Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or My Little Pony. They belong to Microsoft/343 Industries and Hasbro respectfully but all original content is mine.

A/N: And once more into the breach, the real 'honest to god' one this time. This here is the rewrite of the prologue and the beginnings of the restart of this story. Further explanation at the bottom.

Prologue: Nothing But Ocean


It was a frigid cold moonless night but the stars were out, lighting up the sky like guiding torches to show the way home, like the Princess of the Night had intended herself to do so.

The wooden deck thrummed underneath his hooves, purring happily as the two propellers astern, fed by twin reciprocating steam and magical tome engines built by Equestria's finest lead shipbuilding company Star and Chaser, drove the odd thirty tonne, seven hundred and ninety meter long, twin funnel, crystal white and steel grey painted passenger liner through the tranquil surface of the ocean.

He didn't need a watch to remind him the time. By his honed years of experience at sea, by his reckoning it was almost an hour till midnight, his shifts around the foredeck for the night-shift coming to a close.

The pine brown earth stallion, a crewmember serving aboard the leading and last remaining of the Equestrian Navy and Merchant Shipping New Harmony class of liners, walked easy across the wooden deck as delighted voices of:

"Wonderful night, isn't it dear?"

"A great evening, it is."

Came from a few passengers who have taken upon themselves to brave the cold night air and view the peaceful calm.

With hoof under chin as he rested easy on the railing near the bow, the crew pony on night-watch observed as the glass smooth surface of the sea below parted aside by the angled prow, and he began to ponder in excitement as to how so many things have changed for the better for everypony in Equestria, ever since they steamed out of the Gryphon Empire's protective waters three days ago.

While he continued his train of thought about what things the Royal Ambassadorial Party aboard would bring about with the new treaty reached between both kinds, he pushed away from the railing and gazed up at the common show of an aurora borealis.

A combined spectacular display of colours, dancing with the stars in the night sky above, the vibrant dazzling hues of purple and the rose red of this show tonight dominating over the neon greens, blues and pinks of the previous nights.

Another great treat to his end shift on another graceful night provided by hers truly.

The pony exhaled the deep refreshing breath he had taken in earlier with a content sigh.

That's when everything that was so perfect to be true took a turn for the worst, as the ship decided to take an abrupt detour to starboard and down a massive rolling face of a wave, like it was plunging headfirst into the bowels of Tartarus itself.

The ship was erratic, jarring nonstop like a thing possessed, as if it ploughed straight into pack ice and kept going.

Buckets, silverware, anything else inside or out with some kind of magnetic property, shot forward for the bow of the ship. A pony waitress in the first class galley was almost pegged to the opposite wall when a flurry of forks and spoons raced at her from opening cutlery drawers behind her.

The abrupt dive sent the startled earth pony sprawling onto his back, as well as waking everpony on board from their slumber, casting the off duty crew out from their reasonably comfy bunk beds.

His eyes were wide, pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks, and mouth open in horrified shock as he stared up at what had become of the breath-taking sky above. The earth stallion remained on his back as other ponies belonging to the crew or the passengers that had stayed up this late, scrambled in a feverish yet organised frenzy to get back to wherever was safe.

A pony stopped to haul the shell-shocked earth up to his hooves, and proceeded next to give him a hard slap across his face.

The slap was never to be as the two were suddenly collected and swept across the deck when the ship reached the bottom of the rogue wave they had rode down on that then spilled over the prow and gunwales like it didn't exist.

The churning white water blasted across the open deck like a dam had burst open; catching both crew and some passengers alike right into its tossing embrace, hurling them unforgivingly into the metal walls but not overboard.

As the lightning continued to crash overhead with the diaphragm-rumbling roll of thunder, the flashes illuminated a new danger that loomed ahead in the night, much to the dark blue unicorn with a white beard standing on the port bridge wing horrified shock.

The captain of the ENMS New Harmony mouth fell open, eyes wide the size of dinner plates when a section of the sea – about three miles out – began draining away. Two unbroken walls of geysers of spray blasting high into the air, as the ocean itself between them then began to part aside, revealing nothing but a sheer drop into inky blackness.

"Captain! The maelstrom, it's sucking us in!" A holler from his first officer roused the captain from his petrified place on the bridge.

That looked nothing like any whirlpool he'd ever seen but there was no time to argue as he bellowed to the stallion at the helm, racing with horn aglow for the engine order telegraphs with his counterpart, "HARD TO PORT!"

"Aye, sir! Hard to port!"

As the wheel was turned for the ordered direction, in simultaneous ringing dings, both telegraphs were changed from: Full Ahead to Full Astern.

A junior officer near the helm watched through the rain pelted bridge windows, his body trembling in dread like every other pony as the liner continued to plough through the raging sea straight for it, urging faintly through gritted teeth, "Come on… turn… turn…"

The gap in the ocean ahead continued to spread wider and wider, coming closer and closer while the storm above growing in intensity, the pelting rain now coming down in sheets.

"Is it hard over?!" the first officer yelled in extreme agitation, gravely awaiting an answer as sweat and rain raced down his face.

"It is, yes, sir, hard over!"

Still dead ahead, the gap in the sea had spread so wide that, when another series of lighting bolts speared into it, by Celestia's mane, the captain could've sworn he had seen a six silhouetted outlined shapes of a pod of Blue Whales and their calves on the opposite side of the ever-expanding, held back wall of water.

Then, with a slight tilting to the deck, and much to the grateful relief of all the crew and captain, the ship began to veer away.

Resounding cheers of pure elation was overcome by the applause of hooves that went up from everpony on board as the ship continued on its danger dodging turn.

The ship had spared from the disaster.

They had been saved.

Saved . . .

Saved that is until everything else took another terrible turn, this time for the total loss and unfortunate turn of events in the entirety of Equestria's recorded maritime history.

As the ship turned starboard side on with the ocean anomaly, it allowed the gusting winds astern that had come in with the storm, to blow a full gale against the other side of the hull, giving an unwarranted helping hoof at pushing the ship back to it, much to the shear heart wrenching horror of everypony on the bridge and those who were still above decks.

With the portside now acting like a gigantic metal sail and under the ever sucking pull of the ocean draining underneath, the stern end of the passenger liner slewed about, its rear now pointing arse first to the ocean anomaly until it slithered out over the edge. The propellers that were still churning vigorously in reverse were now beating uselessly at empty air.

In desperation to prevent the ship from going any further, the two anchors at the bow were released, their chains rumbling out in a clattering clamour as the ship eased even further out over the precipice, taking on a ever so slightly incline tilt to its decks.

More lightning from the menacing wreathed sky struck out again overhead. One bolt hit the forward funnel of the liner with another striking the same place a scant second later. The unfathomable surges of power delivered from the lightning strikes caused the protective magical lightning rod of the stack to overload.

As the anchors that had splashed overboard into the roaring ocean below, they firmly snagged something on the sea bottom and brought the liner to a jarring stop, just when a third strike hit the same place on the forward funnel.

The overtaxed rod couldn't take it and detonated.

In a bright, almost blinding flash, a wave of hazy purplish blue casted out an electromagnetic pulse that travelled up and down throughout the entirety of the ship.

The pulse from the blast knocked out everything electrical or that used power.

The lighting, the radios, the two crew ponies still actively using the radiotelegraph in haste to put out distress calls for help, and not to mention that it played havoc with every unicorn and sole alicorn aboard abilities to perform life saving spells of any fashion.

All this occurring chaos however paled in comparison on what was to follow next. As the captains' grim attention was focused from what was happening to his sure to be doomed ship to the screams of terrified pony passengers resonating from every part of the liner, a sort of deep, reverberating, droning of a rumble like thunder above started to increase in volume after each passing second.

Looking up from the wing bridge of his stricken vessel, he could suddenly bear witness to see a massive bulbous blunt yet elegantly curved shape in the sky bearing down on them through the storm clouds above. In fact, whatever this thing that was coming for them, it looked as if it wanted to head directly for the wide-open inky blackness of a trench they were balancing over.

"Sweet mother of Celestia…" the captain breathed his last before he was flung backwards with force, flinging him overboard with two other officers as the immense celestial object clipped the ocean faring ship.

It wasn't much of a groan and splinter, as it was more along the lines of the End of the World metal tearing CRUNCH when the tip of one of the four fins protruding from the underside of the immense purple prow made contact with the exposed overhanging stern, just behind the second funnel, cutting straight through like a hot knife through butter.

The impact not only served to sever most of the entire rear half off, it also served to pull the rest of the ship, snapping the two lifeline anchor chains from the bow like wet twine, plummeting into the dark embrace of the void.

By the time the ENMS Zephyr arrived an hour later at the given latitude and longitude coordinates according to the received SOS distress call from the stricken liner ENMS New Harmony, there was nothing left but the clearing of the reported storm.

No maelstrom looking whirlpool.

No immense void in the ocean.

No bottomless abyss.

No ship.

No wreckage.

No lifeboats.

Not one sign of the recorded one thousand, four hundred and eighty three passenger souls on board that it took on after it departed on its fiftieth transatlantic voyage from the Gryphon Empire back to Equestria.

Although it would be many hours until the news of this tragedy would reach the two princess sisters in Canterlot, the tragic news of the ship's lost at sea status and who was on it when it vanished, would send heavy grief stricken shockwaves throughout the both of them, an empire, the rest of pony kind in Equestria and to one very one-off town by the name of…

Ponyville.


A/N: I'm dearly sorry to say/type/report that this story is being rewritten/overhauled and certain events may not have occurred/chapters cut/characters cut/moved around or have been rewritten in a different order.

'Why?! Why are you doing this!? WHY NOW!' all of you start yelling into my ear to ask?

*Sigh* Well there are many reasons. And I've thought hard and weighted my options on it for a while, and the outcome far outweighs the negatives in my eyes on this one and have already started.

Many of which that are tightly linked behind other reasons that would take so long to explain for this but mostly it's because now that I have had the chance to… "broaden" "clean up" my knowledge and ideas as well as existing knowledge on the multi-links of both the MLP: FiM and Halo universes, emotional ties between characters, and magic = supreme technology that go hand and hoof with each other.

The story wasn't heading in the correct direction and it was taking too long to get there.

I'm saying/typing this because I don't want to be content to continue to be the full-blown, naïve, sadistic, and heartless one-sided brain bitch bloody bastard (There. I said it and I deserve it! Seriously.) I was back then when I first conceived to write this.

That being said, the prologue to the revamped/rewritten version that will be also available on the fimfiction site that I have an account on. Ethereal Shadow, just remove the 'Dark' from the front of my pen name here.

- 'Dark' Ethereal Shadow.

P.S. I suggest removing/deleting your reviews for the chapters since they won't make sense.