of them failed." he perked up a little bit.

"What do you mean? What's tried to kill you?" Rainbow looked as confused as ever.

"You ever been to space?" he asked her. She shook her head.

"Nope. Why, have you?" he looked down at her with a look that said 'are you serious?', but then remembered that she didn't know what humans were capable of.

"I have." she beamed up at him when he said this, "Don't get all excited. It wasn't a cake walk. There's all kinds of crap that could kill you up there." he informed her.

"Like what?"

"Well, first off is the no air situation. 'If there ain't no air, you can't live there!' is what they say back where I'm from. Second is the gravity. It's pretty much zero up there, so you have to make your own." he almost got to three when she interrupted.

"You can't make gravity! That's impossible." she looked at him as if her were crazy.

"On the contrary."

"How? You must be pretty smart to be able to do that."

"My race is very advanced. We can do stuff you wouldn't be able to do in a very long time. Like shock-point technology. With it we could move faster than the speed of light."

"Wow, Twilight will be SUPER excited when she hears about this!" she said.

"Who's Twilight?" he asked her.

"The purple unicorn over there. I don't know what you did to her, but it must have hurt pretty badly. Or she wouldn't passed out like that. She normally just passes out when she's scared or something." she chuckled a little.

"I have full ammo in all of my tools. If I would have shot her, then she wouldn't have a leg left." Rainbow grimaced at the thought of having only three legs. He took out his Plasma Cutter and showed it to her. "This is a Plasma Cutter. It's used to cut through some of the toughest ores. If I would have hit your friend with it, then she would have probably been killed."

Rainbow backed away slowly from the device. It was frightening to say the least, but she was the least bit skeptical about the weapon. It was pretty small. And from what she remembered about her encounters with the dragon about a month back was that bigger creatures aren't normally afraid of smaller ones.

"How? It's so small."she looked at the weapon in his hands with a tiny bit of curiosity.

"It doesn't matter how small it is. You never know when it can be dangerous. I learned that the hard way." he remembered his encounters with the Crawlers and shuddered. After he got over his little flashback, he put the Plasma Cutter away and took something else out; The Line Gun.

"If your looking for power and size, there's nothing better than a Line Gun. This tool is used in about the same way as the Plasma Cutter; to mine ores. But this one is only used when were dealing with the toughest of materials; materials the Plasma Cutter can't cut." he told her. Isaac always had a little bit of an ego. He just never showed it off. As he was about to take another one of this tools out, he stopped and looked around as if he had heard something.

Then, out of nowhere, a necromorph popped out of the treeline and ran at full speed towards the group of ponies beside Isaac. When he looked to where Rainbow was, she wasn't there. Instead, Nicole was sitting there, as if she was waiting for him. He tried to reach for his Plasma Cutter, but was stopped when Nicole took both of his arms and slammed him onto his back. She slung back her arm, then brought it down on Isaac. He moved his head to the side to avoid it, but when he did he came face to face with a Pack. The Pack climbed over him and set itself down behind his head. It reached both of it's slender, cold hands around his head and held it in place. He tried to move his now freed arm, but with no luck. Isaac looked to see why and saw two other Packs holding them down. He looked back up only to see Nicole's angry face staring down at him. The apparition of his once dead girlfriend did the same as before; winding back her arm and forcing it down onto Isaac, only this time she hit her mark. As his last moments of consciousness faded away, he could have almost sworn he heard Rainbow Dash calling for him.

"Wake up!" Rainbow yelped, "Wake up, please!" she couldn't move or try to find his friends since she was tied up. She tried once or twice earlier that day to get out of it, but to now success. She squirmed and flapped her wings trying to get free, but to no avail, she was still helpless.

"Uh..." a familiar voice moaned from behind her. She squirmed in place until she found herself staring at a now awake unicorn. "What happened? Where am I?" she asked to no one in particular until she sat up on her haunches to see Rainbow staring at her.

"Rarity, your awake! Get me out of this." Rainbow said.

"I'm sorry... but who are you?" her heart skipped a beat. Did she really lose her memory?

"It's me, Rainbow Dash, your friend!"

"I'm sorry dear, but I think you may have me confused with somepony else."

Rainbow's eyes widened, "You really don't remember me?"

"No. I'm sorry darling, maybe we can be friends later. But what I'm really wanting to know is why I'm bound in vines in this ghastly forest." her friend tried to get out of them, but failed.

"Do you know who they are?" she nodded her head towards the two other ponies nearby.

"No, I'm sorry. The colors really are familiar, though." the white unicorn suddenly got assaulted by pain. Her head almost felt like bursting.

"Rarity! What's wrong?"

The pain was just then starting to go away, "Nothing. Just a headache."

"Are you sure your okay?" she nodded, "Okay, good. I hope you'll stay that way until they come back."

"Who's 'they'?" Rarity asked her as she looked around at the surrounding treeline.

Meanwhile...

Chief and Shepard had been around the surrounding areas of the forest, looking for anything useful, from food to shelter. Unfortunately, Chief had only gotten a glimpse of a few animals. They were just to fast to keep up with, as they run into the bushes even before he gets there. He thought that maybe the Manticore was the reason for it. Or maybe because there was just a bigger, faster predator roaming around the forest. The Spartan didn't really care at the moment, though. He was on the lookout for civilization, or any signs of it. Although it was proof enough to have found four living and breathing sentient beings, he needed to know for sure. That way he would be able to find a way to contact the UNSC, if there was any chance to anyways. And judging from the fact that none of the horses back in the clearing weren't carrying or wielding any type of firearm, either they were stupid, or they hadn't invented the gun yet. The former was easier to go with. He just didn't want to think of the latter. He just thought that if they didn't have firearms, they wouldn't be capable of long range communication, let alone space flight.

So as he was thinking on about the subject, Shepard was only about a mile in the opposite direction, searching for something to eat. He had a little bit of time to think about what was going on. His first realization was that there was no more war, or so he thought. He didn't really know much about the planet, since he's only seen the forests. So judging from the forests creatures, he came to a conclusion; this planet's wildlife was something to be reckoned with. He's fought savage beasts before, but not even half of them could stand up against one of the things he fought back in the clearing.But even though he came to such a conclusion, he wasn't anymore afraid than when he got here.

Well, until he came across a Manticore turned into stone. Then he couldn't help but wonder why he wasn't surprised. He hit the frozen stiff monster in the side with the butt of his gun, but nothing happened. He walked casually around to the front of the beast to see what had happened. When he finally got an up close look of it's face, he was at the very least shocked at what he saw. It had a face with human characteristics. Not only did it have that, but it also had a look of pure fear. He was really beginning to wonder if he should go back to the clearing, but not before knowing what it was that did this to the Manticore. He turned away from the Manticore just in time to see a snake's tail slither into the bushes. Unfortunately, he was being naive about it, and decided that it was just one of the many harmless creatures of the forest. But, as the tale goes, it wasn't over yet. He still needed something to bring back for food. He reached his hand down into the bushes and felt around for the snake.

Shepard soon felt something bite onto his arm, which he assumed was the snake trying to kill him. As always, his armor protected him from it. He pulled his arm out of the bushes and examined what was biting into it. To his utter surprise, it wasn't just a snake. It was a chicken. Strangely enough, it was the same snake he had seen before, only it wasn't just a snake.

It had a chicken's head.