We know not the consequence of action, but of the consequence of inaction.-Applebits

I woke up in pain and my partner standing over me, his armor off I could now see his cutiemark, a bull’s-eye, two thoughts came to my mind, the first was a good shot, the second was an easy target, then I remembered that I never did get his name, he was one of my own, and I didn’t know his name. Before I could stop myself I found myself blushing, and he was staring into my eyes holding, in his mouth, a bowl of soup. I decided to sit up off my side and winced at the pain, my legs were folded under me still and I had stopped blushing, he gave me the soup then walked over to a metal winged pegasus and told him that I was awake.

“How long was I out?” I asked, hoping to break the silence.

Lightning responded, “about two days, me and Bull’s-Eye have been talking about that plan of yours, it was crazy.”

I now looked him over, able to see him in the dim light that was able to penetrate the cloud cover in the sky, he was a pegasus with a charcoal grey coat, orange and black mane, and tangerine colored eyes, with a cutiemark of a black lightning cloud and bolts, it also looked like the cloud had gears in it.

“Well I ran out of ammo and wasn’t about to start spearing them on my horn!” I laughed a little to make them more comfortable hoping that they would get my joke, I had never been good at humor, but they laughed with me.

“Probably good, we don’t want you to break your horn.” my partner Bull’s-Eye said, he had started putting his armor back on, everything but the helmet, then I noticed the wagon.

“Aint she a beauty?” Lightning said pointing a fore hoof at the wagon, it was, in all manners of the word, a pony pulled tank, from the 90 millimeter cannon on top to the two hoof wide tracks on the bottom and the heavy armor plating.

“Who is going to pull that?” I asked, looking at the pegasus, who did look as though he could but I knew for a fact that thing couldn’t fly.

“I am, was going to ask if we could take turns though?” said Bull’s-Eye,I looked at him and nodded.

“Okay for a few minuets there I thought the pegasus was off his rocker.” I said with a laugh, and they both laughed with me. It was nice to have friends that would laugh with me. I had completely forgotten about my rank compared to Bull’s-Eye, though I am an equal to Lightning it must still be nerve racking to be a knight in the presence of to high ranking officers.

“Bull’s-Eye can I speak with you in private please?” I asked as I got up, the pain in my ribs suggesting that I had a few fractures, I will have to deal with that later.

“Sure thing ma’am.” He replied looking slightly worried. I took him to the edge of the light and in a hushed tone told him not to worry about the chain of command, that we are what we have and I see us all as equals in a team. He took it well and we returned to the fire.

“Your armor took quite the beating but I was able to fix it, even slightly improve it, though I have never seen Steel Ranger armor this color before.” Dark Lightning said looking at me, and I realized that I had been launched out the stable door like a bullet out of rifle.

“How bad was it?” I asked nervously now worried about my armor.

“It held well no structural problems just a few external armor plates were blown off nothing to difficult.” he said with a smile.

That news made me happy, I approached him, “is it ready to be worn?” I asked him.

“Yes, its not going to get any better, but I still don’t understand why you two have black and white armor.” he remarked.

I began putting it on, using my magic to put in into place and fasten it, otherwise I would need somepony else to help and there were no other mares in my group, just another reason I like being a unicorn. “The paint on our armor signifies us as part of the first army of Equestria, its purely symbolic.” I said as I was strapping on my battle saddle, “Now I have a few questions for you.” I stated looking him in the eyes to see if he faltered, he didn’t.

“Ask away, we aint going nowhere till the morning, gotta give you time to heal.” he said looking me in the eyes this time.

"Okay", I looked around, “What exactly am I looking at, what happened to the woods this stable was hidden inside?” I asked him as my first question.

“Well this is what is left of those woods, when the mega spells hit, Equestria turned into a wasteland of radiation and mutated monsters, its that simple, the only place that was left untouched was the Everfree Forest, but that place underwent its own mutations.” He said looking down as though he had failed his mission.

“Okay, I know the pegasi closed the sky and all, but why didn’t they come down for us as planned?” BrokenBlade asked him, obviously disturbed.

“Well the Enclave, that’s what they call themselves now, don’t come down to the surface anymore, its not allowed and any pegasus that does comes down here is labeled a traitor and branded as a Dashite, they do this by burning off your cutiemark with the emblem of Rainbow Dash, hence the name Dashite.” He said, a twinge of sadness in his voice.

For a time after that we were just quite, while I had been sleeping Lightning had made repairs to everything possible, and my partner had taken the liberty of gathering supplies from what was left of the stable. Finally I asked him, “So your pre-apocalypse, right? What’s your story?”

He looked at me and sighed, obviously seeing this coming, but not wanting to relive it, “Well as I said before I was second in command of Rainbow Dashes squad, when the mega spells hit I had orders from her to take out the missiles before they left the ground while she dealt with military command as the head of the Ministry of Awesome. I did so, we took down numerous missiles until we had exhausted our ammo, but the damage had been done to Equestria and was irreversible. So Dash told us to go into cryo across Equestria and set our timers for ending cryo around two hundred years. I woke up not even two years ago to this day, the wasteland.”

I looked at him, realizing that General Tempest had stayed behind to stop more missiles from doing even more damage and that he might still be out there. I then proceeded to tell him our story up to the present, when I was done we had both disclaimed everything that needed to be known and we all settled down for sleep, each of taking watches throughout the night.

Author's Notes:

Okay so Dark Lightning is my partners OC (Delta Flood3) who is also the guy who exposed me as a Brony (much to his surprise, lol) and introduced me to this site and FoE so in truth you have him to blame for my hobby ...