"Remind me why we're going into here again?" Grey asked me for the utmost time, staring down the borrowed scope of Ambush towards the destination I had set for us.

"Because a creepy voice from a creepy robot called watcher told us to." I told them yet again.

"And you trust this creepy voice from a creepy robot why?" Cait remarked, using a pair of binoculars to also eye down the facility ahead of us from our hill.

"Why trust a creepy Changeling with a love of destroying scientists?" I replied under my breath and sighed, "I'll do it myself if you guys are worrying about water radiation." my wings flared out, "I can fly, remember?"

Cait shook his head, "It's not that... It's just the large amount of water bears resemblance to a Aqualight pool."

Grey nodded in agreement, "Far too much I might add."

I shrugged a bit optimistic before being distracted by a shiny glint coming from the second floor of the half sunken but mostly intact factory, trying to peer at where it had come from I added, "Well that's even more reason why I should go alone then isn't it? I think I could infiltrate it from the roof and hit the second floor while ignoring the first entirely. Because no pony wants to describe what an Aqualight is, I'm assuming it has something to do with the large body of water claiming half the first floor.

Grey and Cait looked to each other then at me, "We're not going to convince you not to are we?" Cait sighed.

Scrapyard barked as I nodded in agreement, "Then take one of us with you at least," Grey frowned at the water once more. I didn't get it, what was so fearsome about water? "And stay away from anything glowing blue."

I sighed, "unless you wish to go in barely armed, you all are too heavy for me to lift up there."

Cait looked offended, "Hey you lifted me out of the radspid nest."

"That was going downward Cait. slowing down a controlled fall is a lot easier than lifting a hundred plus pounds of pony upwards." It was no secret that I was a bit below average on the strength scale. At most I could probably drag upwards my gear but an entire pony and his gear as well? I would be sore for a few days just trying to scale the several story high factory with Cait or Grey along if I could.

Grey sighed, "Do it your way then, just give out the loudest shout you can if you get in any trouble. We'll try to help."

"Alright." I agreed to it, with no intention of doing so. It was my risk, not theirs, though if I were to change my mind... Hmm...Might as well add something for both of our sakes, "If there is trouble I'll yell something unexpected like blueberry or something."

This seemed to appease the members of my party, and the look of worry eased considerably at least in Cait and Scrapyards face. Grey however still looked skeptical. But before he could add more to their side of the argument I gave them a wave of my hoof and bolted off into the air. The roof was on the fifth floor of the factory, but luckily for me there was a hole on the fourth, allowing me to skip an entire floor if I so desired. But I started on the roof anyway. It was usually better to work from the top or bottom into the opposite direction so it was far less likely to be flanked. While the objective was on the second floor, it was unknown what was above them so I did as Changelings everywhere would do.

I crawled through the cluttered rooftop. It was decorated with a few smokestacks on one end while the majority of the place was covered with old ventilation ducts that no longer worked. Near the smokestacks was the ancient door that connected the roof to the rest of the building but it had been set ajar and it took only a little pressure to dislodge it, but I had to be extra careful with moving it, unless I'd want it to go crashing down the stairs behind it. With a combination of magic, hooves, and wing power I managed to move the heavy door and put it down without making a heavy ruckus.

Sneaking slowly down the dark stairs I turned off my pipbuck's light so that it wouldn't reveal me. Though this also meant that I was completely blind while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Judging from what I'd heard only recently about them a glow would give an Aqualight away. So my main worries came in the form of whatever else could be living in this factory.

Of course keeping all of my guns loaded was a good thing, Both Ambush and my shotgun would be easy to draw out of their saddles as for the varmint rifle, it would take a little longer but that particular gun had it's own amount of problems starting to develop. But I loaded it just in case as well as my remaining small firearm which gave my bags more of the appearance of a tent frame. as each gun's butt stuck out of my bags. Now I had to note that I definitely needed a battle-saddle the next time I was in town, sure they were bulky and harder to aim when your guns are strapped to your sides, but being able to simply fire without having to draw would come in handy no doubt in the future.

As I reached the fifth floor's door I paused, drawing my gun and sending out my senses to scan the room beyond. Nothing, but I didn't quite trust it. Having dealt with Celestia forbid how many robots not days before I was rightfully so a bit paranoid of machines. They just didn't have emotions like ponies did and that made them immune to my senses. A fact that irritated me to no ends when scouting out someplace industrial. Just how did ponies do it? Living without being able to sense the emotions of others? I pressed against the door but of course, it was locked.

I sighed and got to work on the lock, taking out a bobby pin and the old screwdriver i had gotten from stable 103. It was quite the useful tool, the screwdriver. The ability to disassemble slave collars, ventilation systems, and other things as well as putting them back together certainly had been useful. Maybe if I got the drop on a robot I could see what else this thing could do. I rolled my eyes as my bobby pin snapped. Taking out another I continued on the door's lock until it gave a satisfying click and swung open revealing the hallway beyond.

The interior of the hallway was in slightly better condition, at least the floor was intact anyway. It had a carpet flooring that was so discolored and dirty I almost mistook it for a layer of pure dirt though. Decomposing paper documents littered the hallway giving me ample view of what once may have been important documentation of sales and purchases for the company back when it was still being used as a factory rather than it's current state of disrepair. There was only three doors, one of them being an elevator and another was the one I had just left. As I approached the door I paused and pressed my ear against the slowly rotting door. No noise, alright, time to enter. I pushed the door open, it gave a very small amount of resistance as it swung open the first few inches there was a sudden resistance against the door. Was something in the way?

I pushed a bit harder and it gave, a less than subtle click coming to my ears and the door continue to swing open revealing to me the now severed tripwire, "Oh." I managed to get out as the trap sprung and I was hit in the face with a heavy construction slab of metal that descended from the ceiling on it's own set of ropes.

Now I knew what being hit in the face with a steel pillar felt like. I was sent sprawling across the ground as my vision blurred with pain from the impact and I grasped at my nose with the edges of my hooves. The sensation failed to go away and between the blinding pain and the green blood that was spewing from my nostril confirmed my theory about my poor nose. I tried my best to set it back into position before drinking a potion. I had the intense urge to scratch my nose as the pain receded somewhat and my nose came back together. Still felt like as though a brute had hoofed me in the face but it was tolerable at least. I glared at the offending object, the makeshift battering ram of a trap and hissed.

After cutting the ropes keeping the trap together I continued into the room beyond, which was a office large enough to fit the overseer of stable 103's office twice over inside it and still have room to spare. The back wall was a ruined miniature library full of mostly broken shelves and burnt books. While the left and right walls had paintings that were worn beyond recognition. Decorating the center of the room was a large metal desk that wrapped around three sides of an old office chair that held the skeleton of whoever had run the place. On the skeleton's desk was a small 10mm pistol between it's hooves, a red keycard, and a broken terminal.

I took the first two, assuming that any of the security still worked, it would help bypass it, and didn't bother working with the broken terminal. The desk itself held more useless rotting documents and a few clips of ammo for the pistol which I gladly took. One could never have too much ammunition after all. I scanned through the burnt shelves but the only books that were intact was a log of the factories purchases, which were nothing remarkable by the way.

Moving back to the stairs I gave the destroyed trap a well deserved kick. I would like to say I walked down to the next floor afterwards but instead I winced and fell over holding the hoof. Once I had recovered and fostered a new hatred of that particular metal beam I decided to take it with me, if only to share my hatred of it with something else. It was heavy but I had an idea. Working my way to the fourth floor I found a radroach to drop it on as it tried to bite at my hooves and let it squish the unfortunate insect. Mission of sharing my anger with the beam acomplished I continued on to the fourth floor.

The majority of the fourth floor however wasn't nearly as lucky as the top floor. It was filled with enough holes that it looked like someone had riddled it with explosives and sunk the offices into the catwalks that were on the floors below the offices. Judging from all the skeletons, I guessed that whoever had done this did so with intent to massacre everypony here Though I began to have my doubts when I considered the intact nature of the walls and that some of the skeletons were wearing the remains of what once were wastelander scrubs. Also considering a majority of the buildings looked like a wrecking team had shot rockets at every inch of it and then dosed those remains with a flamer, I put togther that this place must of been used after the bombs fell for some time. The third floor however resembled more of an actual factory with a hanging room that connected it to the second and first floors by the way of stairs

Down below in the darkness of the factory I could see several small holes showing a small hole that was constantly flooding in water which eventually found itself going out of the opposite side of the building, or the side that we had seen. All of the water that wasn't around the entrance however was bright blue and glowing. The stairs from the first floor to the rest were severed a few inches above the glowing water.

I sneaked as quietly as I could down to the catwalk and into the hanging room, there was a terminal there luckily enough. With a couple of unicorn skeletons in the corner piled on top of one another. I began to type it up, using my pipbuck to spark back up the terminal and when it turned on it began emitting a horrible static like sound that made my mane stand on end. The Terminal crackled to life and I scanned the room quickly before attempting to download the multitude of files that popped up into a separate folder.

5 percent downloaded. The static sound was only growing worse, and as I scanned the room was it just me or was the lights growing brighter? As if they were growing closer? I readied my weaponry as best I could, unable to free the leg that my pipbuck had attached itself to as it downloaded the computer.

15 percent downloaded. I swore I had seen movement just outside, but when I had looked, there was nothing there, the catwalk looked a bit less stable than before though. My weapons left their bags in my Magical aura spreading the shotgun and both of my rifles to cover both exits and the window that showed the view below. The crackle was maddening, and I could of sworn I heard the terminal make a spiteful laugh.

25 percent downloaded. I hissed looking at terminal and how annoyingly slow it was being, "Hurry up..." I hissed at it while it droned on.

50 percent downloaded. Two large masses of glowing blue slime slowly came up both doorways and clogged them, a single purple orb in each one filled with intricate details that I did not recognize. The creatures made the equivalent of a smile that drooped as it lost shape and turned the attempt as a smile into a monstrous grimace large enough to eat somepony whole. I grabbed the computer with the rest of my hooves, considering that it was still locked to my pipbuck and flared my wings, matching their glow with my own lighter shade of blue. They paused at this, giving me an almost curious sort of look, or at least I assumed it was curious, the other image I got was it was hungry like a staving mare to a feast.

55 percent downloaded. I took off through the window, thanking the goddesses that whatever hit this place last had already taken out the glass windows making me only have to take a few scratches as I forced both myself and the heavy thing into the air and wheel around in the air between the second and third floors in order to see what I was dealing with. The Two blue slime like monsters were similar in shape to a volcano with a rounded top. Large globules of similar shaded substances rolled down the hill only to reemerge into the slime and push the rest of it up. The purple orbs rapidly followed my movements, locked onto me while the slime itself slowly moved towards me.

60 percent downloaded. With my rifle and shotgun between me and the first of the monsters I took aim and fired into the mass, trying to blind the thing with a shot from ambush and following up with a shot from the shotgun. The first bullet stopped several inches away and the buckshot barely decorated the surface. My jaw dropped as I saw the sniper bullet and shotgun pellets dissolve in the goop.

65 percent downloaded. The thing lunged forward with sudden momentum catching me off guard and I was barely able to avoid being caught by it as it's mouth widened considerably, causing me to use the computer as a heavy weight to duck under it's overhanging representation of a jaw and spin with it towards the first floor and barely manage to pull up in time to avoid another of the monsters that tried to rise out and consume me.

80 percent downloaded. I got a close up view as three more of the eyes formed and lunged out, they were multiplying at rapid pace and I let out a string of profanities as one managed to catch and tear out part of my tail it only let go because I unloaded the rest of my shotgun at point blank into the thing to disrupt it long enough to slip my tail out of the gelatin like Aqualight. The buzzing of my wings intensified as I tried rising up towards the stairs. They followed, like wolves on my tail.

90 percent downloaded. I screamed as I barreled through the doors and made the tight turns through the stairs thanking the heavens I wasn't a Pegasus. A pegasus pony wasn't quite as capable of making pin point turns. While they tended to be faster and more enduring thanks to their type of wings instead, a changeling body would allow tighter and more precise movements. A fact of which I exploited to it's fullest potential as the slime pursued me. But despite the advantage it still got closer and closer.

98 percent. Celestia damn it. One got my leg, the front one that wasn't attached to the computer. It was just a splash but already it burned I screamed as I reached the top, my leg was already beginning to burn. I breached the exit while shouting at the top of my lungs,"BLUEBERRY!"

100 percent. The computer disconnected and I rocketed away, the slime that had gotten out hissed as they experienced sunlight even as filtered as it was, and retreated back into the cover of the building, My exhausted wings gave their complaints and protests and stopped their flurried flapping. Cramped up. I began to fall. I panted, trying to force my wings to continue, why did I still feel like I was burning? I shut my eyes and braced for an impact.

It never came, when I opened my eyes I was hovering a few feet off the ground in Cait's familiar light blue glow. The unicorn himself was a few dozen feet away with a look of intense concentration on his face. After a moment he let go and rushed to me, Grey on the other hoof had attempted to catch the computer... Which was crashed several meters behind him completely out of the way. Grey shrugged and I managed to stand, favoring my uninjured hoof with the assistance of Cait. "You alright?" he asked.

I grimaced, raising my injured leg up for inspection. It was unlike any wound I had seen before. It was white for one, and oozing a sickly whitish gel that was furrowed an inch deep at least. And judging from the alarmed looks both Cait and Grey were giving me I guessed that was pretty bad. I swayed, was the world always spinning? I could hear their faint voices but I couldn't understand them, "Medic..." I muttered, oh wait I was the medic... Buck.

I passed out without further warning. Hitting the warm side of Cait with my head on the way down.

Xp Footnote: 35% until level up.

Note added: Aqualights: You can tell these creatures by the blue glow they emit, the gelatinous bodies that can contort into any shape, and the large rudimentary purple eye that each one has. These creatures thrive in dark irradiated areas and their main territory is just east of the city of Vanhoover itself. It is recommended that one passes through their territories only in daylight and avoid stepping in all shadows. The main weapons these creatures use is their invulnerability to traditional firearms and their extremely corrosive and poisonous slime that makes up their body. To combat an Aqualight you need either a large amount of fire or explosives. To repel an Aqualight you need either sunlight, or a lamp capable of emitting the same strength in solar rays. Such equipment is invaluable and usually the only bearers of such lamps belong to ponies known as: Lighters.

So far these have been unedited beyond my quick once over. If you spot any errors in the chapters, feel free to point them out in the comments of said chapter! Thanks, and be sure to check out the tumblr blog you can find on my profile for Aria web and the gang, we have fun answering mail!