Will you just die already you jack wagon? - Dark Lightning

I don't understand why Tempest wants me to help raiders of all ponies, sure one is a preggo but they are still damn raiders for God's sake! I checked behind me as the two raiders followed at a distance trying not to set me on end since they were still holding onto their weapons. we had started out almost immediately since we didn't want to impede Tempest's efforts to contain the hoard of the dead that nearly killed us all back their.

"Ahhhhhhhh!" The younger raider yelled as she dropped headfirst to the ground.

"What's wrong Blood Drop?" Daisy Chains asked as she backed away rather quickly.

"Okay what the heck is goin' on back here?" I asked hovering my flank above the two raiders.

Blood Drop spat blood out along with a lot of chunky stuff before charging Daisy Chains, the latter of which too off running as fast as she could since she was the size of a tank. I braced myself on a petrified tree and went to fire only to here a click since my sniper was dry.

"Shit." I muttered as Daisy kept running, though comical to watch a raider get what was coming to her, I knew that Tempest wouldn't support me letting them die, sometime that pony scares me.

Taking off I dove down and fired my plasma guns to find that they too were dry, sheesh everything I've got is out of ammo today. I flew higher up near the clouds and discharged lightning through my wings to get a bit of high voltage from the cloud cover. Diving down inverted I looked back to see a twin lightning trail coming off of my wings.

"Hell yes raider shit!" I yelled as I unleashed the torrent of electricity onto the zombie pony below.

I landed in front of Daisy and walked passed her as I approached the smoke from my strike. Before I could react Blood Drop charged out of the smoke and tried to bite my wings, fortunately my wings are made of very sharp metal that make close quarters a piece of cake as I merely flexed them and cut her head cleanly in half, earning a yelp followed by the depositing of someponies lunch behind me.

"Well that's gonna take a while to get clean." I said inspecting my gore covered wing.

"She, she is dead." Daisy said as she shed a tear over her last friends corpse.

"Very dead if I may add." I said as I took off back into the sky hopeful to shake the ponies blood off of my wing while I flew.

I looked back to see the mare still crying and mentally screamed, so the pony died, she died back in the town, no she died when she became a raider. I flew back over and landed nearby but out of hoofs reach from the balloon as I sat down a yawned, probably not the most respectful thing I could do. Looking back on what happened back at the village these raiders were never that bad to us, I don't know raiders may not be very smart ponies, but that don't meant that they are all bad. I flicked my tail out of boredom as Daisy got back to her hooves and gave one last long look to her dead friend who had just been living a few moments ago before trying to kill us.

"Can we give her a proper send off?" she asked.

"Eh, if ya want." I replied as I stood up and looked for something flammable in my saddlebags.

"I have an improvised incendiary." she added as she pulled it out using her magic.

"That'll work, so um, would you like to say anything before you send her off?" I asked since I really had nothing to say.

"Yeah, I do." Daisy replied as she levitated the explosive to me.

"Okay when you are done just tell me, I'll give her the incendiary." I said placing it down next to me.

"Blood Drop, when I first met you, you were a nameless filly that was cornered by my raiders." she started before sniffing as more tears ran down her cheeks. "I stopped them and took you in since I never thought I'd have a foal of my own to take over my group. I watched you grow up around my raiders and never change, but you changed us in a way I didn't see coming. You made us less of raiders and more as a community of ponies that still only looked out for themselves, but at least treated others with a bit of respect. You were the reason we went to that town to get away from Red Eye when we double crossed him and set those slaves free." Daisy stopped as a fresh wave of tears broke through her brown eyes and down off of her sage green cheeks.

"Thank you for showing us a better path, even if we never became what you wanted us to be I just hope that whatever happens to you after death that you aren't punished for our sins." Daisy finished as she broke down the rest of the way and gave me a nod.

I gently took off and activated the grenade as I set it in her fore legs and darted away. After hearing her story I couldn't help but feel sorry for her and her adoptive mother since what happened to them came straight out of a horror flick I watch before the war. I took off my helmet and showed Daisy my face by the flame light while Blood Drop's solid red body burned. I hadn't shed a single tear, but I had lost my voice. Giving her a soft nod and mouthing the words 'I'm sorry" to her I turned and began to walk away from the flames.

A few hours passed and Daisy had waddled over to me now as I looked over the wasteland from the top of a ruined building trying to find Applebits and the others. They couldn't have gotten that far away, could they of? As if reading my mind Daisy broke the silence.

"Looking for somepony?" she asked.

"Me and Tempest weren't alone, we were traveling with a rather large group of ponies making our way to Canterlot." I said as I looked to her.

"Would it be possible that they got caught by the local slavers in the area?" she asked me as her eyes narrowed.

"Maybe, we are all low on ammo nowadays since the loss of our tank." I said frowning as I remembered my precious baby getting destroyed when we rescued Tempest.

"Either that or Hellhounds got em." she said raising a brow after I said we had a tank.

"Where do the slavers make camp?" I asked her as I pulled out my pre-war map of Equestria.

She took it in her magic and a piece of charred wood to mark the western side of a river next to a peninsula north of Canterlot and West of Fillydelphia. I looked at her as her eyes widened and she screamed as if she was being murdered, then I realized that she was pregnant which meant, OH HELL NO!!! She gently laid on her side as her legs kicked out and she screamed even louder than I thought was possible for a pony.

"Hang on, get on your back!" I said trying not to lose my aura of calmness as she did what I said.

She had that face of constipation but I knew that she wasn't about to take a dump, no she was ready to pop out this kid. She spread her legs a bit before the kids head popped out coated in blood, holy shit there was a lot of blood. I put my hooves below the newborn foal as she came out the rest of the way and caught her. Flying inches above the ground I delivered the child to his mother who gave him a smile before grimacing in pain.

"You are Crimson Flower, my foal." Daisy said before her eyes closed and her breath left her.

Her foal merely rested on her as she slept unaware that her mother just died holding her. I removed my helmet and gingerly picked the little girl up, she was bloody but her coat was blood red and her mane and tail a golden color matching her eyes. This little unicorn foal wouldn't last an hour in this wasteland alone, so after everything that happened I rigged a harness from a few spare leather straps from my saddlebags and strapped the foal in before flying off towards the slaver camp to see if my friends were there.

Behind me I left a mare shrouded in a blanket with a carving above her reading 'Here lies a good mother of two' embedded into the concrete wall. I may not have any flammables left but that doesn't that I won't show respect to one who earned it, since she would do the same for me.

Author's Notes:

Dark Lightning (Dleta's OC) finally got his moment to shine though it is most definitely the not the last time his POV will be seen. While perhaps the story will remain close to Tempest and Applebits mainly a few other characters may get a chapter or two depending on the circumstance.