The sky was lonely. The airstream flipped and snapped around every contour of their armor. The smell of stale ash swam all around them. It was still noticeable in Sable’s respirator, which caused his mouth to gum up. He wanted to take another sip from his water supply, but it was hard to justify it in such an irradiated wasteland — water was way too precious.
He looked to his friend and companion, Mercury. A pegasi just like him, and sporting the same insectoid power armor. It was sleek and menacing, covered in matte-colored plates, and armored every single appendage from snout to fetlock. If Sable’s Eyes Forward Sparkle didn’t outline him green in his Friend-or-Foe indicator, he wouldn’t have recognized that another pony was breathing under the carapace.
“Merc,” Sable called out on the radio. “How you holding up, buddy?” His eyes briefly glanced at the twisted crupper on his right flank, which melted a day ago to the savage beam of an energy rifle.
“You asking me that now?” Mercury’s chuckle cracked on the transmission. “I’m doin’ great. How about you?”
Sable bobbed his head from side to side, thinking. “I’m good. A little parched, maybe.” He looked ahead of him, to a lonely collection of mountains separated from the long stretch of the Appaloosan range far behind them. Below, a long line of patchy asphalt spanned from one end of the earth to the mountain, covered in the dilapidated wrecks of hundreds — no, thousands of pony vehicles of all kinds.
“Also a little nervous,” Sable admitted.
“Not a lot of fliers around here, so I wouldn’t worry too much,” Mercury assured. “But still keep an eye out for grounders. Not like those Appaloosan hicks crawling on the mountains, but, you know.”
Sable puffed out his cheeks remembering. It was only a two day flight through the mountains, but it was as much of a nightmare as it could possibly get. Shooters from every outcrop and holler, not to mention the overwhelming presence of those Ministry Rangers.
“Yeah. Who would’ve known that the surface was so lively?”
Mercury chuckled again. “Well, you know what they say about cockroaches.” Sable joined him in the laugh.
Sable moved his gaze to a corner of his vision, triggering the rest of the neon purple Heads Up Display to flicker back to life. He looked through a drop-down menu and pulled up a detailed map of Equestria. It focused on his position and approximate distance to his destination.
“Give us another fifteen minutes and we’ll be at the mountain.” Sable shut his right eye and moved the map with his left eye’s movements, dragging the map to his destination, boldly labelled CANTERLOT.
He’d heard of the city countless times as a foal, mostly from his grandmare. They were a many, many times descendant from a family of confectioners, and she would always remind him of it. But on top of these stories, she would always mention the secret to their success: A widely popular and well-guarded recipe for salt water taffy.
Ah, baby, it would amaze and inspire ponies from Manehattan all the way to Los Pegasus, Sable remembered her saying. It glowed with the fires of the sun and changed colors every time you took a bite. When you visited Canterlot, you’d always get ponies telling you that Taffy Twisters was the cream of the candy crop.
Sable would’ve come to Canterlot after the Grand Pegasus Enclave reclaimed the surface — it was inevitable, really — but Sable had a friend in high places. This friend served aboard the Thunderhead cloudship Overcast with him and played poker on Saturday nights. This friend also had a terrible case of loose lips around friends, and let slip a detail of the upcoming Operation: Cauterize.
The tactic was genius, in retrospect, Sable thought. The Enclave needed to establish itself as the power of the wasteland, and why not demonstrate it by blasting away the crown jewel of the pre-war government? This was a few weeks ago, and the plan hatched to sneak out, fly to Canterlot, gnab the recipe and become the next great post-war confectioner.
But after the disaster at Maripony, it accelerated plans — And that was two days ago.
The two pegasi approached the apex of the closest mountain, flying through a light snow flurry. As they crested the top, they saw gently rolling clouds of pink swimming around the capital. It was a strange juxtaposition, seeing something so cheery and benign as the cause for the fall of Canterlot.
They found an outcrop and landed, taking some time to rest. Sable breathed heavily behind his helmet. Though the servos helped him keep his stamina up by taking most of the stress, it was still flying.
He looked to Mercury with a nod. You good? He mentally asked. Mercury returned one of his own, as if to say, Yeah, I’m good.
“Equipment check,” Mercury said with machine cadence. Sable scrolled through his inventory management screen, checking off key supplies. That was just what to expect when chucking stuff into your suit, but you had to manually inspect it just in case it was wrong. This was advanced tech, but it was still old. Stuff was bound to be misplaced and unseen by the sorting spell.
Sable squeezed out of his suit after the exoskeleton hissed open, defaulting to a sitting position. The weapons on his battle saddle folded up at parade rest, and the wings splayed open to let his natural charcoal ones out. He was dressed in an interface body glove, studded with contact points and wires for intricate, split-second reaction from the suit. Jutting from under his chin were the controls for his battle saddle, bifurcated to slip between the molars on both sides of his jaw.
He pushed back the hood around his head and revealed his disheveled violet mane. He sighed, happy to feel the open air again, even if it smelled rank. Mercury slipped out of his armor as well.
Sable approached his suit’s bulky black crupper — ass plates as his fellow mechanics would say — and dug inside. He listed off what was in his suit: Spare energy gems, two health poultices, three rolls of bandages, bedroll, survival supplies, maintenance kit, four days rations, two water bladders… Everything was there. He also checked his on-board health monitor, checking for leaks in the injectors or the poultice vials. Good to go.
“How ‘bout you, Merc?” He called out.
Mercury flipped his ears back. “Uh, I think I’m missing a poultice.”
A bolt of lighting surged through Sable’s spine as he rushed to Mercury’s suit. “Oh, crap. We can’t share three across —”
“No, no! Wait! It’s okay!” Sable skid to a halt. Mercury dug a hoof into his bedroll, and revealed another crystalline bottle, swirling its red liquid. “I thought it was a bit heavy.”
Sable wheezed a sigh of relief and laughed. “Celestia’s ghost, don’t spook me like that!”
Mercury grinned, but his features looked grim. “You think that’s spooky, you should take look down there.” He pointed a copper hoof towards the city.
Sable followed it and brushed a hoof through his mane, gawking. His gaze slowly panned across the hazy, sickly pink metropolis below. It glowed gently under the columns of light that pierced through the cloud cover. The billowing gas rumbled from the streets with the idle brush of the breeze, carrying with it a mixture of an unholy, sickly-sweet scent of flesh rot and industrial ozone. Gold spires twinkled faintly like the final breaths of a beast, reflecting off of a solitary white obelisk that stood defiant against the decay.
“I can’t believe we’re going in there,” he remarked. Inwardly, he said: I can’t believe we made it this far. He shivered, partly due to the snow, partly due to the death.
Sable’s ears twitched at the delicate clink of a lighter’s flint, following with his muzzle scrunching at the lazy apple-tobacco smoke passing by.
“We’re going in there,” Mercury affirmed, mouthing his words around a slightly wrinkled cigarette. “Shit, never thought it would be this bad.”
Sable nodded, the battle saddle controls bobbing against his cheeks. “It’s funny, you know — You read about it from school and at the academy, but, wow. Look at how… Stars, how dead it is.”
As he said that, he saw a distant highrise buckle, like somepony squeezed it from the roof and pushed down. It slid into the mist of the Pink Cloud with a distant thud, echoing to their perch a few moments after disappearing. Squalling birds flapped wildly away from the scene, escaping the plume of dirty dust the wreckage stirred.
Mercury grunted, scrunching his brow. “That’s another problem.” He pulled up a wing and nonchalantly grabbed the cigarette between feathers, tapping off the ash. “I’ve read about Manehattan’s unstable skyline, but this is another level — It’s like the cloud decayed the buildings.”
He chuckled. “I’d rather be here than be spotted by a bunch of those tin cans down on the Keneighwa river, though.”
Sable playfully punched his friend’s shoulder with a chuckle. “That was some quick flying, Merc — Guess grounders just don’t get agility like we do.”
“Hey dude, those Rangers weren’t ones to be fucked with! They must’ve been special forces Rangers or something, with all that red painted on them.”
Sable nodded. “That one with the anti-materiel rifle had your number.”
Mercury laughed. “Yeah, the bastard!”
They settled down on the river bank after their first hours away from the squadron, only to be jumped by giant Ministry Steel Rangers. If that sniper didn’t miss, they’d both be like the mole rat the rifle round turned into ground meat. If they could avoid that, they can avoid just about anything.
Mercury took another drag and exhaled slowly. “This is going to be a cake walk compared to them.”
“Oh, totally,” Sable agreed. “We have a map, we have power armor, and all we gotta face is just some old irradiated cloud.” He pointed to the swirling miasma. “I give us a pretty solid chance of getting that recipe. Get in, get out, back to the Oh, grab a pint, and” — he waved a hoof — “wait for all this to blow over.”
“Speaking of which.” Mercury popped the helmet off of his suit and slid it on. It was a little goofy seeing a giant bug head on a slender pegasus body, but the whole armored ensemble was a little more menacing.
His voice crackled through external speakers. “Forty-two hours and seventeen minutes in three. Two. One. Mark.” He slid the lip of the helmet over his brow. “Okay. We have about two days before Hurricane Squadron blasts this joint into oblivion.” He paused. “No going back now, Sab.”
Sable nodded, gulping. His wings twitched for a cigarette of his own, but he lost his chance. “I’m not going back empty hoofed. Let’s get ready.”
He slid back into his armor, clasping itself back together with a satisfying hiss, pressurizing the shell. The terrible smell followed him inside, and that ozone-death mix would not allow itself to be purged so easily. He mouthed the straw from his water supply and sipped enough to get the taste out of his mouth. It didn’t work.
“Okay,” he said, pulling up his map again. He flipped to a local view, which detailed a Canterlot map on an organized grid. “Let’s go over the game plan. You got your map up?”
“Give me a second, my HUD needs a reboot.” Mercury sighed. “You know, as much as I love that I have a chance to fly the thing I normally do maintenance on, dealing with its software is a pain in the ass.”
Sable chuckled. “Should’ve thought of that before we stole ‘em, then.”
“Yeah, well, as much as you would’ve preferred it, stealing a Raptor was more conspicuous than a couple of suits.” Mercury, like Sable, was a mechanic before leaving Overcast. Mercury specialized in power armor, channeling his love of salvaged pre-war model kits. Sable, on the other hoof, was more in tune with bigger vehicles, started from when he constantly played with his parents’ cloud tractor back in the day.
The plan originally was to take a Raptor, a sleek, cloudship personnel carrier, but it would’ve been much easier to find its cloudtrails compared to a couple of ponies hiding in the landscape.
“True,” Sable admitted. “I can fly myself much better than I can a machine, anyway.”
“Okay, I’m back up.” Sable saw his buddy smack his helmet a few times with an armored hoof, with a few sparks winking on contact. “Luna’s shadow, I swear to Celestia... Alright, Sab, let’s review.”
The plan was straightforward: Approach from the southeast and keeping under the Pink Cloud cover, following Sunshine Boulevard through Starlight Terrace, Gemcutter’s Quarter, pass through Ministry Walk, and finally to the University District, where Taffy Twisters stood.
Mercury nodded. “Easy in, easy out.” He wagged the jointed mechanical tail of the power armor in excitement. It moved as naturally as a regular ponytail would, only with the added benefit of a deadly, double-edged blade swinging at the end. It hadn’t been cleaned since Mercury used it last.
“Easy in, easy out,” Sable parroted, albeit with some reservation. His gut squeezed as he said it, and looked back down at the city. Who knows what’s down there, he thought, chewing on his water straw. Pink Cloud killed everypony, and that’s all I know. Real damn glad I’ve got this armor on.
“Holy crap, look at this,” Mercury chortled, ejecting Sable from his thoughts.
Sable’s ears perked. “What, what’s wrong?”
“Go back onto region view. There’s a place called Zebratown! That’s hilarious!” He was right. A little south of Canterlot blinked its settlement marker.
Sable scoffed. “Is this a post-war settlement? Who would let zekes sit around outside of Canterlot? That’s in poor taste!”
“I dunno, but maybe we can check it out after we’re done. Maybe put a little wipe in their stripe, you feel me?”
Sable shook his head. “That’s fucked up, Merc.”
“Consider it a little payback.” Mercury began to growl as he spoke. “I hear that Red Eye chump has a legion of zeke agents, and they planted the bomb behind the Maripony Massacre.” He stomped a hoof, shaking the stone. “I think it’s good to put down some eye-for-eye action.”
Sable’s face faltered, and he looked away from his friend momentarily. Maripony hit Mercury a lot harder than most ponies Sable knew personally — his marefriend Nephele was among the soldiers at the fight, blasted away from the sudden balefire explosion. Mercury wasn’t alone — Sable had his private feelings for her, too.
But, let’s just keep that to ourselves.
He approached Mercury and swung an armored arm around him. “Merc, now’s not the time to let your feelings get in the way,” he spoke softly. The tinted visor faded away to show his violet eyes, giving Mercury a comforting gaze. “Let’s get the recipe and then we’ll make the next move. I don’t think we should get in over our heads being surrounded by a load of zekes. We don’t have Stealthbucks, and they have cloaks. You know how these devils fight.”
Mercury’s sigh crackled in the radio. “I know.”
Translation: I just feel like a bum and I want to do something about it, Sable concluded. Don’t worry, buddy. If these buildings are as squishy as they look, you can break a few. I know I want to.
“When we get back to the Oh, we’ll help with the Operation. That’ll be our big contribution. We’ll do it for Neffie.” Sable pointed back to the city. “So, c’mon, pal — let’s get this and go home.”
Mercury nodded, and Sable could tell he was grinding his teeth. He always did when he wrestled with his feelings.
“You going to be alright?”
A prolonged silence followed. “Yeah,” Mercury finally dragged out. “I think so,”
Sable beckoned Mercury with his head and left wing. He startled himself briefly as the armored appendage passed his vision. It was still weird seeing sharpened edges acting as his wings. Damn good weapons, too, he mused. Cut through a melon like plasma through paper. Or, when he actually used it, on a Dash-high loony trying to crack concrete through his visor. He tensed his jaw as his lips folded over his teeth, trying to shake off the memory.
Mercury approached the edge with his wings outstretched, ready to take off. Sable joined him, and heard the servos and gears of his armor softly whine as his bladed wings extended. Together, they crouched, and the hydraulics squeezed together. He could feel energy — whether it was truly happening or not — grow on his augmented legs, charging like a unicorn spell. Then without a word, they both pushed up with shattering force, the energy releasing with a sound of a clapping thunderstorm.
They easily launched a hundred feet with no effort, and the world grew a little smaller. Sable looked below him, seeing a wave of dirt and snow trailing up and out. The stone rumbled, causing some of the cliff face to shatter onto the relatively flat stone floor of the outcrop.
“Gets me every time,” he remarked, his tail whipping. “I feel like a friggin’ titan!” He heard Mercury weakly chuckle.
Sable’s HUD’s altimeter cranked into gear as they rose, spooling up from the 2275.42 meter mark they were already at. Mercury was right there with him, staring at the ground below. As their height gain began to plateau, they jutted their wings out with a dangerously musical shing, and they glided towards their destination.
In another time and place, the world they flew over would’ve been the subject of artistic masters, once lush, green and teeming with life. Sweeping down the mountain, instead there were wide swaths of dead grass and shrub littering the slopes, now obstacles of the ghoulish, mutated goat monstrosities that stared at the pegasi as they drifted down. The branches of ancient Hippos firs gently swayed in the wind, as if they were reaching out into the world hoping to catch their long dead foliage.
Far below them was the beaten skeleton of a broken highway, toppling against gravity and time. It was a latticework of metal and asphalt hanging off the cliffside, following what might’ve been an ancient mountain road, expanded to fit six lanes of highway. It shared space with the equally impressive decrepit rail line separating the in and outbound lanes in two. Its walls were once bleach white, studded with painted gold suns and blooming dark blue stars.
Now, it lies dead, Sable grimaced. He shook his head, trying to focus on the trip down.
“You’re a little quiet back there, Sab,” Mercury piped in.
“Just, uh…” Sable hesitated. “Just appreciating the scenery, I guess.”
“I get that. It’s a real mess down here. How anypony survived this shithole is beyond me.”
“Makes you appreciate the exodus after the lance shattered,” Sable agreed. Shattered Lance was the Equestrian military’s word for a live balefire deployment. But post-war, it became a phrase describing the Last Day. It had double meaning for pegasi, which molded into a term for the loss of Cloudsdayle, the old pegasus capital.
“Yeah, I gotta thank my many great grandparents for booking it when they did,” Mercury remarked.
They swung around and oriented themselves pointing northwest, approaching from the southeast, and followed the highway. More vehicles crowded the street, some piled up a story high. Creatures scattered at their presence, some glowing purple blurs darting between rusted hulks. Sable’s EFS labelled them a non-hostile yellow.
Mercury turned his head back to Sable. “I dunno about you, but after this I could stay for a real long time in the decontamination chambers.”
Sable laughed. “I get first dibs, right? This was my idea, after all.”
“I will fuckin’ fight you, Sable.” The humor was nice to have, but it was all just a ruse — a classic tool to calm the scared soldier. Sable was sure that Mercury was just as nervous as he was. His body was tense and his gut tied itself into knots unable to be untied. The lingering skeleton of Canterlot was nothing but a monumental graveyard, and he felt somewhere in the back of his mind that it was not a place they should tread upon.
“Okay,” Sable piped up. “I think that we — Gah! Wait, hold on.” His ears began to ring something fierce. It was more of an annoyance at first, but it began to grow harsher. He saw Mercury continuing onward, seemingly unaware to the problem.
“Merc! Stop!” As he yelled it, Mercury stopped in mid air to push a hoof to his head, and Sable’s helmet was filled with his screams.
“Luna’s shadow and all that’s — Gaaah!” He dove down towards the highway, making a nosedive.
“Merc!” Sable dove after him, tightening his wings together for an extra boost of speed. The ringing grew worse and worse, and so did Mercury’s screaming. The only thing he could do was switch his transceiver off just to have better concentration.
Mercury’s hooves and wings were latched onto his helmet as he fell, with his whole being struggling to pull it off. As Sable got close, he could hear his bloodcurdling cries from under it, desperate to be freed from the torture of this unholy wailing. With luck, Sable snatched his friend, only for the terrible screaming to return, causing his vision to slowly sink into a dull red. Mercury’s weight was tremendous, causing Sable’s exoskeleton to strain under the pressure, squealing madly at the stress.
“Get a hold of yourself, Merc!” He yelled out of his external speakers. “I got you!” As if on cue, Mercury fell silent.
The smell of copper filled Sable’s nostrils as he hauled Mercury away from the city, the noise slowly fading. With terrible strain, Sable laid him onto the roof of a bus, and forced the insectoid helmet from his head. Inside was a terrible flood of sanguine, gushing from every orifice on his face. Sable screamed in fright, bloody tears welling at the corner of his eyes.
“Merc! Merc!” He shook Mercury, hoping to whatever god there was that he’d be okay. Though he was bleeding, the flow had been stemmed, and he was breathing shallow. After a moment, he coughed, blood exploding from his mouth and nose. He pulled in a strained breath of life, bloodshot eyes wide and frightened.
“Oh Celestia! Oh stars!” Sable hugged his friend, tears streaming. “You’re alive!”
Mercury coughed again, splattering blood down the back of Sable’s armor. “Yeah, by the grace of I don’t know what the fuck.” He wheezed a weak laugh. “Glad these suits have built in healing units, or I’d be real fucked right now!”
Sable pulled back, wiping his eyes. “What just happened?!”
“Great question,” Mercury remarked, moving himself back onto his hooves. He spit more of his fluids out onto the roof. “But it sounded like it was coming from our helmets. Didn’t you see me trying to pull that thing off?” He looked at his, hesitant to approach it.
Sable went over to it and checked it out. Popping his off, he slid Mercury’s helmet on. The only thing different between Mercury’s and Sable’s was (aside from the terrible HUD color choice of yellow and noticeable bloodstains) was that his radio transceiver was still initiated.
“Give me a moment, would ya?” He called back, keeping his helmet next to Mercury. “I’m gonna try something out.”
Mercury was doing his best to clean all the blood from his face, rubbing it down with an armored hoof. “Take your time, I ain’t going anywhere.”
Sable took off. He approached the cloud again, and soon, the faint squealing started to ring again. Thinking he was at safe distance, he switched off the radio transceiver.
Fwip. Silence.
He switched it on. More squeals.
That tears it.
“So, two things,” he said as he landed back at Mercury, whose face was much cleaner. “One, I’ve fixed our problem.”
“Ah,” Mercury replied with a smile. “So there is a god.”
“But we can’t have our radios on.”
Mercury’s smile fell. “And she’s a frigid bitch.” He snorted and spit out bloody phlegm. “Color me surprised. Options?”
“I wanna go out on a limb here and say we can still use external speakers to communicate, but we can’t rely on radio transmissions.”
“You think it’s the Cloud?”
Sable nodded with a begrudgingly accepting face. “Considering there are actual rodents of unusual size popping about the backwoods, this isn’t an option I’d discredit.”
“Fuck me.” Sable unlatched Mercury’s helmet and passed it off to him. He rubbed a handkerchief through its interior. Satisfied with what he had, he pulled it back on. “Off to a good start.”
“How’s your poultice supply?” Sable asked.
After a moment of scrolling through menus, Mercury replied, “Half full. Painkillers are about a third down. I think I can survive a grazing and fill up after that.” He popped open the door to the injectors and Sable took a quick look, confirming it with a nod.
“Okay.” Sable nodded. “Let’s boogie.” He offered a hoof to his friend, who obliged. Mercury stood a little shaky, and tested his stability with some idle shaking of his hooves.
“Let’s boogie,” Mercury repeated.
Sable smiled. There’s my buddy!
As happy as he was to see Mercury up and about, Sable was on edge as they started again. His eyes darted to and fro, looking for anything that might come after them. The Cloud is now attacking us, he thought. Jeez, who knew the environment was literally working against us? If anything, it kept him more alert, more focused. More afraid.
If I knew it was this dangerous, I’d have told him to stay home. He must hate being here right now.
Sable took the front of the flying column as the city grew closer. The pink was faint from the cliff they were at a while ago. But here, close to the city, the haze grew thick fast. He was used to cloud mist and contrails from cloudships, but it paled in comparison to the fog that was the Pink Cloud. Shapes could still be seen, luckily. Buildings were obvious, and the general look of the city could still be discerned. But the sun was being choked here. By his suit’s clock, it was 10:24 Enclave Standard. But it felt like late afternoon.
They stayed silent, except for the artificial kee-haa of their respirators, their carbon filters unable to diffuse the flesh rot-ozone stench. Each breath tingled Sable’s lungs, fizzling like the static of a numb limb. The aftertaste of blood faintly touched his tongue.
The sounds of yelling and savage roars echoed in the cloud, like the beginnings of some untamed zoo. He took in a deep breath to try and steady his pulse. We’re not alone.
The Starlight Terrace approach was the aftermath of an unmitigated disaster of unbelievable proportions. The traffic jam on the highway was a terrible prelude to the result of the evacuation of Canterlot. A forest-like jam of cars were packed against the outbound lanes, and as they flew closer, showed to be a mass grave, with the litter of pony corpses lying lame in the pile.
While they passed over the pileup, Sable’s EFS went off like crazy, painting his display in a terrifying red hue. Undead ponies still stirred under the wreckage, moaning for… Well, if I were in their position — release.
This place was once a beautiful approach to the city, lined with then modern architecture, a seamless blend of pre-industrial curvature and natural lines, seamlessly embedded with cantilevered and boomerang designs, while sporting the colors of Canterlot’s gold-purple-white aesthetic. Long stretches of grass and dead trees gave glimpses of the pastoral feeling that was intended. But this beauty was stained with mummified ponies, bloodstains, vulgar, blasphemous graffiti and the unnatural decay of the cloud poisoning its flawless beauty.
Sunshine Boulevard did not lose the car clutter. They passed barricades and checkpoints, where it countless firefights broke out in days past. Ad hoc, post-war shacks and barriers were erected, perhaps in some futile attempt to stay the flow of the Cloud, but did not stem the tide.
“I’m starting to regret coming here,” Sable noted, looking back to his partner. As he twisted his head back, his eyes darted to the wine-red rolling clouds swirling around them. “In a sense, I’m getting the feeling that we’re being watched.”
As he said that, he could have sworn a patch of fog was pierced to his side, the whiff of cloudtrail following an unseen entity. He instinctively dipped closer to the ground, falling just at the height of most roofs of the city, about five stories up. The sight of the boulevard grew clearer, the detail of its decayed hulks heightened and enhanced with the more gruesome sight of the desecrated corpses sticking out of them.
He suppressed a need to puke up his rations.
“After hearing all that shit down there, I think the whole city has its eyes on us.” Mercury scrunched whatever neck was showing from between the helmet and the body, the squeaking of rubber barely audible under the air whip. “But — thank the stars — At least we have the advantage of blasters on our flanks. I bet most of these savages are chucking spears or digging their teeth into each other.”
Sable shook his head. “You said the same thing about the Appaloosan —”
“Yeah, yeah!” Mercury shouted. His voice was shaky. “Yeah, I know, and then they had guns. Celestia! I hate it down here!” A horrid, gurgling cry rang near, echoing off the dying buildings. “Hate it.”
Sable scanned the cloud cover again, looking for any more breaches in it. His ears focused on his robotic breathing, helping him focus his vision. He looked at his EFS — Nothing. Is this cloud fucking with my sensors? Another thought crossed his mind: Is the cloud fucking with me?
“Merc, are your sensors alright?”
Mercury was silent for a moment. “Looks green to me.”
Sable cursed under his breath. Squishy stone crumbled away from a facade near them, falling with an unnatural soft, heavy thump onto the asphalt roadway. His breath shut with a comical zip as he forced his lips shut in response. The chunk landed on a sturdy looking truck, causing it to casually crumple into a heap of twisted metal.
The savage cry shouted up again shortly afterwards, causing Sable to slow down.
“Sab,” Mercury started. “It’s okay. We’re alright.”
“For now,” Sable replied, his breathing erratic. “Something is out there, in the cloud!”
“In the cloud, are you serious? I’m not seeing anything on my EFS.” Mercury looked around, his helmet moving like a hellhound surveying its territory. “Doubt we’d have a Wonderbolt coming after our stupid butts.”
“Whatever it is, just keep your eyes peeled. We’re not alone out here, and it’s starting to freak me out.”
Mercury was at a firm sort of calm. “We’re almost at the Quarter. Halfway there. If we kick up the pace we’ll be out of this dump by sundown.”
Sable beat his wings faster, accelerating. “That’s a good idea. Doubt anything can catch up with us.”
“We’re pegasi, pal. Nothing can take us dowOOF!”
There was a sudden shout, like the wind was violently knocked from Mercury’s lungs. Sable quickly turned in place, seeing a blur of pony launch Mercury through the crumbling wall of a nearby building. Mercury’s cries were drowned out by a crazed roar, blood thirsty and hellish. They smashed into the wall with a terrible explosion of dust and rubble, and their fight echoed within.
“Merc!” Sable called. The combat carried on and boiled, their screams of battle growing more violent. As if on instinct, Sable looked to his weapons menu and charged them on. The blasters started to hum, their tone deep and menacing. The tips and ventilation slots glowed a deep blue. Sable scowled, steeled himself, and charged in.