I lay on the ground, my eyes closed, and a cool breeze caressing me as I lay on the floor. I let my fingers feel the texture of what I'm laying on. Hard, bumpy with a few cracks in it, and something that feels like sand. The smell of smoke fills my nose but I don't feel in danger. It all seems peaceful, quiet. I could lay here forever, but a sense of urgency is tugging at the back of my mind.

I open my eyes to be met with the sky. Not the soft sky-blue color I remember. It has no clouds or birds flocking. Instead it's a dirty orange color, almost like rust, and instead of clouds large pillars of black smog rise into the air filling the atmosphere. A thin layer of what looks like dust hangs in the air. I look to the side, following the smoke stack to its source and find large building made of glass exteriors. Many of the windows are broken and parts of the buildings are missing. The iron frames holding the building together seem to be twisted and melted.

Another breeze flows over my skin, whisking the sweat off my forehead I didn't even know was there. With one last look at the building I push myself onto my feet only to be met by more buildings met with the same fate as the other. The whole world is covered in the orange light, large cracks covering the ground and some of the building threaten to collapse at any minute. In the streets cars lay in heaps of metal, blackened and melted.

I take a quick look around me and find an assault rifle on the ground. I cautiously walk up to it and pick it up, checking the ammo counter and sure enough a full mag is inside. A large crack then a low rumble that gradually grew to a roar catches my attention and I turn to see one of the many skyscrapers collapsing on itself. A plume of dust, smoke and debris rises above the other buildings, filling the air with the stuff. A few seconds later I can feel the gust of wind created by the falling building, silent whispers being carried with it.

Soon more and more buildings begin to collapse, the walls of dust taking their place. The seemingly large wall of dust is getting closer to me as the buildings around me begin to fall to their fate. The once mighty giants falling to their knees in submission to the damage caused to them. Soon the wall of dust is on my and engulfs me, surrounding me and blinding me, but I didn't move or falter.

The sound of whispers once again fills my ears and I try to listen to what they are saying, but so many voices are talking at once I can't focus on one for more than a second before another takes hold of my attention. They seem to get louder as the dust cloud got thicker and thicker, and soon the voices scream at me. I cover my ears but to no avail as they keep on throwing their rage at me.

Suddenly the voices stop and I cautiously uncover my ears. When I hear nothing I ease up, only to tense up again at the sight of a lone figure standing in the dust cloud. I can't make out its features, but I can see its outline. It looks unnatural, distorted, deadly. It takes a step towards me and I raise my assault rifle hopping to stop it in its tracks. The things takes another step and now I can feel the fear rising in me.

"H-hey!" I yell at it, but I doesn't answer. A moment passes where nothing happens but it begins to shuffle closer again. "Stop right there!" It doesn't stop. "I said stop!"

As it gets closer I can begin to see more and more of the thing. I freeze at the sight of it. It wears the UNSC marine armor, but I can tell it's not human. The thing is covered in rotting flesh, and pockets of whatever growing on its skin, causing lumps to form. The head, which looks like a human screaming in pain is pulled back in an almost unnatural way and the neck tore. One of its arms grew out and now looks like a claw while the other arm remain almost normal. The thing walks with a limp and it let out a blood curdling roar as it approaches me.

I can't say anything or move. I'm frozen in place by my own fear of this thing limping over to me. I turn to run but I suddenly find myself on the ground, pinned there by something on top of me. I feel a hand on my shoulder and a release of pressure, then am flipped onto my back to face the thing. Its hand grabs my shoulder and the claw raised up above its head. The claw comes down....
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My eyes fly open and I take a deep, gasping breath. There's a pain in my chest and I see Lyra pull out a large hypodermic needle from that area. The sea-foam colored mare look at me then smiles before turning to whoever is behind her. "He's awake!" I notice I don't have my helmet on and try to look around for it but something is holding me in place. A tingling sensation is coursing through my body and my head hurts slightly.

"Good, we need to get out of here soon or we're going to get over run." another voice that's vaguely familiar calls out.

A loud roar erupts from outside the walls along with the frantic gunfire. People and ponies shouted, calling for medical attention or fire support, their strained voices crying over the continuous fire. I feel something under my armpits and suddenly I'm being dragged behind a wall. I then realize I had been out in the open that whole time because the wall had collapsed.

"Can you stand?" Lyra asked me, poking me in the stomach with her hoof.

I cringed slightly as she did that. "I think I can manage." I said pushing myself up. Lyra helps me up, letting me use her as support. As soon as I put pressure on my left leg I fall back down as pain shoots through it. Lyra caught me and gently set me down. I winced as I propped myself against the wall, leaving my leg stretched out. "Fuck, I think my leg's broken!"

"Guys, we need to get to the pelicans stat!" A very panicked voice pleaded before more roars came from outside.

"Lyra, drag me with your magic." I ordered and she nodded, her horn glowing along with the back of my armor. "Alright, let's go.. ah, my chest hurts. Lyra what did you do to me?" I asked as she begins to drag me across the floor. As she does I can see Twilight firing her weapon at something, but I can't see what.

"Adrinalin shot." she stated while continuing to drag me.

This made me worried a little. "What happened to Cloudchaser? I thought she had the medical training." I ask grabbing an assault rifle of a dead marine as I pass him.

"She died." Lyra said, her voice lacking emotion.

"Wait, what do you mean by did?" I ask almost causally.

Lyra didn't reply at first but eventually she did. "She's... dead. The explosion killed her the rest are fine."

I curse under my breath upon hearing this. I almost forget that we're in the middle of a fire fight if it weren't for the explosions in the background. "How far ar we from the pelican?" I ask half-heartedly.

"Shouldn't be too far, everyone but me and Twilight are there waiting."

"Good." I check the ammo counter on the assault rifle. With half a mag and no extra clips I'll have to make my shots count. I still have my magnum in the holster and a grenade or two. A bright flash appears in front of me, blinding me for a moment. Once I'm able to see again Twilight is there with a panic expression.

"We got to go, those things... they broke through. They weren't human, o-or or Covenant or pony... I-I oh crap I think I'm going to be sick!" she tried to explain before running behind a pillar and heaving quite loudly. Lyra had paused, waiting for Twilight to finish. After a short while Twilight comes back still looking a bit green.

"Twi," i say extremely worried now. I've never seen her this panicked before. "Are you alright?"

Twilight shook her head, turning to look behind her for something. "I thought they were harmless, just little ballon things! But then they latched onto some of the marines and, their screams... of Faust their screams. And then they started to attack the others so I teleported away!"

"Twi, you're not making any sense."

"Their bodies were mangled and torn.... I can't handle this anymore! How the hell do you cope with this!? I just watched Thunderlane get turned into one of those things! How do I deal with that?" She yells at me, her eyes swimming in tears.

I'm not sure what to say at this point, just looking at her confused, worried and scared all at once. A roar reverberates through the hallway causing Twilight to whip around in full panic mode. "They're coming, run!" she yells before turning tail, going past Lyra and I before we can react.

"Lyra, go! I'll cover us!" I bark at her. She nodds before going after Twilight, dragging me along.

We exit out of the castle area and into Canterlot, ponies and humans all slowly moving back towards the pelicans. The skies a filled with the purple behemoths, lurking over the battle and deploying troops elsewhere in Canterlot. What caught my eye though is what Twilight was talking about. The things I've only seen footage of and were thought to be long gone but here they are.

Large masses of the sickening green colored things run across the ground, tenticle like things coming from the front. They jumped onto marines and ponies, turning their bodies into what is known as the combat form. I'm frozen, watching people being over taken so easily then turning on their own, crying out in a raw rage as they lashed at them. I can see a few of the infection forms clamoring over to me, trying to keep up with Lyra's pace.

I aim my assault rifle at a large group of the infection forms and fire a short burst, causing most of them to pop. To replace them combat forms. I dump the rest of the clip into one of them but it seem to shrug off each round. The wall of infected limp towards us, slowly catching up.

"Lyra, run faster!" I yell pulling out my magnum and firing randomly into the crowd. "Or teleporting us would also be nice!"

"We're almost there!"

One of the infected jumps in the air and lands extremely close to me, wildly flailing its arm trying to hit me. I dump the whole magazine into the thing, killing it, them it getting up another two seconds later. Panic set in as I try to change mags but fumble with it and end up dropping the magazine. I curse under my breath as I reach for my last one and quickly load it in before aiming up only to find a combat form right in my face.

It roars at me and goes to swing. The things arm explodes and it tumbles backwards. More come up to replace it only to be torn apart by the machine gun fire behind me and am dragged up a ramp and into a pelican. The tingling feeling around my body goes away and turn to see my whole squad here.

I take a look at each of their faces. Lyra looks relieved, and Bon-Bon mortified. Twilight looks like she's on the edge of going into shock and Flitter looks down right depressed. Her eyes look down at the floor, not paying any attention to anything. I'm divided between checking on Twi or Flitter. Lyra and Bon-Bon can take care of each other so the leaves me with these two. I decide to pull myself over to Twilight first.

"Hey, how you feeling?" I ask, getting close to the lavender mare.

She looks at me but doesn't say anything at first. "I... okay... I guess." she says almost inaudibly. "How... how do you cope with this? It's been three days! Three days of combat and I feel like I'm going to lose it. If anything I'm going to die just from stress alone at this rate."

How did I cope with it? I can't even answer that question. "I'm not sure. I guess you get use to it over time."

"Get use to it? How do you get use to that? Killing things every single day and watching your friends die in front of you! How the hell do you get use to that?" Twilight yells at me, attracting the attention of everyone in the pelican. "You don't just get use to what I just saw!"

"Twi, please calm down."

"No! I'm not going to, because do you want to know why? It's because you humans just do whatever the hell you want to us and get away with it! Look at what happened to Sweetie Bell! Do you not care about that, or are you like every other fucking human? Do you even care about me anymore?" I hesitate to answer her trying swallow the lump that's in my throat. "No? Well fuck you!" she yells while jabbing me with a hoof. She then turns to the rest of the marines who had just gotten on the pelican. "And fuck all of you too!" she then sits back down away from me, throwing her helmet against the door of the cockpit.

The engines roar to life a few seconds later and the pelican lurches up. Outside the battle is still going on while we take off, but I don't pay much attention to that. Instead I watch Twilight fall apart in her own little world. After a moment I look over to Flitter who hasn't moved much. Her eyes are still focused on the floor. I again drag myself across the floor, this time over to flitter.

"Hey." I say just loud enough for her to hear. She looks over at me for a moment before returning to the floor. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." she snaps at me.

"You don't seem it."

"Shouldn't you be checking up on your marefriend? Or did you fuck up again?" I let out a sigh but don't reply. Flitter lets out a sigh of her own. "I'm sorry... it's just, it's hard."

I shake my head slightly. "Yeah, I know."

"She brought up a good point though." Flitter says without looking at me. "How do you get use to... this?"

I sit here and think about the question for a second. "I guess you really don't. It just happens so much you don't really pay much attention to it." I say while adjusting myself into a more comfortable position. "You just keep on fighting for what matters."

Our conversation ends when the sound of a distant explosion goes off causing everyone in the pelican to look out side. The mountain that held Canterlot is now a bright orange with a mushroom cloud forming at the top. The cloud continued to rise higher into the air while the mountain burns at the base.

"Can you fucking believe this?" one of the marines says, gesturing towards the plume in the distance.

"What was that?" Flitter asks from beside me.

I shake my head with slight disappointment. "They set off a nuke. Let's just hope it killed everything on that mountain."

"But... why?"

"Because it was necessary. Renona probably saw the flood coming and that's why she called for the EOD teams." I say resting my head against one of the seats, closing my eyes. "You should probably get some rest before we land where ever we're going."
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Author's Note

Sense I'm no longer interested in writing this, I figured I'd post the last written chapter to this story and sadly I'm glad to say I'm done writing this one. As much 'fun' as it has been to write this, I feel an alternate story coming to mind that doesn't involve halo. For once. Anyway, I guess try to enjoy the last chapter I'll be writing for a while.