MLP Halo: The Equestrian Event...by Evident DisasterChaptersChapter 1: Another Day Another WarChapter 2: All in a day's work...Chapter 3: Run Spartan RunChapter 1: Another Day Another WarMLP/Halo: Pony Chronicles XXXXX CH1: Another Day Another War... XXXXX (The idea came to me when I read everyone else's FFs on the whole concept of crossovers on certain MLP things, so I decided to chuck in my 2 cents. This is tied in with my AU Halo universe so do not start complaining about the whole concept of the UNSC, they aren't where my guys are from, even though being neighbours.) - 2011/9 AN: 2012- its been over a year since I've launched this thing? Holy crap! I neglected this for a long time, and now that I think about it I probably should have thought this one through earlier. Oh well, this is a reboot my dear readers, this was my very first MLP fanfic. Yes this ancient thing was left behind in Season 2's start and I've forgotten to get back to it. Well I'm getting back to my roots with ponies. Also my very first introduction into ponies was through a small link regarding CUPCAKES, yes that fan fiction, that was the first thing I ever saw before I got into the brony fandom, which was much earlier, I was just scared afterwards. Also a few other gore fictions which people linked everywhere. I don't know why it was so common back then. XXXX 2554- 1- 22 Ever since the end of the covenant crusades into human space, things hadn't settled in the past 3 years, the covenant splintered forces were now attacking at random locations throughout the Nova Stratus regions of space. It had been well over 3 years since the destruction of the Covenant's Convent of Reverence and Ascension ended in the UCAF regions. The covenant being an accumulation of multiple races and factions of power which had stood for tens of thousands of years and endured generations of religious and political strife had finally ended in just scant 25 years. The UCAF was the first to encounter the majority of the covenant armada and armies during their first scourging of the colonies of Haven's Gate and Prodigal Prime. Their subsequent cleansing continued with thousands of ships attacking the UCAF colonies and killing the millions to billions of inhabitants of the outer and mid colonies. It wasn't until the UCAF was relieved from the pressure as the covenant splintered into two frontiers, the main front being with the UCAF and its 1500 colonised worlds and over 30,000 external mining and space colonies. Meanwhile the secondary front of the covenant was splintered into attacking the UNSC in the further southern regions of the galaxy. But even then the UCAF was devastated from the efforts of the covenant in decimating life in the colonies, as 4.5 billion were fighting or serving on the front lines to defeat the covenant armies and push the covenant back or simply service the injured. Many others of specific skills and attributes were also in and amongst the UCAF ranks, but even then, deaths mounted. By the end of the war, over the length of 27 years, 9,855,000,000+ military personnel aged from 10-40 had died and 21 billion of civilian and non-combat status had perished, the total death toll was over 30 billion. (The statistics are actually not true because there were more deaths than just the local population and contemporary troops.) The UCAF colonies were in recovery since 2551 when the battle of Ascendant ended, the war was supposedly ended then and there, however with the sheer scale of the covenant crusade forces within the UCAF space and regions, it had taken years longer to remove more stubborn splinter fleets and zealous factions. At the current position and time, at the battle of Vega 22-23 that is where our story begins… XXXXX The amazing thing the universe was, a place of mystery and wonder, a place without bounds of the mind or matter, it was by far a sight holy to one's eyes. But not always were the cosmos so welcoming or so pleasing, to those who actually gazed at the stars and watched ever so long, the heaven's above were far dangerous than they could imagine. The threats of disease and radiation, the void to which all beings may die in horrific manners, but no, this wasn't the threats or dangers that were now being faced, as this was more of sentients and machine. In Vega this was war… Thuds of explosions and impacts went off, their energy dispersed, nothing could really be heard unless one was close enough, but no, to reality the vacuum sucked up most of what is dispersed and sends it in all directions and in forms and shapes. In the void of space, nothing could be heard only watched, and that was what Commander Thomas Liam was doing, he ordered from his command chair to intercept, and in moments his command was relayed to all CIWS to fire at the targets. Thomas was not of who wished to be in command, but he had no other choice in the matter. He commander of the UCAF Dauntless, he was placed in command when he had graduated from the UCAF military command under the orders of Protocol 15 when there was an extreme shortage of viable officers in the command field for UCAF naval vessels. Thomas was placed into the command chair of the ship because of the situation rather than anything else, the commander was reluctant, but soon sat himself into the shoes as the commander of the vessel and commanded over the ship well. And for the past 2 years he had done well to keep himself and his crew alive throughout most of their ordeals. As the war raged outside from the panoramic view of the CIC, he called to the AI of the ship. "Celia, status report." "We're taking incoming fire from 2 corvettes sir! I'm already taking evasive actions, but they're gaining sights on us and quickly." The black haired AI said. "Damn, pull us about and tell Carl he's not finished out there, have him cover us with the EVAF until we can reach slip-space range!" "Yes sir!" XXXXX Carl-2011 didn't know if he was blessed or cursed, but he did know when to focus, the two enemy corvettes were closing in on the Unyielding, he activated his ventral thrusters to pull him away from the ship to engage. The cyan coloured suit glimmered in the plasma fires as the Extra Versatile Armoured Frame jumped into action, it spun into a brilliant manoeuvre as it headed towards the incoming fire from the two corvettes and 2 dozen enemy fighters. Carl knew better than to be alone against such odds, and thus had 4 striker fighters engage alongside his EVAF. He locked targets with his HUD and fired off 2 canisters of 40 missiles; the canisters ripped open like a blooming flower and set forth dozens of cluster missiles. The missiles covered the distance quite quickly and showered the covenant fighters in a deadly array of fire, 6 kills and 3 critical strikes had been sufficient in evening the odds for the UCAF. The EVAF went forwards spraying death with its dual gauss repeater guns, the multi barrelled machineguns destroyed 2 banshee EVA fighters and removed a single seraph in its deadly volley. The EVAF continued on its path of destruction, stitching death wherever it was pointed. Carl took aim upon the first corvette that came upon his sights, the cannons attempted to swat him before he could fire, but he was much harder to strike with simple pulse lasers and plasma bursts. Dodging the fire, he unleashed his 2nd wave of missiles, he'd only have his last reserves of 2 more and then he'd be dry on firepower to deal with the corvettes, the only exception being the main gauss lance he had on the tip. The missiles scattered over the length of the ship, the fire removed all the pulse lasers on the hull and crippled the main guns. Carl brought himself into attacking the rear of the corvette; he brought his 3rd missile reserves and fired. The subsequent explosions sent his EVAF spinning as the engines erupted in a brilliant flame of florescent purple and white, the engines went critical and then finished off with a secondary explosion, the hull ripped apart from the strain of the internal plasma injectors exploding and sending aftershocks through the ship's interior. Carl knew that the first lead ship was useless and this second one was now his priority, Carl set himself onto the enemy ship, but as fate would have it, the enemy fighters quickly ID him as the greater threat amongst the UCAF fighters and went into engage him. He dodged a kamikaze run from one banshee and managed to fire his 4th and last missile reserves. There was one thing that Carl hadn't counted upon, the enemy fighters ran themselves in front of the incoming waves and shielded the enemy corvette. Carl watched as the continued attack on the unyielding progressed, the Strikers had no missiles and the covenant were now within reaching them as the ship was soon to engage slip-space. Carl didn't like this idea, but he had next to no choice in the matter. Spinning up the Gauss Lance, he brought his EVAF down past the enemy corvettes defences and lined up a direct shot. He had nothing to hamper him this time as the enemy fighters were pretty much destroyed, but he could only get in a single shot, or else he'd have to wait another 2.5 minutes for the next to fully charge. And Carl knew that the Dauntless wouldn't be able to avoid plasma damage if it was to jump into slip-space. And as if on cue his com activated with a status report from Celia. "Carl, you have to hurry! We have less than 30 seconds to jump into slips-space." He acknowledged and brought his Gauss Lance to bear on the enemy engines, he was about to fire as the reticule registered a lock, but as he pulled the trigger a box appeared, he twitched the controls as he fired. Two things happened, his shot hit, but only damaged the engines, and the box exploded in his face. He could only see muffins? His HUD was covered in the sticky residue of blue muffins and a lot of plasma fire, he could only imagine where the muffins came from, but his objective had just gone awry! XXXXX "Umm, Twilight you said that the teleporter was working right?" Ditzy asked. "Yes." The lavender pony unicorn replied with a tone of sarcasm. "Where are the muffins I ordered then?" Ditzy asked. … XXXXX Carl didn't have time for this screw up, he called into the ship. "Sir, I just got side swiped by debris, the shot missed, is recall necessary?" "Yes, you've been out there too long, get back to the ship, enter slip-space alongside the Unyielding when you arrive, don't worry about the corvette, the ship's been crippled." Commander Thomas said as the ship accelerated into slip-space. "Roger that, disengaging from the enemy." Carl said as he jumped away. The steady stream of plasma fire had ended, but the corvette was still too stubborn to give in or give up, it headed onwards without pausing, firing off a few random shots. Carl drew up beside the ship and synced himself to the ship's alignment, making sure that he didn't accidently get swept aside by subspace eddies. As they accelerated into the swirling vortex of light, a single lucky plasma blast struck the portal… XXXXX The whole ship shuddered as it entered into slip-space; Thomas hadn't ever been the one to begin thinking that the corvette was going to have to pay for the damned blast. He gripped his railing and began shouting orders. "Celia, begin emergency exit procedures!" The commander yelled. "Yes sir, already beginning slip-pulse!" The slip-pulse was to cause a slip-space pulse within subspace and knock the ship from subspace and into real space once more, there were a few dangers of doing such things though, the chances of accidently blowing one's self into oblivion was incredibly high and unless the situation demanded it, it was usually avoided by many starship captains for the fear of accidently blow the ship to pieces. But with the Dauntless being so close to being ripped apart by unstable slip-space fields, better the alternative than the primary at this point in time. The crew braced as Thomas yelled. "Initiate slip-pulse!" The whole ship jarred forwards the ship hit a proverbial brick wall and sent things into the air, the crew spun about in chairs or on the ground, they could all feel the pressure of the ship being thrown forwards by the sheer forces of slip-space being so heavy. The gravity drives had also gone offline as the ship moved forwards. The Dauntless headed helplessly towards a planet with inertia and gravity doing the work, Thomas knew that this wasn't going to be pretty. XXXXX Carl couldn't imagine how hard it was to keep his EVAF from being thrown into the aftershocks, he had to dangerously dive his EVAF into the oncoming stream of plasma scattering about and then into the bow of the ship just to keep ahead of the pulse. When they exited slips-space, Carl was tossed forwards faster than he could handle the inertial forces from tossing him about. He shot forwards to the planet which had then materialised, he was knocked a few clicks from the Dauntless, but not enough that he couldn't see the trajectory in which it was headed to. He memorised his theoretical re-entry procedures in with standard analysis and physics and determined that he'd been going a long ways from the ship, estimated around 130kms. He then turned forwards to keep his EVAF from completely burning up in the upper atmosphere while he aimed for a clear landing site about 5kms from what he could see was lights, which meant civilisation. It was the dead of night and he could tell that falling in pitch black with a dysfunctional EVAF and on the fritz MKV wasn't the best combination. He warmed up the emergency thrusters for a heavy vertical blast to make sure that he landed safely on the ground without accidently exploding. XXXXX Ponyville, the one true place where one could find everything likeable, it was a place where even the most out of town ponies would find enjoyable, everything seemed rather neat and tidy, and there wasn't a single sign of trouble. In a certain library in the town of Ponyville, a certain lavender unicron pony with a velvet mane worked. This unicorn was Twilight Sparkle, a normal workaholic pony who found studying so much greater than that of almost friendship, but she had learnt that study was good, but having friends was much better. She was currently watching the skies, as a hobby in the local environment, she found looking up at the heavens a good and usually intriguing exercise. It was today she just wanted to look at the skies from her hard work in studying teleportation and the means of teleporting one item from one place to another by magical projection, to which she had not done as well as others who had written works on such an idea. She had hardly gotten anywhere with her work, and the prototype had ended up magically vaporised a box of muffins. She decided that the portal idea needed to be worked on at a later date when others had figured out what might have gone wrong with the projection. She was now just wishing to watch the skies by herself. Spike had gone to heavy sleep, working all morning to night for her, and nothing could wake him up from that sleep, not even the largest explosion in Equestrian history. Twilight sighed and poked another look at a unique phenomenon, there were currently 2 streaks of light in the skies of Equestria tonight, and the strange thing was that it hadn't been predicted by the Canterlot Astronomy division, the lights were too bright and slower to be meteors and one seemed to be heading straight for… Ponyville… Twilight looked away from the telescope to look at the skies normally; a very large blot of light seemed to increase in intensity and size. Twilight could practically see the outline of the light from the background of the stars. The light grew to a size that she doubted any meteorite could possibly fit, but it was also at this point a roar of noise could be heard. She jumped outside to get a proper view and was shocked to see that the object was cooling down; the lights she could see weren't from the re-entry of the meteor, but the lights coming off of it. The object whizzed past overhead and sent a sonic boom that woke the living daylights out everything within 50kms; even Cloudsdale had been shaken awake from the noise. Twilight watched as all the residents woke from the noise, many wondering what could have possibly made the noise, but Twilight had been the first to see it, she had seen that it wasn't an object of natural design; it looked far too agile to be anything of normal astronomical formation. She knew that this was a bad idea, but she just needed to find out what could have landed so close to Ponyville. She looked about and then began to jog off into the direction of the crash; it was closer to the library than the rest of the town, so she'd have arrived well ahead of anyone else within range. XXXXX Carl had been through some of the worst landings in UCAF history, and he had seen some of the worst landings, he had managed to get his EVAF from crashing into the town and landed the EVAF into a small pond, by a miracle. He had managed to put a massive hole in the ground and splatter mud in all directions, but at least he was still alive. His body ached from the combined efforts in trying to land the 21m assault frame, he jumped off and sunk into the mud about 5 inches before he hit the bottom, he walked on from there and disengaged his equipment from an armament compartment in the side of the EVAF. He removed his Mattock AR-055 and 6 grenades, 5X30 clips for the AR, 1 M6SI, and 1 M7S; he had also brought out his new dual core system. The function of the dual core was to work with both a Jetpack and a bubble shield; he knew that they'd work well considering his situation. The jetpack was a Series 9, which wasn't bulky, it was built into the MKV armour he was wearing, and the external Bubble shield was also integrated to use less space for the user. He scanned his surroundings and found nothing, he decided to activate his combat scanners and reboot his suit before heading out. The BIOS kicked in and soon he had a clear field of view of his surroundings. The IFF system worked again and brought out what looked like heat signatures from the nearby place he had overshot. It was rather prudent that he head in that direction because he needed help. He jogged off into the shrub and began to head to the town… XXXXX Twilight had spent nearly half an hour before she reached the forest where the object had crashed, she just hoped that nothing would go wrong if she just decided to investigate a little. When she arrived at the scene she carefully began to negate towards the place of the crash. But as deeper as she got, the more she felt nervous. 'What am I doing? This should be left for tomorrow or the guards, or anyone else, but trying to go into an unknown place where I could get attack?' She thought to herself. She continued on unhampered and soon she made it within visual range of the object, she circled around to see what she had found, it was big and had wings, it was stretched like a bird, but not like any she had ever seen. It seemed to have been shaped completely out of metal, and she could see joining points of the object, it was all so different. Markings on the side of the thing suggested a name or a code, she looked at it carefully, and then she began to swipe her hoof at the point where the markings were, it had the letters: EVAF- E334. She had no idea what EVAF meant, but she continued her work on wiping away mud from the metal surface, she soon uncovered: UCAF- for Honour, Duty, and Grace. She could understand those words, but she had absolutely no clue as to what the UCAF stood for as well. She turned about and noticed something very odd, the whole thing seemed to have had a seat, or saddle where someone would sit, and there was strange pedals on the side and top, she looked at the muddy floor and noticed that there was a track leading into the forests. She gulped and picked up the pace, she activated her magic and began to summon her searching spells; she then remembered the one to track items or people of significance. She then followed the trail through the forests and back out towards Ponyville, she just hoped no one would get hurt should they stumble upon the unknown being. XXXXX Carl knew a few things about tracking, and this wasn't one of them, he had seen a strange glow coming after him ever since he had exited the EVAF, he'd been only half way through the forest when his IFF and scanners picked up a moving energy signature not that of his own. He thought it was covenant, but the signature matched nothing that he had ever seen in his records. He had to assume that a local might have some kind of impulse scanner of sorts. But from a planet that had no active radio waves or subspace emissions, it was very hard to believe anyone would have tier 2 class technology as such. He decided that he'd go wait in ambush for whoever might have been following him, he walked closer to the town, and then put himself just a click from the outskirts and waited in the trees where he had a clear view. He watched and waited for the being which was following him to appear, he didn't need to wait long. 10 minutes into his trap preparations he had received the heat emissions of a being moving directly at him, and thus he knew that this was the same being that had been tracking him through the whole forest. So now all he had to do was wait for the being to reach him. He watched patiently as the being came into the little clearing, it came as a bit of a surprise when he saw the being, being about 2/5th his size and strangely lavender, he couldn't imagine what kind of quadruped was this thing like. He then took note that the being had a glowing horn, and immediately he found out the source of the strange energy emissions. He then noticed that the being's horn was pointing in his direction. That was when he pulled the lever for his quick forest trap, the string net he had made from his inventory wrapped about and pulled upwards, the string tied to a stone trick. It was quick and easy to catch small game, and this kind of counted in the sense. He watched as the being cried out in surprise, he could swear that the being was sentient to the level of human capacity. But when had anyone ever heard of talking horses? But nonetheless he walked from the shadows towards the scared and frightened being, he made sure to scan the area in case of friends, but the 75m beacon found nothing. He proceeded with caution and then went up and scanned the being before him, it labelled the being as a female, equestrian- commonly known as a pony. He couldn't imagine where in the light a pony could have come from on a planet like this. But enough questions he had a bit of investigation to do, he'd never expected this, but then again, the galaxy was filled with unexpected things. He removed a knife and began to cut at the rope where the being was being held, he made sure to tie it up and then bring the netted being down. Once all had been set and done he picked up the netted creature and moved from his location, as it was in his previous encounter with certain races that dangers still remained if one waited too long. His suit's volume and sound buffers were still on, so he couldn't hear a word what was being said, only the dull sounds of movement from the reverberations of his feet and some other outside shakes, his auditory nerves could still pick out other sounds, but none mattered. He just needed to get to a shelter and figure out what this being was. That or if he could use it as a food source… XXXXX Twilight had never been as frightened except when she had faced Nightmare Moon and a hydra, but not to the point where she had been taken alive by something and was very much conscious. This should have been a simple look about and head home thing, but not tonight, she had to be so inquisitive and now she had been captured by a massive bipedal being with arms and what looked like armour, it had picked her up and then taken her deeper into the forest. The shock of being captured quickly passed as she began to focus her magic, she was tired, but not enough to not use her magic, she focused on her location and then to the town, she could feel that they weren't so far away. She'd expend a good portion of her magic in doing this, but it was necessary or she might not live to see another day. Her magic soon encompassed them both and she finished with a blink of her eyes… they were still moving, but now they were in the town, at an awkward position, they fell downwards. She had teleported them upside down. They hit the ground and rolled away, the net came free from the impact and Twilight soon found herself dazed in the middle of town. The being was also mildly stunned from the drop, it had forgotten about her and looked about in utter confusion, and that bought her enough time to yell. "HELP!" The cry had alerted the ponies of Ponyville that something was wrong, those who had stayed at home since the strange crash in the forest came outside from their homes and began searching for the cry of help. Cheerilee, the teacher pony came out of her home and noticed the strange being and soon she cried out in surprise. The being wasted no time, it picked up Twilight and bolted south towards the library, it seemed as though it was a straight run, it just didn't know that half the town was already nearby. Twilight watched as they travelled the distance south in astounding speed, she now knew how Rainbow Dash felt in the air at high speeds. As they reached the south part of town where the library was, they skidded to a halt, the gathered crowds were watching in utter shock at the arrival of the being with Twilight slung over its shoulder. Twilight called for help again, and this time the crowd reacted. A certain Orange pony jumped from the crowds followed by a cyan Pegasus and others, the being carefully walked backwards. This whole thing just seemed to make it uneasy, the being clearly didn't know how to react. XXXXX 'What in the name of Terra was going on?' Carl asked himself. The Spartan had seen many things but this was new. Ponies, quadrupeds with the ability to talk and others with wings and odd looking horns which sprouted magic, he had to have had some serious head trauma or he was delusional or completely sane and just surrounded by sentient beings who just happened to be 'pony' like. But what was more apparent was the very nasty glares he was getting from a few of them. He was just having one of those days… XXXXX Well this was an idea sprouted from multiple fics I've been reading on the net, some of these ones are pretty good, and I do like to think I could try something, and also I have no clue as to what to do about pairings and shipping. Chapter 2: All in a day's work...CH2 XXXXX All in a day's work... XXXXX Carl had never really known much about ponies, but seeing as how a hundred or so of them were looking at him, he'd probably say that they were shocked and a bit angry if not scared. And the lavender pony he had on his shoulders was any indication; he was in a bit of trouble, so he just decided to take a few steps away. He could see that things weren't going to go well if the ponies decided to crush him under sheer weight. The lavender pony was yelling something, he noticed that his EVA field functions were still active, he hated manual changes, but he activated Planetary Functions and then disabled his auditory mufflers. He then found out that his mind wasn't playing tricks on him, the pony could talk, and it could pretty much be very angry. The lavender pony's voice sounded high pitched, female, and frustrated. "I don't know what this thing wants, but it has me hog tied and it's very fast!" Carl watched as 5 ponies from the crowd moved forwards with worried looks on their faces, one seemed to edge carefully around him, and the others just waited and watched, it was then he watched as the cyan Pegasus with the rainbow mane yell out. "Okay bub, no big alien takes our friend and gets away with it!" In a flash Carl watched in slow motion as a blue blur ran at him at high speeds, he was amazed that a being like that could survive shooting off at that kind of speeds without deafening themselves from the rush. He was also surprised that the Pegasus could even move that fast without using a gravity drive. Needless to say, he decided to just move aside and watch as the Pegasus shot past and halt from the movements of the Spartan. Carl didn't know whether or not to take things seriously; these were ponies for crying out loud. On top of which, ponies that could talk and react, he did know that harming other sentient life was probably not the best of ideas, especially if that life happened to be rather primitive. Carl watched as the next pony threw a lasso at him, the thing caught his arm, but the pony who threw it couldn't manage to tie him down. He watched as 4 others joined the cowboy like pony and pulled on the rope, he felt his arm jerk slightly from the combined effort of the ponies, but he decided to just jerk his arm back. The 4 ponies were flung forwards into the ground, the rest of the population just facehoofing at the disaster. He just stared and wondered what these ponies were doing, he didn't have long to wait as he was suddenly attacked by a pink fluffy pony with a scary type of smile, he was taken aback from being scared by the pony and it seemed to just smile and say. "Hello? Anyone home?" The pony tapped on his helmet. Carl didn't know what seemed off, the fact that a pony managed to get on his head and was now tapping on it or the fact that the pony was actually not afraid of him. She rolled off his head and landed in front of his feet on all four hooves and said. "Hey are you new here? Why are you blue? How is it like being made of metal? Blah, blah, blah..." The pink pony was muffled out as Carl couldn't be bothered listening to the pink being who was now speaking at a few hundred words a minute, and he really didn't know why she was so captivating with her voice. He then noticed that his suit was a few pounds lighter than it had been earlier, and then he checked as he found that there were ropes on his back, but the pony had escaped. He turned about to see that the lavender pony had brought out something very heavy; it looked like a giant cup, probably someone's water tank. The lavender pony levitated it and dropped it on top of him with a loud 'CLANG'. His view was suddenly dark, until he turned on his helmet lights, the inside of this large metal tank seemed made of sheet iron, which in truth wasn't strong enough to hold him. But it wasn't like they could actually trap him, but he'd like to see what was going to happen, besides better let them feel safe rather than scaring the living daylights out of them by ripping his way out from the thick iron cup. He would wait these curious creatures out, unless they proved hostile, then he'll remain where he was. XXXXX With a heavy THUD, Twilight watched in relief that she had no longer needed to fear the armoured bipedal giant which had taken her hostage, she was just so tired from the whole ordeal. She watched as the others quickly rushed to her side, Applejack leading the way to her with her friends, she hugged them as they arrived by her side. "Twilight, we were so worried, that thing didn't hurt ya did it?" Applejack asked. "No. It just tied me up and ran through the forest." She replied with some relief. "That sounds traumatic!" The white unicorn named Rarity exclaimed. "Not really, it didn't know about my teleportation ability, I'm just lucky that it ran in this direction." Twilight said. "Well, least it won't be harming anyone else." Applejack said pointing her hoof at the tank. Rainbow Dash arrived rubbing her legs. "Ow, anyone get a licence plate on that carriage?" "Yeah, and that carriage is now safely stuck behind that." AJ pointed at the tank again. "Oh, well at least I could have take it on, but that thing is fast." Dash commented. They nodded in agreement and decided to just rest upon it, Twilight asked. "Does anyone know who could send a message to Canterlot as soon as possible, Spike's out like a light and I don't want to bother him." There was a bit of a rustle as they found their pony to get going, the grey and blonde haired Pegasus arrived, her flank with the few bubbles and awkward eyes. "You need something, muffin?" She asked. "Um, Ditzy could you send out a message for me to Canterlot, you have direct access to the princess so it would be helpful." Twilight said. "Sure thing..." The Pegasus replied. Twilight took a moment to get a message written up and prepared and then she gave it to the postal Pegasus and then watched as the grey pony flew off into the direction of the capital. They'd receive a message by the morning, or maybe the princess would send some help. Twilight and the others finished with their talks with everypony else about what the massive bipedal being was and gave sufficient explanation of what happened. When they were finished, some of the others were left to guard the mysterious being, meanwhile Twilight decided to get some rest, the night was long and she had rather fancy a bit of rest. Hopping along, she headed back to the library and then into bed. She found that Spike was still in his bed snoring away, she headed to bed and then just hit the hay, but she had this itching feeling that he beast in the tank let her capture it. XXXXX "Celia status report!" Commander Thomas asked. "Nothing good if that's what you want to know, the UCAF didn't make these damned frigates to last being shot to pieces like that, or being shoved so damned abruptly. We've taken external damage across the lower hull, but nothing had been compromised, all the internal plating is holding well, we're getting reports from the damage teams." She said materialising on the table. "Good, that's a start, anything from Carl?" Thomas asked. "No sir, Carl's signal went as soon as we hit the atmosphere, all I can say is that his frame had crashed about 200kms in any direction." She replied with a mumble. "Okay, looks like a search and rescue and a repair operation." Thomas said with annoyance. "Let's just hope that he hasn't gotten into any trouble." Celia added. "You should probably worry about the trouble, because you know about Carl, he knows how to deal with trouble." Thomas said calmly amongst the chaos of his ship. XXXXX Carl spent the next 6 hours waiting before he had heard the ponies outside begin to move from their position, he had found that they were busy doing something else than guard. He observed his situation, stuck in a water tank with a means of escape, suit's functionality was optimal, and his guns and ammo sufficient, and he had an objective, getting back to UCAF territory. He sighed, and decided to reflect on some things of his life, he was one who took orders and did them, and he knew how to get them done. Other times he acted rather indifferently. He worked about the whole situation; he knew that the leader of these sentient ponies would most likely wish to see him, if they had one. Or they might decide to kill him, but that's what most hostile primitive races would do, he knew that these beings were probably not warriors and they didn't really fit that sort of a role, also they seemed to lack the armour and technology to do so, unless they had some nukes stashed away. He listened in as the noise increased, he could hear chatter increase and the ponies outside shuffling over to the water tank jail that was above him. The screeching of metal and soon there was a neat cut hole in the side, a voice somewhat feminine and yet inquisitive asked. "You inside, can you understand us?" He held his silence and found that if he answered, then it was either an interrogation or a simple question. He made his decision; he picked himself up and answered. "Yes." It took a few shouts from the outside and some talking before the pony returned to ask. "Who are you and why did you attack one of our friends." "I believed that your friend was strange and oddly unique, and she was following me, and my training kicked in to remove such possible threats, so I decided that she would tell me why she was chasing me." He replied. "That doesn't answer who you are." The voice probed once more. "That's because I won't answer to someone who doesn't show their face, and I won't respond very well to interrogation." Carl said clearly. "Well we'd like to move this thing, but it's rather heavy." The voice said. "Very well I'll just do it." Carl said moving over to the rim of the metal tank, he couldn't hear the surprise from the pony who had been talking to him, but it didn't take long as he lifted the rim up and then pulled upwards. The whole tank was lifted as though it was nothing to him, it would weight about a ton, but he could easily do this. The whole thing lifted up and he was soon in the presence of the whole town, he just showed them it and said. "You know I could have just done this the whole time before right?" The only pony within range of the metal tank was the purple mare he had run across the day before; she had brought out some questions on a note pad and was quivering in fear as he dropped the tank down to the ground. He looked at her and said. "You were saying something about asking questions?" Before he could react, he was tossed to the ground by an invisible force, he didn't know what it was, but it felt like someone just laid a whole warthog on his chest and made sure that he couldn't move. The ponies within range of him had moved away and he could register another energy source, this time much more powerful, it was as if someone had gotten a dozen gravity hammers and were pushing them all onto his chest. "Okay, so it seems that you don't really need much physical force to hold me down." He said as he lay on the dirt floor. It was then a regal voice answered him. "No it would not. And it seems as though you require physical forces more than we do stranger." The voice he could hear was like silk upon water, he didn't know what could make it sound like that, but his posture slightly relaxed as though in a trance. His neural synaptic relays kicked into motion and soon he got back full control, the being was using some sort of hypnotic messages through her voice. And he could hear those voices, he moved about uncomfortably and looked over to where the being was, he watched as the shadow fell over to him, a rainbow mane moved in the non-existent wind, she had a smile that could calm a tide of sorrow and looked as majestic as any being he had encountered since the rise of the Inheritor. "Who are you?" She asked with a clam and soothing tone. "I am Lieutenant Carl-2011, Spartan Alpha, UCAF Naval Spec Ops." He replied to the being. "Good, I am Princess Celestia of Equestria, the lands to which you are present within. I am sorry that I had Shining Armour bind you to the ground, it was a necessary precaution." She stated gesturing to the armoured guard in purple with a star engraved shield on the front of the breast plate. "I would like to be able to stand up, I swear on my oath as a soldier for the alliance to uphold my honour as a sentient not to attack should I be released." He said. The princess didn't really trust the being, seeing as she had heard about how he had ponynapped Twilight and then ran about the town terrorising the whole population. And now of this show of physical force, the being was finally pinned to the ground, by most of Shining's magical grasp. The captain of her guard asked. "Princess, should I release him?" The being seemed to grunt with effort as it said. "You know I think that it might be prudent if we could talk properly." Carl said testing the magical strength of Shining by attempting to push against the magical anvil. Shining poured more magic into his hold on Carl, but it was slowly taking a toll. She had her reservations about the Spartan, but she didn't want the Spartan from doing anything dangerous, also because Shining was starting to wear, but it seemed rather sure that he'd keep his hands from harming anypony. She left out a sigh and then motioned to Shining and said. "Release him." Shining looked at her questioning if this was such a smart thing, but he released if not hesitantly. The human didn't take long as it jumped up in a forward flip and looked at her, its strange face scan her, the silver visor scrutinised her and then said. "Greeting princess, I apologise if that my appearance here might have startled you, but it was necessary that I assess my situation before acting, and thus I captured your student here without intention." Carl said respectfully but also cautiously. The princess replied. "Thank you for clarifying that, and I would like to welcome you to Equestria Carl." Pinkie arrived and said. "Yay, now we have a new friend to add to the list! And can someone please get me an invite to their Xbox live? Its P1NK13..." No one bothered to listen to the pink party mare's crazed rant. XXXXXX It took about a few hours to get things cleared up in the library, which seemed rather cramped for the Spartan, he was almost 3 times their size, he just got through the doorway and got into the room, he sat down and watched the ponies get him things, he looked at a cup that was now present in front of him and the many objects strewn about. The Princess had asked for Princess Luna, a princess of the night as he was told to arrive as well, she was present after arriving in a hurry, she teleported into town and scared most of the inhabitants of Ponyville, it was a funny scene for him, if not for the dozen or so guards in heavy dark armour arrive with the princess. At the moment he was just having an interview with the princesses. The ponies in the room were just the six colourful creatures he encountered, and the few guards, and the captain of the guard who were waiting at every window and entrance in the library. Princess Celestia was across from him on a fold out table and Princess Luna had taken to sitting above him on Twilight's open bedroom floor. He took his mind off things and observed his environment, the library wasn't like any others he had seen, old ones like the ones on Valence, but this seemed to be rather small and quaint, but he had no complaints about the design, it was organic and structurally sound. He just sat quietly as the ponies talked and the 'Alicorn' as he had learnt about was busily getting things sorted out, she brought out a scroll and said. "Mr Carl-." She was about to begin when he interjected. "Just Carl." She adjusted. Very well, Carl, I would like to know more about your unique situation, as of this moment, you are the first being to arrive on our world, and one of the most peculiar. Spike here, shall work as out scribe and record our discussion, this is merely to ensure our records are clear." He looked at the small green scaled lizard which was a baby dragon from what he was told, the little green scaled creature looked at him nervously as he looked at him. He turned back and asked. "Very well, where would you like to begin?" Celestia cleared her throat and asked. "What is your race?" "I am human, or by my situation my class is super human." She didn't deviate from her questions; she'd have Twilight to ask to inquire later. "How did you arrive here?" "My ship was struck by a blast of enemy fire and my commander ordered us to exit out FTL and re-enter real space, however in the process we were thrown forwards to the planet's gravity, when that occurred I landed here." "Are there others like you on this world?" "My ship crashed a fair distance off into the west, I do not know where they had gone, but they are here on the world with me." "Are your people violent?" "Yes, but only when we are required to be, in hostile situations we are required to fight." "Interesting, do your people look as you do?" She asked. "No, this is my armour and this is my suit, it is part of my existence as a soldier, or by your standard a warrior, I am not allowed to remove this suit, mostly because as long as I am inside I am safe from dangers of wildlife and possible threats." "So you look different?" She asked. "Yes." "Would you be able to reveal to us what your look like?" The ponies looked at him with curious eyes, except Pinkie Pie who was busy bumbling about with a tray of muffins. The elements of harmony were all present, and it seemed as though ponies were just as curious as the princess, even Shining Armour who was inside looked on in curiosity, the Spartan had a feeling the guard didn't trust him. Luna was quietly observing the Spartan from her perch. He worked around his armour locks and detached his neck brace and then took his helmet off, he had been curious as to what the air smelt like or how the air flowed around him, he hadn't taken his suit off in years. When he took the helmet off the fresh air came inside, and the smell of muffins and ponies, which smelt odd, so he couldn't figure out why they smelt like soap and flowers. The ponies were hushed, they could see his face, it was pale white and very odd, it was flat and slightly boxy, it had eyes, beady and green, the mane as they could figure was slightly spiky and heavy black. The face of the being made them gasp, Luna looked at Carl with intense curiosity, and Fluttershy looked as though she could just jump at him. "So, none of you ever see a human before?" He asked. "No, you're the first other being who's managed to come from the skies and talk to us like this." Celestia said. "Well not being rude, but this is kind of new to me as well, never been on another world where there were actual beings that could speak which weren't as humanoid as others that I've seen, and also you're not trying to kill me, so that's also a little bit different." He said. "What?" "Nothing, you shouldn't need to worry about that little problem, let's just say that I'm happy to be in the presence of such a being like yourself." He said. "Very well, would you like to continue with our discussion?" XXXXX They talked again, but this time with a more calm posture and attitude, the Equestrians asked about what the UCAF was and how it affected them as a race, Carl was keeping things from diving too far into the history of the human race, he asked an equal amount of questions and learnt a few things, the ponies history was nothing serious or even that significant, it seemed to have just a lot of peaceful years and a few cultural and social changes and governmental. Carl had noticed that the Ponies had literally no conflict aside from random events, or minor confrontations between dragons and griffins and other odds and ends; he had exchanged a brief summary of the human race's wars in the past millennium to which the ponies seemed mortified about hearing about how long the human race had been fighting. He didn't go into the details of the human/covenant war, but he skimmed over some of the records, Celestia could understand that Carl didn't wish to talk about much about the UCAF's war against the inevitable destruction at the hands of the covenant. But he did mention that there were dangers involved in space and wherever there was sentient life. He also questioned a few things as to how Celestia and Luna raise the sun and the moon, it was odd, ponies with magic, this whole thing was surreal to say the least and it was very much confusing. Magic and forerunner quantum abilities were two very different things, and he needed to get a proper science team to check into this whole thing once he got back to the ship. At the current moment in time, he was spending his day with the ponies of Ponyville, Celestia had allowed him to stay at the library or a place of his choosing for the few days, he had offers to stay at Applejack's Farm house, Bon Bon and Lyra had a spare room for him, and then there was Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Cheerilee who had wished to also offer a place for him to stay. He decided to go with staying at Twilight's Library, the thought about being stuck in some place strange didn't appeal to him. Even though being here was unfamiliar as well. It didn't take long before Celestia finished her talk with Carl and headed off back to Canterlot, she had an important meeting with some officials and also some of the local guards about any strange sightings aside from Carl's crash into the dense thicket outside of Ponyville. Carl remained at the library and helped around, the lavender unicorn had said it wasn't necessary, but he insisted and helped wherever he could, he sorted out the library in moments and helped out with dinner, but it wasn't really necessary as he had his own dinner to make. "So, what do you eat?" Twilight asked. "I've got a few ration packs; do you have any hot water?" He asked. "Yes just in the kitchen, the pot is on the stove." She said. He acknowledged and walked over to the stove and placed the water inside and then started the fire, he started it with a few chemical cubes, the insulated heating chemicals react as soon as the safety seal is torn, the coils started and the pot was boiling up in a few minutes. He removed the pot from the stove and moved it to his side, Twilight had already begun to eat dinner with Spike when he had finished. He removed his rations of dinner, 3 packets, and 2 being the potatoes and gravy while the other was cooked and marinated beef with starch, the last was a packet of vegetables. Pouring the boiling water into each packet he prepared his meal in moments and then began to eat, the meal was warm thankfully for the early autumn weather. The smell of meat caught the scent of Spike who asked. "What is that smell? It smells kinda good." "That's what you call beef, and it's a piece of meat from an animal that has been cut up and cooked, I'm just eating it with some other vegetables and soup." He replied. Twilight's expression from listening in asked. "You're eating an animal?" "Yes, that's why I mentioned that I was an omnivore along with most of the human race, I eat meat and vegetables and other things, meat is just a usual thing that most of us do eat, except those who have protein supplements or vitamin supplements, then that's different. But for those who do eat meat, well it's just the way it is." He said chewing up another piece of flesh. The lavender unicorn knew that other animals ate other things, she just added that to her mental list and then turned away, she couldn't help but feel sort of curious from thinking about how ponies would react at the human eat the flesh of another being, she watched as Spike honestly didn't care but was intrigued by the food. He then proceeded to ask. "What about other meats?" Carl set down his food and said. "Well, the human race has lived off many other creatures such as fish and poultry and so on and so forth, but the usual things we tend to consume are from cows." He said picking up where he left off. Once the sounds of scraping metal and chomping continued, the baby dragon asked. "So what does it taste like?" "Warm chewy and rather mild, it's something you usually have for dinner so it's just the way it tastes." Carl said finishing off the last of his vegetables. Twilight really prayed to Celestia that taking in the Spartan as her temporary house guest was a good idea. It wasn't long before they needed to hit the hay, Twilight went over to her bed, meanwhile the Spartan remained in his armour and lay down on the lower level with his suit on and a couple of sheets and a pillow, he made sure to keep an eye on things for the night. XXXXXX It was about midnight when there was a strange sound, Carl pretended to be asleep, and he could hear the whole world around him, even with his armour off, his auditory sensors made sweeps over his area and searched for what might have been making the noise. The sound was about 8 meters away, he could hear 3 individual beings, their voices were hard to ascertain, but they were close, they sounded way too much like grunts, but then again, this was a pony town, so it was possible it was either spec ops grunts or just some little kids getting themselves into a world of trouble. As the feet got closer they reached his legs, one whispered. "See ah told ya it was asleep." One poked his suit's legs and then moved to his hands. "Do you think aliens fall asleep?" One asked. "Well we can see it now." Carl knew better than to let the little ponies touch any of his sensitive gear and decided to give them a minor scare. He jumped up and said. "BOO" The three little fillies screamed out aloud, it caught the attention of the whole neighbourhood and over to the other side of town and then they ran around through the room, it was then Twilight awoke to figure out what the hubbub was about and found 3 scared little fillies and one rather bemused human looking around. XXXXX "Look here girls, you can't just sneak in at night and then try to see if the alien had a cutie mark, as a matter of fact this alien is called a human, and no, they don't have cutie marks." Twilight said. Rainbow Dash and Rarity were also present, along with Applejack who looked annoyed that her little sister crawled out of bed and went to see the alien with her own eyes. Rainbow was only there because Scootaloo was under her watch for that day and she didn't realise that the small filly could escape her sight so easily. Sweetie Belle was under the gaze of a very annoyed older sister who looked perturbed that her little sister managed to get herself into so much trouble. "Sorry, we only wanted to see the Spartan." Sweetie Belle said. Applebloom added. "An get our explorer cutie marks." "Applebloom ya know better than this though, ah even said not to come here." Applejack warned. "Yea, but we jus' wanna know." Applebloom was cut off. Twilight then interrupted. "Well I think the girls have a good understanding of possible issues with going to see people they don't know. I think we should get them home; I need to sleep because princess Celestia said she'd return tomorrow to decide upon one few things. And staying up now isn't the best thing to do." Rarity agreed. "Yes quite, I do require my beauty sleep. However that doesn't mean that any of you are off the 'hook'." She ended. Dash said. "All of you are grounded for the next 2 days." A series of AWWW's came from the ponies. "Now no grumbling, you three could have gotten into serious trouble if this wasn't a nice being from outer space, now say you're sorry to Twilight and let's get going." They all apologised for bothering their sleep at night and headed off. Twilight wheeled around once she closed the door, she said to the Spartan. "So, why did you give the girls such a scare?" "Just comical relief, besides I've had worse from grunts, they tend to shoot while running away. I'm sure that they learnt their lesson from this." He said. "I'm sure that they have. Well goodnight." Twilight said heading to bed once again. The Spartan smiled and dropped into his previous seat and quickly went into sub-sleep. (He doesn't sleep like others.) XXXXX Elsewhere… "Ship master, we have picked up on the human's trail, the slip-space fields state that they headed through this region of space no longer than a cycle ago." A tactical officer announced. "Good, we'll tail them to their hideaway, the covenant maybe broken, but we shall not relent against the humans. Prepare the vanguards." The Ship Master ordered. XXXXX AN: (2012) This was when I was playing Halo Reach and a going through all the wiki's on the Halo Universe to help me make the story and a few things from my more common Halo/ME fiction writing, it's quite common. Also i am currently editing stuff in the story the original didn't have shining armour or Cadence or explained where Luna was or had a lot of things in it, i'm currently just revising things slowly. If anyone would like to take over for me that'd be appreciated. Chapter 3: Run Spartan RunCH3 XXXXX Run Spartan Run... XXXXX AN: 2012: This has not been edited so sorry if things seem inconsistent at the moment, this will be fixed at a later time. I do have my taxes and stuff to deal with so I'm running short on time. XXXXX The next morning Carl had to make sure that he woke up at his usual time, he reset his internal clock to wake him at 5 in the morning at the planet's usual time, once then he went outside to do some practice, he'd go on a 30 minute run outside of his suit, following that he'd do some practice on some trees with his bare hands, he did this on ships and other planets, if not in combat though. He didn't see this as much anyway, and he had been in cryo-stasis the past 2 months before so he really needed to practice again. He exited his suit, shutting down most of the systems; he left on his emergency power to get a fast start should he be returning with an emergency or problem. He stripped his armour into 10 neat pieces and left his bare skin suit on, the skin suit wasn't revealing, except that his torso was half bare, the suit was an EVA variant and he hadn't manage to change back to his standard Ranger gear. He shrugged, it wasn't as if the ponies knew about human anatomy or even knew that he was physically strong. He jogged out of the room and headed on a following of his compass, he'd just follow it and then head back for normal drills, he just hoped Twilight didn't start poking around in his armour, he hadn't cleared it out in days and it smelled something sweaty. XXXXX Applejack woke up early, she had work to get done, the apple trees needed harvesting in the next 3 weeks and she needed to know which trees required a little more time. This was usually a menial task that took days to get sorted out, but it was necessary. She went about checking with the fields on the left side of the farm, Big Mac wasn't going to get going until 6 to get the rest of the farm working. So she was on her own for now. Applejack walked through the first dozen trees checking quickly which trees were either absent of certain red juicy apples or still had ones which were growing. She jotted through taking note on what was happening, she walked through for another 10 minutes and then took a look around the other side that was when she heard something. She turned about to see something in the distance, moving very fast. Here's a fun fact, certain ponies are able to move very fast, such as ponies that usually pull trains along or ponies that pull busses, or pegasi such as Rainbow Dash, who just rip past with wings. That being that, there was one thing that Applejack had never seen, the humanoid shape of Carl moving fast enough that she was flung backwards as he ran in a straight line to the other side of the farm, her Stetson hat flew off into the direction that the Spartan ran and she soon followed after it. Her hooves kicked into action as she went into overtime, they didn't add Jack to the end of her name for nothing you know. XXXXX Carl could have sworn he saw that orange pony from before, but he was trying to keep onto schedule with his run, he was kicking up dirt and wind like no tomorrow and also he seemed to have caught a lot of attention from something, because he noticed that there was someone tailing him. He then noticed that there was a hat following in the breeze right behind him, he plucked it from the air and the then looked at it while he ran. It was a nice looking hat, much like the ones from the frontier colonies he had seen years back. He didn't know where it came from but he plopped in on his head and continued to run at his usual speed, he did keep an eye out on that trailing shadow though. They ran through the edges of Everfree and then to the path along to the roads which headed over to Lyra and Bon Bon's home and then headed all the way back to town, just making sure to pass along by Fluttershy's home on the way through though. XXXXX Flutter shy looked about, she had just finished tending to a fruit bat which had been lost for a few days, she placed it over to the side and let it fly off, it was going to be sun up very soon and she didn't want to wait any longer for it. As soon as the bat flew off she hovered over to her garden to check on some of the plants, herbs from Zecora had been growing well, and her copy of Supernaturals had helped quite a bit in getting these new planets to flourish. As she worked away, Angel Bunny came out from the house and quickly went to helping his caretaker, he picked up an early snack from the kitchen before anything else and went about looking for Fluttershy, he walked on the open dirt path and found her toiling away softly at the plants from that zebra that he knew little about. Chewing away he leaned to one side next to her and poked her. Fluttershy looked away and took notice that Angel was mouthing. "What's up doc?" "Oh Angel Bunny, you should know better than to snack in the morning, it's not very good for your health… and breakfast is coming up soon." She pointed to the skies now slowly brightening up. He shrugged and turned his back and walked away, right onto the dirt path, it was then that a stampeding noise rushed by so fast that Fluttershy looked to see that Angel was no longer there and in fact he was moving away on the shoulders of that giant earlier yesterday that had ponynapped Twilight, and now he was trying to bunnynap Angel! "Angel, I'm coming, hold on!" She zoomed off after the Spartan and Applejack at surprising speeds. XXXXX Rarity had been cross with Sweetie Belle, but had let her off for the night, besides she needed the rest, and Rarity needed the beauty sleep early, she had to get something from that wool worker, Patch, who ran the fabric store in town. She had also had to get something from Pinch who ran the needle and yarn store over yonder. She had gotten her early deliveries and was closing the distance back to the Boutique when she noticed that there was something odd. She couldn't put her hoof on it, but the ground seemed to tremble ever so much, as a matter of fact the longer she thought about it the more obvious it was, and now it was right next to her. Rarity turned her head to watched the human from before running at her at full tilt, he narrowly missed her but he knocked a needle out from her mouth at high speeds, it sped off into the air. She was so glad that nothing else was knocked off her or lost. But never think about it if you really want it to happen, Applejack didn't waste time and knocked the hooves from right under her. "Sorry, hat thief and ah lot of work." AJ said in short as she burst past. Rarity realised that her fabrics had been caught on AJ and yelled. "Get back here with those you hoovingtons!" She chased after them with Fluttershy trailing behind at a graceful yet impressive speed. XXXXX Now about that needle, let's just say it landed in one most uncomfortable place, for the most energetic character out of all of the ponies in ponyville. Rainbow Dash was napping so much on her makeshift cloud that she didn't realise that it was not meant to stop sharp objects. A high velocity needle hitting a bare flank in a cloud= very nasty wake up call. Rainbow Dash screamed and kicked the cloud in pain, and in surprise, the whole area was given a nasty boom. She turned away from the cloud and took notice of the where the needle came from; she traced it over to the group of runners going after the human. "What the hay? Is there a race going on? And I wasn't invited?" She said in unbelief. She'd show them, she bucked up her wings and then shot forwards, heading down to the ground at high speeds she raced to reach the group. XXXXX Carl was nearing the end, there was just the town hall and then down to the library again, he took notice that there were now 5 individual ponies chasing him, and a thunder clap appeared out of nowhere. He was reaching the last stretch of ground to the library when he noticed that there was a blue streak trying to reach him, it was Rainbow Dash, the Pegasus that attempted to fight him the other day before. He didn't relent and continued to stay ahead, once they reached the end, he stopped at the front of the library just as Twilight was leaving her home to go to the post office, she paused in shock as the Spartan bolted to a stop in front of her, but her friends were unable to slow fast enough, AJ just stopped at his back, while Rarity just landed on top of her and then Fluttershy with Rainbow Dash, but it was Pinkie who arrived from nowhere that the whole group landed on the Spartan and on top of Twilight. They were all piled on top, Pinkie just then noticed and asked. "Hey are you all having a Hug the Human Party without me?" "No Pinkie, you just landed on top of us and we all tipped over on to Carl." Twilight said. "Okay, because that would have been so awesome if you were, you know, greeting him…" Pinkie drawled off into the unknown about the whole thing while Carl asked Twilight. "Is she always like this?" The group replied. "Yes." XXXXXX After a hasty discussion and a bit of heavy lifting which the Spartan was happy oblige, they all had breakfast at Twilight's and were introduced to the Spartan's cooking. The Spartan had brought his survival gear with him and for good reason, in case he had no food to look for, there was only 3 days' worth of rations and some water, and a filter, but that was required for places with murky water. The breakfast rations would be fine for them all, it was just protein oatmeal with powdered pancakes and some syrup with potato preservatives, he knew what they put in these things, enough to last a few hundred years and yet fresh enough not to decay in the field. The UCAF rations worked wonders for troops in the field, they weren't harmful in the long run, but in the short run, people tended to get sick if eating the same thing for longer than 1 month they warned against constant use. Carl had some bacon packs and some light powdered eggs, but he doubted that the ponies would like that; he made the bacon for himself and let the rest of the eggs on his plate. Once completing their meals he brought them all their servings of breakfast, he found honey and some fruits in the kitchen, they'd work well with the oatmeal, he didn't really like the oatmeal bland. "Here you are." He said placing their servings down. He set his last, to which the ponies wondered what the smell was, only Spike seemed interested in the whole thing, meanwhile Twilight eyed it curiously. "What is that smell?" Rarity asked. "Bacon, pig cut up into strips and cooked." He replied clearly. The ponies all looked at him as though they had lost their appetite, except Rainbow Dash who proceeded to ask oblivious to the fact that her friends were staring away from her. "Oh, can I have a piece?" She asked enthusiastically. Twilight and the others looked at Dash as though she lost her mind. "Rainbow, that's a pig that's been cut apart and served on a plate. And how can you eat that?" Dash shrugged. "Hilda made me eat her lunch whenever I lost a bet, sometimes she had pieces of chicken cooked or slices of bacon, it wasn't so bad, but I'd rather prefer bacon. I did some searching up on it in a library in case it did something bad, from what I learned the books I looked at said it was fine." Twilight stunned along with the others said. "You went to a library?" Rainbow Dash looked at them smile and then laugh. "Oh, ha, ha, now I get it." She grumbled. "Not to be mean, but you never come here to read any books. It's just funny that you did back then." Twilight said. Rainbow grumbled a bit and went back to eating. Rarity assured Dash. "We're just having a small laugh; you should not take it nearly to heart, besides you're the one who makes laughs at everypony else." That was true, Rainbow did make a few good jokes and pranks, and she couldn't feel all that annoyed. "I guess you're right." Twilight changed subjects. "So, Carl, what do plan to do today?" "I've got to go get my EVAF from the forests nearby, my extra communications systems were aboard it when I crashed here, I just need that and I'll have a team pick me up as soon as possible. You can come along with me if you want." He replied. Pinkie snapped out of her babbling and said with excitement. "Awesome, we get to see your space ship and everything, all the cool details, lasers, lights, and etc." The group let Pinkie go off on her own yapping; Carl just went back to focusing on what he was explaining. "Yeah, so you can come with me to check on my EVAF, it's not far and I'm sure you'll learn something from the experience." "That sounds fine by me." AJ said. "Yeah, this is gonna be awesome." Dash agreed. "Well it would be interesting what it might look like." Rarity said. Fluttershy just stayed quiet and smiled at the idea, Twilight finished with. "So when do we go?" XXXXX Carl walked the way back with the ponies, when they arrived; the pond where the EVAF had landed had long since dried. Carl walked over to the side of the frame and began to try to power it up, it wasn't made for aerial purposes, but it was made to fly, so he'd just adjust the speed and the energy required and try to launch it from the forest, hopefully it would land close to the town, and if not, then he was dragging it over there. Kicking in the drives he made sure to begin ignition sequence. He called out to the girls. "Get back, the ignition on this thing is loud. It's going to fly, but don't stand behind it, the heat exhaust burns everything behind." The girls stood a few meters away from the EVAF; Carl ignited the engines, the rear thrusters set aflame and dust behind it, the wing thrusters activated to lift the EVAF off the ground gently. The fighter frame was just hovering off the ground; Carl had to increase the energy transfer so the EVAF didn't accidently blow everyone away as he tried to move it away. He then increased propulsion and then he was off. The EVAF left a trail of dust in the small pocket of the forest, but once in the air, it was an amazing sight, ponies of Ponyville watched as the EVAF soared overhead. Carl had to make sure that the frame didn't accelerate too much, he was trying to land the thing closer to the town, not land the thing on the other side of the planet. He did circle the town overhead a few laps, then that was when Rainbow Dash caught up, the cyan Pegasus was amazed at the sight of the EVAF, she yelled out. "That's awesome, how fast can you go?" She asked excitedly. "At best, about Mach 5, five times the speed of sound." He replied over his loud speakers. The cyan Pegasus was grinning with awe and respect for the metal thing that was now in the skies above, it was only another 5 minutes before Carl decided to land the EVAF in the outskirts from the town. It took a bit to make sure that he didn't scare the living day lights out of any pony that was nearby and settled the frame on flat ground, the landing struts pressed into the ground and sank a bit, the frame wasn't made for the ground. Once stepping off he waited for the others to arrive at the frame, in the meantime he had about the entire population of Ponyville arrive to see the EVAF. They were all jostling to get a good sight of the machine, even taking pictures to send over all over the place. Carl knew that this wasn't the best idea to attract attention to his EVAF. Especially since that the frame was made to be used in the war, but the ponies of Ponyville did not know about that little detail. Once Twilight and the others arrived, they excitedly began to talk about the machine that he used, Twilight asked. "Wow, is that how you travel across distances?" "Not really, there are many other machines we use to travel; this is just something I use in space above us." He replied. A series of Oohs and Ahs made it simply understandable for the Spartan to just go on with what he was doing; he needed to signal the ship. In moments he climbed to his seat again and brought up the holographic display, he signalled across primary lines, he managed to thank the commander for thinking on his feet; there was a direct line to one of the orbiting satellites that the ship put up in his absence. "Carl to Dauntless, Commander Thomas can you hear me?" Carl called. The ponies had no idea what the Spartan was doing, but he was talking to the blue glowing thing on his flying machine, or space ship as the other called it. The ponies were all thrilled at knowing that there was something interesting happening that day. Twilight was quickly taking note of the whole situation and wrote down all the features of the EVAF, Dash was comparing the EVAF to her flight skills and wondered if she could ever reach that speed. Rarity was still curious as to what the armour of the Spartan would be like in pony size and Fluttershy just mutely smiled with Pinkie prancing around. Carl waited a bit longer before he received a reply. "Carl we hear you, what is your position?" "I'm 121km due west, in a small town, you can't miss it, by the way, I'm surrounded by talking ponies." He replied. "Say again? Talking PONIES?" The AI said with disbelief. "Yes, I said that they are sentient Equestrians with the ability to understand speech, language and other things, though they do seem rather eccentric they're peaceful, and harmless, and over energetic." He replied. "Okay, we'll verify that once you get back to base, and are you bringing any of these Sentient Ponies with you?" Celia asked. "Yeah about 6+1 infant dragon and maybe two or three others, but they might find their own way there." Carl replied. "Okay, well, we'll send in Aires flight 205 Dawn Breaker to meet with you and these sentient ponies, just stay there Lieutenant." Celia advised. Carl knew that they all thought he was going insane, like when has there ever been a case of talking ponies in the history of mankind? He just shoved the thought back inside his head and just accepted that things were just as they were, and he accepted it. The only problem was that he had to bring along 8 ponies, two of which were god like and the rest normal with an infant purple dragon. Does anyone see the irony of his situation? He stepped off the EVAF and then said to the ponies. "Look we've got about 1 heavily armoured gunship on approach in 6 hours, and from what I know you should probably contact your princess and tell her that I'm getting picked up with you girls, seriously we need to hurry." Twilight understood, she remembered that should the UCAF wish to meet with them the princess had to be alerted so either she or Luna or both could attend. She quickly drew out a prewritten message and asked Spike to send it off. Twilight was always prepared. Once the message was away, they just needed to wait. Pinkie on the other hand wished to tell everyone that there was another space ship coming to pick them up and there was little time, to get packing some stuff, so everypony quickly made some small treats for the trip and a going away gift on their trip to the mysterious alien ship, which was a box cake… Carl didn't know if he truly was going insane. XXXXXX The Princess arrived but she brought her sister with her, Luna, the midnight blue alicorn seemed to rather surprise Carl, she looked rather nice, if not unique. Once they all gathered to get ready for the trip, Twilight started to ask. "Princess where are your royal guards?" Celestia replied. "They were told to just wait in Ponyville once I returned, besides I have you going with me my faithful student, it would be not as necessary for that many ponies to go at once, and I am sure that there must be required space for the machine that Carl needs to bring." Twilight understood, but then asked. "Who will be running the kingdom if you and Luna are both going with us for the day?" "The main body of government of course, I do run under a constitutional monarchy, even though I have thought to go back to a simple structure… it would be better to avoid any difficulties." She replied. Well that answered a few things, they talked until there was an over wash of sound, from above they could see a large boxy shape appear, it was much bigger than that of the EVAF and even bigger than that of one whole wing of the castle in Canterlot. The gunship landed down and brought out a rig to lift the EVAF off the ground, the rear doors opened to show the ponies a large bay empty with just 3 humans like Carl waiting. One marine commented. "Wow they really are talking ponies…" "Ha, you owe me 50 bucks." The other pointed. "F***" The other yelled but was washed out by the engines. Carl beckoned them towards into the flying machine. Twilight and the other followed aboard with Celestia and Luna going in last. Once they were aboard the rear doors closed and all the ponies waved goodbye. Once they all were inside, they could see the extent of the UCAF technology, there was lighting and windows to show them the outside, not to mention plenty of head space. But there were no proper seats for Equestrians, Carl decided to lift out one of the belts and strap the ponies downwards so they didn't straddle off in all directions. Only the princess and her sister stood with the motion, happily standing without moving at all. From the windows they could see the speed of the UCAF machine speeding along, it was an amazing sight, and they passed through the many forests and plains and over the city of Manehatten, which raised the question of how the UCAF didn't get noticed sooner. They flew over the sight of many small towns and stopped at their destination at a clearing in a forest nearby. That was where they could see the massive ship that the UCAF had, and where Carl had come from or something similar. Once landing they were shown out of the Aires and down to a medium sized hangar bay, humans of all shapes and sizes walked around. This whole new place amazed the ponies who were eyed by all the UCAF personnel with interest. It didn't take long before Commander Thomas was there with Celia in full form. "So, this must be what you meant by talking ponies?" Celia asked. "Yes, look I know its awkward, but I can explain." Carl started. He didn't get far, the regal form alicorn answered for him. "I think we should explain for ourselves Carl, I'm sure that your commanding officer should be able to understand the situation quite well." The whole area fell silent, and was only broke by Pinkie Pie commenting. "Hey where's all the fancy stuff?" XXXXX (…) So yes we have reached that point in the story about the UCAF and the Equestrians meeting, but don't worry I'll let you know what happens in the next chapter, I need to focus elsewhere before my head explodes. And yes, we will be having the covenant attack, sometime in the near future; I won't hold them back before we finish building the proper bridges. (2011)
Chapter 1: Another Day Another WarMLP/Halo: Pony Chronicles XXXXX CH1: Another Day Another War... XXXXX (The idea came to me when I read everyone else's FFs on the whole concept of crossovers on certain MLP things, so I decided to chuck in my 2 cents. This is tied in with my AU Halo universe so do not start complaining about the whole concept of the UNSC, they aren't where my guys are from, even though being neighbours.) - 2011/9 AN: 2012- its been over a year since I've launched this thing? Holy crap! I neglected this for a long time, and now that I think about it I probably should have thought this one through earlier. Oh well, this is a reboot my dear readers, this was my very first MLP fanfic. Yes this ancient thing was left behind in Season 2's start and I've forgotten to get back to it. Well I'm getting back to my roots with ponies. Also my very first introduction into ponies was through a small link regarding CUPCAKES, yes that fan fiction, that was the first thing I ever saw before I got into the brony fandom, which was much earlier, I was just scared afterwards. Also a few other gore fictions which people linked everywhere. I don't know why it was so common back then. XXXX 2554- 1- 22 Ever since the end of the covenant crusades into human space, things hadn't settled in the past 3 years, the covenant splintered forces were now attacking at random locations throughout the Nova Stratus regions of space. It had been well over 3 years since the destruction of the Covenant's Convent of Reverence and Ascension ended in the UCAF regions. The covenant being an accumulation of multiple races and factions of power which had stood for tens of thousands of years and endured generations of religious and political strife had finally ended in just scant 25 years. The UCAF was the first to encounter the majority of the covenant armada and armies during their first scourging of the colonies of Haven's Gate and Prodigal Prime. Their subsequent cleansing continued with thousands of ships attacking the UCAF colonies and killing the millions to billions of inhabitants of the outer and mid colonies. It wasn't until the UCAF was relieved from the pressure as the covenant splintered into two frontiers, the main front being with the UCAF and its 1500 colonised worlds and over 30,000 external mining and space colonies. Meanwhile the secondary front of the covenant was splintered into attacking the UNSC in the further southern regions of the galaxy. But even then the UCAF was devastated from the efforts of the covenant in decimating life in the colonies, as 4.5 billion were fighting or serving on the front lines to defeat the covenant armies and push the covenant back or simply service the injured. Many others of specific skills and attributes were also in and amongst the UCAF ranks, but even then, deaths mounted. By the end of the war, over the length of 27 years, 9,855,000,000+ military personnel aged from 10-40 had died and 21 billion of civilian and non-combat status had perished, the total death toll was over 30 billion. (The statistics are actually not true because there were more deaths than just the local population and contemporary troops.) The UCAF colonies were in recovery since 2551 when the battle of Ascendant ended, the war was supposedly ended then and there, however with the sheer scale of the covenant crusade forces within the UCAF space and regions, it had taken years longer to remove more stubborn splinter fleets and zealous factions. At the current position and time, at the battle of Vega 22-23 that is where our story begins… XXXXX The amazing thing the universe was, a place of mystery and wonder, a place without bounds of the mind or matter, it was by far a sight holy to one's eyes. But not always were the cosmos so welcoming or so pleasing, to those who actually gazed at the stars and watched ever so long, the heaven's above were far dangerous than they could imagine. The threats of disease and radiation, the void to which all beings may die in horrific manners, but no, this wasn't the threats or dangers that were now being faced, as this was more of sentients and machine. In Vega this was war… Thuds of explosions and impacts went off, their energy dispersed, nothing could really be heard unless one was close enough, but no, to reality the vacuum sucked up most of what is dispersed and sends it in all directions and in forms and shapes. In the void of space, nothing could be heard only watched, and that was what Commander Thomas Liam was doing, he ordered from his command chair to intercept, and in moments his command was relayed to all CIWS to fire at the targets. Thomas was not of who wished to be in command, but he had no other choice in the matter. He commander of the UCAF Dauntless, he was placed in command when he had graduated from the UCAF military command under the orders of Protocol 15 when there was an extreme shortage of viable officers in the command field for UCAF naval vessels. Thomas was placed into the command chair of the ship because of the situation rather than anything else, the commander was reluctant, but soon sat himself into the shoes as the commander of the vessel and commanded over the ship well. And for the past 2 years he had done well to keep himself and his crew alive throughout most of their ordeals. As the war raged outside from the panoramic view of the CIC, he called to the AI of the ship. "Celia, status report." "We're taking incoming fire from 2 corvettes sir! I'm already taking evasive actions, but they're gaining sights on us and quickly." The black haired AI said. "Damn, pull us about and tell Carl he's not finished out there, have him cover us with the EVAF until we can reach slip-space range!" "Yes sir!" XXXXX Carl-2011 didn't know if he was blessed or cursed, but he did know when to focus, the two enemy corvettes were closing in on the Unyielding, he activated his ventral thrusters to pull him away from the ship to engage. The cyan coloured suit glimmered in the plasma fires as the Extra Versatile Armoured Frame jumped into action, it spun into a brilliant manoeuvre as it headed towards the incoming fire from the two corvettes and 2 dozen enemy fighters. Carl knew better than to be alone against such odds, and thus had 4 striker fighters engage alongside his EVAF. He locked targets with his HUD and fired off 2 canisters of 40 missiles; the canisters ripped open like a blooming flower and set forth dozens of cluster missiles. The missiles covered the distance quite quickly and showered the covenant fighters in a deadly array of fire, 6 kills and 3 critical strikes had been sufficient in evening the odds for the UCAF. The EVAF went forwards spraying death with its dual gauss repeater guns, the multi barrelled machineguns destroyed 2 banshee EVA fighters and removed a single seraph in its deadly volley. The EVAF continued on its path of destruction, stitching death wherever it was pointed. Carl took aim upon the first corvette that came upon his sights, the cannons attempted to swat him before he could fire, but he was much harder to strike with simple pulse lasers and plasma bursts. Dodging the fire, he unleashed his 2nd wave of missiles, he'd only have his last reserves of 2 more and then he'd be dry on firepower to deal with the corvettes, the only exception being the main gauss lance he had on the tip. The missiles scattered over the length of the ship, the fire removed all the pulse lasers on the hull and crippled the main guns. Carl brought himself into attacking the rear of the corvette; he brought his 3rd missile reserves and fired. The subsequent explosions sent his EVAF spinning as the engines erupted in a brilliant flame of florescent purple and white, the engines went critical and then finished off with a secondary explosion, the hull ripped apart from the strain of the internal plasma injectors exploding and sending aftershocks through the ship's interior. Carl knew that the first lead ship was useless and this second one was now his priority, Carl set himself onto the enemy ship, but as fate would have it, the enemy fighters quickly ID him as the greater threat amongst the UCAF fighters and went into engage him. He dodged a kamikaze run from one banshee and managed to fire his 4th and last missile reserves. There was one thing that Carl hadn't counted upon, the enemy fighters ran themselves in front of the incoming waves and shielded the enemy corvette. Carl watched as the continued attack on the unyielding progressed, the Strikers had no missiles and the covenant were now within reaching them as the ship was soon to engage slip-space. Carl didn't like this idea, but he had next to no choice in the matter. Spinning up the Gauss Lance, he brought his EVAF down past the enemy corvettes defences and lined up a direct shot. He had nothing to hamper him this time as the enemy fighters were pretty much destroyed, but he could only get in a single shot, or else he'd have to wait another 2.5 minutes for the next to fully charge. And Carl knew that the Dauntless wouldn't be able to avoid plasma damage if it was to jump into slip-space. And as if on cue his com activated with a status report from Celia. "Carl, you have to hurry! We have less than 30 seconds to jump into slips-space." He acknowledged and brought his Gauss Lance to bear on the enemy engines, he was about to fire as the reticule registered a lock, but as he pulled the trigger a box appeared, he twitched the controls as he fired. Two things happened, his shot hit, but only damaged the engines, and the box exploded in his face. He could only see muffins? His HUD was covered in the sticky residue of blue muffins and a lot of plasma fire, he could only imagine where the muffins came from, but his objective had just gone awry! XXXXX "Umm, Twilight you said that the teleporter was working right?" Ditzy asked. "Yes." The lavender pony unicorn replied with a tone of sarcasm. "Where are the muffins I ordered then?" Ditzy asked. … XXXXX Carl didn't have time for this screw up, he called into the ship. "Sir, I just got side swiped by debris, the shot missed, is recall necessary?" "Yes, you've been out there too long, get back to the ship, enter slip-space alongside the Unyielding when you arrive, don't worry about the corvette, the ship's been crippled." Commander Thomas said as the ship accelerated into slip-space. "Roger that, disengaging from the enemy." Carl said as he jumped away. The steady stream of plasma fire had ended, but the corvette was still too stubborn to give in or give up, it headed onwards without pausing, firing off a few random shots. Carl drew up beside the ship and synced himself to the ship's alignment, making sure that he didn't accidently get swept aside by subspace eddies. As they accelerated into the swirling vortex of light, a single lucky plasma blast struck the portal… XXXXX The whole ship shuddered as it entered into slip-space; Thomas hadn't ever been the one to begin thinking that the corvette was going to have to pay for the damned blast. He gripped his railing and began shouting orders. "Celia, begin emergency exit procedures!" The commander yelled. "Yes sir, already beginning slip-pulse!" The slip-pulse was to cause a slip-space pulse within subspace and knock the ship from subspace and into real space once more, there were a few dangers of doing such things though, the chances of accidently blowing one's self into oblivion was incredibly high and unless the situation demanded it, it was usually avoided by many starship captains for the fear of accidently blow the ship to pieces. But with the Dauntless being so close to being ripped apart by unstable slip-space fields, better the alternative than the primary at this point in time. The crew braced as Thomas yelled. "Initiate slip-pulse!" The whole ship jarred forwards the ship hit a proverbial brick wall and sent things into the air, the crew spun about in chairs or on the ground, they could all feel the pressure of the ship being thrown forwards by the sheer forces of slip-space being so heavy. The gravity drives had also gone offline as the ship moved forwards. The Dauntless headed helplessly towards a planet with inertia and gravity doing the work, Thomas knew that this wasn't going to be pretty. XXXXX Carl couldn't imagine how hard it was to keep his EVAF from being thrown into the aftershocks, he had to dangerously dive his EVAF into the oncoming stream of plasma scattering about and then into the bow of the ship just to keep ahead of the pulse. When they exited slips-space, Carl was tossed forwards faster than he could handle the inertial forces from tossing him about. He shot forwards to the planet which had then materialised, he was knocked a few clicks from the Dauntless, but not enough that he couldn't see the trajectory in which it was headed to. He memorised his theoretical re-entry procedures in with standard analysis and physics and determined that he'd been going a long ways from the ship, estimated around 130kms. He then turned forwards to keep his EVAF from completely burning up in the upper atmosphere while he aimed for a clear landing site about 5kms from what he could see was lights, which meant civilisation. It was the dead of night and he could tell that falling in pitch black with a dysfunctional EVAF and on the fritz MKV wasn't the best combination. He warmed up the emergency thrusters for a heavy vertical blast to make sure that he landed safely on the ground without accidently exploding. XXXXX Ponyville, the one true place where one could find everything likeable, it was a place where even the most out of town ponies would find enjoyable, everything seemed rather neat and tidy, and there wasn't a single sign of trouble. In a certain library in the town of Ponyville, a certain lavender unicron pony with a velvet mane worked. This unicorn was Twilight Sparkle, a normal workaholic pony who found studying so much greater than that of almost friendship, but she had learnt that study was good, but having friends was much better. She was currently watching the skies, as a hobby in the local environment, she found looking up at the heavens a good and usually intriguing exercise. It was today she just wanted to look at the skies from her hard work in studying teleportation and the means of teleporting one item from one place to another by magical projection, to which she had not done as well as others who had written works on such an idea. She had hardly gotten anywhere with her work, and the prototype had ended up magically vaporised a box of muffins. She decided that the portal idea needed to be worked on at a later date when others had figured out what might have gone wrong with the projection. She was now just wishing to watch the skies by herself. Spike had gone to heavy sleep, working all morning to night for her, and nothing could wake him up from that sleep, not even the largest explosion in Equestrian history. Twilight sighed and poked another look at a unique phenomenon, there were currently 2 streaks of light in the skies of Equestria tonight, and the strange thing was that it hadn't been predicted by the Canterlot Astronomy division, the lights were too bright and slower to be meteors and one seemed to be heading straight for… Ponyville… Twilight looked away from the telescope to look at the skies normally; a very large blot of light seemed to increase in intensity and size. Twilight could practically see the outline of the light from the background of the stars. The light grew to a size that she doubted any meteorite could possibly fit, but it was also at this point a roar of noise could be heard. She jumped outside to get a proper view and was shocked to see that the object was cooling down; the lights she could see weren't from the re-entry of the meteor, but the lights coming off of it. The object whizzed past overhead and sent a sonic boom that woke the living daylights out everything within 50kms; even Cloudsdale had been shaken awake from the noise. Twilight watched as all the residents woke from the noise, many wondering what could have possibly made the noise, but Twilight had been the first to see it, she had seen that it wasn't an object of natural design; it looked far too agile to be anything of normal astronomical formation. She knew that this was a bad idea, but she just needed to find out what could have landed so close to Ponyville. She looked about and then began to jog off into the direction of the crash; it was closer to the library than the rest of the town, so she'd have arrived well ahead of anyone else within range. XXXXX Carl had been through some of the worst landings in UCAF history, and he had seen some of the worst landings, he had managed to get his EVAF from crashing into the town and landed the EVAF into a small pond, by a miracle. He had managed to put a massive hole in the ground and splatter mud in all directions, but at least he was still alive. His body ached from the combined efforts in trying to land the 21m assault frame, he jumped off and sunk into the mud about 5 inches before he hit the bottom, he walked on from there and disengaged his equipment from an armament compartment in the side of the EVAF. He removed his Mattock AR-055 and 6 grenades, 5X30 clips for the AR, 1 M6SI, and 1 M7S; he had also brought out his new dual core system. The function of the dual core was to work with both a Jetpack and a bubble shield; he knew that they'd work well considering his situation. The jetpack was a Series 9, which wasn't bulky, it was built into the MKV armour he was wearing, and the external Bubble shield was also integrated to use less space for the user. He scanned his surroundings and found nothing, he decided to activate his combat scanners and reboot his suit before heading out. The BIOS kicked in and soon he had a clear field of view of his surroundings. The IFF system worked again and brought out what looked like heat signatures from the nearby place he had overshot. It was rather prudent that he head in that direction because he needed help. He jogged off into the shrub and began to head to the town… XXXXX Twilight had spent nearly half an hour before she reached the forest where the object had crashed, she just hoped that nothing would go wrong if she just decided to investigate a little. When she arrived at the scene she carefully began to negate towards the place of the crash. But as deeper as she got, the more she felt nervous. 'What am I doing? This should be left for tomorrow or the guards, or anyone else, but trying to go into an unknown place where I could get attack?' She thought to herself. She continued on unhampered and soon she made it within visual range of the object, she circled around to see what she had found, it was big and had wings, it was stretched like a bird, but not like any she had ever seen. It seemed to have been shaped completely out of metal, and she could see joining points of the object, it was all so different. Markings on the side of the thing suggested a name or a code, she looked at it carefully, and then she began to swipe her hoof at the point where the markings were, it had the letters: EVAF- E334. She had no idea what EVAF meant, but she continued her work on wiping away mud from the metal surface, she soon uncovered: UCAF- for Honour, Duty, and Grace. She could understand those words, but she had absolutely no clue as to what the UCAF stood for as well. She turned about and noticed something very odd, the whole thing seemed to have had a seat, or saddle where someone would sit, and there was strange pedals on the side and top, she looked at the muddy floor and noticed that there was a track leading into the forests. She gulped and picked up the pace, she activated her magic and began to summon her searching spells; she then remembered the one to track items or people of significance. She then followed the trail through the forests and back out towards Ponyville, she just hoped no one would get hurt should they stumble upon the unknown being. XXXXX Carl knew a few things about tracking, and this wasn't one of them, he had seen a strange glow coming after him ever since he had exited the EVAF, he'd been only half way through the forest when his IFF and scanners picked up a moving energy signature not that of his own. He thought it was covenant, but the signature matched nothing that he had ever seen in his records. He had to assume that a local might have some kind of impulse scanner of sorts. But from a planet that had no active radio waves or subspace emissions, it was very hard to believe anyone would have tier 2 class technology as such. He decided that he'd go wait in ambush for whoever might have been following him, he walked closer to the town, and then put himself just a click from the outskirts and waited in the trees where he had a clear view. He watched and waited for the being which was following him to appear, he didn't need to wait long. 10 minutes into his trap preparations he had received the heat emissions of a being moving directly at him, and thus he knew that this was the same being that had been tracking him through the whole forest. So now all he had to do was wait for the being to reach him. He watched patiently as the being came into the little clearing, it came as a bit of a surprise when he saw the being, being about 2/5th his size and strangely lavender, he couldn't imagine what kind of quadruped was this thing like. He then took note that the being had a glowing horn, and immediately he found out the source of the strange energy emissions. He then noticed that the being's horn was pointing in his direction. That was when he pulled the lever for his quick forest trap, the string net he had made from his inventory wrapped about and pulled upwards, the string tied to a stone trick. It was quick and easy to catch small game, and this kind of counted in the sense. He watched as the being cried out in surprise, he could swear that the being was sentient to the level of human capacity. But when had anyone ever heard of talking horses? But nonetheless he walked from the shadows towards the scared and frightened being, he made sure to scan the area in case of friends, but the 75m beacon found nothing. He proceeded with caution and then went up and scanned the being before him, it labelled the being as a female, equestrian- commonly known as a pony. He couldn't imagine where in the light a pony could have come from on a planet like this. But enough questions he had a bit of investigation to do, he'd never expected this, but then again, the galaxy was filled with unexpected things. He removed a knife and began to cut at the rope where the being was being held, he made sure to tie it up and then bring the netted being down. Once all had been set and done he picked up the netted creature and moved from his location, as it was in his previous encounter with certain races that dangers still remained if one waited too long. His suit's volume and sound buffers were still on, so he couldn't hear a word what was being said, only the dull sounds of movement from the reverberations of his feet and some other outside shakes, his auditory nerves could still pick out other sounds, but none mattered. He just needed to get to a shelter and figure out what this being was. That or if he could use it as a food source… XXXXX Twilight had never been as frightened except when she had faced Nightmare Moon and a hydra, but not to the point where she had been taken alive by something and was very much conscious. This should have been a simple look about and head home thing, but not tonight, she had to be so inquisitive and now she had been captured by a massive bipedal being with arms and what looked like armour, it had picked her up and then taken her deeper into the forest. The shock of being captured quickly passed as she began to focus her magic, she was tired, but not enough to not use her magic, she focused on her location and then to the town, she could feel that they weren't so far away. She'd expend a good portion of her magic in doing this, but it was necessary or she might not live to see another day. Her magic soon encompassed them both and she finished with a blink of her eyes… they were still moving, but now they were in the town, at an awkward position, they fell downwards. She had teleported them upside down. They hit the ground and rolled away, the net came free from the impact and Twilight soon found herself dazed in the middle of town. The being was also mildly stunned from the drop, it had forgotten about her and looked about in utter confusion, and that bought her enough time to yell. "HELP!" The cry had alerted the ponies of Ponyville that something was wrong, those who had stayed at home since the strange crash in the forest came outside from their homes and began searching for the cry of help. Cheerilee, the teacher pony came out of her home and noticed the strange being and soon she cried out in surprise. The being wasted no time, it picked up Twilight and bolted south towards the library, it seemed as though it was a straight run, it just didn't know that half the town was already nearby. Twilight watched as they travelled the distance south in astounding speed, she now knew how Rainbow Dash felt in the air at high speeds. As they reached the south part of town where the library was, they skidded to a halt, the gathered crowds were watching in utter shock at the arrival of the being with Twilight slung over its shoulder. Twilight called for help again, and this time the crowd reacted. A certain Orange pony jumped from the crowds followed by a cyan Pegasus and others, the being carefully walked backwards. This whole thing just seemed to make it uneasy, the being clearly didn't know how to react. XXXXX 'What in the name of Terra was going on?' Carl asked himself. The Spartan had seen many things but this was new. Ponies, quadrupeds with the ability to talk and others with wings and odd looking horns which sprouted magic, he had to have had some serious head trauma or he was delusional or completely sane and just surrounded by sentient beings who just happened to be 'pony' like. But what was more apparent was the very nasty glares he was getting from a few of them. He was just having one of those days… XXXXX Well this was an idea sprouted from multiple fics I've been reading on the net, some of these ones are pretty good, and I do like to think I could try something, and also I have no clue as to what to do about pairings and shipping.
Chapter 2: All in a day's work...CH2 XXXXX All in a day's work... XXXXX Carl had never really known much about ponies, but seeing as how a hundred or so of them were looking at him, he'd probably say that they were shocked and a bit angry if not scared. And the lavender pony he had on his shoulders was any indication; he was in a bit of trouble, so he just decided to take a few steps away. He could see that things weren't going to go well if the ponies decided to crush him under sheer weight. The lavender pony was yelling something, he noticed that his EVA field functions were still active, he hated manual changes, but he activated Planetary Functions and then disabled his auditory mufflers. He then found out that his mind wasn't playing tricks on him, the pony could talk, and it could pretty much be very angry. The lavender pony's voice sounded high pitched, female, and frustrated. "I don't know what this thing wants, but it has me hog tied and it's very fast!" Carl watched as 5 ponies from the crowd moved forwards with worried looks on their faces, one seemed to edge carefully around him, and the others just waited and watched, it was then he watched as the cyan Pegasus with the rainbow mane yell out. "Okay bub, no big alien takes our friend and gets away with it!" In a flash Carl watched in slow motion as a blue blur ran at him at high speeds, he was amazed that a being like that could survive shooting off at that kind of speeds without deafening themselves from the rush. He was also surprised that the Pegasus could even move that fast without using a gravity drive. Needless to say, he decided to just move aside and watch as the Pegasus shot past and halt from the movements of the Spartan. Carl didn't know whether or not to take things seriously; these were ponies for crying out loud. On top of which, ponies that could talk and react, he did know that harming other sentient life was probably not the best of ideas, especially if that life happened to be rather primitive. Carl watched as the next pony threw a lasso at him, the thing caught his arm, but the pony who threw it couldn't manage to tie him down. He watched as 4 others joined the cowboy like pony and pulled on the rope, he felt his arm jerk slightly from the combined effort of the ponies, but he decided to just jerk his arm back. The 4 ponies were flung forwards into the ground, the rest of the population just facehoofing at the disaster. He just stared and wondered what these ponies were doing, he didn't have long to wait as he was suddenly attacked by a pink fluffy pony with a scary type of smile, he was taken aback from being scared by the pony and it seemed to just smile and say. "Hello? Anyone home?" The pony tapped on his helmet. Carl didn't know what seemed off, the fact that a pony managed to get on his head and was now tapping on it or the fact that the pony was actually not afraid of him. She rolled off his head and landed in front of his feet on all four hooves and said. "Hey are you new here? Why are you blue? How is it like being made of metal? Blah, blah, blah..." The pink pony was muffled out as Carl couldn't be bothered listening to the pink being who was now speaking at a few hundred words a minute, and he really didn't know why she was so captivating with her voice. He then noticed that his suit was a few pounds lighter than it had been earlier, and then he checked as he found that there were ropes on his back, but the pony had escaped. He turned about to see that the lavender pony had brought out something very heavy; it looked like a giant cup, probably someone's water tank. The lavender pony levitated it and dropped it on top of him with a loud 'CLANG'. His view was suddenly dark, until he turned on his helmet lights, the inside of this large metal tank seemed made of sheet iron, which in truth wasn't strong enough to hold him. But it wasn't like they could actually trap him, but he'd like to see what was going to happen, besides better let them feel safe rather than scaring the living daylights out of them by ripping his way out from the thick iron cup. He would wait these curious creatures out, unless they proved hostile, then he'll remain where he was. XXXXX With a heavy THUD, Twilight watched in relief that she had no longer needed to fear the armoured bipedal giant which had taken her hostage, she was just so tired from the whole ordeal. She watched as the others quickly rushed to her side, Applejack leading the way to her with her friends, she hugged them as they arrived by her side. "Twilight, we were so worried, that thing didn't hurt ya did it?" Applejack asked. "No. It just tied me up and ran through the forest." She replied with some relief. "That sounds traumatic!" The white unicorn named Rarity exclaimed. "Not really, it didn't know about my teleportation ability, I'm just lucky that it ran in this direction." Twilight said. "Well, least it won't be harming anyone else." Applejack said pointing her hoof at the tank. Rainbow Dash arrived rubbing her legs. "Ow, anyone get a licence plate on that carriage?" "Yeah, and that carriage is now safely stuck behind that." AJ pointed at the tank again. "Oh, well at least I could have take it on, but that thing is fast." Dash commented. They nodded in agreement and decided to just rest upon it, Twilight asked. "Does anyone know who could send a message to Canterlot as soon as possible, Spike's out like a light and I don't want to bother him." There was a bit of a rustle as they found their pony to get going, the grey and blonde haired Pegasus arrived, her flank with the few bubbles and awkward eyes. "You need something, muffin?" She asked. "Um, Ditzy could you send out a message for me to Canterlot, you have direct access to the princess so it would be helpful." Twilight said. "Sure thing..." The Pegasus replied. Twilight took a moment to get a message written up and prepared and then she gave it to the postal Pegasus and then watched as the grey pony flew off into the direction of the capital. They'd receive a message by the morning, or maybe the princess would send some help. Twilight and the others finished with their talks with everypony else about what the massive bipedal being was and gave sufficient explanation of what happened. When they were finished, some of the others were left to guard the mysterious being, meanwhile Twilight decided to get some rest, the night was long and she had rather fancy a bit of rest. Hopping along, she headed back to the library and then into bed. She found that Spike was still in his bed snoring away, she headed to bed and then just hit the hay, but she had this itching feeling that he beast in the tank let her capture it. XXXXX "Celia status report!" Commander Thomas asked. "Nothing good if that's what you want to know, the UCAF didn't make these damned frigates to last being shot to pieces like that, or being shoved so damned abruptly. We've taken external damage across the lower hull, but nothing had been compromised, all the internal plating is holding well, we're getting reports from the damage teams." She said materialising on the table. "Good, that's a start, anything from Carl?" Thomas asked. "No sir, Carl's signal went as soon as we hit the atmosphere, all I can say is that his frame had crashed about 200kms in any direction." She replied with a mumble. "Okay, looks like a search and rescue and a repair operation." Thomas said with annoyance. "Let's just hope that he hasn't gotten into any trouble." Celia added. "You should probably worry about the trouble, because you know about Carl, he knows how to deal with trouble." Thomas said calmly amongst the chaos of his ship. XXXXX Carl spent the next 6 hours waiting before he had heard the ponies outside begin to move from their position, he had found that they were busy doing something else than guard. He observed his situation, stuck in a water tank with a means of escape, suit's functionality was optimal, and his guns and ammo sufficient, and he had an objective, getting back to UCAF territory. He sighed, and decided to reflect on some things of his life, he was one who took orders and did them, and he knew how to get them done. Other times he acted rather indifferently. He worked about the whole situation; he knew that the leader of these sentient ponies would most likely wish to see him, if they had one. Or they might decide to kill him, but that's what most hostile primitive races would do, he knew that these beings were probably not warriors and they didn't really fit that sort of a role, also they seemed to lack the armour and technology to do so, unless they had some nukes stashed away. He listened in as the noise increased, he could hear chatter increase and the ponies outside shuffling over to the water tank jail that was above him. The screeching of metal and soon there was a neat cut hole in the side, a voice somewhat feminine and yet inquisitive asked. "You inside, can you understand us?" He held his silence and found that if he answered, then it was either an interrogation or a simple question. He made his decision; he picked himself up and answered. "Yes." It took a few shouts from the outside and some talking before the pony returned to ask. "Who are you and why did you attack one of our friends." "I believed that your friend was strange and oddly unique, and she was following me, and my training kicked in to remove such possible threats, so I decided that she would tell me why she was chasing me." He replied. "That doesn't answer who you are." The voice probed once more. "That's because I won't answer to someone who doesn't show their face, and I won't respond very well to interrogation." Carl said clearly. "Well we'd like to move this thing, but it's rather heavy." The voice said. "Very well I'll just do it." Carl said moving over to the rim of the metal tank, he couldn't hear the surprise from the pony who had been talking to him, but it didn't take long as he lifted the rim up and then pulled upwards. The whole tank was lifted as though it was nothing to him, it would weight about a ton, but he could easily do this. The whole thing lifted up and he was soon in the presence of the whole town, he just showed them it and said. "You know I could have just done this the whole time before right?" The only pony within range of the metal tank was the purple mare he had run across the day before; she had brought out some questions on a note pad and was quivering in fear as he dropped the tank down to the ground. He looked at her and said. "You were saying something about asking questions?" Before he could react, he was tossed to the ground by an invisible force, he didn't know what it was, but it felt like someone just laid a whole warthog on his chest and made sure that he couldn't move. The ponies within range of him had moved away and he could register another energy source, this time much more powerful, it was as if someone had gotten a dozen gravity hammers and were pushing them all onto his chest. "Okay, so it seems that you don't really need much physical force to hold me down." He said as he lay on the dirt floor. It was then a regal voice answered him. "No it would not. And it seems as though you require physical forces more than we do stranger." The voice he could hear was like silk upon water, he didn't know what could make it sound like that, but his posture slightly relaxed as though in a trance. His neural synaptic relays kicked into motion and soon he got back full control, the being was using some sort of hypnotic messages through her voice. And he could hear those voices, he moved about uncomfortably and looked over to where the being was, he watched as the shadow fell over to him, a rainbow mane moved in the non-existent wind, she had a smile that could calm a tide of sorrow and looked as majestic as any being he had encountered since the rise of the Inheritor. "Who are you?" She asked with a clam and soothing tone. "I am Lieutenant Carl-2011, Spartan Alpha, UCAF Naval Spec Ops." He replied to the being. "Good, I am Princess Celestia of Equestria, the lands to which you are present within. I am sorry that I had Shining Armour bind you to the ground, it was a necessary precaution." She stated gesturing to the armoured guard in purple with a star engraved shield on the front of the breast plate. "I would like to be able to stand up, I swear on my oath as a soldier for the alliance to uphold my honour as a sentient not to attack should I be released." He said. The princess didn't really trust the being, seeing as she had heard about how he had ponynapped Twilight and then ran about the town terrorising the whole population. And now of this show of physical force, the being was finally pinned to the ground, by most of Shining's magical grasp. The captain of her guard asked. "Princess, should I release him?" The being seemed to grunt with effort as it said. "You know I think that it might be prudent if we could talk properly." Carl said testing the magical strength of Shining by attempting to push against the magical anvil. Shining poured more magic into his hold on Carl, but it was slowly taking a toll. She had her reservations about the Spartan, but she didn't want the Spartan from doing anything dangerous, also because Shining was starting to wear, but it seemed rather sure that he'd keep his hands from harming anypony. She left out a sigh and then motioned to Shining and said. "Release him." Shining looked at her questioning if this was such a smart thing, but he released if not hesitantly. The human didn't take long as it jumped up in a forward flip and looked at her, its strange face scan her, the silver visor scrutinised her and then said. "Greeting princess, I apologise if that my appearance here might have startled you, but it was necessary that I assess my situation before acting, and thus I captured your student here without intention." Carl said respectfully but also cautiously. The princess replied. "Thank you for clarifying that, and I would like to welcome you to Equestria Carl." Pinkie arrived and said. "Yay, now we have a new friend to add to the list! And can someone please get me an invite to their Xbox live? Its P1NK13..." No one bothered to listen to the pink party mare's crazed rant. XXXXXX It took about a few hours to get things cleared up in the library, which seemed rather cramped for the Spartan, he was almost 3 times their size, he just got through the doorway and got into the room, he sat down and watched the ponies get him things, he looked at a cup that was now present in front of him and the many objects strewn about. The Princess had asked for Princess Luna, a princess of the night as he was told to arrive as well, she was present after arriving in a hurry, she teleported into town and scared most of the inhabitants of Ponyville, it was a funny scene for him, if not for the dozen or so guards in heavy dark armour arrive with the princess. At the moment he was just having an interview with the princesses. The ponies in the room were just the six colourful creatures he encountered, and the few guards, and the captain of the guard who were waiting at every window and entrance in the library. Princess Celestia was across from him on a fold out table and Princess Luna had taken to sitting above him on Twilight's open bedroom floor. He took his mind off things and observed his environment, the library wasn't like any others he had seen, old ones like the ones on Valence, but this seemed to be rather small and quaint, but he had no complaints about the design, it was organic and structurally sound. He just sat quietly as the ponies talked and the 'Alicorn' as he had learnt about was busily getting things sorted out, she brought out a scroll and said. "Mr Carl-." She was about to begin when he interjected. "Just Carl." She adjusted. Very well, Carl, I would like to know more about your unique situation, as of this moment, you are the first being to arrive on our world, and one of the most peculiar. Spike here, shall work as out scribe and record our discussion, this is merely to ensure our records are clear." He looked at the small green scaled lizard which was a baby dragon from what he was told, the little green scaled creature looked at him nervously as he looked at him. He turned back and asked. "Very well, where would you like to begin?" Celestia cleared her throat and asked. "What is your race?" "I am human, or by my situation my class is super human." She didn't deviate from her questions; she'd have Twilight to ask to inquire later. "How did you arrive here?" "My ship was struck by a blast of enemy fire and my commander ordered us to exit out FTL and re-enter real space, however in the process we were thrown forwards to the planet's gravity, when that occurred I landed here." "Are there others like you on this world?" "My ship crashed a fair distance off into the west, I do not know where they had gone, but they are here on the world with me." "Are your people violent?" "Yes, but only when we are required to be, in hostile situations we are required to fight." "Interesting, do your people look as you do?" She asked. "No, this is my armour and this is my suit, it is part of my existence as a soldier, or by your standard a warrior, I am not allowed to remove this suit, mostly because as long as I am inside I am safe from dangers of wildlife and possible threats." "So you look different?" She asked. "Yes." "Would you be able to reveal to us what your look like?" The ponies looked at him with curious eyes, except Pinkie Pie who was busy bumbling about with a tray of muffins. The elements of harmony were all present, and it seemed as though ponies were just as curious as the princess, even Shining Armour who was inside looked on in curiosity, the Spartan had a feeling the guard didn't trust him. Luna was quietly observing the Spartan from her perch. He worked around his armour locks and detached his neck brace and then took his helmet off, he had been curious as to what the air smelt like or how the air flowed around him, he hadn't taken his suit off in years. When he took the helmet off the fresh air came inside, and the smell of muffins and ponies, which smelt odd, so he couldn't figure out why they smelt like soap and flowers. The ponies were hushed, they could see his face, it was pale white and very odd, it was flat and slightly boxy, it had eyes, beady and green, the mane as they could figure was slightly spiky and heavy black. The face of the being made them gasp, Luna looked at Carl with intense curiosity, and Fluttershy looked as though she could just jump at him. "So, none of you ever see a human before?" He asked. "No, you're the first other being who's managed to come from the skies and talk to us like this." Celestia said. "Well not being rude, but this is kind of new to me as well, never been on another world where there were actual beings that could speak which weren't as humanoid as others that I've seen, and also you're not trying to kill me, so that's also a little bit different." He said. "What?" "Nothing, you shouldn't need to worry about that little problem, let's just say that I'm happy to be in the presence of such a being like yourself." He said. "Very well, would you like to continue with our discussion?" XXXXX They talked again, but this time with a more calm posture and attitude, the Equestrians asked about what the UCAF was and how it affected them as a race, Carl was keeping things from diving too far into the history of the human race, he asked an equal amount of questions and learnt a few things, the ponies history was nothing serious or even that significant, it seemed to have just a lot of peaceful years and a few cultural and social changes and governmental. Carl had noticed that the Ponies had literally no conflict aside from random events, or minor confrontations between dragons and griffins and other odds and ends; he had exchanged a brief summary of the human race's wars in the past millennium to which the ponies seemed mortified about hearing about how long the human race had been fighting. He didn't go into the details of the human/covenant war, but he skimmed over some of the records, Celestia could understand that Carl didn't wish to talk about much about the UCAF's war against the inevitable destruction at the hands of the covenant. But he did mention that there were dangers involved in space and wherever there was sentient life. He also questioned a few things as to how Celestia and Luna raise the sun and the moon, it was odd, ponies with magic, this whole thing was surreal to say the least and it was very much confusing. Magic and forerunner quantum abilities were two very different things, and he needed to get a proper science team to check into this whole thing once he got back to the ship. At the current moment in time, he was spending his day with the ponies of Ponyville, Celestia had allowed him to stay at the library or a place of his choosing for the few days, he had offers to stay at Applejack's Farm house, Bon Bon and Lyra had a spare room for him, and then there was Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Cheerilee who had wished to also offer a place for him to stay. He decided to go with staying at Twilight's Library, the thought about being stuck in some place strange didn't appeal to him. Even though being here was unfamiliar as well. It didn't take long before Celestia finished her talk with Carl and headed off back to Canterlot, she had an important meeting with some officials and also some of the local guards about any strange sightings aside from Carl's crash into the dense thicket outside of Ponyville. Carl remained at the library and helped around, the lavender unicorn had said it wasn't necessary, but he insisted and helped wherever he could, he sorted out the library in moments and helped out with dinner, but it wasn't really necessary as he had his own dinner to make. "So, what do you eat?" Twilight asked. "I've got a few ration packs; do you have any hot water?" He asked. "Yes just in the kitchen, the pot is on the stove." She said. He acknowledged and walked over to the stove and placed the water inside and then started the fire, he started it with a few chemical cubes, the insulated heating chemicals react as soon as the safety seal is torn, the coils started and the pot was boiling up in a few minutes. He removed the pot from the stove and moved it to his side, Twilight had already begun to eat dinner with Spike when he had finished. He removed his rations of dinner, 3 packets, and 2 being the potatoes and gravy while the other was cooked and marinated beef with starch, the last was a packet of vegetables. Pouring the boiling water into each packet he prepared his meal in moments and then began to eat, the meal was warm thankfully for the early autumn weather. The smell of meat caught the scent of Spike who asked. "What is that smell? It smells kinda good." "That's what you call beef, and it's a piece of meat from an animal that has been cut up and cooked, I'm just eating it with some other vegetables and soup." He replied. Twilight's expression from listening in asked. "You're eating an animal?" "Yes, that's why I mentioned that I was an omnivore along with most of the human race, I eat meat and vegetables and other things, meat is just a usual thing that most of us do eat, except those who have protein supplements or vitamin supplements, then that's different. But for those who do eat meat, well it's just the way it is." He said chewing up another piece of flesh. The lavender unicorn knew that other animals ate other things, she just added that to her mental list and then turned away, she couldn't help but feel sort of curious from thinking about how ponies would react at the human eat the flesh of another being, she watched as Spike honestly didn't care but was intrigued by the food. He then proceeded to ask. "What about other meats?" Carl set down his food and said. "Well, the human race has lived off many other creatures such as fish and poultry and so on and so forth, but the usual things we tend to consume are from cows." He said picking up where he left off. Once the sounds of scraping metal and chomping continued, the baby dragon asked. "So what does it taste like?" "Warm chewy and rather mild, it's something you usually have for dinner so it's just the way it tastes." Carl said finishing off the last of his vegetables. Twilight really prayed to Celestia that taking in the Spartan as her temporary house guest was a good idea. It wasn't long before they needed to hit the hay, Twilight went over to her bed, meanwhile the Spartan remained in his armour and lay down on the lower level with his suit on and a couple of sheets and a pillow, he made sure to keep an eye on things for the night. XXXXXX It was about midnight when there was a strange sound, Carl pretended to be asleep, and he could hear the whole world around him, even with his armour off, his auditory sensors made sweeps over his area and searched for what might have been making the noise. The sound was about 8 meters away, he could hear 3 individual beings, their voices were hard to ascertain, but they were close, they sounded way too much like grunts, but then again, this was a pony town, so it was possible it was either spec ops grunts or just some little kids getting themselves into a world of trouble. As the feet got closer they reached his legs, one whispered. "See ah told ya it was asleep." One poked his suit's legs and then moved to his hands. "Do you think aliens fall asleep?" One asked. "Well we can see it now." Carl knew better than to let the little ponies touch any of his sensitive gear and decided to give them a minor scare. He jumped up and said. "BOO" The three little fillies screamed out aloud, it caught the attention of the whole neighbourhood and over to the other side of town and then they ran around through the room, it was then Twilight awoke to figure out what the hubbub was about and found 3 scared little fillies and one rather bemused human looking around. XXXXX "Look here girls, you can't just sneak in at night and then try to see if the alien had a cutie mark, as a matter of fact this alien is called a human, and no, they don't have cutie marks." Twilight said. Rainbow Dash and Rarity were also present, along with Applejack who looked annoyed that her little sister crawled out of bed and went to see the alien with her own eyes. Rainbow was only there because Scootaloo was under her watch for that day and she didn't realise that the small filly could escape her sight so easily. Sweetie Belle was under the gaze of a very annoyed older sister who looked perturbed that her little sister managed to get herself into so much trouble. "Sorry, we only wanted to see the Spartan." Sweetie Belle said. Applebloom added. "An get our explorer cutie marks." "Applebloom ya know better than this though, ah even said not to come here." Applejack warned. "Yea, but we jus' wanna know." Applebloom was cut off. Twilight then interrupted. "Well I think the girls have a good understanding of possible issues with going to see people they don't know. I think we should get them home; I need to sleep because princess Celestia said she'd return tomorrow to decide upon one few things. And staying up now isn't the best thing to do." Rarity agreed. "Yes quite, I do require my beauty sleep. However that doesn't mean that any of you are off the 'hook'." She ended. Dash said. "All of you are grounded for the next 2 days." A series of AWWW's came from the ponies. "Now no grumbling, you three could have gotten into serious trouble if this wasn't a nice being from outer space, now say you're sorry to Twilight and let's get going." They all apologised for bothering their sleep at night and headed off. Twilight wheeled around once she closed the door, she said to the Spartan. "So, why did you give the girls such a scare?" "Just comical relief, besides I've had worse from grunts, they tend to shoot while running away. I'm sure that they learnt their lesson from this." He said. "I'm sure that they have. Well goodnight." Twilight said heading to bed once again. The Spartan smiled and dropped into his previous seat and quickly went into sub-sleep. (He doesn't sleep like others.) XXXXX Elsewhere… "Ship master, we have picked up on the human's trail, the slip-space fields state that they headed through this region of space no longer than a cycle ago." A tactical officer announced. "Good, we'll tail them to their hideaway, the covenant maybe broken, but we shall not relent against the humans. Prepare the vanguards." The Ship Master ordered. XXXXX AN: (2012) This was when I was playing Halo Reach and a going through all the wiki's on the Halo Universe to help me make the story and a few things from my more common Halo/ME fiction writing, it's quite common. Also i am currently editing stuff in the story the original didn't have shining armour or Cadence or explained where Luna was or had a lot of things in it, i'm currently just revising things slowly. If anyone would like to take over for me that'd be appreciated.
Chapter 3: Run Spartan RunCH3 XXXXX Run Spartan Run... XXXXX AN: 2012: This has not been edited so sorry if things seem inconsistent at the moment, this will be fixed at a later time. I do have my taxes and stuff to deal with so I'm running short on time. XXXXX The next morning Carl had to make sure that he woke up at his usual time, he reset his internal clock to wake him at 5 in the morning at the planet's usual time, once then he went outside to do some practice, he'd go on a 30 minute run outside of his suit, following that he'd do some practice on some trees with his bare hands, he did this on ships and other planets, if not in combat though. He didn't see this as much anyway, and he had been in cryo-stasis the past 2 months before so he really needed to practice again. He exited his suit, shutting down most of the systems; he left on his emergency power to get a fast start should he be returning with an emergency or problem. He stripped his armour into 10 neat pieces and left his bare skin suit on, the skin suit wasn't revealing, except that his torso was half bare, the suit was an EVA variant and he hadn't manage to change back to his standard Ranger gear. He shrugged, it wasn't as if the ponies knew about human anatomy or even knew that he was physically strong. He jogged out of the room and headed on a following of his compass, he'd just follow it and then head back for normal drills, he just hoped Twilight didn't start poking around in his armour, he hadn't cleared it out in days and it smelled something sweaty. XXXXX Applejack woke up early, she had work to get done, the apple trees needed harvesting in the next 3 weeks and she needed to know which trees required a little more time. This was usually a menial task that took days to get sorted out, but it was necessary. She went about checking with the fields on the left side of the farm, Big Mac wasn't going to get going until 6 to get the rest of the farm working. So she was on her own for now. Applejack walked through the first dozen trees checking quickly which trees were either absent of certain red juicy apples or still had ones which were growing. She jotted through taking note on what was happening, she walked through for another 10 minutes and then took a look around the other side that was when she heard something. She turned about to see something in the distance, moving very fast. Here's a fun fact, certain ponies are able to move very fast, such as ponies that usually pull trains along or ponies that pull busses, or pegasi such as Rainbow Dash, who just rip past with wings. That being that, there was one thing that Applejack had never seen, the humanoid shape of Carl moving fast enough that she was flung backwards as he ran in a straight line to the other side of the farm, her Stetson hat flew off into the direction that the Spartan ran and she soon followed after it. Her hooves kicked into action as she went into overtime, they didn't add Jack to the end of her name for nothing you know. XXXXX Carl could have sworn he saw that orange pony from before, but he was trying to keep onto schedule with his run, he was kicking up dirt and wind like no tomorrow and also he seemed to have caught a lot of attention from something, because he noticed that there was someone tailing him. He then noticed that there was a hat following in the breeze right behind him, he plucked it from the air and the then looked at it while he ran. It was a nice looking hat, much like the ones from the frontier colonies he had seen years back. He didn't know where it came from but he plopped in on his head and continued to run at his usual speed, he did keep an eye out on that trailing shadow though. They ran through the edges of Everfree and then to the path along to the roads which headed over to Lyra and Bon Bon's home and then headed all the way back to town, just making sure to pass along by Fluttershy's home on the way through though. XXXXX Flutter shy looked about, she had just finished tending to a fruit bat which had been lost for a few days, she placed it over to the side and let it fly off, it was going to be sun up very soon and she didn't want to wait any longer for it. As soon as the bat flew off she hovered over to her garden to check on some of the plants, herbs from Zecora had been growing well, and her copy of Supernaturals had helped quite a bit in getting these new planets to flourish. As she worked away, Angel Bunny came out from the house and quickly went to helping his caretaker, he picked up an early snack from the kitchen before anything else and went about looking for Fluttershy, he walked on the open dirt path and found her toiling away softly at the plants from that zebra that he knew little about. Chewing away he leaned to one side next to her and poked her. Fluttershy looked away and took notice that Angel was mouthing. "What's up doc?" "Oh Angel Bunny, you should know better than to snack in the morning, it's not very good for your health… and breakfast is coming up soon." She pointed to the skies now slowly brightening up. He shrugged and turned his back and walked away, right onto the dirt path, it was then that a stampeding noise rushed by so fast that Fluttershy looked to see that Angel was no longer there and in fact he was moving away on the shoulders of that giant earlier yesterday that had ponynapped Twilight, and now he was trying to bunnynap Angel! "Angel, I'm coming, hold on!" She zoomed off after the Spartan and Applejack at surprising speeds. XXXXX Rarity had been cross with Sweetie Belle, but had let her off for the night, besides she needed the rest, and Rarity needed the beauty sleep early, she had to get something from that wool worker, Patch, who ran the fabric store in town. She had also had to get something from Pinch who ran the needle and yarn store over yonder. She had gotten her early deliveries and was closing the distance back to the Boutique when she noticed that there was something odd. She couldn't put her hoof on it, but the ground seemed to tremble ever so much, as a matter of fact the longer she thought about it the more obvious it was, and now it was right next to her. Rarity turned her head to watched the human from before running at her at full tilt, he narrowly missed her but he knocked a needle out from her mouth at high speeds, it sped off into the air. She was so glad that nothing else was knocked off her or lost. But never think about it if you really want it to happen, Applejack didn't waste time and knocked the hooves from right under her. "Sorry, hat thief and ah lot of work." AJ said in short as she burst past. Rarity realised that her fabrics had been caught on AJ and yelled. "Get back here with those you hoovingtons!" She chased after them with Fluttershy trailing behind at a graceful yet impressive speed. XXXXX Now about that needle, let's just say it landed in one most uncomfortable place, for the most energetic character out of all of the ponies in ponyville. Rainbow Dash was napping so much on her makeshift cloud that she didn't realise that it was not meant to stop sharp objects. A high velocity needle hitting a bare flank in a cloud= very nasty wake up call. Rainbow Dash screamed and kicked the cloud in pain, and in surprise, the whole area was given a nasty boom. She turned away from the cloud and took notice of the where the needle came from; she traced it over to the group of runners going after the human. "What the hay? Is there a race going on? And I wasn't invited?" She said in unbelief. She'd show them, she bucked up her wings and then shot forwards, heading down to the ground at high speeds she raced to reach the group. XXXXX Carl was nearing the end, there was just the town hall and then down to the library again, he took notice that there were now 5 individual ponies chasing him, and a thunder clap appeared out of nowhere. He was reaching the last stretch of ground to the library when he noticed that there was a blue streak trying to reach him, it was Rainbow Dash, the Pegasus that attempted to fight him the other day before. He didn't relent and continued to stay ahead, once they reached the end, he stopped at the front of the library just as Twilight was leaving her home to go to the post office, she paused in shock as the Spartan bolted to a stop in front of her, but her friends were unable to slow fast enough, AJ just stopped at his back, while Rarity just landed on top of her and then Fluttershy with Rainbow Dash, but it was Pinkie who arrived from nowhere that the whole group landed on the Spartan and on top of Twilight. They were all piled on top, Pinkie just then noticed and asked. "Hey are you all having a Hug the Human Party without me?" "No Pinkie, you just landed on top of us and we all tipped over on to Carl." Twilight said. "Okay, because that would have been so awesome if you were, you know, greeting him…" Pinkie drawled off into the unknown about the whole thing while Carl asked Twilight. "Is she always like this?" The group replied. "Yes." XXXXXX After a hasty discussion and a bit of heavy lifting which the Spartan was happy oblige, they all had breakfast at Twilight's and were introduced to the Spartan's cooking. The Spartan had brought his survival gear with him and for good reason, in case he had no food to look for, there was only 3 days' worth of rations and some water, and a filter, but that was required for places with murky water. The breakfast rations would be fine for them all, it was just protein oatmeal with powdered pancakes and some syrup with potato preservatives, he knew what they put in these things, enough to last a few hundred years and yet fresh enough not to decay in the field. The UCAF rations worked wonders for troops in the field, they weren't harmful in the long run, but in the short run, people tended to get sick if eating the same thing for longer than 1 month they warned against constant use. Carl had some bacon packs and some light powdered eggs, but he doubted that the ponies would like that; he made the bacon for himself and let the rest of the eggs on his plate. Once completing their meals he brought them all their servings of breakfast, he found honey and some fruits in the kitchen, they'd work well with the oatmeal, he didn't really like the oatmeal bland. "Here you are." He said placing their servings down. He set his last, to which the ponies wondered what the smell was, only Spike seemed interested in the whole thing, meanwhile Twilight eyed it curiously. "What is that smell?" Rarity asked. "Bacon, pig cut up into strips and cooked." He replied clearly. The ponies all looked at him as though they had lost their appetite, except Rainbow Dash who proceeded to ask oblivious to the fact that her friends were staring away from her. "Oh, can I have a piece?" She asked enthusiastically. Twilight and the others looked at Dash as though she lost her mind. "Rainbow, that's a pig that's been cut apart and served on a plate. And how can you eat that?" Dash shrugged. "Hilda made me eat her lunch whenever I lost a bet, sometimes she had pieces of chicken cooked or slices of bacon, it wasn't so bad, but I'd rather prefer bacon. I did some searching up on it in a library in case it did something bad, from what I learned the books I looked at said it was fine." Twilight stunned along with the others said. "You went to a library?" Rainbow Dash looked at them smile and then laugh. "Oh, ha, ha, now I get it." She grumbled. "Not to be mean, but you never come here to read any books. It's just funny that you did back then." Twilight said. Rainbow grumbled a bit and went back to eating. Rarity assured Dash. "We're just having a small laugh; you should not take it nearly to heart, besides you're the one who makes laughs at everypony else." That was true, Rainbow did make a few good jokes and pranks, and she couldn't feel all that annoyed. "I guess you're right." Twilight changed subjects. "So, Carl, what do plan to do today?" "I've got to go get my EVAF from the forests nearby, my extra communications systems were aboard it when I crashed here, I just need that and I'll have a team pick me up as soon as possible. You can come along with me if you want." He replied. Pinkie snapped out of her babbling and said with excitement. "Awesome, we get to see your space ship and everything, all the cool details, lasers, lights, and etc." The group let Pinkie go off on her own yapping; Carl just went back to focusing on what he was explaining. "Yeah, so you can come with me to check on my EVAF, it's not far and I'm sure you'll learn something from the experience." "That sounds fine by me." AJ said. "Yeah, this is gonna be awesome." Dash agreed. "Well it would be interesting what it might look like." Rarity said. Fluttershy just stayed quiet and smiled at the idea, Twilight finished with. "So when do we go?" XXXXX Carl walked the way back with the ponies, when they arrived; the pond where the EVAF had landed had long since dried. Carl walked over to the side of the frame and began to try to power it up, it wasn't made for aerial purposes, but it was made to fly, so he'd just adjust the speed and the energy required and try to launch it from the forest, hopefully it would land close to the town, and if not, then he was dragging it over there. Kicking in the drives he made sure to begin ignition sequence. He called out to the girls. "Get back, the ignition on this thing is loud. It's going to fly, but don't stand behind it, the heat exhaust burns everything behind." The girls stood a few meters away from the EVAF; Carl ignited the engines, the rear thrusters set aflame and dust behind it, the wing thrusters activated to lift the EVAF off the ground gently. The fighter frame was just hovering off the ground; Carl had to increase the energy transfer so the EVAF didn't accidently blow everyone away as he tried to move it away. He then increased propulsion and then he was off. The EVAF left a trail of dust in the small pocket of the forest, but once in the air, it was an amazing sight, ponies of Ponyville watched as the EVAF soared overhead. Carl had to make sure that the frame didn't accelerate too much, he was trying to land the thing closer to the town, not land the thing on the other side of the planet. He did circle the town overhead a few laps, then that was when Rainbow Dash caught up, the cyan Pegasus was amazed at the sight of the EVAF, she yelled out. "That's awesome, how fast can you go?" She asked excitedly. "At best, about Mach 5, five times the speed of sound." He replied over his loud speakers. The cyan Pegasus was grinning with awe and respect for the metal thing that was now in the skies above, it was only another 5 minutes before Carl decided to land the EVAF in the outskirts from the town. It took a bit to make sure that he didn't scare the living day lights out of any pony that was nearby and settled the frame on flat ground, the landing struts pressed into the ground and sank a bit, the frame wasn't made for the ground. Once stepping off he waited for the others to arrive at the frame, in the meantime he had about the entire population of Ponyville arrive to see the EVAF. They were all jostling to get a good sight of the machine, even taking pictures to send over all over the place. Carl knew that this wasn't the best idea to attract attention to his EVAF. Especially since that the frame was made to be used in the war, but the ponies of Ponyville did not know about that little detail. Once Twilight and the others arrived, they excitedly began to talk about the machine that he used, Twilight asked. "Wow, is that how you travel across distances?" "Not really, there are many other machines we use to travel; this is just something I use in space above us." He replied. A series of Oohs and Ahs made it simply understandable for the Spartan to just go on with what he was doing; he needed to signal the ship. In moments he climbed to his seat again and brought up the holographic display, he signalled across primary lines, he managed to thank the commander for thinking on his feet; there was a direct line to one of the orbiting satellites that the ship put up in his absence. "Carl to Dauntless, Commander Thomas can you hear me?" Carl called. The ponies had no idea what the Spartan was doing, but he was talking to the blue glowing thing on his flying machine, or space ship as the other called it. The ponies were all thrilled at knowing that there was something interesting happening that day. Twilight was quickly taking note of the whole situation and wrote down all the features of the EVAF, Dash was comparing the EVAF to her flight skills and wondered if she could ever reach that speed. Rarity was still curious as to what the armour of the Spartan would be like in pony size and Fluttershy just mutely smiled with Pinkie prancing around. Carl waited a bit longer before he received a reply. "Carl we hear you, what is your position?" "I'm 121km due west, in a small town, you can't miss it, by the way, I'm surrounded by talking ponies." He replied. "Say again? Talking PONIES?" The AI said with disbelief. "Yes, I said that they are sentient Equestrians with the ability to understand speech, language and other things, though they do seem rather eccentric they're peaceful, and harmless, and over energetic." He replied. "Okay, we'll verify that once you get back to base, and are you bringing any of these Sentient Ponies with you?" Celia asked. "Yeah about 6+1 infant dragon and maybe two or three others, but they might find their own way there." Carl replied. "Okay, well, we'll send in Aires flight 205 Dawn Breaker to meet with you and these sentient ponies, just stay there Lieutenant." Celia advised. Carl knew that they all thought he was going insane, like when has there ever been a case of talking ponies in the history of mankind? He just shoved the thought back inside his head and just accepted that things were just as they were, and he accepted it. The only problem was that he had to bring along 8 ponies, two of which were god like and the rest normal with an infant purple dragon. Does anyone see the irony of his situation? He stepped off the EVAF and then said to the ponies. "Look we've got about 1 heavily armoured gunship on approach in 6 hours, and from what I know you should probably contact your princess and tell her that I'm getting picked up with you girls, seriously we need to hurry." Twilight understood, she remembered that should the UCAF wish to meet with them the princess had to be alerted so either she or Luna or both could attend. She quickly drew out a prewritten message and asked Spike to send it off. Twilight was always prepared. Once the message was away, they just needed to wait. Pinkie on the other hand wished to tell everyone that there was another space ship coming to pick them up and there was little time, to get packing some stuff, so everypony quickly made some small treats for the trip and a going away gift on their trip to the mysterious alien ship, which was a box cake… Carl didn't know if he truly was going insane. XXXXXX The Princess arrived but she brought her sister with her, Luna, the midnight blue alicorn seemed to rather surprise Carl, she looked rather nice, if not unique. Once they all gathered to get ready for the trip, Twilight started to ask. "Princess where are your royal guards?" Celestia replied. "They were told to just wait in Ponyville once I returned, besides I have you going with me my faithful student, it would be not as necessary for that many ponies to go at once, and I am sure that there must be required space for the machine that Carl needs to bring." Twilight understood, but then asked. "Who will be running the kingdom if you and Luna are both going with us for the day?" "The main body of government of course, I do run under a constitutional monarchy, even though I have thought to go back to a simple structure… it would be better to avoid any difficulties." She replied. Well that answered a few things, they talked until there was an over wash of sound, from above they could see a large boxy shape appear, it was much bigger than that of the EVAF and even bigger than that of one whole wing of the castle in Canterlot. The gunship landed down and brought out a rig to lift the EVAF off the ground, the rear doors opened to show the ponies a large bay empty with just 3 humans like Carl waiting. One marine commented. "Wow they really are talking ponies…" "Ha, you owe me 50 bucks." The other pointed. "F***" The other yelled but was washed out by the engines. Carl beckoned them towards into the flying machine. Twilight and the other followed aboard with Celestia and Luna going in last. Once they were aboard the rear doors closed and all the ponies waved goodbye. Once they all were inside, they could see the extent of the UCAF technology, there was lighting and windows to show them the outside, not to mention plenty of head space. But there were no proper seats for Equestrians, Carl decided to lift out one of the belts and strap the ponies downwards so they didn't straddle off in all directions. Only the princess and her sister stood with the motion, happily standing without moving at all. From the windows they could see the speed of the UCAF machine speeding along, it was an amazing sight, and they passed through the many forests and plains and over the city of Manehatten, which raised the question of how the UCAF didn't get noticed sooner. They flew over the sight of many small towns and stopped at their destination at a clearing in a forest nearby. That was where they could see the massive ship that the UCAF had, and where Carl had come from or something similar. Once landing they were shown out of the Aires and down to a medium sized hangar bay, humans of all shapes and sizes walked around. This whole new place amazed the ponies who were eyed by all the UCAF personnel with interest. It didn't take long before Commander Thomas was there with Celia in full form. "So, this must be what you meant by talking ponies?" Celia asked. "Yes, look I know its awkward, but I can explain." Carl started. He didn't get far, the regal form alicorn answered for him. "I think we should explain for ourselves Carl, I'm sure that your commanding officer should be able to understand the situation quite well." The whole area fell silent, and was only broke by Pinkie Pie commenting. "Hey where's all the fancy stuff?" XXXXX (…) So yes we have reached that point in the story about the UCAF and the Equestrians meeting, but don't worry I'll let you know what happens in the next chapter, I need to focus elsewhere before my head explodes. And yes, we will be having the covenant attack, sometime in the near future; I won't hold them back before we finish building the proper bridges. (2011)
