For centuries now, mankind has always wondered if life could exist on other planets; or other unknown places in the vast universe that is possibly still growing wider at a very slow pace. So far, nothing has been proved.

Humanity constantly believed that life could be found on our sister planet of Mars because of the ice cap that rests on top of it. That had to mean that there was once sources of water on the planet, and possibly living organisms that lived centuries ago. But no one can still be sure.

Throughout the years, the planet Earth has always been our main source of life and existence. But by the twenty-second century, it was deemed as overpopulated.

By good fortune through from the support of the human military, the United Nations Space Command, humanity was able to travel through the unknown regions of space to locate new worlds to expand on.

Humanity was successful in discovering such worlds, and then colonization was put into progress. It was from then on that mankind could live in prosperity with each other, and with any other beings that may exist.

Things did not stay that way for long.

In the late twenty-fifth century, humanity fell into war with rebels that were known as Insurrectionists. Soon afterward, a new enemy appeared that not only threatened the UNSC, but our very existence in the universe.

On the date of February 3, 2525, we discovered that there is extraterrestrial life living in our universe; but they were anything but friendly like we hoped.

The beings that we first encountered were the reptilian Kig-Yar.

They were vicious and bloodthirsty scaly monsters that had great eyesight and dexterity. Their personalities could be described as greedy which could done them as space pirates or bandits.

These creatures were soon discovered to be part of a religious and genocidal diverse alien collective calling itself the Covenant.

For many years we have been fighting a losing war against this relentless and merciless alien empire. They have killed billions and glassed our worlds throwing away everything that had meaning to us.

Fortunately, the UNSC had created a program that would develop a collection of super soldiers that were known as SPARTANS.

Despite being inducted at the age of six, most of these children were trained to be killing machines to be used against Innie forces, but proved to be very useful against the Covenant as well.

The sad part is that most of the children died in the augmentation process, and that most of the surviving SPARTANS were listed as MIA while they performed their duties; when in reality, their status was KIA.

One of the SPARTAN-II’s that was thought to be dead was Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, along with his AI companion CTN 0452-9, or Cortana for short.

The last known whereabouts of John and Cortana was on the date of December 11, 2552. They activated Halo Installation Zero-Four B which had been listed as destroyed because it fired when it wasn’t even complete yet. The premature firing also badly damaged or destroyed the Halo production facility, Installation Zero-Zero which is better known as The Ark. The reason for this desperate act was to put a final end to a virulent parasite known as the Flood.

When Thel ‘Vadam who was the former Covenant Arbiter and commander of the fleet, Particular Justice was the only one who arrived back on Earth with only the bow half of UNSC Charon-class light frigate Forward Unto Dawn remaining, the UNSC and the rest of mankind knew that they have lost one of their greatest heroes.

On March 3rd, 2553, a memorial service was held in the African savannah to remember those who had fallen to protect the existence of humanity. John was listed as one of the fallen of course.

To close the ceremony, Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood gave the following speech.

For us, the storm has passed. The war is over.

But let us never forget those who journeyed into the howling dark, and did not return.

But their decision required courage beyond measure...sacrifice, and unshakable conviction that their fight, our fight, was elsewhere.

As we start to rebuild, this site will remain barren, a memorial to heroes fallen.

They ennobled all of us, and they should not be forgotten.

It wasn’t until four years later that John and Cortana were discovered stranded on the Forerunner shield world of Requiem by the UNSC’s newest vessel, the Infinity.

Before crash landing on Requiem, John and Cortana were surprised and a bit confused when a new kind of Covenant is present on the wreckage of the backside of the Dawn.

It isn’t until a year later that we found out that this Covenant Remnant was led by a Sangheili cultist leader by the name of Jul ‘Mdama.

Unlike the original Covenant, Jul doesn’t intend to fire the Halo rings in order to begin the Great Journey like the false San 'Shyuum prophets intended. Instead, he seems more interested in collecting Forerunner artifacts and pieces of technology that will make his fleet an unstoppable force to the UNSC.

He has managed to obtain one Forerunner artifact known as the Janus Key from the help of Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey who is the founder of the SPARTAN-II project, and the creator of Cortana.

Dr. Halsey seems to have currently sided with Jul and his army after she realized the UNSC deliberately tried to execute her for her crimes.

The good news is that Jul doesn’t have the full key, he only possesses half of it. The other half is onboard the Infinity currently being studied.

The UNSC are now on a manhunt to locate Jul and Halsey, and take them both down.

One of the vessels joining in on the search is the UNSC corvette, Pony Express.

Not only is it on the search for Halsey and Jul, it’s also testing out a new piece of slipspace technology that will be used on DG79-HTC/MA class Pelicans so they can jump into slipspace freely without the need for being shielded by other ships that have shields that can tolerate slipspace travel.

Onboard this UNSC vessel is Spartan Aaron Jensen (00834-31292-AJ). He’s a SPARTAN-IV hailing from the outskirts of the city, New Cedar Rapids on the planet Earth. The homeworld of all humanity.

He was born to a family of corn farmers in the year of 2535 which was during the time of the UNSC-Innie war. The Covenant thankfully didn’t find Earth at this time.

Aaron wanted to serve as a marine in the UNSC to help fight the Innies when he turned eighteen, but his family forbade it because they needed him to carry on the family ways of running the farm. If he perished in battle, he wouldn’t be able to fulfill that wish.

Influenced by rebellion, he ran away from his farm one night to vent off his frustrations and to find anyway to escape the town.

Exhausted from hitting multiple dead ends and having a low supply of food, he reluctantly brought himself back to the farm.

Tragically when he arrived, he disturbingly discovered that his farm was attacked and destroyed by Innie forces. He soon found the mutilated bodies of his parents and his little brother and sister.

While he was grieving over his loss, he was soon ambushed by an Innie straggler wielding a M90-CAWS in his hands.

Now fueled by adrenaline, fear, and rage; Aaron swiftly side-stepped the trooper and tripped him. Then he grabbed a nearby chair and slammed it hard on the troopers’ head and neck stunning him and forcing the shotgun out of his hands. It’s then that Aaron seized the weapon for himself.

Before the trooper could recover from the blow of the chair, Aaron mindlessly aimed the shotgun at the troopers head and pulled the trigger which caused an explosion of blood, brain, and skull to splatter in most directions.

Aaron stared down at the headless corpse of his attacker in shock. He just couldn’t believe he actually killed a living person. Of course he knew the person was hostile, but the feeling of murdering another human being takes its hold.

Aaron dropped the shotgun from his shaky hands, then he collapsed on his knees and sobbed the rest of the night.

It wasn’t until the next morning that UNSC soldiers found him still in his parents home and hunching near the body of the Innie trooper.

They first thought that Aaron killed his family members since their bodies were present in the same room, but the body of the Innie conflicted that theory.

After being questioned and proved innocent while on trial, the UNSC took Aaron in and trained him to be the soldier he wanted to be.

In 2555, he officially began service as a marine until 2557 when he volunteered for the SPARTAN-IV project.

Unlike the SPARTAN-II’s, the SPARTAN-IV’s mostly consisted of consenting adults instead of children, and SPARTAN-III veterans if they were up for the position.

Also, the augmentation procedures were safer, quicker, and more efficient compared to S-II’s. The training still had its brutal and tough nature through, but volunteers were already in good shape to handle most of the trials thanks to their experience in combat with Innies and Covenant.

In the year of 2558, Aaron became a member of Fireteam Mustang onboard the UNSC: Infinity as their close combat specialist. His primary weapon system consisted of the M45D-TS, and the M6H-PDWS which was a common backup pistol for all UNSC personnel. His secondary specialty was as an operator and mechanic for vehicles.

To repair, or if he was to hijack any available Covenant vehicles, he was inserted with neural implants to gain the knowledge of how to perform such tasks.

On the date of January 15, 2558, his team won a war game simulation of Capture the Flag against Fireteam Grassland.

This victory earned his team the right to perform the tougher missions during the Second Battle of Reqiem.

After the Forerunner planet was destroyed by colliding with its own sun, Fireteam Mustang is currently standing down, except Aaron.

This is where his involvement on the Pony Express begins, along with the new slipspace technology for the Pelicans.

He’s not onboard to be a crewmember of the vessel; he’s there to be the test subject for this risky experiment.

He’s fully aware that he is putting his life on a very thin line, but that’s how courageous he is. He knows he may see his family again if he doesn’t make it.

Tragedy and war may have made him tough, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still soft and caring at heart.

He loved his family so much, along with the animals that he tended to on the farm. Sometimes when he felt lonely and needed someone to talk too, he did it with the animals despite their ability to talkback. This never bothered him a bit.

It’s quite a funny thing to think about what would happen if animals could talk, but frankly we all know that it is not possible. Or is it?

***

In an unknown and undiscovered part of the universe millions of lightyears away from all known areas of humans and aliens alike, is a single and lonely earth-like planet that is deemed as Equis.

We did not give it that name of course, it was given by the inhabitants of this world. What are the inhabitants you ask? The answer will shock you, or you may not believe it at all.

Equis is home to the monsters and creatures that we’ve heard about only in fairy tales and mythology.

Crazy as it seems, it’s very true. Humanity just hasn’t bothered or haven’t yet developed the technology to travel to such places or dimensions.

Equis is a beautiful and harmonized planet mostly inhabited by intelligent and technologically advanced pony-like creatures that have learned to get along with one another. It is also where the continent of Equestria stands, and where Princess Celestia, goddess of the sun and her younger sister, Princess Luna who is goddess of the moon rule their kingdom in perfect harmony.

There was once a strong rebellious evil that overcame Luna transforming her into the dreaded Nightmare Moon.

Seeing that her younger sister would not stand down, Celestia had no choice but to use the Elements of Harmony against her to banish her to a thousand years in the moon.

Nightmare Moon was finally freed like the prophecy foretold and brought back eternal night to modern day Ponyville.

By good fortune through, a unicorn by the name of Twilight Sparkle formed a friendship with five special mares and used the power of friendship to once again defeat Nightmare Moon. But instead of banishing her again, they brought back the real Luna who decided to accept Celestia's friendship and once again rule peacefully with her older sister again.

With all the adventures Twilight has had with her friends and discovering the deep meanings of friendship, Twilight has became an alicorn princess like her mentor Celestia, and her old foal-sitter Princess Cadence.

So far things are looking up for Twilight, her friends, and all of Equestria. But when a human like Aaron accidently stumbles upon this mysterious kingdom, will things become better; or will everything crumble around them?

This will be one of the most toughest and brutal challenges that Twilight and the others will have to face.