> Fallout Equestria: Final Flight
>  by nolongerinuse
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter One, Welcome to Hell.

"Take me down, to Paradise City where the grass is dead and ghouls are pretty!"


It was around noon, through smog and clouds the sun produced a dimmed light across the wasteland, creating a gloomy gray scene of burned land and the occasional skeleton of a once powerful and proud civilization that is know recognized as the Equestrian Wasteland. Hope still remained, news spoke of many "heroes" roaming the wastes, fixing many of it's problems. But at the same time, many spoke of the villains who opposed them. There are no heroes here. Out of every place I've traveled, the only thing I can find here is what has become of pony-kind in two hundred years. Lawless, murdering animals that only live for themselves and the pain of others. Seems fitting. All that lives here are raiders and slavers. And who am I? I don't know. But I am no hero, but I'm not a villain either.

Some may see me as an evil minded pony, what with me killing pretty much anything holding a weapon, or being associated with the Enclave, I guess it means I am born a bad pony. I truthfully don't care what others think of me. That feeling of self conciousness left me when I was young, before I joined up for the military. Let's just say, being a colt cuddler isn't exactly a thing most ponies will look at your normally for, or being in love with a griffon. So I'm used to ponies judging me, and ever since I defected from the Enclave I've had to live with criticism for who I was, just because I'm a Pegasus, bla-bla-bla, and all of that bull shit. I don't care.

So welcome to my world, it's a beautiful place in my opinion, it's my kind of place. I guess that does make me a villain.
We'll see... We'll see...


***


The radio blared some prewar song that everypony had heard nearly a thousand times, the ugly brown wastes beyond the city's skyline was at it's mid day ugliest. The smog was choking, but the filtration systems in his helmet allowed him to stay up this high for possibly days on end if need be. Cobalt laid at the top of the old Bank of Equestria Plaza in Canterlanta, the tallest tower and his most recent victory. 

He looked down the scope to the various streets below him, all cluttered and crowded with thousands maybe millions of wagons and other miscellaneous vehicles that ponies used before the war, now all are burnt and chard remains. It was unusually quiet, even up this high you'd occasionally hear a victim of a raider's, "fun time," scream loud enough to crack the eye pieces of Cobalt's helmet, but all he could was the flap and flutter of the Enclave flag he had tied to the flag pole on the very tip of the tower as a symbol of his victory. 

Everything was calm. Cam before the storm he guessed,  but he maintained his concentration and kept his scope trained on the 57th floor of the CelestialTrust Plaza, waiting patiently for his target to pop out again. 

"Point 5 of a mile out... Wind direction, East..." He mumbled to himself and adjusted his Anti Machine rifle. He saw something. Pulled the trigger...

*BANG* The loud sound of his rifle echoed throughout the land and down throughout the ruined streets of the city, the only sound, then a quick scream. He watched as a body fell from the other tower to the streets below. Cobalt exhaled a pained breath, got up and laid back against one of the support beams leading up to the pole, listening to the radio play the song as things faded into fuziness.

Numbness, except the pain in my side from where I got shot, all I felt. Relief, fighting's over for a time.

Welcome to Canterlanta. Capital of Southern Equestria, where lawlessness of Raiders ravage anypony who tries to explore the ruins. Nopony is in charge. It's just constant turf wars between raiders and the Slavers who gained control of the Trotter Field, that huge stadium where prewar ponies played who knows what. It's funny, I'm from the Enclave, meaning a lot of us are of prewar descendance and a lot of us still don't know half of the stuff we find down here in the wastes. I guess our culture is completely destroyed, even if we had the Stables and the Enclave.

But anyways, this is my home. Well, my new home. I waste my days fighting off Raiders and Slavers in this city, hoping that soon they'll all be dead but some how more just keep coming. Unlike other ruined Equestrian cities, like Manehattan, or Hoofington, Canterlanta is very much intact. Not in the sense like New Pegasus intact, but intact. Though out of its over 200 skyscrapers it had before the war, now only about 124 remain. And every single one of them has either Raiders or Slavers, I can deal with them later. But my main goal, I must complete then I'll finally be able to leave this city in ruins like it was meant to be. I have to find my, how can I put it in a way delicately, my griffon-friend? Yeah, Kieos. He was captured by the slavers, I was too late to help. And I will free him, even if it's the death of me.

Cobalt woke abruptedly to an explosion, he quickly got to his rifle and scanned the ground, he found the smoke rising from an area in the crowded street. A pony had stepped on a mine. "A shame." He mumbled, picking up his rifle and unscrewing the barrel, then folded the barrel back to the stock where it clipped with a small, *Click* and then slung it around his body and under his wing to not impede his flight.

After preparing himself for his travel, he walked over to an area under the towering spires of metal and put some stuff in a hidden Foot Locker so he could keep himself light weight and not carry all his stuff at once, which could be very dangerous when flying. It's a matter of his wings hitting one of his weapons, or being unable to move around enough because of too much stuff covering his armor. So he locked the Foot Locker with a special lock, made sure the door to the roof was booby trapped beyond repair if it were ever set off. He didn't need the stairs anyways, he could always just fly and land on the roof. And so could Kieos, so there was pretty much no problem to his plan of booby trapping it. Unless, his wing got wounded, but even in that case he had a backup plan and a lot of medical supplies from the hospital he raided and nearly destroyed.

So in his mind there was no problem. He'd just have to survive the mine infested, raider patrolled, ghoul-covered zone that is the streets of Canterlanta. If he did get wounded, chances of survival on the ground of the city were extremely... slim... But he had to risk it, even if he usually prhobitted flying during the day, including in the open. Noon was when the smog would be clear enough to see the cloudy sky that was all across the wastelands, interestingly enough, the smog wasn't clearing. It was great for Cobalt, he could fly easily with the help of his armor.

He had to take the chance. He strapped up the battle saddle on his armor and prepared the Magical Plasma Casters. He never usually used these at extreme distances, that's why he had his custom rifle. It was very handy in some tight squeezes he's been in. Including the fight for the Bank of Equestria Tower. If he hadn't of used his rifle to pick out some of the raiders with heavier weapons before going in, he would've had to taken the whole building down.

"I'll fly over the stadium, took a look at who's got captured by the slavers, and fly off back here. If he's there, then he won't be that hard to spot out of a lot of ponies." He said to himself and opened his wingspand and with a powerful thrust of speed, his wings made a strong flap and he was off into the air.

Flying with armor didn't feel the same. Without it, his mane and tail free, it felt natural. With Power Armor it felt... Odd... He had thought about this every time he flew, sure the armor felt like nothing because of the servos and motors designed to make him and the armor work together properly but still, it felt unatural to not feel the breeze over his coat. Possibly when I free Kieos, him and I could go flying around without armor for once. Too dangerous to do here. Don't feel like dying from a 9mm pistol when you could say, "I could've been wearing power armor instead!" Was always the sang in the Enclave Military if you got shot by a low powered weapon. That's why most Officers who are dispatched to the ground without armor in those stupid coats get killed the first. Well, that and they're the officers of our military and that if they are dead we couldn't plan anything.

He smiled a little. It's always funny to watch Scientists when they rip their air tight suit and freak out like they're dying. Fucking geniuses in that lab, idiots outside of it. Though he did have to give them credit, they did make his light weight Anti-Machine Rifle that could fold the barrel to the stock to allow him to fly better. And it is also compatable with his hoof so it's not saddle mounted. He wouldn't give that rifle for the world.

The loud *PING* that also pushed him up a little made him shake his head and return to reality as he heard gunshots from a nearby building to his left.

"Why not." He grinned getting an evil idea as he broke left and headed for the building, he started to strafe to the side as he fired his duel plasma casters at any target he saw, turning those he hit either into glowing goo of magical energy or into chard and burned corpses. He had no worries, until he spotted a raider wielding a missile launcher. 

*SWOOSH* Missile Launcher made it's sound as the missile headed straight for Cobalt, he watched as the rocket neared and then locked his wings and dropped, he fell almost halfway to the ground until he opened them and flew close to the ground, not the smartest plans either. Gun shots rang out all around him as bullets also passed by him, some low caliber rounds pinged off his armor attempting to cause damage, others dented his armor, an annoyance to him but it was better than being hit with those bullets, he silently thanked Celestia for the existance of power armor.

Raiders were literally, everywhere. In the buildings above him, in the streets below, everywhere. He wasn't going to be able to get near that stadium with all this commotion. He occasionally fired back but he kept flying as fast as his wings could possibly move him, but he was feeling like his armor was getting hit everywhere. 

"AGH!" He yelled out in pain as he lost his speed and altitude and fell face-first to the ground, hitting a wagon and pretty much flying right through it. His wing was shot. "Dammit my luck!" He said folding up his wings so the armored side covered the unarmored side, and he had to keep moving or the raiders would catch up to him and finally have their way with him. He kept running, bullets hitting everywhere around him. Kept hitting him too, it'd be a matter of time before a bullet hit a weak area of his armor and actually hit him or a raider with a higher caliber weapon would spot him. He had to keep moving, and quickly. He kept running, he knew this was suicide already. He should've stuck to his rules of not flying during noon, or even to fly in the open. Now he was in the soup, and things didn't look like they were going to get any better.

"Come on COME ON!" He yelled in the pain of his wing as he ran from the persuing raiders all around him, he knew this was bad. VERY bad. He needed to fly but he couldn't less he wanted to get shot immediantly on take off and get worse injuries than he already has. Bullets kept pinging on his armor, some hitting harder, he knew raiders with better weapon were firing too. Hopefully, with a little luck, these were raiders from two different tribes and they'd instead fight each other. A slim chance of survival opened upon thinking of that. But what he was up ahead made him growl in frustration.

Feral Ghouls, lots of them of all sorts. He NEEDED to get passed, he NEEDED to get out of this before he got into slaver turf or things will defintely NOT go well. "So close, I just need a taller building!" He said to himself and as he ran he looked up into the sky looking for a tall building but couldn't find any that looked sturdy enough to fight against raiders in and eventually allow him to take off. But he kept running as he heard the feral noises of ghouls that had spotted him, then watched as they were also shot by raiders. 

He knew it could there a chance, he could see the way through the ghouls and quickly dashed past through the hole and was clear through them, but he could still hear the wild whooping sounds and screams of the raiders behind him, closing. He wouldn't end it like this, he ran harder. 

"Time to put all that running in basic to use!" He groaned in agony and ran harder as bullets were hitting around him and on him.

As he was running through the streets, cluttered with cars, he stepped on something he'd never of thought he'd step on. 

*BANG*

Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Bat Pony --   When the sun is down, a Bat Pony gains +2 to both Intelligence and Perception. This perk directly affects your "internal clock" and remains active both inside and outside. Try not to go into sunlight!


> Chapter 2: Pain is Game.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Two, Pain is Game.

"Pain is game kid, if you can't get back up and act tough then just stay down and give up."


Almost all of his body was numb except his right leg which had pain that burned like nothing before. He'd always been trained to right himself as quickly as possible when shook up from explosives but they never accounted for when you stepped on a mine and got pretty much sent through the air and landed right on your head. He could hear muffled yells, screams, gun shots as he began to slowly lift his head up. He saw a raider. A big, disgusting looking raider who was coming straight at him wielding a huge fire axe in his magical grip, about to swing it into Cobalt's forehead. He closed his eyes knowing that it was most likely the end.

After about a minute of nothing happening, with hearing coming back, he opened his eyes in confusion. He didn't see the raider infront of him anymore, infact, he saw the axe lying on the ground nearby. Though it didn't sway his fears for long as he saw raiders coming up the street and firing their weapons, but suprisingly not at him. He heard shouts from behind him, and the sounds of heavier weapons firing as well. He knew who they were.

"Slavers..." He pretty muched coughed, with his senses starting to come back to him, he suddenly felt that burning pain in his right leg even more, and it was challenging to prevent himself from groaning in agony, he knew it must be broken, but he didn't anticipate how badly the damage was until he looked at his leg. 

His eyes widened in shock, looking through the shattered eye pieces of his banged up helmet, he saw the remains of his right leg, utterly shredded armor with some pieces of his armor had been sent into his leg as well. Decimated, and was bleeding very badly. He needed to get out of there, he was in a warzone now, and he needed to find a safe place to huddle into and attempt to heal. Or, bleed to death and that be the end of his life. 

But as he began to move something pulled on his armored tail, next thing he knew he fell down into a hole in the street and blacked out again with a terrible ringing noise.


***


"Ugh... what happened...." He groaned getting up feeling like he broke his spine.

"Well you fell off a building, tried to right yourself, then hit the cloud floor at I'd say... acouple miles an hour?" Someone said landing nearby. A Griffon. "Good job. That'll make you a flight captain of your own wing before you know it." He snickered.

Cobalt shook his head as he slowly got up from the fluffy cloud ground. "Can you hold your jokes back for later Kieos? I think I'm really hurt..." He groaned stretching his wings a little as he felt the agonizing pain in his back.

Kieos chuckled then got serious and just picked Cobalt up and plopped him on his back. "Yeah let's get you someplace where we you can get you help. Rather you not die before you even get in flight school." He chuckled again as he opened his own wings and took off into the air. "Oh and, mind not bleeding on me?" He said abruptly.

Cobalt was confused as he lifted his own leg and looked at it feeling a pain, he saw his shrtedded leg and shrieked which ended the dream. 


***


Some pony was holding him down to the table and was making very weird noises that sounded like speaking but more like gurgling at him as he was yelling back and trying to get off, utterly confused by his surroundings and in terrible pain. The pony kept pushing him back down until she got a syringe of morphine and jabbed it into the torn up leg. 

This confused Cobalt in some way, nopony could take off power armor unless they're a Pegasus, or at least very smart. He knew those raiders were neither of the above but his thinking began to change as the morphine took it's effect in his body, and he became way more relaxed.

"Who are you! Who am I?" He asked lazily, trying to move but instead wiggling his body and giggling like an idiot.

She grumbled something and pulled out acouple tools and moved them to a small platform next to the table he was laying on. The pulled out a scaple and took his leg and began to pick out pieces of shrapnel and his own armor.

The still confused Cobalt watched her use her magic to presicely move the scaple and cut into his leg and use tweezers to removes forgien pieces of metal lodged in his still bleeding leg. At some points she couldn't see the pieces because his leg was so bloody and kept bleeding feriously. She then put the blood covered scapel down and got a piece of cloth and tied it tightly around the the base of Cobalt's leg and knee area, stopping blood flow but the already existing blood remained where it was so she covered it in another piece of cloth and applied pressure, cleaning up some of the blood.

Now his leg wasn't bleeding as badly, and she continued to remove pieces of metal from his torn up leg for about the next hour or two, taking out about 67 pieces of metal and then sewed it up surprisingly well for being in a rush. She then injected him with something again which made him extremely tired, a general anesthetic most likely.

He slowly closed his eyes as she continued to bandage his leg up. "T-t-thank you...: He stuttered to her, only getting a grunt in response.

Another hour had passed of Cobalt sleeping, he hadn't slept for days in fear of waking up with a knife to his throat, again. He learned that lesson not to sleep when exposed pretty easily, and quickly. And nearly paid with life for it. Now he was so paranoid of everything that he was surprised that he even trusted the orange mare who was fixing him up, but when he saw her medical cutie mark with absolutely nothing relating to gore and murder, he felt somewhat more comforted that at least some other pony wasn't going to kill him. Well, hopefully.

"Seriously now..." He groaned as he slid over to the side of the table and began to get up. Being out of his armor which helped strengthen his body felt weird. Weaker maybe, well, he'd always been the weak one in the family, and even in his company, he unwisely relied on his power armor. He was extremely thin, black coated with a dark, coalt-blue mane and eyes, with a cutie mark of a gear with olive leaves in it. Though he was an extremely talented sniper, his true talent lies in creating weapons, customizing, and a lot of the technical shit that the company didn't want to do. He could either blame his field work in the wasteland on the fuck-ups of the higher ranks, or on the help he had getting on there. But there was something about his cutie mark that stood out. The big symbol that had been burned into his flank, right over his cutie mark, his Dashite branding by his company before he quit the Enclave, wanting to move to the ground.

She looked at his cutie mark curiously but still didn't say anything, she was pretty quiet, and for any other stallion she looked like'd be a good mare for them, except for the scars all over her body, and how a part of her horn was chipped. She was filthy, and looked like she was in pain too, how she walked an everything showed it. But she still didn't speak, just made a grumble.

"Are you okay?" Cobalt asked getting up but stumbling a little due to his weak stature and wounded leg, she helped him stay up. "Thanks..." He mumbled.

Her horn lit up and the piece of cloth floated up and a knife, the knife cut her leg a little causing a small blood flow and she wrote on the cloth with her blood. 

'Can't speak, tounge cut out. Throat, damaged, raiders. She wrote before cleaning up the small cut on her leg and floating away the cloth.

"So, you're mute?" He asked and she nodded. "I'm really sorry for you, truly. To me it's just a surprise there's another pony in this city who doesn't want to rip my guts out or slap a collar on me." He said with a slight chuckle and she shook her head disapprovingly, making him confused.

"And I'm going to guess you don't want me leaving anytime soon, right?" He asked her getting a nod as a reply from her. He sighed. "I need to get out there." As he said it there was a loud explosion from above and the place shook, gun shots were still going on from above, though more muffled now. "Well... I guess I have to stay until that dies down..." He groaned looking around the small room, which from the looks of the place, and the slight smell, a mateneince room in the sewers below the city. 

Great, most likely means ghouls are down here too. But if she pulled me out of the streets, then she must know her way around them, and around this town. Wonder who she is too... He thought to himself as kept looking around and spotted his equipment, the remains of it. He quickly trotted over to it and picked up pieces of his armor.

"Great, now my armor is as damaged as Steel Ranger equipment..." He scoffed looking at the torn-apart leg armor that just barely protected his right leg from being torn right off. "Once again, thank Celestia for power armor..." He grumbled look at the damage on all the pieces of the armor and weapons. He notice one of his plasma casters was bent and severly damaged, most likely the blast form the mine damaged the weapon and the flip out caused the bending of the long barrel. 

Though, most of the damage was to the suit of armor itself, he noticed his Anti-Machine rifle was still in great condition. Luckily it was on his left side. Fixing his armor wouldn't be too hard if he had some metal around, but of course all the metal in this city was either broken, rusted, or too weak for armor. He knew the torn up leg piece was useless, to hazardous to wear less he wanted to cut himself on the pieces sticking out. But other than that the armor was still useful, some pieces of it were hit by bullets enough to dent it pretty badly, but nothing he couldn't spiffy up when he headed back to the tower. 

Then it hit Cobalt, he quickly found a mirror and painfully unfolded his shot wing which was bandaged up. Didn't look too bad, maybe a day or two to heal it. But that's not good enough, it's damn hard to survive down in the streets of this city, too many mines. Unless... "Does this sewer system go all around the city?" He asked her and she nodded. "Even under the stadium...?" He asked curiously, she nodded again. He felt really stupid. He'd never thought of hitting them from underground, only from the sky.

"I might be able to use the sewers to my advantage... Use it to hit and run the slavers primarily until they are at their weakest... And including with causing massive raider attacks on them, costly yet..." A loud explosion interuppted him, most likely a Mini-Balefire Bomb. "Effective... Plus it somewhat gets rid of the raider problem...." He had a bit of an evil grin that slightly creeped out the mare.

"Perfect..." He grinned and picked up his armor, looking at it more. She put a hoof on his back and shook her head disapprovingly.

"I understand, I'm wounded. But I need to get to work, or things that I have to do might not go exactly as planned. I know how I can do this." He said putting on the pieces of his armor except for the severely damaged helmet and the damaged metal boot, he laos removed the damage plasma caster to lighten up his load and made sure he had a plasma pistol with him incase his back was against the wall and he needed a secondary.

When he was ready, he noticed the mare had two saddlebags on her and s type of coat, looked like a factory coat that was slightly armored. "You're coming with me?" Cobalt asked and she nodded unlocking the door. "Fine by me, you know thus place better so I'm trusting you." He then glared at her. "But I swear, do something that makes me mistrust you, and I'll literally drop you into a camp of raiders. I know where they are, so don't try me." He growled at her a little and she rolled her eyes and walked out of the room, Cobalt followed, making sure the door was closed behind them.

The stench was aweful. The sewer was full of bodies, both chard remains or skeletons. He looked at them all, they looked like they were huddled together, like they died here together... "So, why didn't they go to a Stable?" He mumbled to himself wondering why they had all went down here. "Possibly they didn't get there in time? I haven't seen a Stable pony around here ever, interesting." He mumbled to himself as the trotted through the sewers, occasionally passing a grate in the sidewalk which made the sounds of warfare outside louder, but more evidently were talk ramblings of Raiders who had gained ground over the slavers at high costs of life, but since when did Raiders care for their lives?

Fighting was still very active outside as the passed through the tunnels, occasionally encountering a ghoul or two. Nothing serious. Until Cobalt stopped, and pushed the mare back a little seeing lights dotting the dark floor of the tunnel. Small little, blinking lights.

Mines. My worst enemy...

Normally Cobalt would be able to disarm them, but they all reminded him of what setting off one does to you. And plus a huge clunking metal pony isn't exactly light hoofed. He didn't want to set off the mines, which would draw attention to them, collapse the tunnel, or bring every fucking ghoul in the tunnels to them because of a loud fucking noise in a really goddess damned confined space. He sighed, and slowly crawled to the nearest mine and began disarming it taking the risk. You're in the wasteland, you HAVE to take risks, or you'll never survive.

It's the biggest mistake a pony can make, other than trusting somepony with your caps or letting a pony put a collar on you telling you it's pre-war tech that can make you immortal, is not to take a risk. If you don't take chances, you'll live your life in fear of what you'll lose if you don't choose to risk it and for the gain. He'd heard a Colonel comment on the Steel Rangers once; "Those who try to defend all, lose everything." And that's a value he takes seriously. 

The first mine was diarmed fairly quickly, he pushed it back to the mare who in turn placed it in her saddle bag. They might to be of some use later on. He then moved onto the next mine cautiously, hopefully his time in Tech. School for the military would pay off better than Flight Academy or Combat Training, which of course, both we're the hell of his life.

Well except when he defected. But you know, it's more interesting than patrolling miles of empty clouds or looking for a non-existant stable dweller who supposedly breached their territory or that, "escaped Fillydelphia." Whatever that bullshit was that the pony on the radio spoke of, either he's lying and being an ass trying to make everypony in the wastes feel better or create some type of uprising of good ponies, he didn't care. All that mattered right now was survival, and no Stable Dweller was going to save his ass if he got into a fix like before, maybe a mute pony will help, but he doubted she'd help him twice.

Which brought him to another question. "What's your name?" He asked as he slid the second disarmed mine over to her. She went into a saddle bag and pulled out a piece of paper, guess she's rehearsed this situation before. Cobalt looked at the name on the paper. "Amber huh. Nice to meet you I guess, Amber." He said getting a nod from her and he went back to disarming mines.

Until, he head a dreaded screach from behind them. "Ugh... Ferals..." He groaned, he was already an inch away from the mine, he had to finish disarming it. But there's a good chance the ghoul that was now charging, by the slapping sounds of rotten flesh, could just push him straight into the mines infront of them. It was tough, but when he felt his plasma pistol ranked off of his armor and fired quietly at the ghoul and the dying sound of it, he actually began to trust this mare, Amber, a little more. Or until she decides to turn on him atleast.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Swift Learner: You are indeed a Swift Learner with this Perk, as each level will give you an additional +5% bonus whenever you earn experience points.
> Chapter 3: In Strangers We Trust
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Three, In Strangers We Trust.

"Sometimes you just have to make new friends."


After about seven to eight mines disarmed and several ghouls dead behind them, they had cleared the tunnel of the explosive devices, and were able to reuse them. 

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*

One of the mines almost exploded until Cobalt just slapped the top of the thing and it disarmed, magic huh?

After collecting the mines, Cobalt and Amber had continued their progress through the tunnels, going deeper into raider territory. Amber knew more about the tunnels and had been using them to help onies who had been captured by raiders to escape, but now Cobalt had a better, more violent ideas for the tunnels. Ideas which he was carefully planning inside his head.

Cobalt froze up, he heard talking. Really close, he held up a hoof to signal Amber to be quiet. Well, she's mute so not like she's going to say anything, but she knew what he was meaning by telling her to be quiet. They listened.

"Why'n tha' fuck are we attackin' them slavers anyway?" One asked, sounded like a male, very illiterate too. He had a very rough voice too, like a normal raider.

"Because. We shot down that goddess damned pegasus, almost killed her, then the slavers spotted us all running down the street straight at them, and she snuck off." Another male raider said, sounded thankfully, much more literate. Though he rolled his eyes at the gender remark, he already knew he looked feminine, he didn't need a reminder. It seemed like every raider, slaver, or just pony who he ever met seemed to of always called him a mare or filly, it annoyed him.

"Yeh. Ahwell, les go back to the tower, ah bet Crak will have anoth'r assignment fer us." He slurred to the other raider beginning to walk off until they heard a smack. "OW!"

"Don't call her that. He name is Crak The Raven, or Raven. Never call her Crak unless you want to be falling off one of these towers." The other growled and began to leave with the other as their conversation became distant.

Cobalt nodded back to Amber who nodded back and was about to step when she pulled him back, there was a trip wire he was about to set off. He sighed in relief and nodded to her and disarmed to drap which was connected to several grenades. "These raiders sure have a lot of heavy explosives... And some that I've fought seem to have some real nice weapons..." He whispered to her and she nodded. 

Cobalt had been alone for about a month since Kieos got captured, fighting by himself, not having anyone to talk to. Sometimes he even tried to capture raiders and hopefully have someone to talk to, but that usually ended in him having to kill the raider because of them getting annoying, trying to kill him, or calling for help. It had taken it's toll on him, and now he finally finds a friendly pony and they can't even speak, he did feel bad for what the raiders did to her, but for all he knew, she may of deserved it. But he didn't want to think of that now, it'd most likely make things between them get harder to work together which she was a very valuable asset to him at the moment, with her ability to heal him and knowledge of the tunnels.

He was too deep in thought because he ran straight into a concrete support. She giggled a little and he shook his head a glared at her. "Quit it!" He said like a kid and it made her giggle more and snicker as she lit up her horn and moved him to the side of the pole so he could walk around it. 

After about an hour of walking in the dark, they came to a metal door, it was obviously locked. Cobalt grumbled something and began to work on the door. As he was picking the lock of the door, Amber was looking over the door as well, her horn was lit up, illuminating a small area and the door as well. She was looking around at the door, examining it closely.

A *click* sounded from inside the door, and the tumblers began to turn and the handle spun and a wire seemed to snap from it. Amber quickily pulled him back using telekinesis and threw him down the tunnel and jumped back as a medium sized explosion shot her further down the tunnel and landed a little infront of Cobalt. He shook his head, explosions were much much louder without his helmet, and including in a tunnel.

The dust started to settle and Cobalt was back up and was helping Amber back up, they could hear yelling from in the room ahead. Obviously not good, he got his remaining plasma caster ready and gave Amber back his plasma pistol as she shook her head and made a very disgusting cough and and nodded, taking the pistol and getting ready. 

"Cover's blown. Let's go loud, doesn't matter anymore. Kill everything that moves." He said to her and she rolled her eyes. Cobalt pulled out a grenade and pulled the pin and threw it into the doorway.

"GRENA!-"

*BANG*

A leg flew through the doorway, Cobalt moved up to the wall next to the door and slightly leaned to the side to look inside, a big blast mark, a couple bodies, then he moved his head back hearing a gunshot as it broke a piece of the doorway next to his head. Amber moved on the opposite side of him at the doorway, she nodded to him showing she was ready, Cobalt nodded back and moved inside, plasma caster blazing hitting targets and turning them to magicial goo or a smoking corpse. Amber followed him in and fired at stragglers.

The first couple were dead, then he heard yelling from another room, a raider shot right out of the room with a wicked knife charging at him, he moved to the side and Amber shot the raider, turning him to goo. Another ran out and charged Cobalt, he turned around and bucked the raider in the mouth, the raider mare's knife flew out of her mouth as she landed on the ground, limp and unmoving, dead. He had shattered her jaw and broke most of her skull from the buck right in the jaw.

Cobalt quickly moved to the door to the other room and was about to throw another frag grenade when Amber stopped him and shook her head. "What?" He asked her and she kept making motions he didn't understand, she got frustrated and stomped her hooves and ran into the room. There were acouple hostages in the room, but the raiders they killed before seemed to be the only ones guarding them. Amber shook her head and slapped the back of his head. "Ow!" He rubbed his head as she walked over to the hostages.

She motioned from him to come over to her, and quickly by the worry on her face. He ran over to them and examined the hostages. They were severely abused, some had cuts all over them, one had no ears, another was missing an eye and a leg, more alarmingly to Cobalt they were strappedup with explosives. 

"They won't last long. And they're severely hurt..." Cobalt said in a solemn tone, Amber turned her head to him with a mortified look and slapped him again. "Ow! Stop it goddess dammit!" He growled at her as she went back and began untying to hostage ponies, and he began to help untie the explosives carefully. "You know as well as I do they're not going to survive long if we just let them go out in the city. They'll most likely get captured by raiders again, or slavers." Cobalt said to Amber who shook her head as she untied the one without ears and Cobalt removed the explosive harness. The earless mare got up and trotted away from them and was mumbling things that were inaudable.

The next one, the one covered in cuts and gashes, who was severely abused just stared at a body on the other side of the room, well more like a chard remains of a corpse. Cobalt looked at it, it was a small black skeleton that was chard and burnt tied to a metal pole. Cobalt didn't look very surprised, or mortified, though he recoiled at the horrid smell. He seemed pretty emotionless and calm, it disgusted Amber, but she assumed it was just some brain washing the Enclave did to him or something. 

She untied the pony and even with the explosives still on her, the hostage mare ran over to the skeleton and hugged it, and began to cry, rubbing her head against the side of the skull screaming. "My poor child! My baby!" She yelled as she held the skeleton close. Cobalt just watched the mare hug her burned alive child, crying, yelling, and cursing the raiders, just emotionless.

Amber walked up next to him and looked sad for the mare, his face just seemed cold and emotionless, the world's cruel. Deal with it.

Cobalt began to disarm the explosive harness on the mare as Amber went to the last hostage and began to untie the stallion who had lost an eye and a leg, oddly enough he didn't have any explosives tied to him, though it slightly made sense; he was sitting next to two mares wired with explosives.

Cobalt had the explosives off of the crying mare and threw it to the side, it was really hard to pull the mare away from the skeleton of her child, she kept fighting it and pushing him away.

He tried to pull her away from her dead child and she punched him straight in the muzzle and pushed him away. "Get off of me you emotionless bastard! Go back to your fucking safe cities above the clouds and get the hell out of here!" She yelled at him. 

Cobalt just got back up and grabbed her, then threw her away from her child. "He, or she. is DEAD. Get over it, crying is not going to make em' come back to life. Move on, or you'll never get over it." He said to her and held out a hoof. 

She reluctantly took it and pulled herself up. "And just so you know, I'm not allowed back up, nor do I ever want to go back up." He said to her shaking his head.

For a little while and awkward silence ensued, except the crazed giggles and mumbles from the other mare without ears who had obviously gone insane from the torture and the harsh relality. And things werent going to get prettier anytime soon. Amber ushered the other ponies into the tunnel from the other room, 

Cobalt gave her a nod. "Be safe, get them back to your little hiding place I'll hold here until you get back." He said, getting a nod from her as she led the way for the ponies. He sighed and sat against a wall, he didn't know where in the hell he was. He knew it had to be a building, maybe the basement. But something seemed, different. Instead of just a big storage area, or a bunch of offices, this place has a bunch of huge tanks of Celestia knows what, and a lot of boxes full of empty Sparkle Cola bottles, then again those might just be from the raiders. 

He decided to explore a little, he headed to the next room and began to go up to the stairs. As he walked up the stairs, and opened the door to what looked like a huge rotunda with with a big oddly shaped glass window, and outside showed a pretty good sized clearing of the city, like a park. Still a lot of Sparkle Cola bottles, he continued further into the room, careful not to accidentially kick a bottle, he saw a huge sign wrapping around a big decorative bottle that had collapsed onto the ground.

"WORLD OF SPARKLE"

"Huh. Didn't know they made bottles that size."

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Tough Hide: The brutal experiences of the Equestrian Wasteland have hardened you. You gain +3 to Damage Threshold for each level of this perk you take.
> Chapter 4: Curiosity Peaked.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Four, Curiosity Peaked.

"Just look around you, it's a whole new world!"


Cobalt had been examining the room of what he know knew as the World of Sparkle musuem, which he was still confused of why in the hell anyone would make a museum for it, but after some looking it also seemed to be part of a factory as well. Made sense, I guess. Not much to describe about the place, the huge glass window in the rotunda was shattered and bent pretty badly, getting near it made the geiger counter built into his armor, *tick* *tick* *tick* tick* Meaning out in that park must be irradiated as hell if it's affecting this area, though he armor also warned him  that there was a low amounts of radiation further inside. 

Interesting, a Cola factory with something causing radiation? Or, is there an opening to the outside? Truthfully, he didn't feel like getting irridiated, everypony in training told him if you get radiation poisioning that a mutated hoof will grow out of your stomach and you'd have to put a bullet in your brain, 'For the Enclave!' As they always said it. But this had made a general fear of radiation poisioning, despite him always being in contact with radiation. Guess the armor's geiger counter just isn't as accurate as a Pipbuck.

There had to be more raiders around here, no way that was their entire garrison. This building is too big for there to have been about, four or five raiders guarding the place. And the mutilated corpes of ponies showed it too. There had to be more.

*WHAM* 

A corpse being used as a trap sent him flying back from the stairs and onto his armored ass. The corpse was opened up from crotch to throat and had it's guts ripped out of it, it was hanging on a meat hook that was put inside the body. Away from the mutilated ponies and shit, how did they get a meat hook in a Cola Factory? And since when did we have meat hooks? 

Cobalt didn't eat meat, he'd lived in the wasteland for not that long but for anypony three months feels like a long time. And even through that time he had still never come around to eating meat, espescially not another pony. He just couldn't keep it in his stomach, it'd always come back up. He'd always been used to the food Pegasi grew, but of course you can't get any of that down here, so somedays when espescially covered in smog he'd of flown up to the sky and taken some of the food out of the cloud farms above. Beats not having anything to eat, and he needed to keep energy. Only problem now, he couldn't fly, so he needed to find something edible or he wouldn't last long.

Then it hit him. What did Amber feed him when he was on Morphine? Oh shit...

A knife flew by and stuck into the ground right next to his head, he quickly jumped up, ready to fight as another knife flew out of the darkness above and skidded of his armor as he coverd his head. "Damn!" He yelled running for the cover of a pillar.

"Contact...' He chuckled, remembering what he had been trained to sya every fucking time he saw an enemy. He quickly hopped out of cover and threw a plasma grenade up here. After about four or five seconds, a bright green light illuminated the dark upstairs and cry of pain pretty much shook the whole room. Well there goes the element of surprise, or what ever element he had before.

"SHHHHHIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT!"

Cobalt began to walk up the stairs again, cautious os anymore traps, or crazy knife-throwing raiders. As he got upstairs, he saw the goo pile remains of the raider with the knives. "Haha. Fuck you." He chuckled to himself looking at the goo. Always a good sight seeing you enemy turned to goo.

Hey looked around the barely illuminated second floor, the goo pile giving a soft green glow, he carefully stepped around it and the various holes and cracks in the floor. Less he wanted to fall down and hit the ground below, not the best thing to happen including if you weigh nearly a hundred and sixty with your power armor, weapons, and other various equipment.

He was very careful with the second floor balcony as he made his way to the door to another room, he could hear his geiger counter ticking away, getting somewhat annoying, but he knew what it meant, and he had to see what in the hell is irradiated in this place. As he walked into the room, he noticed conveyor belts that were holding what looked like thousands of Sparkle Cola bottles, about all of them seemed empty, though as he walked further into the building, some looked filled, but had some type o glow to them. It could just be Quantum Sparkle Cola, but instead it glowed more green rather than in a rainbow like the Quantum did. Infact, all the filled bottles had a strange green glow.

"Interesting." He mumbled to himself as he approached one of the filled, glowing bottles and picked it up. His geiger counter began clicking feriously. He quickly put the bottle back down carefully. "Damn. That's a lot of rads." He said backing away from the conveyor with large quantities of irradiated bottles.

He continued on through the hallway, keeping to the side of empty bottls to prevent from contracting unneccisary rads from the bottles. The hallway was very dark except the soft glow from bottles of the now poisonous drinks, he stopped suddenly, thinking he heard somepony talking further down the hallway in the next room, he listened closely but didn't hear anything.

"Might be a trap..." He whispered to himself and was reaching for a grenade in his saddlebag when he remembered Amber stopping him before. He groaned and instead of a frag grenade he pulled out a flash grenade and readied to throw it and move inside. He pulled the pin with his mouth and threw it into the other room and covered his eyes and looked away from the doorway.

There was a bright flash of light and a very, very loud *BANG*

Cobalt uncovered his eyes, put his mouth on the trigger for the battle saddle and quickly moved into the room and looked around. Clear. Nothing there. Then a gun fired and the bullet pinged off of the side of his armor and he dived for cover behind a crate as the room erupted in gunfire and muzzle flash from the radiers firing at him.

"Shit!" He yelled from behind cover as bullets hit around the crate. He didn't see any hostages from his inital glance, maybe it's safe to use a grenade. He pulled one out of his saddle bag and pulled the pin, he churcked it from behind cover at the raiders.

"GRENA_" One yelled.
"HIT IT BACK YOU DUMB ASS!" Another one yelled, sounded female. Then he heard the sound of metal hitting the ground nearby him then a loud and powerful force pushed him forward and utterly ripped the crate behind him into shards of wood.

"AH SHIT!" He yelled as he was shot forward by the grenade and pieces of the crate landed on him. "Fuckfuckfuck..." He groaned as he began to push pieces off of himself and was sprayed with bullets by the raiders. "FUCKFUCKFUCK!" He yelled pushing the objects off of him, the bullets were pinging off his armor but one pieces a weak part of his armor as he dived to cover behind a nearby desk. He laid under the desk looking from under the desk trying to find where the raiders were.

Then he noticed the windows in the room in between some cubicles and desks. He had an idea, hopefully the raiders had nothing covering their hooves. He pulled out his other pistol, a really damaged 10mm pistol, mouth held. Hopefully it would hold up for this.

He hopped out of cover and began shooting the glass windows in room, they shattered and rained shards of glass down upon the floor all over the room and ontop of the raiders.

"AGH! SHIT! I HAVE GLASS IN MY EYE!"

"And my hoof in you balls if you don't shut th- AH SHIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTT!" The raiders yelled in pain, some tried moving to different cover but instead stepped onto the shards of glass which stabbed and cut their hooves.

Cobalt took this chance to charge them, running at them quickly, the glass being crushed under his metal hooves, though he refrained from using his injured right hoof. He bucked one raider straight in the muzzle, then shot him with the plasma caster. He turned his attention to the other raider, who was indeed a mare, then used his armored, and quite deadly, tail to stab her right in the throat, tearing a hole straight through her windpipe. She died with a sickening gurgle, then fell limp. Cobalt dislodged his armored tail from her throat and then looked around the room.

He chuckled a little. "Good riddance, bastards." He mumbled as he continued onto the next room. "Fewer raiders defending this place than I originally thought." He mused as he walked through the room, more mutilated corpses pretty much everywhere, their guts sickeningly decorated the walls the room.

"Bad taste of decore I might say..." Cobalt mumbled to himself walking through the room to another door, this time it was locked. He guessed the raiders just aren't really good at picking locks. What was odd was that the door was the metal bulkheads that you'd usually see in the services tunnels. Must be important then, he began to pull out his tools to pick the lock.

*Click*

The sound came from directly behind him, he felt something poking the back of his head. "Don't mwove fwucker." Came a muffled, yet still harsh, voice from behind him. He stayed calm, well as calm as you could be with a gun to your head being held by a pony who'll most likely vivisect you for pleasure. Yeah, pretty damn calm.

"Say what?" Cobalt asked, still unmoving, but thinking carefully.

"I sawd don't mwove!" The muffled voice said louder, straining to say it clearly with the gun in his mouth.

"I can't really understand you very well... Speak up." Cobalt asked again getting ready to make his move.

The raider turned his head a spit out the gun. "I SAID DO-" Was all he could say before Cobalt bucked him, right in the jaw, hard. The raider flew back and landed on his back with a loud cry of agony, Cobalt kicked the pistol away and made sure it was unloaded then approached the wounded raider who was trying to regain his composure after nearly getting his jaw bucked off. Cobalt pointed his plasma caster right at the raider.

"That's what I thought you said." He chuckled a little then looked deathly serious. "Where does that door lead to?" It was a stupid question, he knew, but there was a possible chance the raider would know.

"How in tha' fuck would we know? We'd never gone in there, dumb ass!" He cackled until Cobalt stomped on one of his legs causing him to cry out in pain.

"Thanks for the useless information and insult which does nothing to change your position at the moment." He said stepping off of his leg, then shooting the raider in the face at point blank range with the plasma weapon, causing him to turn into the glowing green goo like others before him.

He went back to the door and continued to unlock it, sometimes glancing back to see if there was anypony else who'd feel the need to disturb him as he broke two bobby pins until the door finally unlocked. Just because I can pick locks, doesn't mean I'm the greatest fucking pony to do it. It's just a helpful skill when the time comes, and it's really payed off at times too.

The door slid open with it's high pitched sound of metal across metal, opening up to a large room with huge vats up high, bearing the name of 'Sparkle Cola' and bottles on conveyors below, all empty, awating to be filled. What concerned him was the amounts of rads being put off from the vats of the irradiated beverage, which could be potentially very dangerous. He almost decided to not enter it, but his curiosity got the best of him and he entered the bottling room of the factory, museum, thing.

He imagined how busy this place must of been before the war, must've been very interesting to walk around. But all that's left to be interesting are the mutilated corpses that are left on display for sickening reason. Raiders to him were not just plain stupid, but had their own leauge of stupidity. If they saw something the liked, it's theirs. If they like you, they'll torture you longer and more painfully. If you aren't as amusing to them, they'll kill you in an equally as brutal manner. Along with their violent behavior, lack of general education, and over use of any drug they could find... Or anything they could find, they'd of probably tried drinking these hazardous drinks before, and that may just be the reason there are so few raiders defending the place.

"It's a hazardous location, it should be destroyed..." He said, then thinking about blowing the place until it was just rubble, but that would most likely cause all this extremely radioactive material to leak out. It's better contained in here, but something needed to be done. He just couldn't figure out what to do at the moment. For now he just passed through the room quickily and entered the next room, which had pictures and objects in shattered glass cases. It was obviously the musuem part of the building, because aged and ruined photos of ponies, old bottles, and other miscellaneous objects were either in their shattered cases or on the floor. It was an utter mess.

Cobalt walked through, fairly interested in some of the ruined photos, and set up some of the objects that had fallen over back to their correct stands. It was a thing he usually did, out of respect for the old world. He reached another window and looked outside, the burned land that he had seen pretty much everyday. The remains of what must have been a really lovely park, now a sizable crater clearly when the Balefire Bomb hit the city. There was most likely more than one that hit Canterlanta, judging by the extreme rads, but they must have not hit the city directly enough to cause too bad of collateral  damage.

Though it still puzzled him, why had he not seen anypony who had been in a Stable? Infact, he hadn't seen a Stable-Tec advertisement anywhere. It's almost like Stable-Tec didn't even exist to these ponies. It was possible, however unlikely, that there are no Stables around here.

He remembered all of the skeletons of ponies hiding in the sewer tunnels, hugging their children, or close family members, hoping that it would provide suffcient protection agains the blast as their world ended around them. How terrible it must have been as many of them burned in those tunnels believing they'd be safe. He shuddered at the thought and passed it off as he sat down and looked at the glow emanating from the crater. How anypony could use such powerful weapons without a care to the thousands, maybe millions who's lives would be exterminated in a matter of seconds was beyond his understanding, even his cold heart couldn't bring him to do it. 

He whistled a little as he looked at the distant crater. All was quiet, except for the occasional gun shot or explosion in the distance, he guessed the raiders and slavers must still be going at it. Fucking idiots. He picked up a cigarette that was on the desk next to him and put it in his mouth, slightly chewing on it before throwing it out the broken window. "Must've been hell." He mused still on the thought of what it was like merely minutes before the balefire explosion. Maybe he'd find a recording or something around here, or in some other building that'd enlighten him a little, but he doubted it. Maybe a ghoul who hadn't gone feral could tell him, but he hadn't met a single ghoul not trying to eat his brains, so once again, unlikely.

He sat there for who knows how long, maybe around thirty minutes. Just pondering his thoughts, he'd never really had the time and he didn't understand why in the situation he decided now would be a good time to do so. Must be what museums do to you? He just sat there and looked out the window into the smog covered sky, smoke rising from parts of the city, could be camp fires, but those are never good ideas here. Raiders flock to camp fires, so either you get over the cold of night or you get captured by raiders. Your choice completely.

He couldn't even tell what time of day it was, but by how dark it was around the place it must be night time. The nights were usually long and cold, unless you're inside a building low to the ground. But being low to the ground is often unsafe, due to raiders. He'd sleep in his armor up on the top of a tower any time.

After another thirty minutes pass, he heard hoofsteps from behind. He whipped his head around to see how was there, ready to jump to cover if he had to but only saw Amber. "Oh, hey." He said with a small nod and got a nod in reply. She walked up next to him to see what he was looking at, she shook her head.

"What'd I do this time?" Cobalt chuckled thinking she was nagging him but she lit up her horn and pulled out a small piece of metal and a marker she had found.

Nothing. Just terrible, the war. Feel bad about what happened to Equestria. She wrote down and Cobalt sighed.

"Yeah. Not the best thing that could of happened, but it did. And we're paying the price for it. Well, ya'll are." He chuckled a little. "And now I am too." He said looking back out the shattered window. "Those ponies at your place?" He asked her and she nodded. "Good. More to come, hopefully."

She nodded, though she didn't fully understand what he was meaning. 

Cobalt was silently just looking outside, he felt a little tired but he knew he couldn't rest. But he just felt, really tired... Things were starting to blur over time, and he found himself dozing off a little, laying back against the desk. He tried harder to stay awake, but when it comes to sleep. You just can't fight it. And he slowly drifted to sleep next to Amber.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Youthful Rebellion!: Your young age increases your love of breaking glass objects like windows or bottles, breaking an object made of glass nearby an enemy with light armor will cause them to suffer a -3 combat skills.
> Chapter 5: Flying With Ravens.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Five, Flying With Ravens.

"Always watch your back.."





***




Cobalt looked smaller, and younger. He was also in a type of dress uniform, he had a cocky smile and was chatting with the other colts who were up in the clouds with him, other class mates for the Infantry Academy. Pegasi flew all around them training to fly, many in training armor, the first version of power armor made because it was obsolete and heavier meant to help trainees get used to flying with extremely heavy armor.

He was talking with the other colts about how they were ready to fly. Cobalt mostly listened to them rather than talked about himself, he was slightly shy but kept listening intently to some of their stories.

"Man, I am SO ready to get my first set of armor! Can't wait until I go on my first combat tour!" One said looking tough and giving a proud stance that you'd usually see on a Grand Pegasus Enclave poster.

"Same here dude, I can't wait to go and kill some of those scum down below! Bet they'd start crying right when they see us!" The other said giving the other a high five with their wings.

"Get all the mares, huh? Bitches love power armor!" Another snicked and all except Cobalt cheered in response brohoofing each other and giving wing high fives.

Cobalt was pretty quiet but had a smile as he listened, unlike the other cadets, he already had acouple medals on his uniform. Only about one or two, already from the Enclave Military Engeering School he had taken before being reassigned for field duty because higher ranks had noted his accuracy in marksmanship during an annual draft test that everypony of his age was required to take incase of a draft for new soldiers, essentially to find out who they were looking for.

Cobalt stood around in the group, surprised at the lack of any mares or fillies. They most likely have their own training school to prevent things between colts and fillies in training, or to make it fair. No clue, he hadn't seen his sister since he got his orders to report to the Grand Training Academy. Infact, he even thought she got some orders. Most likely was sent to the Officers Academy, she was always a good leader in his opinion.

Though he was very nervous, he was the second best student in the engineering school, he had worked hard, he didn't really know why he was being assigned to field training because he could shoot a gun better than the average colt who'd accidently shoot themselves. Sure his parents had always been more diciplining, and were always hard on him and his Sister, but he guessed it turned out for the best. Especially if it got him second in his class and his sister in Officers Academy. 

He just couldn't wait until his letter back to mom and dad telling him how he got assigned to the Infantry Academy, and with other more personal matters. He had never told anypony who he was dating, he had been dating Kieos for awhile now, and he didn't mention what race Kieos was because of a serious distaste for Griffons by the Pegasi because of massive conflict between them, but he did note that Kieos was indeed male. He knew his parents wouldn't mind, he just didn't want to embarrass them infront of other famillies that he was a colt cuddler, it's one of those things that can in some way shape or form, give your family a bad name. So he decided to keep it a secret with his family members, he knew they'd understand him.

He smiled a little then snapped back to his dream's reaility when a colt was talking to him. "Wooah, how'd you already get medals?" One of them said getting the other's attention to his dress uniform.

"Uh, I was second in the Engineering Academy, and top marksman of my age group for the Draft Test." He shrrugged, truthfully the medals weren't much of an achievement for many of the already trained soldiers, but to already have medals at his age was outstanding to many kids. He didn't really think so, he wore them pridefully but he knew they were just medals to give your a, 'military pat on your back' for doing something that the next age group will do flawlessly.

The other kids began shooting questions at him relentlessly before he simply said. "They're just some medals, when you actually go into a combat tour and survive you'll get a medal for each tour. These aren't much of achievements." But they kept asking him questions, until the older Cadets started to notice.

"Haha! Ohhh he got two medals for being an engineer and a sniper." An older cadet mocked walking up to the crowd of small ponies with two other friends. They were big, buff. Most likely around fifteen or sixteen of age by their achne and greasy manes. But what still got his attention was big and buff. Most likely the fact they'd been here longer than the arriving class of nine and ten year olds. 

"Uh yeah." Cobalt shrugged. "I told them it's not much of an achievement." He rolled his eyes until one of them stepped on his head bright him to the cloud ground in a bowing position.

"No shit it isn't, quiet flank-face. Don't think I don't know your brother, Cobalt." He snickered. Oh yeah, did I forget to tell you about my older brother? Well I dilberately 'forgot' for a reason. He's not exactly the nicest to me, but there are those times he had shown some compassion. He's currently a Staff Sergeant in the Infantry. Let's just say he knows the older brother to the colt who's currently standing on my head like a hoof rest. And when he talks shit about me, he tells his friends everything about me. Like when he walked into the house when me and a colt were making out on the couch when watching a movie. Poor New Moon, his family pretty much moved on the other side of the Earth when they found out what he had been doing.

"Hey kids? Want a warning about your upcoming academy training?" He asked with a shit-eating grin and got a lot of nods and excited faces from the kids. "Watch out for this flank staring colt. You might wake up in bed with him!" He laughed and picked up Cobalt then pretty much threw him onto the ground, taking Cobalt's academy cap and crushing it under hoof.

Cobalt shook his head and got up to tried to wail on the older colt, instead the teenager put out his leg and his hoof against Cobalt's head stopping him in his tracks. "You fucking prick!" Cobalt yelled at the teenager wailing on his leg.

"Ah stuff it colt cuddler." He snickered and laughed, getting laughs from his buddies then jumped into the air and began to fly off laughing.

The other colts looked at him, not saying anything. Some began to laugh at him and make fun of him, others just stood there not really wanting to be a part of it, not really seeing the problem with it. Just his preference.

The laughter continued and continued as the dream was ending.




***





"Ughhh..." He groaned waking up slowly and rubbing his head, he also made a yawn and his eyes were slowly opening and becoming clearer of his surroundings. He shook his head feriously to shake off the sleepiness he felt. He groaned again and started to get up. Morning from the light and less smog. Good, still a live, thats a start. 

He wobbily stood up and stretched his back and groaned in pain. "Ugh... still have a bullet in my side..." He mumbled remembering the bullet that did pierce his armor. He looked around the place and saw Amber still laying against the desk, asleep. He chuckled and walked around the room and looked around as well, the place was much lighter now.

He stopped and walked back over to the desk and nudged Amber to wake her up. "C'mon we need to go. I don't trust this place." He said helping her up and she nodded in agreement. They began to leave through the way they came, passing the goo of raiders who tried to fight them. Cobalt chuckled thinking of how he had gotten through, though still puzzled at the serious lack of raiders defending. Very confusing to him, every building he had attacked had been filled to the walls of raiders to where he could kill about thirty by throwing a grenade into a single room.

But he unwisely shrugged it off, must be the high radiation and lack of survivable ways into the place. He'd truthfully be happy to get the hell out of the building, those radioactive vats we're starting to creep him out. Including the bottles.

"So, uh. I'm getting slightly hungry... How about you?" Cobalt asked and she shook her head. "Any, uh, Apples? Or Carrots? Strawberries?" He asked and she shook her head. "Then what do you eat?" 

She pointed to a raider who wasn't turned to goo. "Uh... I'm good..." He looked a little sicked by his facial expression. "I think I can hold my hunger." He said with a nod as they went down into the rotunda and then were into the basement of the building and on their way tunnels. They began to walk into the tunnels so Cobalt closed the door behind them causing the room to be completely engulfed in darkness until Amber lit up her horn creating a small light.

They walked through the tunnels, Amber trying to keep the light spell going continously, Cobalt looked at her slightly worried whenever her horn glitched and she looked like she was in pain. Cobalt suddenly looked confused. 

'Why do I care? Ugh, I'm starting to care for her... Not good, remember what you we're trained, emotions get you killed, emotions get you killed...' He thought to  shaking his head a little then he remembered, his only reason for being in this city was his emotions. He staying here to help his mate. Dammit... I guess she's not that bad... She's been helping me a lot... I guess I can trust her enough...

They heard a hiss and a disgusting growl from ahead. Ferals... Cobalt moved Amber behind him and began to open fire his plasma casters upon the ghouls cutting them down, except one that began to charge him and had some pretty nice armor... Hell if he could see mistake it for power armor he would.

*WHAM*

The ghoul DID have power armor, Not a good enemy to fight. Including a feral ghoul. Cobalt got knocked back but he quickly got back up, turned around and bucked the armor-clad ghoul in the helmet merely hitting it back.

"GET OFF ME FUCK-FACE!" Cobalt yelled at the ghoul and kept hitting it in the helmet hearing the disgusting noises it was making from the helmet's speakers.

Despite what ponies think, Enclave armor is not the strongest. Infact, before the final day of equestria, the last armor type to be made for Steel Rangers is the strongest and most technologically advanced. Sure we have some advanced-ass tech on our armor, I've even seen Enclave scientists working with Kinetic Barriers and force field tech that they were someday hoping to implement to armor. But like I was saying, a lot of our armor has exposed parts that should NOT be exposed. Like energy circuits and air tubing, he was hoping he could prove that he was better in engineering to help work on armor rather than weapons or even in the Infantry at all. But now he was having a hoof fight with a ghoul wearing T51 power armor. Well fuck me.

Cobalt pushed the ghould off of him and hopped ontop of the ghoul and began to wail on it, hoping that carbon fiber and plastic armor wouldn't be as hard to break as steel plates. But obviously it didn't work like that as he barely saw dents in the armor as he punched away. He pulled his nearly-broken pistol out and shoved it in the neck area between the helmet and torso armor and began firing, he felt the splatter of blood but he knew just shooting it wouldn't kill it, if he was stuck in the armor as a ghoul, there'd be enough radiation in there to heal it back.

The ghoul pushed Cobalt off and began to wail on him. "AMBER! SHOOT THEN DAMN THING!" He yelled at her as it wailed on him relentlessly. Amber pulled out the plasma pistol but was hesitant. "JUST SHOOT IT DAMMIT! PLEASE!" He yelled in pain as it wailed on him. She fired at the thing, melting pieces of the armor but due to it's design it could take energy weapons quite well. But it distracted the ghoul because they can only focus on one thing at a time. Cobalt pushed it off and punched the weaker spots that Amber had made from her plasma shots until there was finally a hole in the chest plate.

Cobalt puled out a frag grenade and punched the ghoul's helmet getting it's attention. "Hey bitch! Follow me!" He said running further down the tunnel, it chased him closely until Amber couldn't see them. She heard a loud explosion and a lot of dust fly and she came running down the tunnel until she saw gorey remains and armor shrapnel. Cobalt was lying under a large slate of gore and armor but was slightly moving, dazed.

She ran to him and pushed off the gorey remains and checked over him for wounds, nothing too serious. Just some shrapnel wounds, a lot of bleeding from the beating he had taken, but thankfully nothing serious. Maybe a broken nose. That'd help him with the terrible smells of the wasteland at least. She helped him up onto his hooves. "Ugh.. Thanks..." He said to her getting a nod from her.

"Lets continue on, shall we?" Cobalt asked a little loudly. Obviously being right next to a grenade without the sound proof helmet had pretty much made him deaf, well not like she could speak so she nodded and Cobalt continued to walk down the tunnel, using his heavy armor and powerful plasma caster to his advantage to tank through the tunnels which still had a lot of ghouls surprisingly, with Amber covering his flank and directing him to where to walk down they got to the small service room that Amber had used as her hiding place quicker than when they left it.

They opened the door and the other ponies greeted them as Amber walked through the door while Cobalt stood watch then backed inside the room and closed the bulkhead shut. He looked back into the room. The marer without ears seemed calmed down more, most likely on morphine now. The other mare whom he had yelled at about her child didn't make eye contact with him, but he didn't mind. He could slightly understand why anyway. The severaly mutilated colt had a pistol nearby him and was looking at Cobalt helmet very curiously. Cobalt walked over to him and sat next to him.

"Sup." He said to the colt who nodded back and looked at the helmet.

"I guess this is yours?" He asked and Cobalt nodded. "It's a nice helmet if it wasn't so damaged. Bullet proof eye pieces are hard to find. But I know a place that has a lot of power armor parts and weapons." This got Cobalt interested.

"Go on." He said simply.

"Well, there's this underground armory in a military base called Fort McPonson down pretty far south in the city limits. Hard to get there by street. I tried getting around the park but that's how the raiders found me. If you want some heavy weapons or armor pieces, that'd be the place to go." He said to Cobalt getting him interested.

"Yeah I've heard of the place before. Crawling with military ghouls. Meaning power armor and combat armor wearing ghouls. Shouldn't be too hard. Maybe there could be something I could read to what happened in this city." Cobalt said actually smiling a little.

"Well obviously the place was bombed." Noted the colt.

"No shit. But I'm meaning why there's nothing about Stables anywhere in this city. Like they don't exist." Cobalt said and the colt raised his eye brow. 

"What's a Stable...?" The colt asked.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Tank: You may be soft on the inside, but you're protected by a hard shell! You gain a +3 bonus to Damage Threshold when wearing any type of Heavy Weight armor but you will suffer a -1 to Agility if wearing anything that is Light or Medium Weight.
> Chapter 6: Cat n' Mouse.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Six: Cat n' Mouse.

"I will draw his fire, keep your eyes out for the flash..."


Cobalt had been trying to bend the broken Plasma Caster's barrel back into place with no avail, even with the armor and stomping on the barrel to put it back into it's place had not done a thing, that explosion must of really made him hit the concrete pretty damn hard if the barrel is this hard to break. He finally sighed put it back down and looked at his broken helmet, he looked into the eye pieces. Here had he gone wrong? Maybe he shouldn't have stayed for Kieos, his Drill Sarge was right, emotions get you killed. Not like he wasn't going to die anyways, now it's just guaranteed to be more grusome and painful. He knew he shouldn't of flown in the day, yet he did it anyways. Cobalt knew this was all on him, but there was still a possibility to finish his mission, he had to get to that fort down a in the southern part of the city.

After trying to explain what a Stable was to the colt, he thought Cobalt was crazy. Even saying; "What in the fuck has the Enclave told you about us." And laughing at him, so Cobalt had resorted to trying to work on the power armor. If he could fix his helmet with, hopefully, a working T51B helmet, he could possibly wire up his Armor's built in EFS to the helmet. And hopefully mess with the helmet to make it match his armor more, he is pretty crazy when it comes to stuff that doesn't match. Even pony's colors, like if they have a blue coat, why do they have a red mane? That's something that always annoyed him about the Enclave, so many colorful ponies, down here a pony's colors were more... Dark, and depressing. More likely to shade them better than a neon pony in a burnt and dead wasteland. And weird enough it seemed like he was the only pony when up in the clouds that was dark colored, maybe he just hadn't met any.

He sighed as he kept looking into the shattered eye pieces and began to pick out the important tech from the helmet, such as the EFS and other things that he might need to use mess with the armor in the fort. Problem was, Cobalt couldn't think of how he was going to get to the fort. He was possibly about five miles from the fort, he'd looked at maps of the city streets and if he takes the streets to get there he'd most likely want to use Northside Drive, problem was raiders had swarmed that area not too long ago in their charge through the streets towards Trotter Field, and worse he'd have to pass Trotter Field to get to the fort. He could use the backroads, but those are guaranteed to be covered in mines.

A thought came to his head. How do raiders get around the city without using hte streets? Roof tops! They use rooftops, usually with types of catwalks, he'd seen them before. And if there's no way to get from a very tall sky scraper to the ground, he could give a try at the form of flying he fails at so much when attempting to recover from a wound. Gliding, his worst enemy. That or he could just destroy the supports and lower floors of a tower and allow it to crumble to make a big pile of debris to walk upon. Capturing a tower seemed easy before, but that was when his wing didn't get blasted with a bullet.

He finished taking pieces of the helmet out and put the now completely useless, broken, helmet back onto the table in the room next to the plasma caster and put the special pieces into his left saddle bag and walked over to where Amber was who was taking the disarmed mines out of her saddlebag. He took some of them and brought them over to a workbench, he took some Duck Tape then began to tape two mines back to back enough to make them unable to fall off and set the improvised explosive down on the table then worked on another pair. Seven mines, one will not be able to be taped, so a total of three of these imrpovised explosives. He'd only need to activate one mine and have it be set off the blow up both, so it worked out perfectly. Though if he really wanted to fuck with a raider who knew how to disarm explosives without shooting them, activate both and when one is disarmed, the other goes off. He smiled gleefully thinking of all the ways to fuck over somepony's day.

Amber was messing with her armored mill outfit a little, adding on some armored pieces that the raiders wore over their armor, making sure there wasn't anything disgusting inside of it or on it, soo she had a pretty nice improvised armored outfit covering herself, she took some of the ammunition that she had taken from the dead raiders, and occasionally feral ghouls, and loaded up some spare magazines for her 10mm pistol and a rifle she had picked up, both weren't in very good condition, but by her standards these things were in mint condition. 

"Hey, um, when we get to the fort, if they have some parts I could fix up your weapons Amber, and give you some proper armor. Hell maybe even some power armor." Cobalt offered and she shrugged and nodded a little. "Alright, trust me power armor is way cooler than you think." He smiled a little thinking of how happy he was to get the training version of power armor, heavy, old, worn-out piece of power armor that was more to scare a pony rather than survive rifle rounds. Only the newer version could truly take on rifle rounds like proper power armor, but hey, I wasn't complaining.... That much...

I just seriously wished I could've worked in the Engineering Corp instead of the Infantry, but then again it could've been worse. He could've been assigned to a Light Infantry Unit which is pretty much given some slightly better versions of Combat Armor and is thrown into the heat of battle to rush enemy hard points. They aren't even given power armor, and a lot of times they're given a single plasma caster and no helmet and told, go take that hill! Though he was lucky he'd been given a helmet with a filtration mask rather than his muzzle sticking out like in a standard version of the helmet, a shame it had to get damaged.

Still it puzzled him, why do they have the Light Troopers? Isn't that a waste of a good flier? Sure their armor is lighter, but it means that a normal pistol round could cause them damage, Kevlar and metal pieces don't stop bullets too well, Ceramic Plating and metal does. Or in the T51B's case, plastic, ceramic plating, and metal. I guess because they fly fast enough for you to miss, they're essentially cannon fodder, that or flying engineers if you're around a Thunderhead. (Which I wish had I been assigned to one of those! They're so cool!)

Sometimes it just wasn't fair, but hey, when was life ever fair?  No point in it to start now. And things aren't going to be very easy either. He looked at the city map one last time, annoyed with the, "YOU ARE HERE," on the map because it truly is not a good point of reference of where he really was because he pulled the map from somewhere else. Didn't matter, he found where the World of Cola was and moved his eyes in the direction he had walked down the tunnel with Amber until he estimated that he was there, under a building of good size. Possibly an apartment, or a hotel. Didn't matter, he just had to get up high and scope his way around the city to the fort. He looked over to Amber who nodded and took the map and put it into her saddle bag and was ready to go grabbing the ammo they needed, like energy crystals and magazines along with whatever medical supplies they would require, like Healing Potions, bandages, food and water. Pretty much anything essential.

Cobalt had to be honest, she was a real big help carrying ammo and the explosives, and even the map. Plus if he ever got downed she could heal him up easily and get him back to fighting, plus she was starting to change his mindset in a way that both slightly annoyed him, and he actually admired. Instead of busting into rooms and killing everything, he was being cautious. Dammit she is too damn nice even after what the raiders did to her, if that happened to Cobalt he would be killing anything in his way, good or bad. Good thing it didn't happen to him, and it's not going to happen now. They were going to get to their destination, grab some heavy weapons, fix up some armor, get ammo, come back and blast the fuck out of Trotter Field, in that goddess damn order.

Though like he said, it's never that easy, and he sighed knowing that. "Amber? You ready?" Cobalt asked looking at Amber and then she nodded in reply pulling out her pistol. Cobalt made sure he had his single plasma caster, plasma pistol, and his light-weight Anti Machine rifle and then nodded as well showing he was ready.

He thought of one last thing. "Hey, you." He said to the colt pulling something out of his saddebag and threw it over to the colt. "If you need anything, or need to tell us anything, use the radio and tell me." He said getting a nod from the colt. Cobalt then took an ear piece out of the saddle bag that had a small microphone. "I took this out of my helmet and kind of messed with it." He said to the colt who nodded and smiled.

"Nice to see you got some use out of your broken helmet." The colt said and nodded again. "And I'll be sure to call you if we're in trouble." He said with a nod.

Cobalt nodded back. "Good." He looked to the other mares who were looking at him and Amber. "We'll be back soon, if we can we'll try to get more food for you all." He said to them and they nodded.

"Thank you..." The one who he had wrestled to get away from her dead son nodded and said with a small, halfhearted smile, she was grateful for the help at least.

The other mare was still jittery, and her head had been wrapped in bandages because of her ears being cut off, Amber walked up and wrote on her note pad telling her what they were doing so she nodded as well.

Cobalt looked over to Amber. "We're going up into the building above, stay close to me, shoot anything that is holding a weapon or running at you. Watch out, check your corners, if you see a pony without a weapon wait before letting down your guard." He went over with her and she rolled her eyes already knowing what to do as they left the small room with the ponies they saved and closed the metal door behind them.

The tunnel was quiet, no growls from zombies to be heard, nothing at all. Cobalt exhaled and looked to Amber tiredly. "Let's get this done. I don't like ghouls..." He grumbled as they began to walk down the tunnel way opposite of the way they went last time. It smelled bad, but it was not as bad now because of Cobalt's slightly swollen nose from the ghoul that had beaten the shit out of him. He shivered, wouldn't happen again though, hopefully Amber would kill it before it does some damage to him.

But then again, she most likely did it on purpose, he guessed he deserved it, ah fuck that still doesn't mean you should let him get his head bashed in by a Power Armored Ghoul. He shook his head as the walked and then saw a door on the side of the tunnel. Cobalt sped up his pace and moved up to a side of the metal door and got ready to move in, Amber followed to the other side as her horn lit up and her rifle was drawn. Cobalt opened the door and threw in a flash grenade.

"SHIT!" Somepony yelled and was cut off by a loud bang and a bright flash from the room, Amber used her magic to float the rifle over into the door way, she had a mirror on her rifle and it was reflecting to her what was in the room. All she saw were the raiders and fired two shots, one hit one raider in the head the other shot the other in the chest as they were still paralyzed by the flash grenade.

Cobalt rounded the corner through the door and into the room, looking around at his surroundings carefully. He patrolled the walls of the room, checking it, he knew raiders enough to sneak around like this and set up ambushes, he kept walking around the room checking the shadows espescially. 

A pony suddenly screamed and tackled Cobalt holding a wicked knife to his throat. "DIE DIE DIE!" The pony chanted crazily as she was about to slide the knife across his throat, until her head completely spladdered blood across Cobalt and he pushed her body off of him and to the side, the pony's face pretty much was obliterated with gore everywhere, Cobalt wiped the blood off of his face as he got back up and looked to Amber who was reloading his her rifle, she gave a sly smile to him and tilted her head a little then moving it back.

"Yeah, I owe you... Again..." He grumbled and she made a gurgling giggle in response, Cobalt rolled his eyes and had to chuckle a little too. "Aren't you just way fucking excited for me to owe you something..." He rolled his eyes as his face turned to a serious expression, Amber's as well and they both nodded and continued to the next door.

They moved into the next room slowly, until they heard a loud thud and a table got turned over into a type of barricade, there was some shouting then gun fire. Cobalt pushed Amber into cover behind a counter and also got into cover while the raiders blasted the stone counter into pieces with their weapons. Cobalt could identify two guns from the blazes of gun fire, one shotgun, one machinge gun. Cobalt readied a grenade and then remembered how some of the raiders threw his grenade back at the World of Cola building, he didn't want to take that chance, including with Amber. He saw a metal table, just like the ones the raiders were using and quickly rolled to it and took hold of the table by it's stand and began rolling it on it's side using it for cover while attempting to keep it up as raiders shot it.

"Come on, come on, come on..." He mumbled to himself as bullets pounded againsts the metal table as he moved slowly, flanking the raiders as best he could. As he was almost behind the raiders, the stood out of cover to fire at Cobalt's table, the table was beginning to break in some places from the point blank gun shots as two shots rang out and ended the constant barrage of fire. Amber had shot the two raiders as they stood out of cover, she moved slowly from the counter reloading her rifle and taking the ammo on the raider's bodies.

Cobalt chuckled at what they had done, and they continued on their way through the building meeting little resistance. Untill they made it from the basement into the lobby. The basement muffled a lot of sound, even gun fire, so most of the raiders didn't exactly expect two ponies to pretty much jump out of the basement door and begin to fire at them.

"GET DOWN!" Cobalt yelled to Amber as he pushed her behind a couch which was getting ripped to shreds by the bullets, they needed better cover. Cobalt pushed her from the couch to a wall that had a big wooden desk and pushed her behind the desk and acouple bullets hit his armor and he turned then fired back getting a kill and wounding another just barely as they continued to pelt him with all types of rounds. Suddenly a loud bursting sound of bullets pierced the air as a crazed raider firing an SMG blasted bullets all around the place and was pelting Cobalt and Amber's position with bullets, they couldn't defend this area long. They needed to take the raiders out quickly, Cobalt jumped into cover behind the desk, pulled out a grenade and threw it over the counter.

"SHIT!" Somepony screamed and then it exploded blowing a lot of small shards of wood and dust over the counter, bullets kept firing with only a minute of delay. They heard agonizing screams of a raider who most likely didn't completely die from the grenade blast being drowned out by the sound of gunfire. Amber's magic pulled up her rifle over the counter and with help from the attached mirrors, fired and hit most of their targets pretty well. Another one got hit by her rifle as they got to cover again and began firing at her rifle so she brought it back into cover. 

"What do we do?" Cobalt asked Amber, hopefully she'd have an idea, she just shook her head. "Well shit. I can try and draw their fire again, just please don't hesitate to kill them, please!" He said and she nodded getting ready. 

He jumped out from behind the desk drawing their fire and jumped behind the already torn up couch as bullets continued to rip it into pieces. "AMBER!" He yelled as bullets hit his armor repeatdly, Amber popped out of cover and shot several raiders before they started to get back into cover. Cobalt got back up and charged the remaining raiders shooting at them with the plasma caster killing one and turning another to goo, he then bucked the last one in the jaw and tackled the raider and began to punch the raider in the face until the raider fell limp. Dead.

Cobalt got back up and quickily helped Amber out from cover. "Come on, we still have a war to fight." He said as she hopped from behind the desk. "There's more in this tower, and no doubt they heard us. Move with caution, there will most lilely be some traps." He said reloading his plasma caster as Amber nodded. "Alright let's move." Cobalt said going to a door nearby the front desk and bucked it right open knocking a raider back who was waiting to just immediantly stab him. He looked surprised as a Amber shot her rifle right into his throat. He began to gurgle and hack blood as he slowly and grusomely died.

Cobalt began to go up the stairs slowly looking down at the stairs and scanning them constantly looking for wires or other traps. He kept scanning as they walked up about eight flights of stairs, by the time they reached the top Cobalt was carrying Amber on his back and then set her down next to the eighth floor of the building and got to a side, ready to breach waiting on Amber.

Amber got to the other side, and Cobalt moved up and bucked the door open and moved to the side again as bullets began to fly through the doorway. He looked over to Amber and made a head motion for her to use her rifle. She nodded and used her magic to move the rifle around the corner and looked at the mirrors, she saw her target and fired wounding the raider, hitting ihm in the side. She gurgled a curse and fired at another hitting the other raider in the chest and watched him fall over then looked to the wounded one and fired at the overturned table hoping to penetrate it with her rifle. She fired and she heard a scream from behind the table.

Amber nodded to Cobalt showing it's okay to move in, Cobalt nodded back and moved in and walked to the left as Amber followed him in and went to the right searching their sides of the floor, moving down the hallway checking each hotel room. Amber kept moving until she heard the bang of a large caliber rifle in the distance and somepony yell.

"AMBER!" Cobalt called out hiding behind a thick desk hoping it'd be cover. Amber ran into the room as a large caliber round pierced the floor infront of her, she jumped back into the other room and looked through the door at Cobalt. "AMBER?" He yelled to her.

She nodded and looked like she was listening.

"AMBER! I AM GOING TO NEED YOU TO DRAW THE SNIPER'S FIRE. GOT IT?" Cobalt yelled to her, Amber shook her head feriously showing she disagreed. "I NEED TO SEE WHERE THE SNIPER IS!" She shook her head harder and looked at him, absolutely shocked by his request. "Amber! Trust me! Please." He said to her and she shook her head again as Cobalt was unpacking his rifle.

"Amber! If you don't help me, if we don't take down that sniper and move on, we're both going to either get killed by the sniper in a quick death, OR we're going to captured by the raders. TRUST ME." He called over to her again and she hesitated, she looked like she sighed then nodded reluctantly. She grabbed a book and threw it out into the room hoping the sniper would shoot but he didn't. She sighed again, readied to run to the nearest desk as soon as Cobalt showed he was ready.

Cobalt unpacked his rifle then set it up where he could look around slowly so the sniper wouldn't find him first. He looked over to Amber and nodded, she nodded back and took a deep breath. She ran out from the other room as the floor nearby her splintered and exploded from the high caliber rifle fire and she lept for the desk. Cobalt saw the flash from the sniper as he fired and ran from where he was, Cobalt trained his sights over the sniper as he ran, took three quick breaths, then held his breath, and pulled back the hoof-compatable trigger.

*BANG*

His rifle made an extremely loud bang and even made the dust around him rise from the sheer force of the bullet as it left the barrel. He watched through his scope as part of the sniper exploded into a huge cloud of gore, the sniper went flipping through the air and landed onto the ground onto his head and rolled a little before falling and not moving, his rifle flipped and fell off the building. Cobalt exhaled his breath in relief, he quickly got up and moved around the desk he was hiding behind and saw Amber with her hooves covering her head and shaking slightly. Cobalt walked up to Amber and slightly nudged her with his hoof, she looked up. He offered her smile. 

"Guess I owe you again?" He asked with a chuckle. She shook her head as Cobalt extended a hoof and helped Amber up. "And if you hated my idea form before, you're going to REALLY HATE my next one." Cobalt said going back over to his rifle and folding it up again and slinging it over his back.

She wrote down on her note pad: 'What's your idea?'

He chuckled, his wings opened right up, except his left one opened slower than the other. Amber shook her head feriously but Cobalt grabbed her and threw her over his back. "Trust me, I trust you. Enough. I'd get a grip, gliding isn't my special talent." He chuckled as he galloped out of the window and used his wings to glide across the gap over to the building the sniper was in landing in a lower floor, possibly the fourth floor. Good, there's a lower roof access here we could use to get to the catwalks.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Trust Fall: Your Companions trust you with their lives, and you do the same for them. You companions gain a 25% increase to Combat Efficiency and will take less damage if you accidentially cause them harm.
> Chapter 7: A Heart of Amber
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Six, A Heart of Amber.

"All I'm doing is sharing a bullet, that's still caring, isn't it?"


Amber was pounding on his armor, slamming her hooves down on it making loud clanks as Cobalt was just dying of laughter. "Oh your face was sooooo hilarious!" He laughed harder as there was next a hoof to his face in a sudden burst of pain. "Ow! Well F you too, let's keep moving." He replied, and could only giggle like an ass hole watching Amber shake from gliding over a gap, nearly eight stories down with a messed up wing. 

"So uh, would sorry cut it?"

*WACK*

"Ow! Guess not! Any harder and you might slap some sense into me!"

*WACK*

"OW! I WAS JOKING."


***


After landing and regaining composure, they were both slowly sneaking through the building they had landed on. After a little bit of rubbing his cheek the hoof mark was starting to go away, would've hurt more of she had armor. 

'Note to self... DON'T piss her off when she has power armor... Or at least have a helmet on...' He thought to himself while still attempting to concentrate on the task at hand. Get through the building, find the catwalk networks, get to that fort and suit up for a real war. He could only grin at what he'd do when he gets to that field and finds the slaving bastards who took his lover and have been slaving anything innocent, or anything not innocent too, in this hell.

He couldn't wait... He just couldn't wait...

His thoughts were interuppted by sudden gunfire. "Well there goes the option for going in quietly!" He yelled over to Amber, then realised she was in the other room still. "Oh. I blew our cover... Just great." He groaned as bullets began flying and jumping back into the other room with Amber. "Got to think less and concentrate more!" He said to her as she floated her rifle with a mirror around the door frame and took out a raider, the other knew what she was doing and got into cover.

Cobalt then heard her gurgle and yelp as he also heard gunfire and saw the wall Amber was hiding behind being ripped through by bullets. He noticed she got hit once, though it didn't do much to her considering she had her leather and metal armor on, most likely bruised her from the impact. 

"You okay?" He asked her and she nodded, he nodded back. "Okay well get ready to either heal me or mourn me." He said quickily rushing into the room, the raider heard him charging and began firing for some reason at his armor instead of his exposed head. Odd, but he used it to his advantage and kept charging.

He rammed into the raider, send the raider flying back onto the the floor, and before he could recover from the sudden charge, Amber made sure to put a bullet into the raider's head, splattering brain matter all over the floor.

"Ew." Cobalt kind of muttered. "Alright, let's keep moving." He said to Amber who nodded. He kind of sighed. 'I wish I could talk to her more... Kind of lonely...'

He shook his head violently removing that thought from his head. Lonely?! He's never been lonely before, what the hell is going on? He shuddered at the thoughts of loneliness, and actually having friends.

Amber was looking at him with an eyebrow raised at what exactly he was doing. "Uh. Just ignore it, bad thoughts." He replied and she shrugged, he followed her, still thinking intently on what the hell he was thinking of.

They entered the next room, strangely quiet, but you can't always expect enemies in each and every room of this city. But if you become too cozy and aren't on your hooves, it could surprise you. And kill you. The next room had his geiger counter slightly clicking, the only real sound in the room, other than that it was distant gunfire or the creaks and groans of the building and the sound of his own breath.

He kept shifting his gaze around the room suspisciously, also looking for a door. "Amber? Can you try and find where we are on the map?" He asked and she nodded pulling out the map and spreading it out upon a nearby table, she was tracing her hooves along the map and looked like she was mouthing stuff to herself.

He shifted his gaze away from her working and trotted to a nearby window and looked out, he could see the mid-day sun. Bright even in the immense cloud cover, smoke, and fog. It illuminated the streets in a blood red aura, he watched soot fall and ashes sparkle when light made contact with it almost giving the illusion of it was snowing.

A poisionous, snow, this time not crafted by Pegasi in Cloudsdayle, but instead by the rage of war created by two nations. He mused these thoughts for a little while, looking out in the streets until he saw a Unicorn in the streets, slightly sneaking around. The pony, even at the distance he stood at, looked beaten and hurt from the way they limped and used anything to hold them up. He looked for the stairs and was quickily down the stairs to the first floor, checking it out for any raiders in the shadows

. He set himself against the wall nearby a window and continued to watch the pony, he'd seen a trick much like this before from the slavers. Sending out a slave armed with a vest of explosives, trying to play on his emotions. But this pony didn't have any vest of explosives, he had a collar but not an explosive one. He knows explosives enough, he even uses explosive collars to destroy poles and support beams because of it's curved charges causing it to explode inward, making it more forceful.

He kind of popped his head up. "Psst!" He made a noise, and got the pony's attention. "Hey! Get out of the streets!" He called over to the pony who looked hesitant until he realised why Cobalt was telling him to get out of the streets, he looks around and saw Raiders who had not yet noticed him trotting around in higher floors of buildings and on rooftops.

He quickily ran for Cobalt and slid in through the doorway, he still looked suspiscious of the pony who had called him over. "Who the fuck are you?" The pony asked Cobalt.

"Uh, Cobalt. Trying to save my, er, friend from the slavers at Trotter Field." He replied and the colt nodded a little.

"I was being brought there, but some raiders ambushed the convoy and I got away. M'names Draco. Or some ponies would called me Rad King because I was born with a mutation and I can take Radiation better than a normal pony." He said pointing at his dragon like irises, his eyes noticably had a slight glow.

"Hope that doesn't glow too brightly, because if I am taking you with us then we don't want your eyes as bright as the sun." He noted and Draco nodded.

"Only gets brighter when it nears radiation." He replied then pulled out a pair of shades from a small, dirty bag. "I usually wear these because it can reduce some of the light that's given off." He said putting the shades over his eyes. 

"Alright, good. Say, you can take radiation better?" He asked and Draco nodded. "Good, me and a friend of mine named Amber are heading to that old fort down in the sourthen part of the city, we heard it is full of rads and ghouls." Cobalt told him and Draco nodded a little and got up, so did Cobalt.

"Same thing I heard, the raiders don't dare to go there but I overheard slavers saying they're trying to get to that fort for some sort of heavy weapons armory..." He replied and Cobalt looked stunned.

"Oh shit. Then we have to move." He began to ascend to the second floor of the building where Amber seemed to have circled where they were and the route they needed to take to get to the fort by the catwalks. "Good job Amber, just in time too. Slavers are going to try to get there first. Can't let that happen." He said and Amber nodded and stared at Draco.

"My names Draco, nice to meet you Amber." He said holding out a hoof and Amber shook it with a kind, but tired smile. "Alright, so we're heading to that fort?" Draco asked and they both nodded.

"Here, take my pistol. You need something." Cobalt said handing his 10mm pistol to Draco who nodded. Amber left the room and came back with a mostly intact pair of raider armor that wasn't too badly protective, or too disgusting.

"Thanks, better than nothing." Draco replied fitting the peices of armor on and then found a place to put the pistol, Amber then gave him a small rifle and some ammo she picked up from some raiders. "Thanks once more." He smiled as he was now armed and armored. 

"Alright, now when we get to the fort and clear the place I'll fix up some better armor and weapons for you two. Got it?" They both nodded to what Cobalt said as he changed the energy crystal for his plasma caster. "Good, because we're going to move quickily. I don't want slavers getting their hooves on that type of weaponry." He said as Amber folded up the map and slid it into her saddle bag and they began to move to the nearest way that Amber had found to get to one of the rooftops to where they could access the catwalks.

Draco was actually a good addition to their little team, though Cobalt didn't trust him as much as he trusted Amber now, he proved useful. He could shoot very well, and he could even make a bullet out of anything wiith his magic. Sure a lot weren't as damaging as a normal bullet, but if you're out of ammo you'll take any bullet you can find. He was very useful and sometimes would help watch their backs as they moved from building to building on their way to the fort.

Amber pulled out her notepad again and began scribbling quickily. 'Catwalks should be accessable from the fourth floor of the building. She wrote down and pointed at the slightly ruined building that had some wooden boards leading across to other rooftops and various other buildings. 

"And this will get us to the fort quicker?" Cobalt asked and she nodded and began to write again.

'Quicker than the streets, sure there'll be a lot more raiders than the streets but less of a chance of stepping on a mine.' She wrote down and nodded to Cobalt.

"Good catch Amber, let's get ready to shoot just about everything in sight." He checked his weapons, as did his two companions. 

They moved to the door of the building they were currently at and Cobalt took a position at the door and nodded showing he was ready to be covered. Amber and Draco nodded back and Cobalt quickily galloped across the street and entered the next building, checking the room he was in the took a position to keep watching the room as Amber joined him and took a position at a window to cover Draco.

Draco ran across the road in the same path as Cobalt and Amber, he was slightly slower than the other two because of his injury but Amber had already made sure to bandage it. He slid through the doorway of the building to join the other two.

"Alright, now let's check the floors and get up to those catwalks." He whispered incaise any raiders were nearby. Draco and Amber nodded. It amazed Cobalt how they had been so quiet and had not fired a single shot for awhile, but it also scared him too. This could be a trap.

Cobalt kept that thought in mind as they made their way to the stairs and catiously made their way up them. Cobalt was at point, Amber was in the middle, and Draco was at the back of the line covering their flanks in case any raiders tried to ambush them from the back.

Cobalt stopped at a door the second floor. "We ready?" He said to the two, Amber cocked her rifle in reply and Draco nodded as a reply. "Alright, lets form up." He said as he got onto the left side of the door and his companions got onto the right side of the door. He then turned and bucked the door pretty much off it's hinges and got into cover as the other two went into the room and shot a raid, another ran off.

"Get him, quickily!" Cobalt called to his friends as he slid to cover. Draco popped out of cover and floated the small rifle with his magic, he took a big breath and held it.

BANG

The raider dropped like an apple from a tree, a hole in his chest appeared as he fell to the floor whining in pain, pleading to not be killed. Odd for a raider, they usually taunt you until death. Cobalt slowly approached the downed and good as dead raider.

He examined the sadist closer to find him only to be a young colt, it didn't hit Cobalt immediantly, but it kind of made him look at the colt a little differently. Another example of how Amber is changing him from a heartless, uncaring bastard into a pony who gives a fuck.

She's too kind.

Cobalt grabbed Draco's pistol and shot the colt right in the forehead, saves him from the pain so it's not as cruel as letting him die slowly. And at least he got to kill him, Draco was great at sniping, almost better than him. But he's so headstrong he wouldn't admit to it, but it kept popping up in his head.

"Alright, Amber give me those taped frag mines." He said to her and she went into her saddlebag.

"What are you planning?" Draco asked him, curious about why he would need frag mines, or ones that are taped.

"Going to place them around the place and blow the building after we got onto the catwalks. It'll either slow them down or make them interested in why an entire building seemed to of exploded." He said grabbed the two mines taped together than Amber was giving to him. He trotted to areas in the building that seemed weak and put a double mine in each of them, he found the building's supports and placed two double mines there as well. He placed acouple nearby a window to where he would start this explosion.

"Alright, let's get to the fourth floor." He said and they both nodded.



***



"Upstairs! Upstairs!" Cobalt barked at the two who jumped right up the stairs as bullets shredded the walls and stairs behind them, as soon as they were up Cobalt slammed the door and locked it. "Go to the catwalks I'll follow!" He hissed at them, the others didn't even nod they just ran.

Behind that door was a large group of some really nasty raiders chasing them up both flights of stairs, they had just returned from the streets and saw the trio walking right up the stairs, apparently they weren't to kind to that and began to open fire.

Cobalt armed the double fragmine and set it near the door and put some more around the top floor room.

BOOM

The armed mine exploded and pretty much blew off the area around the door, sending shrapnel into Cobalt and causing him to lose balance. He waddled to the catwalks, dizzy and punctured by a piece of shrapnel in his neck. Blood flowed along his neck in a steady river as he headed to his friends and watched Draco come and help him along.

"Come on! Come on!" Draco said to him helping him across the catwalks to Amber, Cobalt began flailing a little. "What's wrong?" He asked panically and Cobalt pointed back to the building where the fragmines were and then pulled out a grenade. He pulled the pin and tossed it into the window on the second floor and jumped to the floor of the building they were in.

Acouple raiders appeared from the ruined doorway of the other building right as a loud roar sounded and the ground trimmered, the raiders began to lose balance and the floor pretty much exploded and crashed around them causing them to call into the firery rubble below. Dead or not, they would be dead buried or burning from the remains of the building. The remaining unexploded fragmines would kill any raider who came to assist, and if they tried disarming one, there's still the second one to contend with.

Amber laid Cobalt on his back as she watched the dark life source flow from his neck steadily, it either punctured an artery or just cut his neck. But it was a good amount of blood, slightlu forming a pool next to his head.

"How bad?" Draco asked walking up to them.

"Not good." Cobalt gasped a little him and coughed as Amber covered his mouth and made a motion not to speak or it'd make it worse.

"Think you can patch him up?" Draco said to Amber and she sighed. She began to write on her notepad.

'May of punctured an artery, I don't have the tools to fix that up. I might just have to remove the piece of shrapnel and slide a cloth in to hopefully stop the bleeding. The fort may have some more medical supplies, if we can get there.' The notepad dropped on the floor and she kept examing the wound.

"Well I can try to get to the fort myself and bring back some stuff." Draco suggested, Amber simply shook her head.

She wrote down: 'Stay here and protect us, I'll try to get him into moving condition.'

"Alright." He replied trotting off and looking around the building.

Amber began to pull out her medical kit and sedated Cobalt so he wouldn't be in pain anymore, then started with trying to remove the shrpanel from his neck, slowly and carefully, she took her time.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Beyond the Colt of Duty: You are always staying behind so you can allow your friends to escape safely, you gain a +2 to combat skills when your health drops below 30%.