I looked up to my instructor as he gave out team numbers, my nearby classmates and family were all giggling and talking amongst each other and only half paying attention in the large underground dome that was to be our gym class activity for today. "Hey 13." a voice to my left, familiar as 28 neared me, a wide grin on his face, trailing after him was one of our other brothers, 17, "Were teamed up again!" he said with utter glee. Of the three of us, he was often the most vocal of our little trio.

We had often been teamed up together due to our repeated success in gym. I was the fastest, being able to outrace my fellow classmates while 28 was the brains and 17 the strength of our group. Together we were unstoppable, or so I thought with utter and complete certainty since we had won the last five challenges in a row, while the screw ups before was when we were still figuring out how to work together. I nodded and 17 snorted dismissively. Though before we could continue chattering our instructor, an average sized pony in a lab coat that we all knew as Red Delicious, began giving us our instructions. A game of flash tag, half of the groups would be armed with small light batons that would leave a small glowing patch for a few minutes signifying that we were hit, and we weren't supposed to move a hoof from then on until the patch faded.

There was ways for the intended victims to win, though that involved trying to disarm the groups of their batons and using them against the opposing groups. This however was extremely risky. The other way to win was to run and hide and keep out of the enemy teams sight until the round was over, then the roles were reversed. We all frowned as we were assigned to the runners team first. 28 gestured for us to wait near the edge of the group and me ad 17 followed him as he was unusually talkative today, even for his standards, "So 13, whatcha think about the mare in the moon lesson?" he asked me with a goofy grin.

I responded by instinct, "What is there to think about it? Our goddess made a mistake and saw her ways after being blasted by those element-thingies."

"Elements of Harmony." 17 corrected with as few words as possible, he usually tried to remain mysterious-macho-pony whenever in public though the truth couldn't be further from the truth. After playing with him for the past year or so I had learned he was afraid of the few bugs, the dark, being in enclosed spaces... Just about anything that wasn't introduced by our instructor or each other really.

"Still didn't seem right to me, forcing her to change her mind like that anyway." I opened my mouth to comment but then Red had ordered for us to scatter, giving us a chance to retreat out of range of the other team before he would send them after us. We began to run towards one of the walls as a group as the other four groups of three also went in their own way. We started to scurry up some rubble that hadn't been around the last time I had looked and our wings buzzed, not quite big enough to allow us to fly, but it still helped us with climbing the rocky grey remains. "This way!" 28 yelled and I looked behind me to see the other 15 members of our class had turned into raiders, and Instructor Red had turned into a large mutated monster of a pony with a pumpkin for a face.

My confusion left me staying still for a few moments before 17 bit down on my tail and dragged me over the ridge. My absence of thought was replaced as we were forced to scramble down the mound and glided down a tunnel through a stable door that was swinging shut. 28 frowned as the door stopped half way shut and the raiders were seen on the ridge. Oh celestia no, we were going to get caught!

17 battered at the panel that was supposed to shut the door, trying to heave the switch to shut it but after he had accomplished it the door remained inert. No no no! I scanned around but found nothing that could help, 28 looked at me, a sad look on his face and gestured towards the door, "Run 13." he said, "I'll hold them off..."

The look on his face brook no argument and for some reason my body obeyed, trusting him and 17 went with me. The blood curdling yells as the first raiders closed in nearly giving me a heart attack, I looked back as we were running away and I could see 28's sad smile. Why was he so sad? His eyes glowed and I was forced to look away as everything in that direction went white. 17 was still with me though as we ran down the metal hallway, now we were running away from the ever closing white light. It reminded me so much of something, but I was confused. None of this made sense. One second we were in a game of Flash tag, another we were running for our lives.

I thought about how I must of been going insane, I looked back to 17 to comment when there was a black barrel of an submachine gun in my face, 17 was grown now and so was I. He pulled the trigger in my face and I heard the click. Everything faded to black.

I had the sensation of falling momentarily, and wondered where I was. This was far different than anything else I had witnessed, and slowly I became aware of the sensation of being watched. Whoever designed this world deserved to be smacked upside the head for all the randomness. Oh wait, that was me right? I didn't comment. Slowly I became aware of the sensation of being stared at and I searched around, but didn't find the source. Soon enough I found the ground back under me as my subconscious messed with me again. the floor was pure stone and slowly I heard the slow sounds of hooves echoing across the world of darkness. My eye scanned around for the source but I first became aware of the red eyes.

"Who's there?!" I shouted across the cave at the shadowy figure.

"Arrriaaaaaa..." A voice said, the eyes grew brighter and larger, "Arrriiiaaaaaaaaa..."

My voice caught in my throat, and I fell onto my tail, crushing it beneath me as I started to shrink before the menacing eyes, "Ariaaaaa...?" the voice started again and then the voice barked.

Wait barked? I blinked a few times as everything faded and slowly turned bright green. "Aria? Wake up already." the familiar voice of Cait came again and my eyes dizzily came into focus. Why was I so sore? My thoughts recollected themselves from when I had last been conscious, "The building exploded..." I muttered under my breath, as I took in my surroundings.

We were back in the hotel room, Cait was standing over me with a concerned looking Scrapyard tugging on my tail, "Oh, good you're awake." Cait muttered, "Quite the explosion that was," he continued on, not giving me a chance to speak, "Seriously impressive miniature megaspell explosion there, found you after the blast shortly afterwards, your leg was dislocated but we fixed it." That would explain why my leg was merely sore instead of screaming in pain.

"Thanks." I muttered, and pressed my hooves against my own forehead, "Got any headache medicine?" I asked him warily, and he shook his head, still smiling.

He prodded my side, "So how did your adventure go?" he asked me cheerfully and I replied, my throat dry, "How about we discuss over a drink?" I groaned, and he nodded and obliged, leaving the room momentarily before coming back with a pair of sparkle colas.

I nodded appreciatively and took a tentative chug out of the cola, my pipbuck momentarily ticked but the warm feeling it gave me was better than usual. Slowly I began to explain what had happened at the facility but I described the Ghouls as feral zombies instead of as the sentient versions. They were worse though I don't know why I lied. Guess I thought he would of been upset, he didn't quite understand what had went on in Stable 103. Though when I described Maul and what I knew about him his expression became unreadable, it was disturbing but then his smile returned, but it seemed oddly forced. I managed to also describe the rest of my escape and the mare I had run into without incident in a rush though, and then it was Cait's turn to explain what had happened.

Apparently Cait had wandered into nothing but robotic security and boring office rooms in which he had gathered a large supply of pencils and coffee cups as well as other useful materials from the robots themselves. The way he described it was similar to that of a foal having the time of his life tearing up a small army of paper zebras. An hour later or so he had run across a room with a small group of modified mister Handy's who were focused on their terminals. Apparently by then he was captured by overwhelming force and tied up with spare wires when the orange sentries had attacked.

Cait had merely stated that he had grown bored of being a captive as the rest of the robots left the room for some reason and only left a grey one who was having a constant overreaction to everything around it. When I asked how he had escaped he simply stated he had grabbed his sword with magic and easily cut through his bonds. That was when I had heard the intercom about the self destruct sequence. Then he had run and caught up with Scrapyard and bolted. They had assumed that I had already escaped at that point and made it, by my estimate, out several minutes before I did.

After the explosion they had found me in the remains of a building with my radiation meters slowly climbing and they drug me out before I died of radiation poison but it was a close thing. Apparently I was nearing the final death line but they had forced enough rad-aways down my throat to bring it back down enough to drag my limp form to Zem for examination and he had purged the rest of me with a few of his herbal brews.

We exchanged sheepish grins before he also muttered, "Seems like we blew up a building on accident though, Geary's going to be pissed."

"Not exactly," I told him, with my limbs still weak and my magic finally starting to regenerate with all the other ponies nearby, still I felt like I couldn't move from the heavenly feeling of the bed, "Mind bringing me my saddlebags?"

He obliged, bringing my worn army bag to my hooves, the poor thing was frayed and dirty, and strained at the seems, the past week hadn't been kind on it at all if ever. The combination of events that it had been through had left it with enough dirt, dried blood, and ash to turn it's once dark forest green covers brown. I made a note to give it a firm wash before we headed out again and began to dig through my bag, the contents were mixed up, probably from how much jostling that was done in it and the fact that I had to dump them out back with maul in order to clear out a few of the health potions that had been broken and hurriedly shove the rest back in.

Luckily however with the recent gear I pulled out my barding which had been placed on the top of the pile, something predictable considering I wasn't wearing it currently and dug through it's pockets. Then I found what I was looking for. Located within was where I had put Project MISS, the black device was still small as two pencil widths and a chip in thickness but it was luckily still intact. My barding however couldn't look further from the truth. It seems hanging around Cait was rubbing off on me. My poor stealth barding was full of more holes than there were in my legs. With several dozen cuts from my brief fight with Maul.

I presented it to Cait and told him where I had got it and he looked at me with glee, before wrapping me up with a large hug while going, "Woohoo, it wasn't a waste after all!"

It was tight, far too tight, "Cait..."I gasped, "Can't... Breathe!"

He let me go with a sheepish grin and cheered, loudly, but not quite as loud as before, a voice upstairs yelled at him through the walls, "Quiet down, I'm trying to get some sleep!"

He sheepishly grinned and lowered the cheering to a smaller level, still easily heard across the room but bearable. At least the neighbors didn't shout at him. I rolled my eyes and flitted my wings out, stretching them as I gestured for him to sit down beside me as I made room for him. His smile never left as he took up the spot and I rummaged through the rest of the things I had gathered over the course of our adventures and took out the EFS II's before passing them to him, "EFS twos." I told him, earning a surprised raise of an eyebrow from him. Why was that charming? I thought the question to nopony in particular though he merely examined it and gave a low whistle, "What?" I asked as no response came in haste.

"Good condition, and this is some serious equipment." he told me, flipping one open somehow with his hoof, I didn't understand how he could do that so easily but I noticed the screen inside was a deep blue grid, "Worth a fortune for ponies as they provide a much larger radius to scan and can tell the exact coordinates on a two dimensional plane rather than a flat line and a bar. With proper calibrating... " He had lost me at dimensional.

He went into mathematics and science talk for a good ten more seconds before he noticed by slightly glazed over blank stare. He blushed in an dorky oops-too-much-information kind of way before brushing one of his curly green hairs out of his face before speaking in a language I could understand, "It can tell where enemies and allies are in a large radius to the operator." he told me and my eyes stopped having the glazed over sheen as I understood what he had said.

He smiled and what comments on it I had was stuck in my throat, instead I drug a pillow out from next to me and rested my face in it, "Glad to know it's useful." I replied within the confines of pillow-y induced goodness. I left my leg out for him to mess with the notes on my pipbuck and explained, "Got a few more things in my bag for you to sort through if you want." I lifted the Disc that was similar to Maul's out and said, "Keeping this though, Maul had some and it seemed useful at the time, just need to figure out how it works." I would of checked my notes but I had already surrendered my pipbuck covered foreleg to Cait's reach, and he covered either side with his front hooves while pulling the different things out of my bag and starting to read through them.

Minutes turned to hours as he sorted through and with the early morning rays started to come through the window sill he started to yawn, pausing as he finally finished sorting between what needed to be sold and what we wanted to keep. In the end a strange looking pistol that had no ammo joined my metal disc as well as a modification for Cait's Zebra sword and some devices Cait had called 'Stealth Bucks'. The other pile was much more impressive however. Seems like I had grabbed a lot of junk to be sold instead of anything we could use, though Cait made a note of which objects needed to be sold where, considering a few of the things I had collected were apparently good for a medical science which meant Zem was going to lose some caps if they sold as well as Geary and any traveling merchants we came across if we accidently drove one of them broke.

I pulled my pipbuck away as I noticed Cait sway and with a yawn he passed out, busy guy. I smiled softly to him, noticing Scrapyard curled up on the opposite bed. He leaned into me and I let him, turning my pipbuck light off and letting the dim blue glow coming from behind me bathe everything in a calm light. Wait a second... What blue light?

My wings fluttered and so did the light, what? I looked behind me. My wings... they were glowing. Buck me with Celestia's forelegs and toss me through Luna's plot, what in the world had happened to my wings?! I bolted for the bathroom, shutting it behind me as I looked in the dirty pre-war mirror at myself. Yep, my wings were glowing. Why were they glowing though? I mean I knew a danger about radiation was a side effect of mutation, which was the only thing I could think caused it but this was strange, even for my relatively short life. I also had to complain about the color, "Why blue?" I muttered under my breath.

Why couldn't it be red or yellow, or something. I flapped my wings experimentally before folding them back under their protective slits. Luckily the light went with them covering everything in momentarily blinding darkness as I thought over it, alright calm Experiment 19- I mean Aria, so your wings are glowing. That's nothing to panic about right? Right? Oh who am I kidding, I panicked.

Xp Footnote: 75% until level up.

Trait Gained: Firefly: Your recent dose of balefire radiation had mutated your already weakened scientifically altered genetic structure and as a result have given your wings the ability to glow blue in the dark. No don't ask somepony to try to remove the glow, we've already tried. As a result however, while you suffer radiation poisoning of any degree your limbs slowly regenerate in combat. The higher the radiation is also the faster you can regenerate these said crippled limbs. This also acts as both a stronger light source than your pipbuck in dark areas but as a result completely ruins any attempt at stealth when trying to fly around with them at night. However you can still disguise them as normal wings with magic for a bit of an extra cost if you really need to I suppose.

Next Chapter: Chapter 16: Firefly Getaway Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 35 Minutes