I left him.

A rational part of my mind wants to remind me that he volunteered, but that logic is far too much of a lie, even for me. I’m in command of this squad... I have to make the calls, and I picked the easy path. I could have forbidden it, I could have thought of something else, but his offer gave me a chance to save Tailwind and myself. I hate that despite everything I’d thought I stood for, I left him the instant it proved to be the militarily sound decision. Tailwind and I survived, while his sacrifice was “worth” it. We may have lived, but we left behind far more than just a dear friend in that shack.

Had I known he loved me? Of course I knew. So did Tailwind, and in private we’d discussed the thought of maybe, someday…

At any rate, that thought would never come to fruition. We’d flaunted our relationship in front of him, enjoying his awkward moments whenever he saw us being intimate. In the end, we’d simply ran out of time. We took life for granted and played with his feelings. It isn’t fair, he didn’t deserve it, but this is how it turned out, and it is far too late for us to mend those wounds.

It was too soon to properly mourn, the emotional wounds too fresh. Not to mention the immediacy of getting Tailwind to safety. So at the time, I bottled up my thoughts and focused on placing one hoof in front of the other, simply trying to protect the mare who is all I have left of my world...

—Snap Roll’s Journal

The three mile trek towards the ‘waystation’ was grueling. Had we the option to fly, the trip would have taken almost no time at all, but with the howling crosswinds, unrelenting snow and Tailwind’s injuries we were forced to rely on our hooves to get us there. Somewhere along the way I’d found a cleft in a rock face that shielded us from the wind enough for me to change into the second set of winter wraps we’d stolen. It was… awkward trying to fit my wings in, but I managed. The added insulation helped greatly, but by the time we crested a ridge and came upon a small collection of dilapidated buildings, Tailwind was already edging towards hypothermia, with myself not far behind.

There were two rows of buildings, about eight in all, leading up to what seemed to be a train platform with an ancient rail line stretching off into the distance to the south. The buildings were varied enough to give me the impression that each had once served a distinct purpose in the settlement once upon a time. Had I to guess, I couldn’t imagine more than a couple dozen ponies inhabiting the place even in its heyday. The weather was certainly nothing to brag about.

Were I to hazard another guess, I would say the settlement seemed to have once served as an end-of-the-line train stop. Or perhaps not the end, at least. It did seem that the railway might have continued straight through the small settlement long ago, with the tracks simply having been dismantled in the hundreds of years since it had last been really inhabited. I could imagine the metal in the tracks themselves being considered valuable in the wasteland — we had a similar mindset in the Enclave of re-using available materials.

As we descended the shallow slope into the settlement, I glanced through the map on my TFD. Now, I had expected the map to be out of date — cartography had definitely taken a side-seat to simple survival in the time since the Great War, and that was understandable. What disconcerted me was that despite clearly being from before even the war, the settlement was nowhere to be seen on my TFD’s map. Not even the rail line showed up. I plotted and labeled the spot with an idle glance through the menus, simply naming it “Waystation.” It became the sole point of interest on the otherwise bare map, save for a few hoof-drawn notes from the briefing that morning. I was highly suspect of the validity of even those notes by that point.

There was no movement or light from any of the buildings, not even the telltale darting of shadows in windows. As we entered the settlement, I muttered as much to myself as to keep Tailwind conscious. “Surely even the dirtponies mark their buildings for passersby...”

Tailwind murmured something in response, though her voice was too weak for me to hear over the storm. She leaned into me a bit more, as if trying to warm up through physical contact alone. It was laughably far from enough considering how cold it was, and the temperature was only dropping. We needed to get to shelter, and fast.

Looking for any sort of obvious medical building proved entirely fruitless. One of the first buildings we came upon was a saloon that seemed to have been the site of quite the gun battle once upon a time, judging from the bullet holes coating the exterior and the broken letters above the entryway. I figured it was a possible place to take refuge for the night, and led Tailwind inside. As it turned out, the inside hadn’t fared any better.

Broken tables and smashed chairs littered the interior of the saloon, and not a single window was entirely intact. I could practically smell the reek of alcohol residue emanating from the wreckage of the bar. Peculiarly, a solitary pool table off in the corner seemed perfectly serviceable, though I couldn’t see a trace of any pool cues or most of the balls. I found myself wondering what sort of pony would take a pool cue or an eight ball, but dismissed the thought as irrelevant as I continued searching through the ruined building. A wartime poster was tacked to one of the walls that had apparently managed to stay intact until then. It hung by a single point of adhesive as it flapped in the wind, and it bore the image of a pony I knew well. She had a rainbow coloured mane, cyan coat and defiant magenta eyes. She was wearing a variant of the same powered armour Nosedive had worn, the cloud and lightning bolt of her cutiemark painted on the flank. Transposed beside her, a trio of like armoured pegasi flew in formation as a heading declared, “Keep the skies of Equestria safe, join the Equestrian Air Force Today!” The ministry mares had always been made to strike powerful images for the propaganda posters, and she was no exception. Ministry mare Rainbow Dash, one of the wartime heroes of Equestria. A gust of wind came through the building’s destroyed rear exit, and I realized we would have no shelter there. We might have been able to close off a room deeper into the building, but without a means of heat, we would freeze over the long night. As we moved on, the last of whatever adhesive held the recruiting poster in place finally gave way, and it was borne out of sight by the harsh wind.

Most of the buildings along the strip yielded similar results, though none were as badly shot-up as the saloon. However, a two story building with the words “Sheriff’s Office” emblazoned upon its face below a bronze six-pointed star had a full set of intact windows and doors. The paint even looked like it hadn’t been simply rotting away for two hundred years. I figured it was as good as we were going to get, and we were kind of out of other options at that point. Giving Tailwind a nudge with my muzzle, I commented, “Almost there, Tailwind. Stay awake, you hear me?” I was practically the only thing holding her upright at that point.

“Still here, Chief.” She mumbled back as she glanced up at me. “Gonna turn ourselves in? Heh…” She smiled thinly. It seemed like she wanted to laugh at her own bad joke, but didn’t have the strength for it.

I grimaced at the thought of walking into a sheriff's office dressed as some hooligan gang, but we didn’t really have an alternative. I led Tailwind to the door, considering briefly if I wanted to even try and be stealthy about entering the building. The thought was quickly dismissed in favour of just getting the hell out of the cold, and I shouldered the door open while helping Tailwind inside. The first floor was what I could imagine passed for standard fare for a professional building on the surface, if distinctly less destroyed than I’d expected. A reception desk sat off to one side of the room, with a hallway extending straight away from the entrance. About a dozen paces in, I could see a pair of corridors branching off of the main route, though they were blind corners from my perspective. Sandbags had been liberally used to turn the reception desk into a micro-fortress, and set up to make a shoulder-high barrier beside each of the branching corridors. Somepony had worked quite hard to make the entryway a killzone, and we were standing dead center in it. Surprisingly, the building smelled almost clean, though I could smell a lingering trace of smoke. It was actually warm inside, and Tailwind let out a small, relieved sigh as I helped her lean up against the reception desk. I whispering quietly to her, “Stay here for a minute, seems like it might be uninhabited, but I’ll check it out.”

I gently placed my hoof on her cheek, waiting for her to look up at me. Her beautiful emerald green eyes were unfocused, but she managed to nod and respond, her voice already sounding better now that we were out of the storm. “Yeah... I’ll just hang out here. Don’t worry, Chief.”

I’d hardly taken a few steps when I heard the ominous sound of an action being cocked, the challenge obvious if the owner waited until I was inside to ready their weapon.

They have the drop on me, I don’t know how many there are, and there is categorically no cover in this entryway... time to improvise.

Cursing under my breath, I replied while staying well away from the pistol at my hip. “We don’t mean any harm. We’re just seeking shelter from the storm.”

A mare’s voice responded from deeper into the building, presumably from the corridor down the hall and on the left. “Oh, is that so...?” Her tone was practically dripping with venom. The voice’s owner was an off-white coated unicorn mare dressed in leather barding, levitating a nasty looking bullpup style assault rifle beside her as she emerged from the corridor I’d guessed she was in, moving to stand behind the sandbag barrier. She didn’t take cover, but from her perspective I suppose she could have taken me without needing to. Her black mane was braided in a practical manner that still managed to be attractive. “Don’t mean no harm, that I’m doubtful of.” She couldn’t have been older than her mid-teens, but she magically held her weapon with a confidence that spoke of a deep familiarity with weaponry.

“There’s no need for this to get violent,” I replied as casually as I could, “We’ll move on once we’ve warmed up enough to travel again.”

“Funny how you scouts seem to do that, yet a bigger pack of not-so-friendly ponies always seems to follow don’t they? It would save me and my ilk a lot of trouble to just put you scum down right here.” She accused, leveling the rifle at my chest.

I glanced to my side, fearful that she’d seen my wings, to see only the reassuring white of the barding I was wearing. I rapidly realized several things. First, the mare actually believed I was with the group that previously owned that barding, and second, that the “Redeye” group was both larger than I’d expected and seemed to be rather passionately disliked by other surface dwellers... which would make sense, if what the mare had said about slavers had any truth to it.

That in mind, I feigned surprise at her accusations, “Oh shit, the barding... we’re not Redeyes!” I stammered as I removed the hood and face protector, letting my mane fall free. “We caught a pair of them by surprise and managed to take them out, but got caught out by the storm.” I tried to put as much sincerity as I could into my reply.

“Redeyes...?” She seemed to find the way I’d said it offputting. I found myself wondering where the name actually stemmed from — I had assumed it was just the name of the group. Were they named after an individual? I made a mental note to find out. “What exactly are you then?” The mare asked with a skeptical look.

“They’re down right stupid is what they are!” Yelled an older unicorn with an identical off-white coat as he stepped into view from the corridor opposite the mare’s position, saving me from having to reply without any real answer thought up. “Anypony worth their bit knew a storm was brewing four days prior, yet these dipshits didn’t even have their own barding.” He looked my way, wearing a look I could only describe as displeased. “Had to go an’ steal it from some slavers. Daft.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘bout how I would put it as well, pa.” The mare replied, her rifle still trained on me.

The stallion continued walking closer, passing his daughter and the sandbag position she was behind to come to a halt a couple paces in front of me. “Pretty weak story if you ask me.”

I stammered out a response, the stallion standing above me reminding me all too vividly of a pissed off NCO. “We were on a scavenging run, found a downed Vertibuck and a bit of neat stuff to fence,” I gestured towards my still holstered energy pistol as I mentioned it, “Then started to head back when we ran into the previous owners of this barding.”

The buck paused and a thin smile curled its way up his lip, just a little. “I see...” he concluded, seeming to enjoy letting the declaration remain as vague as possible. A moment later, he straightened up, yelling “All right, that settles it!”

Grimacing as I anticipated the worst, I hopped a half step back into a low crouch, a move that had become muscle memory to ready myself to take flight... a moment before realizing my wings were still trapped within my own disguise.

The stallion, watching this, declared with a smile, “They’re gonna stay with us till this here storm passes!”

What?

“What?!” Stammered the mare, clearly as surprised as I was.

Suppressing my look of bafflement, I straightened up as I replied, “Thank you very much, sir.” I gave a short bow of my head as I did.

The older stallion chuckled, waving a forehoof dismissively. “I ain’t been knighted there, missy.” Turning to his daughter, he added, “Grace, grab a pair of splints and a healing potion for her wounded friend.”

The young mare stumbled back in surprise, her rifle finally pointing somewhere other than my chest, “Whaa? Oh fine, I’m on it, Pa.” She groused, before disappearing into the same corridor that her father had emerged from.

The immediate threat to our lives avoided, I trotted over to help Tailwind to her hooves. As I did, I caught sight of the older stallion looking our way, an unreadable expression on his face. He beckoned us to follow him, and as he turned away I caught a glimpse of a black knight emblazoned on his flank. Catching my gaze, he commented with a smile as he cantered out of sight, “The name’s Chess.”

He didn’t exactly give us a chance to respond in kind, and we hastily followed. He led us to a set of stairs, hidden from view of the entryway. The cleanliness of the building continued to strike me as being an oddity down here. I mean, the entire rest of the town was practically destroyed. Chess apparently wasn’t in the mood to wait around for us to follow, and I caught sight of his tail disappearing around the side of the first switchback of the stairs. We followed at our own pace, Tailwind leaning heavily on my side as we ascended behind him.

The stairs continued zig-zagging upwards — presumably towards an attic — but our destination seemed to be on the second level. As we left the stairwell, we entered what seemed to be a living room of sorts. There was a large hearth blazing happily away, heating up the building so very nicely. A considerable amount of firewood was stacked in a sconce near it, what looked like enough to keep the fire burning for days, at least. Newer-looking rugs and pillows were scattered around the room, and off to one side there was an impromptu kitchen, complete with fridge and an oven. Several doors lead to other areas of the building, presumably bedrooms and storage rooms of some sort. Chess had just entered one of the doors on the far side of the room, leaving it slightly ajar behind him. Tailwind and I waited by the stairs for the moment, unsure whether he wanted us to follow… And because standing by the hearth just felt so damn good. I could feel my feathers again!

The noise of a pony descending the stairs behind us scattered my thoughts on the warmth of the fire. I turned, seeing a midnight blue earth pony with a thick grey mane as he descended the same set of stairs we’d just left. His build was… well, I would come to determine it as “average” for an earth pony, but at the time I’d thought he seemed to be more solidly built than most of the pegasi I’d known, Nosedive excepted. A cutiemark of a hardcover book resting upon a red cloth, closed, with a trio of bits resting upon it decorated his flank. The rifle slung across his back lent credence to my suspicion that they had had a spotter in the attic, presumably using some window or another to keep watch. All in all, he gave off a vibe of being almost overwhelmingly normal... except for his eyes. They were of a soft grey tone and seemed… distant, as if focusing on something I couldn’t see. Without context, I paid his expression no heed for the time being.

Returning from the room wearing a white medical coat, Chess addressed the unusually quiet buck, “Don’t worry, they’re guests. Uninvited, but welcome nonetheless.” To which he received only a nod in response. Turning back to Tailwind and myself, Chess announced, “Got some medical supplies, gonna fix you gals up right and proper.”

Seeing the coat, I piped up with the interest, grasping on to medical knowledge as something we might have in common. “You’re a doctor?”

“Hah, doctor?” He replied as he choked back a laugh, “I ain’t got no schoolin’.”

Oh dear.

I glanced at the earth pony to see his reaction to that, but he’d already disappeared into one of the adjoining rooms without a sound. I managed a light chuckle, “Should I be worried, Chess?”

“Bah, just get yer flanks in here,” Chess tossed his head dismissively.

Following the older stallion into the impromptu clinic, I saw a plush couch along one wall easily big enough for two ponies, with a set of leg braces and a healing potion sitting on a small operating table next to it. Of the mare who’d evidently put them there, there was no sign. Sitting against the far wall was a collection of cabinets holding containers with many medical supplies I recognized — more purple vials of magical healing potions, Med-X with both IV drips and auto-injectors, a decent supply of magical bandage, and a few orange packets of RadAway. However there were other small, glass-fronted containers, filled with a bewildering array of... well, drugs. Vials of hefty looking yellow-orange pills sat beside what seemed to be inhalers of some kind, while another shelf held a mildly terrifying array of large injectors with varying colours of liquid inside, all carefully organized. They were all as meticulously arranged as the mundane supplies I was familiar with, but very much foreign to me. There was a substantial lock on the cabinet, not that I intended to peruse his supplies without invitation anyways.

Before I could take a closer look at the assortment of medical supplies, the grey aura of Chess’ magic encased the door, closing it behind us as the stallion turned to face Tailwind and myself. “So girls, when were you planning on telling us you were Enclave, hmm?”

Were we that obvious? Damn.

My ears drooped. In a few minutes, he would have been doing medical work on Tailwind, and I would have been in a position to control the situation when he did inevitably find out. As it was, it said a lot about his character that he not only hadn’t drawn a weapon but was still willing to hear us out. "Well, the plan had been to find a doctor and bank on patient confidentiality being high on his list of personality traits. We truly don't mean you or yours any harm. My name’s Snap Roll, and she’s Tailwind.” I paused a second before adding, “How did you know?”

He barked a short, humourless laugh. “Almost nopony down here knows what a Vertibuck is, even if they were to see one.” He gestured to the pistol still sheathed on my foreleg, “And that pistol looks far too well cared for to be a salvaged from a wreck.” He took on a more serious tone as he sat down in a chair off to one side of the impromptu operating area. “Tell me then why y’all are down from your pretty perch, can’t imagine what ya would want down here.”

“That would be classified Enclave intelligence you’re asking me to divulge,” I declared, the last of my conviction lending weight to my words, before tiredness at the day’s events caught up with me... not to mention the mild hypothermia. “We were looking for any sign of a griffon forward operating base in the area, as well as any sign of some ‘Redeye’ fellow or his gang.” I sighed, letting my posture slump. I discovered I was almost embarrassed by how bad our information about what we were up against was. “Well, no sign of a griffon FOB, but we found plenty of Redeye. Shot us down. Had griffon support and... everfree winds, something that looked for all the world like one of the Princesses of old, all on our crash site within an hour.” I closed my eyes, “Our... partner bought us time to get out with our lives.”

The old buck’s features grew tired, that of somepony who’d been through much in his life. I’d seen the same look worn by veterans of the Pegasi-Griffon War. “I’ll do what I can for you two, it’s what I do. But you know you can’t go back up there now. You’re stuck in this world you and yours helped make.” Opening his eyes, he stared straight into mine, “And don’t count on anypony else down here givin’ you as much as we have.”

I nodded, quietly absorbing his words. It was unfortunate, but not surprising that we were hated. I helped Tailwind over to the operating table, giving support as she climbed up and laid her head upon a pillow.

Chess stood up from his chair, helping Tailwind get herself situated on the operating table before carefully measuring out a small dose of Med-X and applying it. Despite his assertion as to not having been properly schooled, his movements were confident enough that I figured there was much he could teach me about medical treatment.

No schooling, indeed.

I conversed with him as I lounged on the couch, bundled under a blanket that had been provided. “So about the others here... how would they react if they found out about us? And is there any particularly bad blood towards cloudfolk?” Realization hit me that he might have some information on my actual mission objectives, almost forgotten after the events of the day, “Oh, and who is this Redeye character anyways? Seems to have a fairly well equipped gang with the resources to afford griffons and...” I paused, frowning as I realized I didn’t really have the vocabulary to properly describe what I’d seen. “A… Goddess?” The word made my mouth itch with how uncomfortable it was to admit, but I didn’t exactly have another term of reference for what She was.

“Most everyone hates your type down here. Grace is a good gal, wouldn’t do ya harm, and Bernard is too emotionally scarred to be aggressive towards anypony not trying to kill him.” I made a mental note of the other buck’s name. As Chess spoke, he continued working. His horn lit with its soft grey aura, and I saw the same form over Tailwind, as if outlining her. I didn’t have anything to base it on, but the way he looked at her was as if reading data off an EFS. It struck me that he must have been using a medical diagnostic spell, and I was incredibly jealous. I mean, if I could pick one unicorn trick to be able to do, a diagnostic spell would make my side-role as a medic so much easier. I was so entranced as he worked that it caught me off guard when he continued. “As for Redeye, he runs his own mini empire, complete with munitions factories and the biggest army on the ground since the bombs fell. Them wing’ed ones ain’t no goddesses — they’re monsters.” He dropped his voice low as he closed off his spell and looked me in the eyes. “Cold, heartless monsters, and they’ve allied themselves with Redeye ever since he started spouting somesuch nonsense about ‘Unity,’ and ‘making all ponies equal’.”

Oh. That definitely counts as intel.

He resumed attending Tailwind, content to leave me with that remark. He delicately began removing Tailwind’s barding, starting with the straps across her chest. In response, she whinnied, “Ooooh Chief, a stallion’s undressing me... weeeeee...”

Good to see the Med-X is taking effect.

“Little young ‘fer me there, missy.” He replied with a distracted shake of his head. Her wings popped free as he peeled off the last of her barding, then began applying the set of leg braces.

“Oh no, he’s tying me up... oh nooooo...” Tailwind half heartedly flailed her legs, eliciting an almost paternal frown from Chess.

Wait, that’s not the Med-X. That’s just Tailwind being Tailwind.

“Oh hush, we both know you enjoy being tied up, Tail.” I cooed in her general direction, enjoying her melodramatic discomfort. I took the opportunity to snuggle further into the cushions of the couch. They were nothing like the comfort of cloud pillows, mind you, but I took what I could get after almost dying of exposure. And to be completely honest, they came a close second.

“Now now girls, this be a doctors’ office, not a brothel.” Chess chastened, finishing with the leg braces.

Pouting in his general direction, I resumed lounging as Chess returned to his work in relative silence, humming a soft tune as he did. Minutes passed, with all present seemingly lost in their own thoughts. Finishing up with having Tailwind drink the last of a healing potion, Chess declared "There ya go ma'am. You'll be good in a couple o' days, just don’t do nothin fancy."

In lieu of a reply, I heard soft snoring coming from the operating table as Tailwind hugged the pillow her head had been resting on, already fast asleep. Chess’ horn flared to life once again. He carefully lifted the sleeping mare and set her down on the couch. I admit I was a little entranced at how smoothly he could manipulate… well, her. He then draped a blanket over her with his magic, a wistful smile on his features.

Curious, I inquired in a soft voice as I started gently brushing Tailwind’s mane, “How long do you think this storm will last?”

Setting his instruments down on a side table, Chess turned to me and replied “At worst a week, probably four days now though. Well past your contact time if’n I’m not mistaken.”

I sighed, having feared as much. “When I had heard about this waystation, I had been hoping we’d be able to access one of the...” I paused, considering whether or not the average wastelander would actually know what the MASEBS towers do, before deciding to play it safe; “Broadcasting towers the DJ down here has been using. There isn’t one, is there? It would look like a tall, white tower, reaching into the clouds.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry to say... there isn’t one. Not within a days’ trot at any rate, and you aren’t gonna be flying anywhere with winds like this, no matter how strong a flier you think you are.”

I bet he'd like to see how strong a flier I think I am.

I mentally clamped down on the instinct to snark at that particular comment. He was sheltering us, and he was probably right at any rate. Even if he didn't know me, he knew the environment, and I'd be a fool to disregard that advice... as bruising to my ego as it was.

Another topic had come to mind, a change of conversation direction in order to avoid that particular confrontation. “Well, I hadn’t wanted to think about it, but... we might need a source of bits if we’re gonna be here as long as it looks like we might.” I raised a hoof to my muzzle in thought, before concluding “There isn’t any chance you know of one, is there? A job?”

Chess let out a hearty laugh, “Oh girl, you got some adaptin’ to do. How ‘bouts when morning comes you head out with Bernard? He’s running an errand for me and I’d appreciate you going along.”

By the time the sun rose above the horizon — that is to say, the wasteland went from pitch black and snowy to a dim, grey light… and snowy — we were already on the road. Needless to say, the storm hadn’t calmed any during the night. As we headed out, Bernard and I had been struck by the continued howling winds, driving snow and fierce cold as we were once again enveloped by the storm’s embrace. Visibility was on average about twenty paces, getting better or worse depending mostly on varying wind speed. I’m sure my eyes would have been hurting a lot more from the brightness if the snow goggles I’d appropriated along with the barding hadn’t proved so useful. Heading out around midday made the weather closer to bearable, or at least not threatening to actively kill us by exposure alone, but that would change once the sun started to set. Of that I had little doubt. We were on our way to fix what Chess had vaguely described as a “surveillance probe” he’d situated in an abandoned bunker complex an hour or so north of the waystation.

My questions about the nature of the probe itself had largely gone unanswered, Chess apparently preferring to let me stew on what little bits of information he gave me. When I asked if it could transmit radio waves, he replied “Nope, it’s a closed circuit, lass. Don’t want nosy turkeys hackin’ my defence works!” I made the connection that “Turkeys” must be the popular slang for pegasus down here, as I recalled one of the Redeye sentries using the term the day before.

I guess it’s fair turnabout considering the names we call them... though ‘dirtponies’ definitely has more of a ring to it.

The “road” we trotted lead straight north out of the settlement before beginning a series of slow bends as it navigated its way through the hills and valleys. Realistically, it was less of a road and more of a built up and hardened route that was moderately easier to traverse than the snow around it... but I’m not exactly the best judge of what does or does not constitute a road, as I had literally not needed one before in my life. It was just so… pedestrian.

My wings were still uncomfortably contained within the Redeye winter wraps, and Bernard had put on a drab coloured winter jacket that looked like it kept out the cold rather effectively. His long rifle was slung over his back, and his lack of a battle saddle led me to believe (correctly, as it turned out) that he hoof fired the rather substantial weapon. Strapped to his foreleg was a pistol I’d managed to determine was of the 10mm variety.

During the trot North, Bernard remained silent, though every now and then he would cast the occasional look in my direction. His body language suggested passive curiosity, but I remained wary of him nonetheless.

Just as Chess had promised, slightly over an hour into our trek we came upon a side path branching off of the main. As we left the main path, my hooves sank into the snow to about mid-fetlock. At the time I had assumed that was simply because the side path was unused, but in hindsight that didn’t make sense to me. I mean, there wouldn’t have been anypony to pack it down since the storm started, and it had been snowing steadily... why would the snow not accumulate? My mind wandered as I put one hoof in front of the other, a monotonous tread of hooves in deep snow.

As it turned out, what managed to break me out of my reverie was a slight break in the wind, revealing a series of concrete buildings through the lull in the storm. The remains of an ancient military outpost loomed, the fortifications themselves appearing to be mostly intact. A series of stakes lined the outside of a short defensive wall separating the courtyard from the outside world. Within, I could make out a smaller bunker and what appeared to be something of a main building further into the complex. Snow covered bulges topping each of the stakes. The sight left me feeling uneasy as we trotted closer to the entryway. The silence between us began to get to me, and I spoke up in an attempt to draw conversation from the reserved buck beside me. “So, any idea how long it’s been since Chess last checked on this probe?”

Bernard’s reply was as monotone as it was uninformative. “At least a week, probably longer.”

Frowning, I cantered over to the nearest of the stakes, curious as to what the bulges were. I moved to brush the fresh snow from the object, wanting to get a clearer view of what it was. “Well, let’s just find this probe and be done with-”

A pony’s head was impaled on the iron spike, her swollen tongue lolling drunkenly from between frozen lips.

Taking a horrified step back, I gasped as I realized the extent of the silent carnage before me. There were an awful lot of stakes before the perimeter wall, each representing the cruel end of a life… it sickened me beyond words, the callous butchery. Nopony deserved that.

“Raiders.” Bernard grumbled, his comment betraying the first real hint of emotion I’d heard from him. There was deep seated anger in his tone.

“You say that as if you’ve seen this before, Bernard,” I replied shakily, still staring wide eyed at the severed head, not realizing the verbal blunder I’d made.

He paused for a moment after my statement and seemed to tense up. “So where are you from exactly,” His voice sounded accusatory, “Because I haven’t met a pony yet who hasn't seen or heard of them before.” His posture adjusted only slightly, but I caught him leaning more to his left — the side of his pistol holster — as he turned his head to gauge my response.

With a sigh, I dropped my gaze. I was tired of lying to him, and there wasn’t going to be a better time to break it to him than when we were alone. “I expect you’d have found out soon enough anyways.” Removing my utility knife from its small holster on my purloined barding, I flipped out the knife attachment and carefully began cutting a strategically placed hole in the left shoulder of the barding, right above where my wing was confined by the thick cloth.

Bernard remained silent, never falling into a defensive stance or pointing a weapon at me, but I knew I was being judged in those quiet moments. After my wing popped out of the barding his features hardened some. He took a long while to respond, but when he did it was a monosyllabic “Why?” The way he said it gave the impression of a demand, rather than a query.

“I wasn’t lying about the crashed Vertibuck,” I muttered just loud enough to be heard over the wind, “We lost three friends yesterday, and I was hesitant to trust anypony. Chess figured it out on his own.”

His gaze remained firmly locked as I finally got my other wing free, “So military then.”

I nodded. “Was supposed to be a scouting mission, quick in-and-out.” I grimaced as I recalled the specifics. “We were supposed to check a zone for any activity on the part of Redeye or Griffons… well, we found ‘em, that’s for sure.”

His response came fairly quickly and was rather blunt. “So now you and your friend are stuck. Good.” He added the caveat without breaking his callous expression, but his tone carried a hint of spite. To my ears, it was a challenge.

I dropped the utility knife, stepping into a fighting crouch. I didn’t move for the pistol still holstered on my foreleg, but I wasn’t about to let that comment go unaddressed. “Fuck you too,” I spat back, “When was it that we pissed in your hay fries, again?”

His response was forthcoming and very cold. “Every day of all of our collective lives,” he paused a breath before continuing. “This storm, the cloud cover — our entire existence in the wastes is dictated by your people's indifference. So excuse me if I don't get teary eyed when a hoof-full of you get shot.” He bit off the end of his statement, revealing ever so briefly a deep hurt before he regained his composure.

“Oh yeah?” I replied, “Our indifference is what gets pegasi killed every other time we try and interact with your world instead of just watching from the clouds. Our ‘indifference’ is what costs our families their mothers, fathers, daughters and sons.” I might have faltered for just a moment when I mentioned fathers. I hoped he hadn’t noticed. I advanced on him, closing to about a pace away. “For what? Are you telling me the benefit to your family outweighs the cost to mine?”

He visually scowled at my intentional use of 'family' but instead of getting even more heated he took a rather unexpected turn and pointed a hoof at the mare's head that seemed to look right at me. “I'm sure she would've.”

I glanced at the impaled head in thought. He had a point, and I’d already made as much of mine as I had the heart for. I could see the current tack of conversation was only hurting both of us, and I was rapidly becoming aware of the fact that having this conversation in the midst of a snowstorm that was only getting worse was not the greatest idea. Letting my body language slump, I dropped out of my fighting posture. “Bernard, do you know what I care about right now? Paying Chess back for taking us in, and keeping Tailwind safe. She’s all I have right now; even if we don’t see eye to eye, I’m sure you can understand that.” Meeting his gaze, I pointed a wing in the direction of the bunker complex. “I won’t do it for you, Chess, or the fucking wasteland; But to keep whoever did this away from Tailwind, I’ll do whatever it takes.” Dropping my wing, I checked the load on my energy pistol, seeing a solid green charge from the spark battery. “Are you gonna help me or not?”

He seemed to soften slightly when I explained myself, “Yeah, I more than understand.” He spoke softly, as if to himself. “And yes, I will help you kill these sadistic animals.” He met my gaze again as he spoke, “You're new to this so I'll give you it straight; you kill them. Don't talk, don't give them any quarter or thought of mercy. Just shoot.”

“I think that can be arranged,” I replied with a smile as I retrieved the utility knife. I stowed it and pulled my TFD from another utility pouch, brushing my mane away from my right ear as I clipped the device back on. It started up just fine, and I quickly saw the reassuring overlay of targeting reticle, compass, and the rest of the display. “I’ll clear the first building, can you cover me from here?”

Bernard nodded in affirmation as he unlimbered the long rifle from his back, using practiced motions to press check the round in the chamber. Satisfied, he gave a quick glance down the sight before replying, “The storm makes it difficult, though.”

I crouched, angling my body towards the smaller bunker. “Good enough for me,” I replied before kicking off the ground and flapping hard against the vicious crosswinds, forcing my way through the storm. I wanted to get a better view of the structures before us. In the end, despite fighting against the sweeping winds, the bird’s eye view was more than worth the effort of sustained flight in a snowstorm. The smaller looking structure was definitely a pillbox, sticking out of the protective wall and obviously having a dominating field of view over the path we’d been traveling along. The pillbox was seemingly unconnected with the main structure, though I wouldn’t be able to tell if there were underground tunnels without clearing the building personally.

Utilizing ground bound ponies’ predisposition not to look up, I started a lazily descending circle, careful to stay out of the lines of view from any visible fire slits on the pillbox. I gently set down on top of the pillbox, looking back to where I knew Bernard was set up. I could barely make out a slightly uncovered hoof wave at me through the snow. Taking heart that I was still covered, I moved quietly along the building’s roof to where I could make out an entrance. There was no door, seemingly letting in the elements freely, though I could make out a dim light from inside.

Mustering my courage, I drew my energy pistol and poked my head down into the building, my mane falling free on its own. Inside, judging from the layers of detritus, garbage, and other items coating the floor, it seemed as if many inhabitants had taken up residence here over the years. Each had left tiny mementos of their lives scattered over the floor. Here the broken, empty bottle of a healing potion. There a discarded injector. Empty cans of food, bandage wrappers… I didn’t even want to know what was in one of the corners. At least it didn’t smell. I saw a tube of wonderglue that wasn’t fully expended, and I stowed it in a pocket. Hey, you never know right? Eventually, my eyes were drawn towards the only light source in the room, the still powered screen of a terminal set against the wall. A series of wires varying in thickness led from the rear of the terminal into a circular device hovering where, once upon a time, the main weapon system of this pillbox would have been mounted.

With a few quick hoof signals, I managed to indicate to Bernard that the way was safe. He began making his way to the pillbox, rifle slung over his back.

As the buck trotted over in what I suppose could almost count as tactical movement, I inspected the small robotic orb hovering near the main weapon’s wall slit. It appeared to be a modified spritebot, one of the old toys once used by the Ministry of Morale to spy on the average citizen’s daily life. A series of additional lenses seemed to have been added, as well as the cluster of cabling linking it to the terminal. The modifications were clearly made using what had been available, but appeared to be fairly well put together, all things considered.

I realized that such a jury rigged setup could only be the probe Chess had spoken of, and moved to take a look at the terminal after covering Bernard’s crossing of the snowy courtyard. It occurred to me that if anypony did still occupy these ruins, they were doing a poor job if they left such an easily defended and monitored point like the pillbox unoccupied.

Terminal operation never was my strong suit. I’d always had Tailwind around, and her particular love of terminals meant I’d never really needed to learn to operate them. Luckily, Chess had left no password. Upon booting up the screen, I was greeted with a crackle of static and a caption typing itself across the top of the screen. “Thanks Mr/Ms/Mrs stranger for helping me get in contact with this terminal! Below will be a diagnostics report of what’s wrong with this here installation!” The portrait of what appeared to be an overjoyed stallion’s disembodied head narrated.

What followed were a series of step by step processes to reconnect the optics wires inside the spritebot. Even with my lack of technical aptitude, I set to work reconnecting the wires. A spliced point in the wires had caused a short, damaging a few wires and leaving the spritebot without power. I managed to find a small collection of spare parts among the detritus lining the floor, and replaced the damaged components without issue.

The task at hand completed, I rejoined Bernard at the entrance. He was sitting contemplatively, but with his rifle close at hoof. There was no mistaking the intensity in which he watched the main building, as if willing whoever had left the stakes in place to still be there. He had hid his emotions pretty much since I’d met him, but I could see a cold anger behind his eyes, gone in a blink as he noticed my presence.

“You still want to do this?” His question hung in the air, giving me an out if I’d truly wanted it. He knew I’d fixed the probe, he knew we’d just completed the job we’d technically been sent on. We could come back later, we could even leave things as they were. Even if we left, we could still inform Chess of the unwanted visitors that were now nesting near his home.

“Yes.” My determined response surprised me. I hadn’t yet settled my thoughts on the matter at hand, but these ponies had done unconscionably monstrous things to those they’d killed, and threatened those who’d taken Tailwind and myself in.

He nodded thoughtfully, the barest hint of an uplift bringing his lips to a tight smile.

We moved up to the main building in the same fashion as the pillbox. The main blast door was ajar enough for a pony to slip through, and seemed to have been slid to that position with raw effort some time since the facility had lost power. It wasn’t closing anytime soon.

The entryway was clear, but a wave of sickly smelling air hit me as we made our way quietly inside. Having caught wind, Bernard commented, “They’re still here,” I replied with a solemn nod.

A “T” intersection seemed to bring our route into the facility into question, but the right hand fork abruptly ended in a metal blast door with a terminal lock, this time requiring a password. I had no desire to fiddle with that, and the level of dust and undisturbed snow accumulated in front of the door led me to believe that way was clear enough to proceed down the other hall. As I did so, I gradually becoming aware that a light emanated from an undefined source probably about twenty meters down the hallway, around a corner.

Continuing with a pony’s length between us, we came upon a dark fluid, reflective in the dim light. It had long since pooled, and originated from the far side of the corner. The smell of copper and less identifiable things assailed my nostrils, almost making me gag. I’d been fully immersed in mass casualty situations through the VI… but that was so much worse.

I rounded the corner.

Dead, swollen eyeballs stared at me, illuminated only by the flickering orange light of a pair of ancient light fixtures, evidently part of the bunker’s emergency lighting system. A pony’s desecrated body hung above a stairwell leading down into the depths of the facility. Its gender was indiscernible due to the sheer level of surgical violence levied upon it. Its limbs had been hewn from its skinned body, which was held in place by a series of chains bolted to its ribcage. The eyelids had been sliced from the corpse, and its jaw was split into four equal segments — they were splayed wide with what looked like surgical twine, then frozen in place by rigor mortis and the cold. The innards had been spilt from the corpse and dangled onto the stairs. The walls themselves had been defiled with foul, bloody graffiti. Chunks of flesh and a generous pool of blood adorned the floor and stairs. It was an abomination.

I felt dizzy and took a faltering step backwards, feeling what had been breakfast rising in my throat. The thought of somepony downstairs having the presence of mind to hear a mare being violently sick on their front door flashed through my head. I took another step back before dropping to cover my mouth with my forehooves.

I heard Bernard’s sharp intake of breath, the same thought surely going through his own mind. I felt his gentle hoof on my back, but it was too late for comfort.

I threw up as quietly as I could in my mouth, tasting Chess’ broth, mixed sickeningly with the taste of carrots. Slowly, disgustingly, I went through one of the operations I’d occasionally teased recruits about when they were going through their gas attack drills for the first time. I ate it back, my throat shuddering in protest. I almost threw up all over again, but I managed to get it back down with only a muffled whimper.

Why is it always carrots?

Bernard glanced down at me with… not-quite concern in his eyes. No, it was more like he was letting me decide for myself what to do. He didn’t say anything, but I knew the question behind his silence.

"Should we continue?"

I wiped my mouth on a sleeve before stating, quiet but firm, “I meant what I said outside, and this only serves to justify that. We need to end this.”

Without waiting for a reply, I started off down the stairs, carefully nudging aside the entrail curtain blocking the stairs with a wingtip. I heard Bernard’s hoofsteps following close behind me, his stance on the matter clear.

As we descended further into the complex, it became clear that a more substantial amount of violence had happened at the top of the stairs than was initially apparent. As a medical pony, I figured there was far too much blood for the solitary corpse to have been the only such victim. Blood and bits of gore coated the entirety of the stairs, leading to the necessity of careful hoofwork for both Bernard and myself; I lacked room to properly hover, the base clearly having been designed for earth ponies. As we approached the end of the stairs, a flickering light threw dancing shadows towards us. It did nothing to calm my nerves. I could make out a few indistinct noises from further into the building.

At the base of the stairs, we discovered that the emergency lighting had failed on this level of the complex, the hallway lit only by the flickering light of burning refuse in a trashcan. The stairway exited into another T intersection. I ignoring the right hand side for now. The now more distinct slapping sound of meat hitting meat, a steady rhythm, emanated from one of the two rooms stemming from the hallway on the left.

The hallway extended about fifty meters from the staircase, branching off into what appeared to be a smaller room about ten meters away, and a larger one about half the length of the hallway from where we stood. The steady noise came from the closer room, though snatches of muted conversation could be heard from the further.

Sneaking our way forward, I edged around to take a look into the closer room. I almost needn’t have wasted the effort, the room’s only occupants were very much indisposed.

The room was about ten meters wide and circular, taller than the hallway by about three meters. A grating-covered vent was on the far wall, higher than was feasible for a pony to reach unaided. The room, however, was not what made my eyes go wide as I threw a forehoof to my mouth to cover a harsh intake of breath. The noise emanated from a mare with her face pressed against the wall being raped by what could only have been one of the raiders Bernard had described. The poor mare was pinned, literally. Her forehooves were nailed just below shoulder height to the concrete wall. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but a manacle or… something was attached to her right foreleg. A faint green light seemed to come from the device, illuminating the small table beside the two ponies.

Sweat and less wholesome fluids slicked her light green coat to her body, her straw coloured mane matted down and as dirty as the rest of her. As the stallion mounting her continued rutting her against the wall, I could make out a piece of rebar sticking from her hip, extending through her stomach and reaching to the floor. It seemed to be all that held her upright against his violent thrusts. Her eyes were tightly shut, and every thrust seemed to drive the breath from her lungs. Blood and a slurry of sexual fluids ran down her thighs into a disgusting pool of the same already there. Some had already dried.

The stallion behind her appeared to be light brown, though in the dancing firelight and beneath what could easily have been a lifetime of unwashed dirt and grime, it was difficult to be certain. He wore a helmet made from the skull of a wolf, and his body was covered in a coat of flayed pony hides reinforced with pieces of metal. There was no affection to the act he was committing. In fact, it looked like he was deliberately grinding her against the spike of rebar propping her up. He wasn't merely getting himself off in her cunt, he was being cruel about it — as if her pain was all part of what was doing it for him. A nasty looking serrated sword rested on the small table a few feet from the two ponies. I thought I could make out a peculiar, dim red glow given off from the blade itself. Or perhaps it was just the firelight playing tricks on my eyes.

It sickened me, but I didn’t want to blow our cover. Nor did I want to leave a hostile behind us were we to continue further into the building. I waved Bernard forward, indicating for him to keep an eye on the stallion with a pointed wing. He didn’t seem surprised by what he saw, disgust merely curling his frown further into a grimace, the cold anger of earlier surfacing again in his eyes.

Not daring to risk words, I hoped he understood my intent as I carefully made my way past the doorway and on towards what appeared to be a larger room on the opposite side of the hallway, judging in part from the muted voices coming from that direction.

Poking my head around the corner, I discovered that the emergency lighting had failed in this room as well. I also discovered a whole new stench of death than any I’d been exposed to. Six ponies sat and conversed idly around a rather substantial fire, a mixed bag of unicorn and earth ponies of varying colourations. It was the poorly lit corners of the room that drew my eyes, however. Bodies, dozens of them just from what I could make out, were piled at the edge of the light. Dimly, I could make out a series of cages further in. I couldn’t quite see the walls, so the full size of the room remained a mystery. The whole room practically emanated a foreboding aura, but I know that was largely the smell.

It was in that moment that I heard the deafening report of Bernard’s rifle from the doorway behind me, echoing throughout the underground structure and leaving my ears ringing. For a pregnant instant, the underground was silent save for the crackling of the fire and the soft thump of a body hitting the floor. The sound of a rifle bolt being racked broke the silence, following by the soft pinging noise of the ejected casing rolling towards my hooves.

I drew my energy pistol, firing a brace of shots into the chest of a buck who, for the most part, had the misfortune to be the first target I settled my targeting reticule on before pulling the trigger. He staggered back as the mares on either side of him jumped to their feet and started blazing away with mouth-fired ballistic weapons in my direction, not a hint of hesitation or surprise in their response. Bullets pinged off the doorframe and the wall behind me as I was forced back around the corner. As I made to run back towards Bernard, the last I saw of the larger room was that of a huge earth pony, wearing a metal helmet with a trio of huge blades built into it, stand up and bellow a warcry. I turned and ran, the echoing cries of the other ponies in the room lending speed to my hooves. I saw the last of Bernard’s tail disappear into the room I’d hoped he’d be observing right about now.

Ponyfeathers.

I wasn’t about to leave him, so I skidded to a halt in front of the doorway, taking in the carnage Bernard had wrought with a single bullet. I locked eyes with the poor mare, now splattered in gore. I saw no emotion in her eyes, only numbness. The stallion that had been mounting her had fallen limply to the side, his head messily separated at the neck. The wall behind both ponies was now coated in blood. Behind the buck, Bernard was already prone in a firing position, his rifle resting on the corpse as he braced behind it.

I dove out of the line of fire into the room, bare seconds before one of the mares who had fired at me rounded the corner. I caught a glimpse of wild frenzy in her features before the top of her head exploded in a spray of gore as Bernard’s rifle roared again, more deafening than before. He racked the slide back and forth with practiced hoof motions. Hot on the dead pony’s hooves, the next pair of ponies didn’t hesitate for an instant, rounding the corner and sprinting straight at Bernard’s position. Bernard fired again, catching the buck with a blackened chest from my earlier shots, who lost his footing and fell to the floor. In his fall, he sprayed small caliber rounds from the submachinegun clutched in his mouth. I fired on the still standing mare beside him, catching her in the flank with a pair of nasty laser burns. She was thrown off balance, but kept her footing and continued her charge towards Bernard’s position, eyes locked on my companion behind the long gun. Clenched between her teeth was what appeared to be the result of unholy matrimony between a sickle and numerous combat knives, forming a quasi efficient but very demoralizing weapon.

She’ll get to him before he can cycle the action again, and regardless of how the fight goes, the rifle will be down and they’ll overwhelm us. Damn it, this is going to hurt…

I dropped to a crouch, flapped my wings and sprang towards her. Halfway there, I intercepted a pair of rounds from the pony now lying on his side as he continued to spray rounds ineffectively towards Bernard. Despite the blossoming pain in my side, I managed a solid body tackle on the mare, focused on Bernard as she was. On the whole, it worked better than it had with the wolf. Of course, that still left me in hoof to hoof combat with a mare that obviously had experience with the sickle, judging from the dried blood gracing its blade and mouth grip.

We tumbled out of the line of fire, catching our footing on the blood slick concrete. She came at me with a flurry of small cuts, slicing slim lines in my stolen barding, trying to wear me down. As we struggled, I kept my grip on the energy pistol and held my wings to my sides. I banked on her not having fought many pegasi in close combat, which was just about the only thing I had going for me in the situation.

I heard Bernard fire again, and the submachine gun abruptly fell silent. He wouldn’t be able to hit much in the melee I found myself in, and the raider was bearing down on me fast.

The raider was clearly better than me at this range, and quickly overcame my feeble attempts at defending myself with raw strength and rage, forcing me to the ground and cutting a deep gouge into my shoulder. She lifted her sickle-bladed weapon high, and I felt my own blood drip from it to splatter on my face. She clearly intended to bring it down on my neck and end this one-sided fight... but I saw the chance I needed as she stood above me, triumphant. I pincered my wings as the blade fell, biting back the pain as feathers and flesh were cut apart, stopping just short of actually hitting bone. Surprise blossomed on her features as she frantically tried to back off and try again. I didn’t let her, reaching up with my neck and wedging my energy pistol under her chin. I fired a pair of rounds straight through her palette. I felt a familiar burning heat over me as a magical chain reaction tore through the mare, reducing her body to pink dust as her mortal remains disintegrated on top of me.

I think I just breathed in dead mare dust.

I coughed and tried in vain not to remember the taste as it clung to the back of my throat... flash burnt char with a twinge of lingering destructive magic. Frantically, I scrubbed at my tongue with my forehooves. It took me all of a second to remember I’d just walked down the bloody staircase. Even more gross. I spat in disgust at the whole situation, and I was rapidly forced to admit there were bigger problems before me.

A glance at the door showed no movement, and the grounded buck had very much been put out of his misery. I rapidly checked myself for injuries, finding that the pair of bullets I’d taken in the flank had been stopped by the barding. It hurt, but some deep bruises were the worst that would come of those bullets. I quickly pulled a couple lengths of magical bandage from my medical pack, applying solid pressure to my shoulder with a thick pad of gauze enchanted to speed clotting and healing. I felt the soft comfort of the enchanted gauze doing its job, and the throbbing pain in my shoulder dropped off right away. I also tied off a pair of quick bandages on my wings. Wings don’t have terribly much blood flow to the tips, and I wasn’t too worried about them… but it hurt. Oh, northern winds did it hurt.

Still seeing nothing in the doorway, an eerie calm had settled over our little battlefield. I took the opportunity to take stock of the other ponies in the room. Bernard was fine, the corpse he still took cover behind having absorbed a series of bullets and was leaking onto the already bloodstained floor. I glanced at the mare and my heart fell. She hadn’t been doing well before, but she’d taken several stray rounds to her unarmoured side and stomach. She now lay on her side as much as her position allowed, trying futilely to gasp for air. It hadn’t clicked in my earlier glimpse of her, but the metallic form of a pipbuck adorned her right foreleg.

These raiders must have hit a stable, and recently. She couldn’t survive this treatment for long, even before the bullet wounds.

The medical pony in me couldn’t take it. I ignored Bernard’s silent pleas to hold my position, dashing to her side. I noticed her cutiemark was a set of seeds, transposed over what appeared to be a field of dirt.

By the winds, I can’t tell if that’s part of her cutiemark or parallel bruises on her flanks.

As I took her vitals, I came across an even more disturbing discovery. They had given her at least some of a healing potion after pinning her with the rebar. They deliberately healed her around the piece of rusty fucking metal they stabbed into her. Words cannot convey what I felt for them right then.

I saw her eyes flutter open as she felt my hooves upon her, and she shuddered away from me as much as she could. The action caused the rebar sticking out of her to grind into her side — causing obvious pain, but she didn’t seem to care. I had to help her.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m a medical pony. I’m here to help.”

“Help…?” Her eyes were distant and glazed, her voice weak. I knew in my heart we didn’t have the precious medical supplies we’d need to save her. She was steadily bleeding out, we had no way to remove the rebar without massive trauma, and there was almost no way to keep infection out of the injuries on her forelegs. All without taking into account the raiders waiting just down the hall.

“I can make the pain go away.” I said a voice as gentle as I could, “Do you want that?”

She still looked dazed, but there was pleading in her eyes, like I was the only pony who would offer her what she wanted. In a way, I suppose I was. “It hurts… please?”

I dug through the medical kit I carried, removing one of the injectors of Med-X and stabbing it into the her flank. She sighed as it took effect, closing her eyes in what I could only imagine felt like the first bit of relief she’d had since she was captured by these ponies.

A voice carried from around the corner, deep and with a gravel like inflection, but tinged with a spark of wildness that sent shivers down my spine. “I see yer still standin’ then, hehehe!” From the deeper, older tone I hazarded a guess that it came from the armoured stallion I’d glimpsed earlier. “Can’t wait to get me hooves on ‘ye, ya little winged bitch!”

I couldn’t help cringing at that, quite sure what he intended. I mustered the pain, rage and venom I felt at having seen everything these ponies had done, hiding my fear in a far corner of my mind as I replied, “Come here you sky-damned bastard, Enclave Diplomacy’s waiting for you!”

He laughed, a long, mad laugh that echoed through the otherwise quiet underground. “Ha! One with some fight! I’ma enjoy this one, but I can wait. I got m’self satisfied not too long ago on yer new friend in there. Not a bad lay, needed a few ‘props’ though!” He laughed again, uttering the same disturbing noise as before at his own sick joke.

“What made you like this?” I replied in anger and confusion. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the sadistic drive to do the things these ponies had done. “What makes ponies do the things you’ve done?”

Bernard muttered from behind the corpse he still used as cover, quiet and dangerous. “Snap, they aren’t ponies any longer. Once upon a time, they might have been. Not any more.” His eyes flicked to meet mine for a moment. “There is no point in talking to them.”

A reply wafted from the other side of the standoff we’d created. “What made me? Ha! Your good, my fucking ma’ made me ya dumb cunt! T’would really help them honest folks if there were more than a month of growin’ time up here a year. Hell, half the ponies we’ve got strung up here had to risk raiders or die out there in the storm. One that you pegasi could stop if ya cared enough.”

His words brought new context to how I saw the cloud cover. Bernard’s thoughts on the matter had hinted at it, but the Raider’s words brought it home. We weren’t just starving them of sunlight — we were forcing them to live the way they do. To be completely honest, I’d always seen the cloudy skies as a life sustaining thing. It was simply the way my world had always worked. It had been such a constant in my life, something that we relied on so much we never really thought about the consequences to the ponies down below. Well, I’m sure they were thought about, just not by me. But despite that, the fact remains that the cloud cover is why the Enclave is able to exist as it does. I’m sure there could be some sort of compromise that could be reached, but as far as I was concerned, I wouldn’t be the pony doing it. Hell, I just wanted to get home.

Ultimately, my internal turmoil was relevant to the argument at hand. I shunted those thoughts away and grasped on to the counter-arguments I was familiar with; all the ponies we’d lost to the surface,forever. “We would be more inclined to be charitable if our recon teams weren’t shot down and murdered as often as they are. You are the fucking face of the wasteland to us, and up there they don’t know half of how terrible it is!”

“Me?” He asked, incredulously, “The face of the wasteland? I’m fucking honoured! I love it like it is, bitch!” His reply sent a chill through me. “Desperate folks come right to my door… fuck, you make it better ‘fer ponies and they might start having a fucking chance!”

I really didn’t want to think about the accusation that we’d indirectly been aiding the existence of ponies like him. As convinced as I was with my stance on things, that wasn’t to say the thought of what we’d done… what we are still doing didn’t weigh on me. With considerable effort, I did as Bernard suggested and turned my thoughts from the bastard waiting outside our little room. The dieing mare beside me deserved better, and I would give her what I could.

She wasn’t doing well, and I already saw that I could not save her, not with the supplies I had at hoof. I didn’t even have a healing potion left! I could stabilize her — at least, I was fairly sure I could, but regardless, she was going to die. She had lost a lot of blood, and her wounds quite simply would become infected. To top it off, she was in no state for the walk to the waystation.

If I only had a sky damned healing potion I could save her… damn it!

It occurred to me that the Raiders probably had at least one or two of the magical potions kicking around, judging from their willingness to feed her one once they’d pinned her in place. Not that that deduction helped me any; it simply increased the helplessness of the situation.

Her current position was making it harder and harder for her to breathe, her breath coming in short rasping breaths. She stared at me, her eyes conveying a sense of loss I couldn’t begin to fully comprehend. She was free of pain, but the cruel position she’d been nailed in was causing her continued discomfort. They’d nailed her hooves to the wall at a downward angle. In her state, it was impossible to move her body in such a way as to slide off from her own volition, but should they want to they would just lift her off… but then they’d given her some of a healing potion, and changed everything. Moving her from the rebar pinning her in place would force open the wounds on her hooves. I didn’t have the supplies to stop that bleeding, not from both legs.

So either she dies of asphyxiation while nailed to a wall, or from blood loss… damn it.

I moved to her side, speaking in low, caring tones. “I’m going to help you lay down. Do you want that?”

She nodded, but I saw in her eyes the fear of how much it would hurt.

She clearly hasn’t been on Med-X before… fucking hell, she’s from a Stable. She might even have had a normal life before these ponies took her.

“Close your eyes, dear. I’ll help you down. All you’ll feel is a tug on your legs, I swear.” I wrapped a foreleg around her barrel, readying myself to hoist her off the metal stakes.

She nodded again and closed her eyes, still obviously afraid, but with little choice now that it was almost physically impossible for her to breathe.

I pulled her up and away from the wall. It sent incredible waves of pain through my injured wings, but I used them to generate just a bit more lift. With a sickening squelching noise, her legs came free of the wall, blood steadily leaking from the reopened wounds. She groaned, but kept her eyes shut. I laid her down with her injured side facing up, careful to avoid moving or jarring the rebar still sticking through her stomach.

She was now bleeding out even faster than before, and I there was nothing I could do to stop it. Her face was pale beneath her dirty coat. I held her in my hooves, running a foreleg through her matted and tangled mane. A few minutes passed like that, quiet minutes, but with a silent weight behind them. Eventually, she opened her eyes and looked up at me, tears falling from her eyes. Her voice was weak, and all she said was, “I… I don’t want to die.” Each word had a conscious effort behind it, as if it was taking the last of her strength just to say them.

“I know… I know, dear. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…” Tears ran from my own eyes, leaving wet marks as they fell on her coat. I felt her give a final shuddering sob before going limp in my hooves. I felt wretched as I placed her in what looked to be as much at rest as I could put her, crossing her forelegs over her chest.

Another life I’ve failed to save.

During the operation, Bernard had remained motionless, his eyes occasionally flicking over to see what was happening. I got the impression he agreed with what I had done, but had no intention to comment on the matter. Aside from the occasional taunt from around the bend in the hallway, the raiders seemed content to wait us out. They had food, fire, and time on their side. If night fell before we left we’d be trapped. It would be suicide to attempt the walk back at night, and they knew it.

Between the four dead raiders, the poor mare and my own wounds, a substantial amount of blood was pooling in the small room, slowly trickling into a drainage grate behind Bernard and his macabre piece of cover. I figured the grate was probably intended for dealing with water runoff during the spring and summer, as the snow melted as much as it would this far north.

But why would there be a grate this far into the facility? Surely water wouldn’t be this much of a problem this far from the entryway…

I glanced up at the paired grating set high upon the wall of the room, realization dawning.

If that led to the surface, melt water coming down it might be an issue, hence the drainage grate under it. If the table off in the corner there was a workstation once, it would make sense that this room would need ventilation. Then this vent would lead straight to the surface, with an intake grate probably located in the bigger room…

I got to my hooves and spread my wings, feeling an ever so slight airflow headed upwards, through the vent. It was simply a tickle of airspeed to my sensitive feathers, but that was all I needed. I was long used to telling airspeed during high altitude flight, the direction of prevailing winds. I could predict, sometimes even alter all manner of weather simply through the feeling in my feathers; It’s in my heritage after all, the form of magic innate to all pegasi. Almost imperceptible as it was, that slight trickle of airflow was enough to confirm my suspicions. That grate was a direct line to the surface and open air at last.

From his spot beside me, Bernard was giving me quite the baffled look, no doubt wondering what the hay I was doing all of a sudden. I quietly leaned over, whispered in his ear “The grate is an exhaust vent. It’s a way out, I can feel the airflow.” His eyes went wide in comprehension as he spared another, more thoughtful glance at the grating above us. “We’re getting out of here.”

Despite my comment, there was one more thing to be addressed in the room. The peculiar looking blade, which I could now see clearly did indeed have a dim red glow to its serrated blade. I didn’t want to leave it to the raiders, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to fight that. I tucked it into one of my saddlebags, forming an impromptu sheathe with the grip hanging out in mouth’s reach, should I need it. That finished, I turned back to the vent.

As a test, I gave my wings a few experimental flaps. The cuts hurt something awful, but I could fly. With an anticipatory grimace, I gave a short hop before quietly fluttering over to the grate near the roof. It wasn’t huge, but I figured it should be wide enough for Bernard to squeeze through, if but barely. I fished out my utility knife once again, flipping out the screwdriver attachment and beginning to work on the four rusty screws that bolted the grate to the wall. As I worked, I noted reassuringly that what had been the faint sensation of airflow from floor level was a steady stream of (rather chilly) airflow that I could feel on my cheeks as I carefully worked the screwdriver, carefully depositing each screw in a pocket so as to avoid noise. Preoccupied with holding the grating in place once the last screw was loose, I fumbled the screw itself. It fell!

I watched as if in slow motion as the tiny screw plummeted the short ways towards the hard floor. Terror flooded my system. There was no way I could make it in time... if they heard, they’d try and rush us! Bernard would end up like that corpse in the entryway, and I would-

Bernard’s hoof shot out, deftly catching the little screw. I breathed one of the most heartfelt sighs of relief of my entire life. We were back on track. Removing the grate proved to be comparatively easy, and it even came away without the telltale shriek of metal on metal. The body that Bernard was sheltered behind proved to be the perfect thing to muffle the sound of a grate being placed upon it.

With a few silent hoof signals passed between us, Bernard slung his rifle as I hooked my forelegs under his own from above and behind him, lifting with all I could muster from my injured wings. It was barely enough, the strain almost unbearable as I lifted the earth pony who easily weighed half again my own weight high enough to reach the grating. With a final hoist on my part, he got his forelegs inside, allowing me to grab his waist and lift while he helped pull himself up.

We almost managed to do it quietly.

As his rear legs finally disappeared into the hole, the vent gave a deafeningly loud groan of protest at having a fully loaded earth pony suddenly weighing it down. I gave a final flap of wings, hugging them to my sides as I threw myself into the opening right as I heard sounds of surprise coming from the other room.

The vent itself was tall enough only for us to crawl along at an awkward shamble, but we managed to get far enough up the shaft by the time the raiders searched the room to merely hear the larger buck yell to his subordinates, “Both of you, get up there and find out where they’re comin’ up!” The sound of running hooves met our ears.

“Go, go go Bernard, fast as you can!” I yelped towards the buck ahead of me, thinking back to the armoured raider’s promise, should he get his hooves on me… A shiver ran down my spine as I shuffled as fast as I could behind Bernard. Having lived in the skies literally my entire life, the thought of being trapped, or worse, caught in the claustrophobic venting lent speed to my crawling I hadn't known I possessed.

A mildly irritated grunt wafted my way, but our pace increased.

It took us almost half an hour of steady uphill climbing, on our bellies the whole way. At long last we saw light wafting down through another grate. Not giving me a moment to dread the prospect of the raiders having found our exit already, Bernard bucked the vent off and clambered up.

I didn’t hear the sounds of a struggle, or much of anything other than the howling winds for that matter. At that point, the sound of the storm was actually a comforting reminder that we were almost above ground at last. I pulled myself out of the vent as well, promptly falling a couple meters into the loose snow.

Of course they’d have built the vent not to get snowed in… ugh.

The fading warmth was already making itself known, the icy air finding its way into the slices the mare with the sickle had made in my winter barding. The winds were picking up too, and I could tell it was going to be just as bad as the night before, if not worse.

We had emerged onto a small ledge. The bunker complex was barely visible through the snowstorm below us, slightly over half a click away down the slope of the mountain. Picking myself up, I cantered over to where Bernard had already set up with a pair of patched together-looking binoculars as he watched the complex and courtyard. “They’ll be coming,” I commented as I sat down beside him and pulled out my own sleek black set of Enclave issue binos. “They might not know where that shaft leads, but those two are already looking for us.” As the words left my mouth, we both found our gaze drawn west, towards where the sun had just broken the lower edge of the cloud layer, hushing the winds for a brief period. We had maybe twenty minutes before dark fell upon the wasteland.

“Bernard, what are our chances if we stayed out at night?”

"None." He replied with conviction.

“Alright, we’ll need cover, and I can only think of using the pillbox. We can deal with the Raiders in the morning, but at least we won’t be stuck in the same building with them.” I laid out the plan to Bernard as it formed in my head, beginning to canter towards the complex after shaking off the snow I’d landed in after falling from the vent.

True to form, the plan — like many before it, and no doubt many more to come — didn’t survive contact with the enemy.

I hadn’t gone ten paces before Bernard piped up, once again looking through his binoculars, “Snap, all three of them are set up in the courtyard.”

Fuck.

I dropped low, reaching for my own binoculars and looking through the sights. All three of the remaining raiders were in the courtyard, slowly searching out from the buildings. Now that I had a chance to properly get a look at it, the raider chief’s armour made the already huge pony even bigger. Full, segmented steel armour encased his hide, and the full-face helmet he wore was adorned with a trio of viciously long spikes. I got the distinct impression they weren’t for decoration. If he got into close combat, he would literally tear me apart without even needing the large bore guns he wore on a battlesaddle that was barely big enough to fit around his frame. Though, judging from his previous comment, I suspected were that situation to come about, he would take pains not to kill me. I fucking hate raiders.

It seemed odd to me that they would try and fight us outside when they knew full well we had a rifle, though with all I’d seen thus far their lack of tactical acumen really shouldn’t have surprised me. The continuously dropping and worsening conditions spurred my decision. Night was approaching, and we needed out of that storm. “Bernard, we’re doing this the hard way. See that outcropping of rock about two hundred meters up from them?” I pointed with a wing at the indicated spot, “Think you could lay down fire from there?”

He nodded, packing up his rifle and making best speed towards the indicated spot. If we were gonna get through this, I’d need to be able to fly. I jabbed myself with one of my few remaining Med-X injectors, immediately feeling the cool relief of deadened nerve endings. Taking to the air again, I flew along beside him most of the way. “I’ll do what I can to keep them in the open. Hit ‘em as hard and often as you can!” I yelled in his direction before heading to just below the storm’s heavier slipstream, doing what I could to maintain altitude in the harsh conditions.

By way of response, Bernard slid into position behind the outcropping, steadying his rifle and taking aim at the larger buck. He fired, sending a round hammering into the stallion’s unarmoured hind leg. He was going to take some putting down, considering all that did was slow him.

Well, let’s do this then, shall we…

The raiders scattered towards what cover they could find, two of them headed in the general direction of Bernard. Not on my watch.

I dove, laser pistol clenched between my teeth. The first pony to find herself in my sights was a unicorn levitating a submachine gun at her side, already beginning to return fire at Bernard’s outcropping. I zeroed in, firing as fast as I could pull the pistol’s trigger with my tongue, stitched a line of red across and through her. My line of fire scythed her right leg off at the knee. I followed through the dive, pulling up and away to set up for another run. I heard Bernard fire again and saw the buck that had been running beside her drop to the loose snow.

Time for the big one… that bastard!

I popped the drained energy cell from the pistol, stowing it in my barding as I hoofed through my ammo pouch for another cell. I found I was down to my last one. I loaded it without pause, hearing the reassuring sound of the weapon charging once again. I dove on the raider chief again, stitching rounds towards his unarmoured rear and underbelly as much as I could. The beams that struck his armour only seemed to blacken it, doing no visible damage.

The armoured earth pony brought his guns to bear as I pulled out of my dive. I didn’t really know firearms, but I knew enough to know I didn’t want to get hit by that, dodging to the side as he fired. He was trying to lead a flying pegasus, but I nonetheless got my hindquarters clipped by what felt like pieces of shrapnel. Seeing my own mild injury through the artificial clarity of the Med-X, I got the general idea of how a shotgun worked from the hit.

I dove again, and again, continuing to hammer the raider as he became more and more impaired by his injuries. Bernard repeatedly landed rounds on target as he tried to find weak spots in the buck’s heavy armour. I saw one of Bernard’s bullets impact right along the line of his spine, punching through a damaged segment of armour. The raider chief let out a primal bellow as Bernard apparently hit something vital, and he fell to his stomach as his hindlegs gave out.

Seeing my chance, I dove again, coming up to within fifteen meters of the buck struggling on the ground. I laid into the ammo feed for his twin shotguns with rapid-fire beams of red energy, damaging the intricate mechanisms. With the way conventional weapons work, he had one shot left in the breach, and we both knew it.

He threw himself on to his side, gambling one last time to hit me, this time at close range with the nasty weapons on his back. I wanted him to fire, to waste his shot. I waited, seeing him turn as I faced directly down the large bore guns. There was no time to think, no time for fear. I simply acted. As he fired, I cut the air with my left wing and pushed hard with the right, propelling myself off to the left.

I caught a whiff of buckshot in my tail, but all I felt was the rush of having stared death in the face and won. I knew I had him, that I’d just won our deadly little game of chicken. I recall myself grinning like a madmare as I zeroed in on his unarmoured stomach.

I fired and fired and fired, coherent beams of energy tearing through his belly, a deadly light show that I stitched from his liver to lungs. Each pinprick of deadly light left blackened ruin wherever they hit. I fired until the last of my final energy cell was spent. He didn’t flash, but by the time I was done his insides were wide open along his entire torso, practically crackling with residual destructive energies. The stench of ozone and burnt flesh lingering even with the winds whipping all around us. He finally went still with a gasp as he tried to draw breath through his destroyed lungs.

I settled to the ground, exhausted. I felt the black recede from the edges of my vision, and I knew I’d be sore as soon as the Med-X wore off. All I wanted to do was get to cover and curl up into a ball and try to forget what I’d seen — and done — in the depths of that sky damned complex. I dropped my guard as the adrenaline began to drain from my weary body.

That was a mistake.

My first indication that there was a problem was the unusual feeling of pressure against one of my saddlebags. I turned, seeing the glow of a magical aura around the horn of the mare I’d cut the leg from on my first pass. The same magical glow had wrapped itself around the hilt of the sword still in my pack. I may have been fast enough to dodge a shotgun blast moments before, but at that point my body was all but willing me to just stop. She brought the blade down as I tried to dodge, slicing a thin line along my right foreleg before I was out of range. She laughed. Despite having lost a leg and surely about to die, she cackled as if she’d just won a victory. I heard the retort of Bernard’s rifle one last time. Her head snapped back, frozen in a toothy smile despite the neat hole in her forehead as she collapsed to the ground.

Pain blossoming along my leg was my first indication that something was very wrong about that blade. I was hopped up on Med-X at the time! Ponies have lost limbs and kept fighting while on that stuff — it was one of the core drugs the Steel Rangers used, and was a big part of what made them literally walking tanks. I hadn’t felt the pain in my wings since I injected myself, but that simple knife cut was excruciatingly painful. I drew out the last of my magical bandage, wrapping the wound and waiting for the feeling of flesh knitting back together to start. Except it never did. The wound bled freely, soaking the dressing at a rate that quite frankly horrified me. The size of the wound wasn’t life threatening, but if it kept bleeding like it was, I was going to be in trouble. Thinking fast, I reached through my saddlebags until I found what I was looking for: Wonderglue, pilfered off the floor of the pillbox over an hour before. We had always joked that the stuff could seal anything, and I guess I figured it was time to put that to the test. I popped the cap with my mouth and carefully stitched a thin line across the wound, using my other leg to apply pressure as the incredibly sticky substance took effect, physically sealing the edges of the wound together. The bleeding slowed, then stopped as the glue sealed itself.

I fell to my knees in exhaustion as the last of the adrenaline drained from my system. I felt disoriented as the combat high dropped — my mind and body all felt sluggish. I’d gone in way too deep, and I was experiencing the cost of going that far into the black. ‘Course, knowing what it was didn’t help any... and despite all that, in the back of my mind there was a part of me that wanted back there. Back into the black, the hair trigger of life and death. It scared me.

It still does.

I heard galloping hooves, and it wasn’t long before Bernard reached me, getting me up and moving for the cover of the pillbox. Once we were safely inside, he helped me lay down and made sure I’d be alright. he ran back outside, stripping the bodies of equipment to save it from the cold. The second time he returned, he’d dragged a barrel full of wood and flammable refuse into our shelter, setting it alight after positioning it near the middle of the room. I figured he’d grabbed it from the raiders’ nest, but didn’t ask.

With the need for warmth sated by the slowly growing barrel fire and the pain all over my body becoming more and more of an irritation as the Med-X wore off, I thought of the mare.

I killed her. I wanted to think I’d done her a kindness, I really did. But who was I to make such a decision? To keep her from even having a fighting chance at survival… hell, I never thought we’d actually win the fight with the Raiders. Had I known, we could have stabilized her and left her, coming back once we’d won… but I hadn’t known. Of course, by the same token if we’d lost she would probably still be a... pleasure mare for the raiders, if not dead anyways. The thought still doesn’t comfort me.

Bernard must have known the direction my thoughts were taking when he found me quietly staring at my hooves. He tried his damndest to interrupt my train of thought by dropping the battlesaddle, shotguns still mounted, at my hooves. “You’re out of magical energy ammo, aren’t you?” He inquired, rather bluntly.

I do so love energy weapons. No muss, no fuss, no recoil…

With a sad glance at the unpowered pistol in my foreleg holster, I nodded dejectedly. “How did you guess?” I replied, still looking morosely at my pistol.

He nodded his head back in the general direction of the mare that had cut me with my own damn knife, "Well for starters you didn't shoot her.”

I grimaced, running a hoof over my still bandaged foreleg. A sudden blossom of pain caused me jerking the hoof away. “Don’t remind me, but yeah. Doesn’t look like we’re likely to find any in the raiders’ den, either.”

Bernard smiled, the first time I’d seen him do that. “To put it shortly, no. But it will be a good time I think to get you on something you'll likely be able to find ammo for. Laser weapons aren't too common around here.”

He then proceeded to sit down next to the light of the fire and pull out a small sack of parts from his saddlebags and start to dig through and pull out individual parts and set them aside.

I glanced over his shoulder, confused and quite honestly intrigued by what he intended to to with the collection of… things laid out before him. The pile for the most part consisted of springs, various wires and small metal rods that I figured went to different kinds of firearms. Not that I could say which went where.

I watched over his shoulder for a while as he seemed to pick certain parts out of the collection before him. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I asked, “So… what are you doing, exactly?”

"Well you melted the feed system. With luck I should be able to get it to cycle with parts I have here." He paused to think for a second before he continued, "Although I can't fix the casing without proper tools so you'll have to watch that it doesn't get gunged up."

While he spoke he began the process of using a small set of clippers and a set of screwdrivers to repair the damage I’d done to the feed. I watched with genuine interest as he replaced broken components with newer ones, some of which didn’t quite look the same, but in the end it all fit back together.

My mouth was still hanging open in astonishment when he placed the saddle around my shoulders. He coughed discreetly into the crook of a forehoof, and I caught on that he didn’t plan to adjust it himself. Despite having been worn by a pony that probably weighed almost three times as much as I do, the mechanism adjusted to my smaller frame with relative ease. I honestly don’t know how that was possible, but I guess that’s just one of the wasteland’s mysteries. The saddle had some weight to it, but wouldn’t impair my mobility any while flying or in combat. Regardless, I used a rag to heavily wipe down the mouth bit and trigger. Tentatively grasping the bit in my mouth, I gave an experimental swipe of the reload lever, and heard the satisfying whirring and clacking of rounds being fed and chambered to both weapons.

Giving a quick turnabout to show off his work, I struck a pose as I commented, “I’m impressed, Bernard. Where in Equestria did you learn to do that?”

“There haven’t been new parts for any of what you see down here for almost two hundred years,” He replied with a just a hint of irritation. “When just about everything here is in varying states of broken, you pick up the knack for fixing things pretty damn quick.”

Can’t argue with that.

As the storm’s ferocity increased outside, the warmth of the burning barrel kept the air temperature of the bunker livable. Bernard had fallen asleep curled up across from me as we huddled around the fire. It occurred to me that tonight marked the second night we would have been stranded on the surface. If neither Tailwind nor I made contact by midnight, our entire team would be designated Missing In Action. Taking the portable radio from my saddlebags, I stared at the screen as it pulsed out the signal that should have indicated that we were in need of extraction. Would have, if it wasn’t constantly flashing a warning that it couldn’t connect to any Enclave monitored channel. I kept forcing it to re-attempt a connection for what must have been hours. Silent tears ran down my cheeks as our last chance to contact home slowly slipped through my hooves. At least it wasn’t cold enough inside for them to freeze to my face again.

In desperation, I started manually cycling through radio frequencies, broadcasting the signal in the open. During one such change in frequency, I came upon an already broadcasting station. With a brief fizzle of static, a Stallion’s voice wafted from my radio’s small speaker. It was a deep, rough voice that oozed charisma. And exuberance, incidentally.

“Helloooooooo, Wasteland!”

I grimaced at the abruptness of the statement, turning down the volume out of long established habit.

This must be that “DJ Pon3.” What the hell do they see in this broadcast, anyways?

“Have I ever told you how glad I am every time you listen in to my little station? Because I really, really am, and boy do I have some interesting news for you today.”

I was just about to resume scanning the available channels, when his next statement most certainly caught my interest.

“This one comes straight from the frozen North. You know, with all that white stuff called ‘snow.’ Tell me, how many of you have seen snow before? Because I can tell you, it’s no laughing matter when you’re stuck out in a storm just full of the stuff. A couple of Enclave ponies found that out just the other day — imagine that, kids; An Enclave team coming down from the clouds just to get caught by one hell of a storm. A little bit of irony, that. But wait, there’s more!”

Oh, fantastic. Now not only is our cover blown, but we just got publicized to the entire damned wasteland! Wait, how the hell does he even know about that?

“I’m sure some of my more… ahem, venerable listeners remember back when I brought you the exploits of a pony known as Nemo. For those of you who don’t know, I don’t have the time to recap. Ask some of the older ponies about The Black Knight, just know it makes for quite the bitter tale. But if you do know what became of our old friend Nemo, then you’ll know the significance of what he did last night.

“Folks, I’m sure many of you have rather strong views towards just about any pegasus who doesn’t have a certain brand on their flank; I share many of those views, as a matter of fact. But those two pegasi were lost in that storm and far from home; the same as many of you have been, and I’m sure you can relate. Here’s where it gets real special, folks. Nemo took them in. I don’t know the specifics, but considering his… prior experience with the ponies from the clouds, if you do happen to see those two pegasi — and you’ll know it’s them, don’t worry about that — give ‘em a chance, will ya? If Nemo could bring himself to open his door to them, that’s gotta say something. Granted, I don’t know exactly what that’s saying, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t keep your gun handy; but it says something, and I’m willing to bet you’ll want to know what that is.

“Now, on to the weather! Once again, we’ve got heavy cloud cover over the entirety of-”

I clicked the radio off, my thoughts a jumbled mess of questions. He could only have been referring to Chess, but… what the hell was that? “Nemo”? “The Black Knight”? There was so much there I had no context for, but something apparently profound had happened.

My train of thought was interrupted by a rather urgent beeping from the sprite bot surveillance system. Getting shakily to my hooves, I favoured my uninjured leg as I cantered over to the small screen built into the sprite bot. Visible was an enhanced sight picture of the crossroads just up the path from where we’d diverted to get to the complex we currently resided in, currently being viewed through thermal vision.

In the center of the cross road stood a flowing equine figure, seeming to have no solidly discernible form as its silhouette shifted as if it were in a flag billowing in a slight breeze. I checked the thermal settings and was forced to do a double take as I checked them again. The thermals were working properly, and their report was disturbing: Whatever-it-was was drastically colder than the storm raging around it.

On an automatic loop, the camera cycled to normal optics. Whatever it was remained indistinguishable, a whitish grey shape against a backdrop of blizzard, shifting as if it were made of a multitude of different fabrics. A pair of glowing, ice blue eyes that entirely lacked pupils stared directly at the camera. Through magical cabling, snow, and concrete, that gaze felt like it pierced my very soul. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winds outside.

Scared and disoriented, I backed away from the screen. My mouth was open in soundless terror as I bumped into Bernard’s sleeping form. He woke as I turned to him. “B-bernard, what the fuck is that?” I jabbed a wing in the direction of the terminal.

He didn’t hesitate to get up to look through the monitor, but when he turned back to me he simply tilted his head and replied casually “I don't see anything, Snap. You went through a lot today, try to get some sleep.” Behind him, the monitor showed nothing but snow being swept past the crossroads, no sign of… It. He cantered back to the spot he’d been sleeping, and I heard his breathing drop off as he slipped easily back into apparent unconsciousness.

Sleep. Right.

Author's Notes:

So I would like to preface the Author's Notes by saying, I do not think I did the DJ broadcast justice, but I'd looked it over umpteen times and can't wrap my head around how to go about fixing it, so there it is. There won't be many of them, comparatively speaking.

And I was, ah, debating whether or not to add the *sex* mature content tag, but decided that it was definitely best to stay on the safe side. Ech, means I can be a bit more lewd in good ways to counteract... that. And fuck, I felt dirty writing goddamn raiders. I just want to point that out. All of that.

Additionally, the concept of the level up perks... I don't know if it's just me, but they just don't feel right for my story. I might retroactively add them if inspiration strikes me, but for now they are absent until further notice. I feel it breaks the immersion, and following them for the sake of tradition... doesn't feel right. I honestly don't have anything overarching to DO with them at the moment, and they would be an add on simply for the sake of being added on.

I wish I could say that I could give an update schedule, but to be completely honest there won't be one in the near future. I'll give a three week estimate on the next chapter, but I'm not super confident about that. It needs quite a bit of work done upon it.

Many thanks to the editing team. Belmor decided to show himself on 4chan for the first time in years, so there was that. Big thanks to him and PersonalGamer, this one needed quite a few run-throughs. In hindsight, learning to break up the editing steps a bit more probably needs to happen, but we got 'er done. The response to Frozen Skies as a whole has been superb, and I'd like to thank you guys for the wonderful feedback.