Cait fails multiple Charisma checks, disastrous results ensue.

\111/

Thunderstruck, Cait, Leighla, and Ada spent hours eyeing the Robco factory from a distance, watching it grow larger and larger the closer they became. The size of a distribution warehouse, the factory comprising Robco covered twice the ground area of Diamond City. It was amazing to only a quarter of the group that a building could be so large, and only have a single entrydoor.

Following the TankBot's treads back to the source was an easy enough path to follow. The tracks from the other robots helped as well, but all signs pointed to them leaving from giant steel-plated retractable garage doors that were strong enough to take repeated accidental missile blasts. There were Mechanist machines on patrol outside, preventing anyone from getting too close.

"So how the heck are we supposed to get in?" Cait asked,

"We're still looking for a way in,"

"What about flying in as they come rushing out? Wait for the doors to open, then bolt in like rats or a pigeon looking to roost in the rafters?"

"The roof will be our best way in,"

\111/

The exterior and the walls, fences, building was tall, offered little outside access, and heavily fortified, the roof was contracted open exposed ceilings and wires for easy installation of overhead lights, fans, vents, cables, with no money being put towards putting up a ceiling to cover it all. The factory had windows, but high up to prevent thieves from breaking in, or saboteurs from getting to the machinery.

Flying to the roof, over all the lookouts and cameras, they were able to find a gryphon sized hole for Leighla to pass through, and quickly take cover as the four of them landed inside the factory line production floor high up atop machines and equipment, with dozens of Tank bots roaming around on the floor, with swarms of eye-bots hovering thirty feet below them. Below them, just like an automatic production line in an auto-factory, pieces were being assembled and drawn together. New parts being forged and pressed out, molds capable of reproducing for centuries, they were instantly overwhelmed by the amount of Mr. Handies they could count off in groups of ten, or the constructrons going back and forth between half-assembled robots and ones ready to come off the line.

"Right into the thick of it, we step," Cait said, wrinkling her nose and scrunching up her face.

There was no slowing down nor stopping, and from where they were, they hesitantly looked back up to the hole in the roof and wondered if they were suddenly overwhelmed, but Thunderstruck looked down at the whole factory floor below them and pointed, "There." She said, having to yell the word.

The inside of Roboco factory was vastly louder than the outside, getting everyone to look exactly where she was pointing, Thunderstruck saw the tell-tale sign of a foreman's office. It was a windowed office overlooking down on the factory floor, but the window was already broken in.

"I'll go first, you follow. Ada, grab hold." Thunderstruck said, letting the Assaultron grab on. Shaking out her wings, puffing her chest up, dancing and taking short quick breaths to oxygenate the blood and her limbs, Thunderstruck bolted off the top of the production machines and stuck as high to the ceiling as possible, between lights, exposed cables, around vents, then doing a half downward spiral loop, she dove 180 degrees, turning her body upright and diving through the window. Slamming into the wall to brace herself and come to a stop, she and Ada made it.

dusting herself off as she stood up, she was suddenly rammed by Leighla and Cait running into her and Ada as they all piled into the foreman's office, skirting the detection from hundreds of robots.

"Ow~!" Thunderstruck said, disentangling herself from the bottom of the pile as Leighla pressed into her. The giant gryphon weighed nearly three times as much as herself, and getting slammed into the wall to act as their barrier brake hurt.

"Aye, no time for bellyachin'- So far so good. We made it in. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I am a heavy blunt instrument, and for that I can say I am gonna bash whatevers whats put's the screws to us."

"Wha?" Thunderstruck said, trying to read Cait's lips, "Cait, what's that sign on the wall say?" Thunderstruck asked, pointing to a yellow, black and white sign that read 'All Employees must wear Hardhat on Production Floor.'

She looked at the sign, and then to Thunderstruck, "What are you talking about? I don't know what these are anyway. I dont recognize the symbols."

"Were you taught to read...?" She probed, hoping not to set Cait off, especially here and now in the office. While they were staying away from the windows, and no bots seemed to be patrolling through here on a loop. She knew this wasn't the best time to learn about her new partners, but to Thunderstruck the fact seemed more important than Cait was showing to understand.

Symbols, Thunderstruck thought, plenty of people can get quite far in life without reading and following symbols, knowing what they mean. But here, the signs on the wall and directions, and even a non-essential map of the factory showing fire-route exits and safety precautions gave Thunderstruck, Leighla, and Ada a sense of the layout, but Thunderstruck noticed the way Cait stared at it, trying to absorb the information through symbiosis.

She could see how Cait realized there was knowledge to be gained from a fire-exit map detailing the Robco factory, but the way she looked at it made her face red, expressions flustered, and anger beginning to build, a sense of frustration that she realized she was being left out. As much as Thunderstruck wanted to bring Cait up to a level of awareness that could understand and facilitate the use of a map, she wanted to say that this wasn't the time or place to be learning the phonetics and A-B-C's.

Leighla knew how to read a map, but wasn't so good with titles or associating places on the map until after she went there herself and saw it. From these and learning from others who could read and write, began associating the place where she lived, with the name for the places in the world around her. Leighla had spent far less time being captured than Cait ever was, but she was far from being able to pick up books and enjoy them. Comprehension and interpretation were as far off concepts as words were for Cait.

"So we are here...in the Facilities Management part of the building here..." Thunderstruck said, looking to the stairwells and how the factory was layered. Fortunately for them, there were only 4 levels, with three of them being above ground. What we're looking for on this map is....this room here."

The way to the main factory's control center, a nexus hub furthest away from fire hazards, and potential invaders, there were three ways to get to the room where all the controls for the factory and the Mechanists robots being created were all programmed from a secure location.

"Systems Control Room. The brain of this place. Everything that happens in this factory can be controlled from there. The only way to get to it though, is either through..." Thunderstruck combed over the map, "Straight through the production line floor, an elevator, or down through the basement. We can maybe get to this elevator, but I've got a feeling it wont work for us. We can try it, we've been lucky so far. Otherwise the only way to get from here in Productions is to head all the way over to Storage, then up the stairwell and back into the Master Control. The way they've got it all walled off, I'm sure is to prevent fire, flood, theft, damage, or any other thing we can think of, but those are our routes." Thunderstruck said, then eyeing their own emergency escape route, options were pretty slim if they were penned in by the robots on the production floor.

"Well, let's try the lift first, see how much we can get away with up here before having to go back down 'ut there." Cait said, not daring to get too close to the foremans windows.

"Good idea." Thunderstruck said, despite her own map reading, the factory's layout was intentionally complex, to stall intruders like herself. She was hoping for another way to get closer to the Mechanist before being found, but until then, staying quiet and not drawing attention to a 800 lb griffon was fraying her nerves. Thunderstruck was impressed with Leighla in a fight against a Tankbot, which was initially why she asked the giant along, but after arriving she woefully accepted that she underestimated how many machines the Mechanist would have on hand. The sheer numbers of machines ready to slip into a murderous state and kill them was frightening, and she was doing her best to let it slip into her voice.

"I...need...them...built." Thunderstruck slowly said, trying to remind herself why she was here. She was here to take over and conquer the whole factory, death machines and their be-damned, but she wanted to do it without smashing up the place. Exhaling a cool calming breath, Thunderstruck checked her weapons and her sword. "I need them..."

"Are you ready?" Ada asked, noticing Thunderstruck's hesitation.

"Yes. Just visualizing the path ahead, I'm ready."

\111/

Despite how quickly they moved, it still took a long time avoiding robots, or waiting them to pass by, darting past them as they turn their back. Twenty minutes of maneuvering closer to their goal, their only setbacks were motion sensor spotlights that they needed to fly above and beyond its height to avoid.

The was a loud speaker playing back a heart-beat. It was listening for their heartbeats to track the noise and locate the source. Microphones and security systems designed to track living objects. Ada had to blast white noise at the sensors and microphones to get them to stop tracking properly.

The next came after they descended down two flights of stairs and came to a path with a cross walk with eye-bots and protectrons passing by. Rolling down the hallway was a machine they hadn't seen before, a tanks treads, with a robotron's body, but domed with a human brain in a nearly shatter-resistant casing was a Robobrain.

"What the hell...nah...Gimme that gun, that ain't right." Cait said, even Leighla seemed put-off by the odd machine. Wirey limbs with claws and blaster tips attached to the end, the Robobrain passed the crossway of robots and came towards them.

Thunderstruck told them they needed to be fast, to get to the far end of this hallway, and then go downstairs.

They barely poked their heads out before the robot's arms started flailing and four lazer shots blasted right around them. The robobrain seemed to be operating independently from the protectrons and eyebots, as they still kept their same pace as before.

Cait and Leighla were looking to Thunderstruck for permission to attack, holding them off for another moment, the Robobrain rolled closer before they sprung at it from both sides. Ada took the time it was rolling closer to line up a perfect blinding shot of energy right into the Robobrain's visual eye-cones, completely blinding it. Even as it fired away, Thunderstuck used her brought along laser pistol with a rifle's grip for her hoof to press against, and tapped the trigger 30 times all clustered at the Robobrain's left arm.

Boring holes and searing through steel and aluminum plates, the wiring connected to the Robobrain's laser sparked and continued waving through the air as it's unending advanced continued. Thunderstruck chose the laser pistol over simplicity to load, but the battery cells had a positive and minus side, and in the heat of the moment put the battery in backward. Dumping the battery to the ground, and shoving in a new one, she was luckier this time in getting the positve and negative magnets to line up to create the circuit and power her pistol again.

Leighla and Ada were the first targets, being larger and robotic respectively, the Robobrain acknowledged Cait then Thunderstruck as threats last, but the weapons they carried bore massive damage against robots and metal.

While Leighla wasn't able to procure a weapon suitable for her size, Cait was more than happy to have brought along a pilfered Assault rifle and Laser rifle from the stack of weapons brought from the USS Constitution, to the Vault 111 armory.

With rifles in each hand, Cait knew everything there was to guns, she could see the numbers, read the labels, knew what every single one did and how they operated, because in her time at the Combat Zone and before, that was all there was to read and talk about with other raiders. The weapons they carried, how to shoot it, what kind of noise did it make, how to dodge it, how to clean it, how to dismantle and reassemble it, bullet sizes, lengths of barrel, types of stocks and sights, scopes, wraps, scrimshaw, totems, feathers, charms, beads, energy blasters, laser pistols, brands, she knew them all.

While she lacked the aim and experience, her knowledge of weapons and how to use them was vast. She knew she needed to carry plenty of bullets and ammo for her rifles, so she taped them to her chest and waist like a bandolier. With the laser rifle, she could hold up and shoot with one hand, since there was no recoil, the other she braced against her stomach or off her thigh and let her body absorb the shock.

Spraying bullets and laser blasts, she would've been more accurate and on target choosing one rifle and using both hands, but Thunderstruck couldn't argue with Cait as the three of them finished off the Robobrain and the whole factory started blaring red claxon alarms loud enough to make Thunderstruck's arteries dilate. Her sensitive ears demanded that they get away from the sirens, as the protectrons and eyebots in this area stopped what they were doing and suddenly shifted into a scan and search mode.

"Hey, we gotta run! Now! Cait! Leighla! Ada! Let's go! Let's go! Now!" Thunderstruck beckoned, hurrying them along as she saw their window of opportunity closing fast. With silence no longer being an option, Thunderstuck pushed them along as one protectron spotted them, followed by two eyebots.

"Get going!" Thunderstruck said, taking aim at the eyebots, she knew they wouldn't stop following them. As blasts of energy sailed by, one struck her in the chest, stunning and electrifying her into tensing up for a moment as the robots got even closer. She rolled sideways and fired from the ground, watching the two eye bots break apart and come crashing to the floor.

Even with the protectron following her, Thunderstruck ignored it and fled after Ada, Cait, and Leighla, not wanting to be too far separated. Hoping that she could break line of sight long enough for the robot to forget about her, she flew down the hallway, disappearing from the protectron's gaze.

Coming to the stairway, they descended thirty feet to the basement of Robco factory and into the Robobrain facility.

\111/

Thunderstruck waited anxiously by the stairs, but no more robots were coming their way, and the alarm was limited to the upper floor of the facility. She was grateful that it was much quieter, but the loud hum of machinery was still present everywhere. It was hard to tell if any floating robots were coming their way, making her cautious about not seeing many yet.

Overhead were long thin orange pipes, caged over and shining down a long concrete tunnel lined with human cells and prison bars.

"Eugh," Lieghla said, snorting out the air, "This prison still smells wrong, like fear and old piss."

"Don't think too hard about it," Thunderstruck said, "And look, another one. Keep your voice down." Down the hallway, most of the cages were open, but along rolled another Robobrain operating on high-alert. Its arms were raised, like it was ready to whip laser blasts to its left or right.

"Easy enough," Cait said, readying both rifles again.

"Cait, use one at a time," she suggested.

"But I have more time to shoot before reloading," She argued, pulling open a cage door, she propped the tips of both rifles through the bars and aimed them down the hallway. Pulling both triggers, one blasting ballistic rounds, the other red laser blasts, Cait sprayed the whole hallway down.

While the initial wall of gunfire ate away a whole level of metal plate, the Robobrain grinded through gears and broken and exposed shielding to turn and face the group.

Thunderstruck and Ada fired their volley next, pulling back as Leighla charged ahead like a bull and slammed into the Robobrain, flipping it up and over, ripping through its arms and crushing the brain with her paws. The casing was pinned like a soda can and flattened.

Moving further down the hallway they came upon more Robobrains, and surgical rooms that only made more sense as to how these particular robots were made.

"What kind of hospital is this?" Cait asked,

"It appears all these rooms down here, from the former human cells, to the surgical rooms, to the presence of robots using human brains as a operating system, all seem to be part of the same process to produce these Robobrains." Ada explained, "Truly a cruel fate for the former prisoners here."

"Lieghla, you get on that one first, we'll blast the other to smithereens." Cait said, reloading her rifles.

Fighting through the laboratory and the hallways that squared off again along the ceiling, making Thunderstruck believe they were under solid ground and supports again. The ceilings were much higher, and knowing to expect seeing a flying robot made Thunderstruck and Ada all the more aware of a patrolling eyebot making all the noise of an electric water-kettle set to boil.

Leighla and Cait had never seen an eyebot before, a floating speaker with a covered metal grate for a face, single laser and camera on the top with long antenna.

Blasting it while the duo looked at the robot like it were a soap-bubble, the pop it made from frying the electrical circuits and bursting open snapped the two back to reality. "Didn't even know that was a robot. Didn't know what I was looking at there for a second..." Cait admitted, shaking the confusion away. Now, with a determined stare, she would just blast anything that moved.

"I believe we've been spotted." Ada said,

"Nothing we can do about it except move faster." Thunderstruck said, looking for signs along the walls that pointed to where they wanted to be.

After saying that, within thirty seconds the sound of more Eyebots descending from the factory floor, swarm-bots being redirected, and protectrons still on the bottom floor all being sent to deter Cait, Leighla, Ada, and Thunderstruck from moving on.

"Come no further," The Mechanist said through the robot's speakers.

"Ignore them! Until we get to this person face to face, they're just going to keep coming." Thunderstruck said, thinking about the production lines above them endlessly producing more and more automatons. There were moments she feared being shot, and when she finally was, her side burned ceaselessly until she forced herself to move. Laser blasts melted a tiny divot of skin on her hide by her right ribs, making full strides impossible as the area was incredibly tender and red with inflamed blood vessels on the surface.

Cait and Leighla were getting hit, but Cait's numb senses and sharp reflexes kept her vitals protected and dodged any close range robots looking to strike her. Even as an Assaultron charged at them, Cait knew exactly where to strike and could knock it off balance with one punch, then follow up with an elbow jab to the core, open palm strike, then kick the whole thing backwards to tip it up and over. She fought dozens of these in the Combat Zone, and fighting them one on one was only easy when she wasn't being distracted by other hovering pests blasting their way in.

Leighla was getting targeted more and shot at because of her size, but this only made the gryphon move as fast as possible. These close quarters had her crawling up the walls, launching herself through the air as she sprinted and dashed along. Never slowing down because she knew to pause longer than what she could strike at as she moved meant they already locked on target and ready to fire. As all these machines shot at her, she wished for a weapon of her own that could fire back, a cannon to fit in her claw. But even as she saw the need for a weapon beyond her own claws and muscles, her strength protected her from the worst damage, and size was able to shield Cait when she wasn't paying attention to the flying robots above their heads.

Ada focused on any robot hovering or buzzing around. There were shafts leading all around the factory, and by design, it wouldn't take long for another wave of swarm-bots, eye-bots, or Mr. Handies to reach them. It was the buildup of tanks, assaultrons, and protectrons, that as they ran into more and more of them, the more surrounded they were.

Downing the Assualtron, Cait blew apart the head piece until it was nothing but a pile of splintered metal and broken parts. Shoving more ammo into her rifles, she turned her assault to any buzzing pests trying to pin Leighla and Thunderstruck to the ground. Every close call made each of them react a bit more fiercely until the fighting was done, not wanting to die or fail. Cait's ears were ringing as she finally got a degree of timing down where she was firing in sequence with the laser and assault rifle, instead of pulling both triggers at once as fast as she could. For a robotic weapons factory, there was a distinct lack of weapons available to pick up and plunder. Her aim improved as she sighted targets flying around them and shot them down.

Ada was more advanced than the other Assaultrons, her programming had been updated and reworked, the experience she gained from the Commonwealth and Jackson's input helped curtail her skills into reacting faster, responding while Assaultrons of a similar model were still processing the best way to react. This split second timing allowed Ada to shoot first, interpret dangers quicker, and avoid damage. Where all the Assaultrons programmed by the Mechanist were running basic funtionality, Ada learned how to incorporate her groups skills and strengths, their weapons and how they lead counterstrikes on enemies in their openings. She knew that the Cait, Thunderstruck, and Leighla were relying on her to be their shield, their protection, and even stand in the way of critical hits that would otherwise kill anyone else.

As the four of them tore through two waves of robots, over a dozen in all, they all felt the pressing urge to run on and sprint for the the stairway leading up into Central Command. They could hear more coming, and visually see more faster lighter robots on their way to lead the fight again.

The stair way was a walled series of ramps that made it possible to roll or push a cart up the entire three flights. At the top, the space opened up to the control center. More stairs leading to catwalks and access points to other parts of the factory, they came up through the longest path to reach this room.

Behind walls and panels of thick indestructible glass, security gates, and laser turrets were the consoles and command nodes for the entire Robco Factory. Dozens of Robobrains were operating the controls, the Mechanist drops the security gates down over the Central Command. One final layer of protection was a thick shutter they hoped would be a final sign to keep intruders out.

"Let me do the talking," Thunderstruck said,

"The hell you are, I got some words to say to this autonomatic asshole! Assinge'ing my ass off listening to an automatic answering machine beep about protecting the Commonwealth." Cait seethed, looking up to the Mechanist's control room.

"You Mechanicalist Shit for Brains Monkey! Show you'self before I drop you faster than a bad mother does with her child!"

"Cait! Quiet! Jesus! You're not helping our first impression." Thunderstruck said, "We're here for the robots and that's it!"

Cait nodded, "Yeah. Yeah! You hear that!? We're here for your robots, Mechanist! So give up now!" Cait demanded, escalating the situation.

"Cait! Damnit! Shut up before something worse happens!"

\111/

Twenty seconds after Thunderstruck silenced Cait with a final shush, the fire alarm went off- causing remote access lifts from the main factory floor to ascend. Thunderstruck saw the top heads of two tank bots rising up and knew what they were before anyone else did. She recognized the shape instantly, while part of her wanted to chew Cait out for blowing whatever chance of talking to the Mechanist out of the water with her stellar charisma, the tanks were an even worse luck as a result of that.

Each Mk.3 Tank Bot carried a mini-gun, ready to fire instantanously as it rolled off the remote access lifts Thunderstruck spotted from the Fire Escape Map. They weren't primarily supposed to be used to bring heavy weaponry into the control room area, but the Mechanist deemed it enough of an emergency that she put the elevators into use.

"Kill the Intruders."

As both Mk.3 Tank Bots pointed and fired hundreds of rounds at them, Ada stopped the hail of bullets by raising the energy in her palms and firing wide beams of lasers, vaporizing bullets to particle matter before it could strike them.

To Cait and Leighla, the Tanks were slow. Fighting each other in the Combat Zone, wrestling, actually walking the line between nearly crushing each other, choking each other out, punching, grappling, and throwing each other against the bars to extend their matches as long as possible, was easy to execute on Tank-bots. Even as their omni-treads kept them on target, Ada let Cait use her for cover, where the only opening was avoiding missiles launched or them ramming into the walls like rampaging bulls.

\111/

The Mechanist shook, body fuming, anger past the boiling point, "Are you alright?" Sparks asked. The Mechanist seethed at the monitors, scared and angry, emotions hidden under a metal mask, the Mechanist recoiled as more and more of the security systems didn't allow them to trap the intruders. Whatever they sent, the marauders either ran from or blew through.

"Are we going to be okay?"

A cool calm voice by the Mechanist's side asked, Sparks a blue Pegasus mare with a two tone eletric-yellow mane and tail and remote control-switch box with a big red button, and off the tip of a small antenna on top of the box was small white bolts of lightning.

"How are these mauraders able to get this far in?" Sparks asked, "The Tankbots will be able to hold them wont they?"

"I'm more worried that they're here now, and we'll figure out how they got in later. These four are more than regular mauraders, they're vastly more ferocious. Each of them are capable of taking on multiple regular Assualtrons, and Protectrons, smashing through them like they're glass. They've got a roided-out gryphon that can peck through a regular tankbot's armor like an aluminum can, and its only because I've put my own touches on these two that the hen isn't crumpling them apart. The woman there is a gunserking trigger-happy, spray and prayer, decimating everything in her path over accuracy, the Assaultron they have is the same rogue bot we've picked up on scanners for days now, and this Pegasus...now she's come and tracked us down. We've barely got any footage of her to compare to know what she's capable of. Only in the last twenty minutes the eye bots were picking up images of her, but even then she's moving pretty fast."

"Then will the security gates hold them if they Tankbots wont?"

"I've got a surprise in store for them even if they're feeling like keeping any tricks up their sleeves. The shutters can prevent anything up to a small warhead, and if they're here for the machines, then they'll risk damaging the main control if they try and blow their way in." The Mechanist replied.

"I should suit up." Sparks said, "I don't want to be standing here, waiting for them to shoot us down when they decide to melt their way through." Retreating away from the Central Command Center, the Mechanist anxiously watched the monitors, tapping away at the consoles to invoke faster commands.

These four marauders were destroying everything they threw at them, and couldn't separate them.

Their cohesion as a unit made it hard to crack their defenses, but she knew if she could take at least one of them down, or separate them, it would be easier to fight them that way.

The Mechanist inhaled a deep breath and held it, listening to sounds of explosions and hails of bullets and laser rifle ricochete and burst off the walls around them. The sound of Leighla screeching as she latched onto one Mk.3 and spun with it as it tried flinging her off. She clawed and scraped at the metal, tips finding purchase every time and gouging long divots into the armor. Even as Leighla was bodyslammed into the wall with the force of a speeding car, The colliding of aluminum on talon grated on all their ears was not a sign they were winning easily.

Ada ran into the tankbot with enough force to lift it up, throwing it's sense of balance out of scale as it hastily tried readjusting by throwing itself in reverse and pushing away from the wall.

"The Assaultron..." The Mechanist said, feeling a sense of uncertainty and confusion. Even with the Equestrian on their side, this wasn't about to stop if they were violent and wanted to hurt them, the Mechanist figured.

While Ada and Leighla fought one, Cait and Thunderstruck fought the other.

The Mechanist's Mk.3's were able to deal with the overheating relay by rapidly raising the open air vents to the central core and vent fans to rapidly blow air through the system to cool. These fans were so strong it could suck air particles out of the air and once the cool damp air touched the Mk3 cores, it turned to steam.

These tanks were pouring off steam to keep themselves cool, and Thunderstruck noticed that these tankbots in particular didn't shift into a cooling stage. She saw those billowing clouds above them and saw her opportunity. Flying overhead, she uses her wings to gather the vapors and condense them into a pillar of cloud.

With Cait and Leighla tag-teaming the first Mk.3, Ada and Thunderstruck on the second, the Mechanist purposefully put extra armor and plating around secure joints and over any vital components, making it difficult to critically strike to take them out of commission, even after Leighla ripped off plates or gouged divots, the tank still lumbered on. Cait kept on shooting at their legs, trying to get the treads to stop moving or cripple it. Even as one leg was ground off, the machine plowed on, throwing up skidmarks of sparks and drag marks rivets across the ground.

Ada kept firing at the Tankbot's eyes, its head, determined to blind it or at least throw off its tracking sensors while Thunderstruck worked to shape and condense the cloud. Chasing after the Mk.3s, maneuvering above them and collecting the vapor trails as it spawned and grew.

With the cloud turning darker and darker, plasma crackled and formed around the sphere as Thunderstruck crushed the cloud into a ball with her hooves, watching as the cloud shook and reeked of dust, but feeling the heat and energy coming off of it made her hooves sweat and burn. She knew it was dangerous to force a cloud down this small, but she wasn't given much to work with. As it neared the size of a bowling ball, the nearly black tesla ball was vibrating violently, and all it needed to break was a point of contact to conduct energy through.

Pushing it away, the ball was a slow moving orb that could be heard staticly with the air around it being charged. But, as it neared chest-height, Thunderstruck pushed her wings and sent a gust of air behind the ball, making it float right at the Mk.3 Ada was fighting.

As the ball of plasma struck the first tank bot, it exploded in a massive orb of electrictity and discharges of lightning spinning and spiraling out in every direction for five meters, with a few errant bolts of lightning lancing across the entire control center room, striking randomly out at metal plates or wired fixtures. The capacitors and energy terminals on the tankbot grew so hot they ruptured and exploded, releasing all the energy in loud explosions that caught fire and burned through the interior circuit boards.

The Mechanist and Sparks both cried out at the sight of losing their last line of defense to the four raiders who were able to bust through everyline of defense. Even as she stood here, waiting for more processes to be enacted, the computers were moving too slow and with how much destruction they caused to the security coming in, it would take a day to program robots to be aware that there were intruders inside the Central Command Center right this moment. Neither of them had time, and as even enacting the code for the factory robots to redirect resources took too long.

"I know," The Mechanist replied.

Fully prepared, Sparks sported her own Mechanist themed Power-Armor, battle-saddle with built in laser-rifles for dual-strikes with triggers tied to a gimble down by her hoof. All it took to fire both lasers was a flick of her hoof. Connecting the power armor's fusion cores to the laser rifle's power supply, she could continuously keep firing for long periods of time. Armor covered wings were 3/8ths aluminum, lightweight, water and rust resistant when combined with zincs. Her wings fit into the suit, then the braces would clasp around her wing joints and expand, allowing for full flexibility.

Sparks signals that she's ready to fight, but the Mechanist denies her. Shaking her head, their eyes were fixated on the last tank bot. While now the four of them could concentrate on a single target, Thunderstruck was attempting to gather more cloud vapor trails to form another plasma ball. Able to put distance from being the direct target, Ada, Cait, and Leighla all swarmed the second Mk. 3, as Thunderstruck saw the opportunity to strike out again.

The Mechanist thought she was being smart by withholding modified tank bots close, that the meer sight of their overwhelming presence would un-nerve any raider or vagabond who saw them, realizing that they couldn't get any closer to their goal than before.

"No." The Mechanist says defiantly, watching Thunderstruck as she gets close to recreating her lightning strike again, the Mechanist activates the environmental controls for the Central Control Room.

Lining the ceiling, floors, and walls were vents, water spouts and nozzles, vents, and fans all devoted to preventing the terminals in the control room from catching fire.

These same systems could be used to create massive amounts of steam. Diverting heat to the central room, rapidly cooled with sprinklers, the entire room was filled in moments as everything was fogged out through thick humid warm air. Thunderstruck was pushed upwards as her Pegasus magic acted against her, keeping her above the clouds as she tried containing more than what she could wrap her hooves around at one time.

The tank bot was moving blindly, but was still visible and extremely audible as its ground-off rear leg scratched skidmarks into the ground, and ran full force with as much momentum as if could muster before colliding and bouncing off a wall.

Intending to crush them, Thunderstruck tried to quickly coax a bit of cloud into her hooves, working faster to get the job done as quickly as possible.

Pulled upwards to the ceiling, Thunderstruck fought the strong current but was then pushed up by the hot air and steam rising, towards the vents where the force was even stronger.

"You think you'll be able to get away with that again?" The Mechanist laughed, instead of cutting off the flow of water and heat, the Mechanist increased it even further, steam plugged the room and Thunderstruck was finding it difficult to fight and fly her way through the thick steam. Her pegasus natural magic instincts were acting against her as the humidity of the whole room reached 100% and it was like moving through a steam-sauna with the blasts of hot air coming up from the floor. Making the whole room wet, it was part of the fire-resistant safety features to control the environment in the room at all times.

Thunderstruck, any loose debris, and all the air were sucked up and out of the room, like a vortex of whirling air, it dragged Thunderstruck along, slamming her through the system before spitting them up and out through the exhaust above the factory. Thunderstruck ached and was sore from the bruises and bent angles her body was forced into before being expelled back outside.

Blasted hundreds of meters into the air, she was surrounded with steam and was drenched to the bone with saturation and water. Her wings were wet, she felt like she was flying through sand, and the steam was like playing hot-potato with her skin. As long as she kept moving, it didn't burn. Keeping her mouth shut, a tiny whiff cleared her sinuses and stifled her nose, slightly burning from the heat. Bruised and sore all over, she couldn't directly place where she felt hurt, just an all encompassing feeling she was knocked upside down and spun around.

Freeing herself from the condensed cloud of air, she was far above the factory chimneys and exhaust vents, seeing the clouds of steam wafting up and out.

"Ohh.....," Thunderstruck said, panting as she gathered her breath. Shaking out her wings she felt the cloud of cooling steam wafter ever higher above her and around her, being blown by the Easterly wind inland.

"You think you're so smart" Thunderstruck said, glowering down at the factory below her. Growling as her mind raced for another solution to get back at the Mechanist. It hurt more to be cartoonishly ejected from the factory than anything else that night.

To most other creatures, their limbs passed through it or the particles wafted around them. For Thunderstruck, she could hold out her hoof and feel the particles condense like a dragging a scoop through powdery snow until it formed a ball of cloud. Pulling the cloud away, it shrank as it cooled, but remained solid for Thunderstruck to manipulate.

With endless amount of water vapor and steam to play with, she flew higher and spread out her wings, her arms, and body as wide as she could, creating a pony-sized cloud in just a few seconds.

"Let's see who the smart one is now..." She said, letting the cloud build and build, as steam from the factory was shaped by Pegasus magic to add onto the mass, the cloud grew upwards and wider.

A roaring engine was loud enough to make Thunderstruck look down, racing up through the air from the roof of the factory was Sparks the armored pegasus.

\111/

"Oy! Cunt!"

"I am the Mechanist!'

"Oy!....ROBO-CUNT! Come out here where I can see you and get a shaft of my 10 inch wrench upside your rusted twat you buggering bolt-Bitch!" Cait's explitives only became more and more derogatory and baseless until she was shouting swears in no particular order, offloaded back with her voice pounding out insults into the Mechanists ears.

Ten minutes of yelling and cursing, even Leighla wondered if there was a limit to how many aggressive threats a person you could make without pausing to take a breath. Cait was finally running out of steam, having promised every sort of gruesome painful path to death until finally wandering away from the blast doors, voice growing quieter as she came closer to sitting down, gripping her head, "Ohff, I feel light-headed...and cold." Teeth chattering, Cait wrapped her arms around herself, shivering and legs locking up.

"I think you said everything that ever needs to be said, Cait. And then some..."

"Then some what?"

"Just take a seat, Cait. You'll feel alright in a bit."

"I feel better though, getting all that off my chest. Like a ballon was inside my head...but now it's all deflated."

The Mechanist was standing there in the dark, terrified of the woman on the outside,

\111/

Sparks aimed at Thunderstruck in her crosshairs and fired as she soared upwards into the clouds. Thunderstruck dove and swung out wide, The twin blasts of laser fire cut through the air and painfully accept on of the blasts piercing right through her side and out her back, burning and searing a hole straight through her body. It made her gasp, but she knew it was only one of dozens more that followed as Sparks continued her unending assault.

Thunderstruck flew ahead, dodging Sparks attacks as she chased her, she could feel the heat of lasers pass by as the armored pegasus gunned for her. The only saving grace was that even though Sparks was faster, Thunderstruck could react quicker than the other pony could. She saw that detail almost instantly when Thunderstruck tried attacking her head on. The armored pegasus stalled, fear, Thunderstruck instantly recognized.

The other pegasus was far outskilled as a fighter, and even though well protected, she wasn't experienced. It was the extra boosts from her fusion cores powering the suit, as well as the weight too that slowed her down. Thunderstruck also had a much wider peripheral than the power-armor's narrowed vision to protect the eyes.

These differences didn't equate much in a ranged air battle, but in close, able to hug tight on her inside, she saw openings to exploit.

Being chased, Sparks was on Thunderstrucks tail, blasting away with twin laser rifles. Pulling up, Thunderstruck fanned her wings and maneuvered up and pulled back, feeling Sparks draw closer she then forced herself to a slow crawl as Sparks came barreling towards her without much time to stop. With only a single chance to strike, Thunderstruck contorted herself and bucked straight down, landing a solid blow at Sparks' left wing joint.

There was a crack of metal as she heard screws and bolts break, a chip in the armor that Thunderstruck was now fixated on. A perfect hit too, Sparks lost rhythm and had to come to a slow and recover. Thunderstruck already was following closer for another strike, this time bashing the back of the mare's skull down, slamming her hundreds of feet down as the Sparks had to work harder to climb back up and reach higher altitudes.

Noticing the extra effort it took for Sparks to fly straight up, Thunderstruck raced skywards.

The air turned cold, and observed Sparks as she flew towards her, studying every movement, her eyes caught Spark's wrist flicking upwards, followed by the twin blasts from her side-mounted laser rifles.

With no options but to attack head on, Thunderstruck dove at Sparks again, on the back of Sparks power armor, a plate slid back to extend and unfold a miniature tesla coil that bristled and crackled with electricity. Thunderstruck's eyes were on the tips of Sparks hooves, grabbing onto her Thunderstruck screamed as she was electrocuted.

Momentarily paralyzed, Sparks shoved Thunderstruck away, letting her plummet. She freefell but shook the stasis off and looked up between her legs as she fell.

Spinning over onto her belly she thrust he wings out and saw the ever-growing magical cloud she formed and was now large enough to cover the entirety of the Robco factory and start spreading across East Boston. Every second thousands of gallons of steam were cooled and condensed into the expanding cloud touched with pegasus magic.

With only a sharpened blade, the Shishkebab, banging against her backside, she drew it out and raked it across the top of the cloud. Sparks ignighted the flaming sword as she began a miniature vortex of wind. Sparks was staying high, readying herself for a second round against the pegasus.

The nimbus cloud forming above the Robco factory started blooming upwards, growing higher and higher. As Sparks chose to dove, Thunderstruck let go of the Shishkebab and let the vortex of wind take it upwards where it was carried out towards Sparks as she dove.

"Thanks for wearing metal," Thunderstruck said, clawing out a section of nimbus she squeezed the blackened cloud till it errupted in her hooves, shocking herself, but the chain lightning went for the closest charged ions and found a metal lightning rod. The lightning dashed up the vortex and exploded in all directions, striking and electrocuting Sparks in a burst of plasma as one of her power cores were overloaded and burst into white hot flames.

Sparks fell through the sky, slamming into the magic cloud as Thunderstruck went after her falling sword.

Now with the positions switched, Sparks was down 50%, her armored wings too heavy to even flap without power running through them. If she were stronger, she could muscle her way through, but this being the only time she ever dawned the suit to use in actual combat, only wearing it before while building it, Sparks felt true fear at losing this battle.

Confined to the floating battlefield, the cloud continued to expand and grow large enough to reach the Charles Bay, expanding over the abandoned Boston Airport.

She didn't react in time to see Thunderstruck slam a punch directly into her helmet punching at the mare's ears, determined to disorient and cause a massive headache for the armored pony, neither of them heard a single word from each other as Thunderstruck fanned clouds up under her wings, using the vapors to stay afloat, putting less effort into every flap as she kicked Sparks in the head this time. Again, and again, and again, Sparks flared up her armored wings, covering her head and deflecting the blow. Pressing a hoof to her chest, a large pulse of energy burst outwards around her form, throwing Thunderstruck back as the remaining power core worked overtime to cover for the energy deficit.

Sparks ripped off her helmet to see, and Thunderstruck's eyes went wide. A moment was all she could spare in determining if she knew this mare or not, and the muscles around her eye sockets were straining, twitching. Her eyes felt dry and she couldn't blink as she could only say that they'd never met each other ever before in their life.

This pegasus wasn't from Nuka-World.

"You're not from Nuka-World! Where the hell did you come from!?"

"So you're from Nuka-World?" Sparks asked, "I heard only nothing but raiders and slavers from there...so you're one of them!" She cried, "You're not getting any further you fiend!"

"Use your eyes, you blind bat! Your robots are killing EVERYONE!"

"No they-"

"EVERYONE!" Thunderstruck screamed, "Attacking caravans, merchants, everyone and anyone! The longer we're up here, the less patient the human and her gryphon are going to be. And they have about as much patience as they have brains combined, so either stop attacking and end this fight. Or you'll see them destroying the Robco factory, raizing it to the ground because you didn't take the time to stop and think. They're not going to stop until you and every bot you created are a molten pile of slag unless you give up, now."

Sparks almost looked down, dropping her guard, but as she broke eye contact, she raised a hoof and cut the power to the rest of her suit, leaving only a single circuit breaker active for the tesla coil. Thunderstruck saw the immense weight that suddenly took its toll on the armored pegasus and took to the air. Raising her sword, Thunderstruck let go of a breath she had been holding onto ever since she first saw the armored pegasus flying towards her.

\111/

A part of her hoped that they shared some sort of kinship, that they knew each other in a previous life, at Nuka-World before things went terribly wrong, or even before that when the Commonwealth was nothing more than a place that existed on a map to her.

Seeing that there was no love lost, Thunderstruck felt sad that the way things turned out, they were compelled to fight, but there were too many faces and stories lost and found along the way to give up and accept defeat. She didn't want to kill another pony, especially another pegasus as well, knowing that in all likelyhood, they were cousins. That fact hit harder than others, seeing that they were relatives, but grown up so far apart, and so differently informed over the years that now when it came to this fight, they didn't even get time to talk and discuss why they were conflicting in the first place.

Thunderstruck's family was small, her father, mother, four sisters, and a brother. She hadn't seen her mother, Live Wire, or father Black Ice, since long before moving out on her own, and as for her brother and sisters, Scotch Bonnie was dead, killed in an accident when they were all still young, Heat Seeker was still kicking in Nuka-World as far as she knew before being separated from each other. High Voltage was sold off, Lotta Rosie, herself, and seven others were the only ones who made it off the chain gang that day and was missing, she didn't know if she was alive or dead, sold or escaped, while her brother War Machine was dragged into a raider gang last she knew. He was only a step above surviving everyday, but he was still miles and leagues from living everyday like it was supposed to be.

She knew her father and mother both had as many siblings, more than she could remember because there was a time she heard her aunts and uncles names as well. She didn't know it, but Thunderstruck was related to a third of the ponies in Nuka-World by blood, and related to everyone by marriage or family bonds when recorded and traced properly.

Several years ago, there was a push from Springfield, Massachusetts to keep first, second, and third cousins from getting too close and creating undivergent family trees. The more narrow a family tree was, the easier it was for the new roots to break and collapse from the weight of their ancestors above. Having a large family, and keeping track of who was related to who, and making sure they weren't walking inbreds was enough to push families out of their nests and go out into the world, meet new people, and then start new ones.

Without a doubt, Thunderstruck knew in her heart she was striking down a relative, but even so, Sparks was the one who refused to yield when offered the chance. Instead, Sparks used that opportunity to attack Thunderstruck with everything her power armor and fusion core could provide.

A blast of lightning arced out, Thunderstruck felt the air molecules heating up as the intense blast of voltage raced towards her.

With both hooves, Thunderstruck gripped Shishkabab and lit the blade on fire. Defending and bracing as the lightning struck the flaming blade, Thunderstruck felt the energy coiling around the sword, then swung it back in an electric reversal and flung the bolts of lightning back at Sparks.

As the lightning struck Sparks, the air split apart, blasting a crater of white light that burned with a sun's intensity and crack of noise that ruptured the sound barrier. The thunderclap afterwards was all that was heard as Sparks was blasted back hundreds of feet, then as she lost consciousness and dipped below the battlefield, she fell through and back down towards the surface. Unable to move, lifeless to the world, Sparks crashed through the roof of the Robco Factory.

\111/

The disturbed cloud rippled and grew darker, this entire time they were fighting, the cloud Thunderstruck started before the battle kept growing and growing, and within seconds, any sign of the scars through the cloud vanished as it grew in size from a nimbus, to a cumulonimbus.

Touching down atop the massive stormcloud, she tried punching down, feeling herself spring upwards and bounce off.

Taking off higher, she slammed down again, this time with more force but the winds blowing in cool air from the sea, to the still warm land was pushing the cumulonimbus thousands of feet up as it grew to cover the entire Charles bay and East Boston as far as Revere to the North.

"Oh no. I can't punch through." Thunderstruck said, trying to bust the cloud.

That never happened to her, and she never considered it a possibility in her life, but her mind went spiraling through dozens of reasons and solutions until she jumped up and down, trying to condense more cloud into breaking off bolts of lightning to strike the Robco Factory, but it was too dense.

She needed to overload the circuit breakers and system to the Robco factory, but now the magic-influenced stormcloud was beyond her control. Thunderstruck couldn't move something this large on her own.

Thunderstruck accidentally created a cold-weather system right over the Robco factory that was being perpetually fueled by the steam coming up, and into this one concentric cloud that was quickly going from a nimbus to a cumulonimbus cloud that was getting bigger and bigger every second.

"Uh-oh." Thunderstruck said, feeling the cloud beneath her hooves.

She couldn't move this much water, as there were hundreds of thousands of gallons of water all particalized and suspended in fine cool vapor, and within ten minutes, it would grow to be over a million gallons of water, 8 million pounds of liquid mist vapors thicker than snow at the top of a mountain. The cloud was touched by Pegasus hooves, supposed to retain it's shape, but without cutting it off from the source. Thunderstruck couldn't even see the ground as more cloud was naturally cooling and joining the rest.

Flapping hard upwards, Thunderstruck slammed down into the cloud from thirty feet, listening to the thunder beneath her hooves roar and beat loud like a drum in her heart. Stomping, kicking, bucking the clouds, they grew darker, but more white steam from the factory was condensing and cooling, only adding to the layers of thickness like slabs of mattresses stacked twenty high.

Sweating as she poured energy into blasting through, wings flapping frustratingly as the cloud she was handling suddenly became to big for her to control.

"Come on, lightning! Strike!" She bellowed, hammering down onto the white tufts with her hooves. Flying higher, she tried 60 feet this time, sending ripples of static through the whole cloud, darkening the tone, but only growing bigger.

"Buck!"

She already spent ten minutes gathering cloud, and by the time she realized her folly, another ten minutes passed. It would take dozens of pegasus to break through a cloud this big, and by the time she attempted her second strike to bust up her work, the size grew to spread most of East Boston.

This type of cloud making was dangerous, as now a runaway cloud production was resulting in a massive bank of energy forming, that without any provocation, would eventually reach a pocket of highly condensed energy like the Glowing Sea, sending hot waves of concentrated postively charged atoms into the air, meeting a cold pocket of negatively charged condensed water slowly floating by as frozen particles, and the resulting swirling currents of air and energy would result in a tornado, cyclone, or a complete rending open of the sky and letting lightning bolts rain down. Until then, as the cloud expanded and walls of water heaped upon themselves to join Thunderstruck's cloud, she thought to herself that the only way to burst through this without bouncing off would be to go even higher.

Taking off, her teeth clattered as she climbed, sensing the growing target behind her. As she reached a thousand feet, she realized that the skyscrapers were even taller off to her left.

The expanding cloud was growing unnaturally, thanks to Thunderstruck's Pegasus magic keeping it all together. To let it go free now would be cataclysmic akin to ten thousand bolts of lightning striking with enough force to rip the landscape apart and vaporize the rest to cinders.

Only moving faster, and dropping in from higher resulted in any sort of response from the water cloud beneath her.

Falling, she could feel the air pressure ripping back at her, trying to keep her from moving faster, the roaring in her ears, it sounded like the blast of the X2-rockets attached to the USS Constitution, and as she struck the cloud from over 1000 feet up, she still couldn't burst through.

Thunderstruck looked all around her, seeing if there was a way to push it, but coming up blank and panicking as her memories took her back to the moments she broke free from the chain-line and sprinted from open-skies. The boom of the rockets ripped through the air like a blast, and she could remember knowing in her heart and legs, and wings that moved before she even acted consciously was that she was long gone like flash of lightning, trailed by the clap of thunder.

Chains seemed to weigh on her, even there above the clouds. She could feel the cold rusty chains grating on her side. Forcing her wings out, she could hear the sounds of all the others who got their chance to run that day, and others who saw them slip away.

Her promise to Paladin Brandis came up as a parched thought, to go back and look those other ponies in the eye who were still on the line. Heat Seeker, High Voltage, Lotta Rosie, and War Machine, and every other pony who weren't given this feeling of pleasurable freedom was better than anything she ever knew from before then. Everyone was given a ticket for the freedom lottery the day Nate and Meathead distracted the entire Commonwealth, she was the one who got hers pulled to lead her here.

Three times she failed, and now she was on the verge of crying. "Come on!" She yelled. Her wings tightened against her side, tired to move but she wouldn't listen to them. Shoving them all the way out she moaned as she wagged them all the way up above her head, drawing in a deep breath, and shouting as she charged upwards.

Blasting up from the clouds billowing around her, threatening to swamp her in thick soupy fog, Thunderstruck rose up even higher. Chasing the sun and moon, she didn't have a reference for how high she flew, only that she could see more landmarks that were slowly being swallowed up by the expanding clouds.

The bay of Boston was covered, and the wall of clouds was moving through the skyscrapers like a wave during the tide. Washing upwards and then spilling back, like a bowl it bunched up along the buildings and trickled in through every part of the Boston skyline.

Most residents in the whole county didn't even give a second moments notice to the odd weather pattern, sniffing the air and idly commenting how it got foggy pretty quickly for them, or how it smelled like it was going to rain or freeze.

Now she couldn't even get back down to the surface cloud cover was so thick, it wasn't even possible to dig through with her hooves, she would need a drill to dig through.

Feeling the weight of Shishkabab by her side, she grabbed for it, pulling it up out of its sheath, 'Or a blade'.

Flying higher that the Mass Fusion building, taller than Trinity Tower, Thunderstruck flew up higher and higher until she was certain she could see the entire Commonwealth, every corner of it, but at the same time, she couldn't appreciate the beautiful view. When she was high enough in the sky to see Cape Cod from Boston, out on the end of the peninsula of Massachusetts, she finally let herself rest. Thunderstruck savored the rest her wings received from not having to flap anymore, and instead let the weight of Shiskabab drag her down along with gravity as she was pulled faster and faster.

Igniting Shishkabab, she saw the flames whipping past and held tightly to the sword as the air molecules could be heard splitting around the blade as she plummeted through the air. Flapping faster and faster, she could see the air resistance building up around her, tugging at her, trying to get her to break her form.

Accelerating as she kept her wings pumping, the sword as a point to break the air-tension, she felt the air want to rip her wings out of her sockets, and the slightest twitch of a wrong feather send her spiraling off course, Thunderstruck felt lightning building around her hooves, trailing off the end of Shishkabab.

As the cone of air and energy narrowed, she felt the whips of lightning burst around her right hoof as she kept it steady and pointed directly down. She was a ball of electricity plummeting towards a massive carpet of cloud covering a quarter of the Commonwealth, from South Boston to Fort Strong, to Vault 81, when Thunderstruck hit the wall she hit it the same was she would've if it were a regular sized cloud, the whole wall seemed to drop and dip like a curtain struck with a weight. With all that energy concentrated around a single being, Thunderstruck's body was suddenly forced to channel that much energy through her body, or hit the magical resistance wall which would've electrocuted and vaporized her.

The insane amount of electricity in the cloud could all be felt in the tip of Shishkebab, through the hilt and grip, into her hoof, up her forleg, around her shoulder, and up the spinal column into the brain. Faltering would break the magical field and cause everything to burst. Using a tool to help her break through a cloud bigger than what she was normally able to do was entirely human as the Pegasus feel raw magic and electricity coursing up through her nerves and into her brain, down her spine and out through her wings, finally bursting off Thunderstuck's sides in static sparks.

A yellow ball of lightning and plasma burned as brightly as a small star in the sky before bursting through the clouds with such tremendous force, the resulting blast woke the ghouls of the Commonwealth again and echoed for fifty miles in every
direction, even further across the water since there wasn't anything blocking it.

It caught the attention of everyone on the water, everyone across the Commonwealth again as they turned to the source of the noise and saw a bright light, followed by a loud Sonic-Boom.

Waves of lightning rippled out as shockwaves piercing down through the thickened cloud in pulses as Thunderstruck was moving faster than the speed of sound, wrapped in thick ropes of plasma around her limbs, a halo of energy rocketing back down into the Robco Factory. The entire supermassive cloud they'd been fighting on erupted in a hurricane of lightning discharges. All of Boston was suddenly drowned in tens of thousands of lightning blasts striking the city in a surge of electricty that ripped the sky apart and bombed everybody's eardrums. The ground shook and vibrated violently as the electrical storm centralized over the Robco Factory unleashed a massive tower of light from several miles up, wider than skyscrapers, this massive beacon of light was visible from states away as a massive glow on the horizon.

Many who saw the light from a distance thought it was an explosion, which it was. All the energy particles channeled through a single point and then triggering an enormous reaction that converted all the potential energy into kinetic energy instantaneously.

Breaking down through the ceiling and directing the force of hurricane force lightning at all of the Mechanists computers and machines.

Sparks was slammed through the ceiling into the Central Command before a ball of swirling plasma and lightning touched down and struck the floor.

Spreading up and down the walls, crawling through the wires and lighting, coursing through the plant and substations, blowing capacitors and energy resistors all of East Boston went completely dark and shook as processes were ground to a halt and attempted to be restarted.

Failure warnings and massive energy surges flashed warnings all across the Mechanist's screens, higher protocols were forcing all her security lockdown measures out of effect, overriding them, dropping security walls, gates, doors, deactivating all sources of energy consumption to cut out and focus on restarting the main computer controller terminal.

As the swirling ball of crackling energy struck the floor, sending out a shockwave through the Mechanist's control room, blinding everyone as it was too bright to look directly at the center.

It was only the Mechanist who wasn't blinded who saw the crater in the main floor appear, and suddenly Thunderstruck within vanished in a flash of smoke