The Reality War

Freeman couldn’t believe what he was seeing. And that was really saying something considering he’s seen a lot. A Combine Superportal? Here in Equestria? Why? Why did they have to come here? To this peaceful world. The Seven Hour War that the humans experienced would seem like an eternity to the time it would take the Combine to take over this world. How did they even find this universe? They must have taken the way that Gordon took. Those heartless imperialists would stop at nothing to control all of existence. This was not going to end well for ponykind. That is, unless Freeman could somehow stop them. But that was the problem: it had taken so much effort and so many resources and man-hours to close the portal on Earth. He had no scientists other than himself with the knowledge on this and he certainly didn’t have any way to build what was necessary. Unless…

Freeman turned around to see the Doctor, crew of the Normandy, and everypony else looking at him. “What is that?” the Doctor asked.

Now Gordon didn’t like to display his emotions. He’d seen horrors that no man should witness and didn’t make a peep. But just thinking of the same things done to these harmless, innocent ponies, well, it made him feel sick to his stomach. He was running out of time. The scouts would be through in a couple of hours with the main war machine following a couple hours after. He had to explain his predicament to the Doctor or else he may not be able to execute his plan. You see, if he were able to get together an army; a really big army, they might be able to repel them long enough to let the Doctor seal the way. The Combine is an army of clones; they will never stop their assault once they get going. The Resistance wasn’t going to cut it; they were going to need outside help. Gordon had explained his universe to everyone there. He had explained the war, and how there were few humans left, and even fewer fighting back against the Combine forces, but he had neglected to tell anyone, save for the Doctor and Shepard, about all the gruesome details. What the soldiers really were, what happened to those who rebelled and weren’t killed immediately but were captured instead, and worse yet, those… things. The creatures from the universe Xen: the headcrabs. How the Combine actually weaponized them like a plague. Gordon explained their problem and the brutalities of the Combine to everyone, sparing no detail, to give them a sense of just how urgent things were.

Celestia had faced a lot of problems during her rule. Discord, Nightmare Moon, the eighties, and she had faced them all with a level head. But when she heard Freeman relay everything to them, and just how bad these things were, a small part of her just wanted to curl up into a ball and wait for everything to fix itself. But she couldn’t, she had to lead Equestria. But her guards mostly dealt with drunken brawls and petty thievery, not wars; and certainly not of this magnitude. How were they going to do it? But then Freeman turned to the Doctor and asked him if he could do something that he just told Shepard they couldn’t: go to other universes. They would have all the time they needed and maybe, just maybe, find others out there willing to help. To Celestia’s surprise, the Doctor agreed. They needed to do something, and fast. Wasting no time he ushered Shepard and Freeman to follow him as he ran to the TARDIS.

The Doctor was running, thinking, and talking at the same time. It wasn’t easy, but he was going to do whatever he had to to save Equestria from the Combine. He had fought a war like this before, and he wasn't about to let it end like that again. “Commander, Gordon and I are going to borrow Joker, Tali, and the Normandy so we can go get reinforcements. I think that a ship would be easier to move people than the TARDIS. I need you and the rest of your crew here to work with everyone you can to save as many ponies as possible. Go tell everyone what they have to do and go tell Celestia what I just said.” With a nod, Shepard broke off from the other two and ran back to tell the others the plan. Arriving at the TARDIS the Doctor quickly ran in and just as quickly came back out with a small handheld device in his hand, no larger than an iPod. Running with Freeman to the Normandy they boarded it and while Freeman went to the Armory to arm up (he’d decided to leave his weapons there instead of lying about the castle) the Doctor ran to the engine room and plugged the device into the ship’s mainframe. Shepard had already told EDI to allow the Doctor full and unrestricted access weeks ago, so he had no resistance from her. Installation completed, the Doctor ran into Tali on the way back to the elevator and told her that she would have no more issues traveling through inter-dimensional wormholes than she would traveling through normal space. But he wanted her here all the same, being the ship’s Chief Engineer and all. Back up at the bridge, the Doctor had already told Joker that they were ready to go via the intercom system, so without further ado, the Normandy lifted off from the ground for the first time in weeks and flew right through the other glass wall of the ballroom. The Doctor had already briefed Joker on how to use the device once it was installed, so with a push of a button, an energy field engulfed the entire ship and in an instant they were gone.