The Wastes:

“And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder:
One of the four beasts saying: “Come and see.”
And I saw.
And behold, a white horse.” said the aged and weary-sounding voice crackling from the foreleg worn device known simply as the Pipbuck. It was a useful little tool, able to pick up on local radio stations, detect Megaspell related radiation when present, and perhaps most importantly, help you stay alive. One thing the Pipbuck was able to do, perhaps something everybody took for granted was a simple thing imputed by the controversial (And that was perhaps putting it mildly nowadays) organization known as Stable-Tec.

That feature, simply put was that the Pipbuck was able to discern the weak points of the various hostiles its wearer may encounter on their trip through the nightmarish Equestrian Wasteland. Sadly, for most, the trip was often a short one. It took a special kind of character just to survive a walk through the hellish landscape. Most didn’t have that kind of character.

Riptalon Hawkwind would have been one of those who might have been chewed up and spit out by any one of the nightmare-borne monstrosities that inhabited the wastes if not for one thing. It was a small, simple thing really. He had a very keen ear and knowing when to stay out of trouble and when to get involved. He was an opportunist at heart, always jumping from one organization to the next, never really getting involved in things that he didn’t deem important (which was quite a lot of things really) and never staying too long in one place. He considered it safer for his health. After all, in his mind anyways, if you never got involved in a cause you had less chance in losing life and limb. Riptalon favored keeping his limbs, thank you very much.

The coal-black griffon, only distinguishable by a few blue markings on his facial feathers as his only real distinct feature darted from rock to rock, keeping a keen ear out for any signs of Raiders. A combat knife was strapped to his other foreleg, ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice. Quick reflexes were another skill key to survival in the Wasteland. His ears perked up at the sound of conversation and a campfire crackling from behind a jagged outcropping.

“You heard, right?” a raspy voice chuckled. Riptalon guessed the owner might have been parched for water.

“Heard what? Lot of rumors going around lately,” said another voice. Female, if Riptalon had to venture another guess. As that voice was raspy as well, it was rather difficult to discern. “Recently heard rumors that there was this Gray Ghost wanderin’ about. Don’t know who the buck they’re referring to, but makes one wonder don’t it?”

Riptalon pressed his back against the the boulder, listening in curiously. He too had heard of the Gray Ghost. Some said she was a Griffon like him, others said she was something else entirely. Something not borne to this world, something otherworldly. Personally, Riptalon believed those rumors to be the stuff of drunks, like that Earth Pony he’d met in a bar a while back with a warrant for his arrest. Long story short, he may have caused a bit of… chaos a while back. Took a bit of haggling, but he was able to convince the arrest warrant to be dropped, least till he got out of town for the time being. Needless to say, a couple of the NCR members were still after him.

“And to think, I saved a few of their worthless hides a while back. Really ungrateful bastards they are if you ask me.” Riptalon thought to himself with a quiet huff as he continued to listen in, shutting off his Pipbuck in the process and deafening his radio to prevent detection. Mind you, that orange mare within their ranks isn’t so bad. Quite a looker, really.

“Tellin’ you, that Gray Ghost rumor gives me the creeps, makes my spine tingle,” the same (Probably) female voice said.

“Now don’t tell me you’re afraid of that? It’s just a rumor, nothin’ more,” a third voice joined in. “I mean, something going about the Wasteland takin’ names for itself and being an instrument of Celestia’s vengeance? Still sounds like a drunken fool’s ramblings to me.”

Riptalon let out a little snort. Seems he wasn’t the only one to take that mindset about the so called “Gray Ghost” making their mark on the Wasteland. Of course, Riptalon immediately realized making that little noise may have been a rather serious mistake on his part as the sound of weapons cocking reached his ears.

“Damn it all, knew I shouldn’t have lingered and just got a move on, but that’s curiosity for you, always getting the better of you and generally getting you killed… or close to it, anyways,” Rip thought to himself as he reached for his knife. “I almost envy the Light-Bringer about now. Almost.”

“Hear that?” the female voice asked as a shotgun cocked, and at this point Riptalon guessed she was the leader. “Looks like we got ourselves a little spy, boys! And we know what happens to them, don’t we?”

Low chuckles followed that statement.

“Yeah, definitely the leader,” Rip decided. “Let’s just hope it’s a small band of raiders, not a rogue group of Gawd’s Talons or whatnot. Really not looking to meeting with them again, given that half of them hate my guts and the other half want to eat my guts.”

Riptalon emerged from behind the boulder and pulled out his knife in his paw before ducking to the left behind a fallen tree as a shotgun shell whizzed past his shoulder with a loud whump like a bomb going off. Then, heavy machine gun fire riddled the air above him like the noise of thunder cracking through the sky. It was a nearly deafening, roaring sound like that of a wild animal. The griffon reached for his belt strapped across his chest, pulling out a grenade and throwing it as he pulled the pin and smirked.

“A pomegranate, from me to you,” Riptalon muttered to himself. “Consider it a gift from yours truly,”

There was a deafening explosion, followed by somepony screaming and cursing very loudly.

Riptalon sighed to himself before he shook his head and let out a little growl of frustration. Even if there were only three of them—albeit one injured—to one of him, he was still outnumbered. He needed a distraction. And then, as if somepony had heard him and was answering his prayers, he got one.

Something blazing bright red and orange like a comet flew through the sky above him on a collision course with the wastes to the south. Ears ringing from the sounds of gunfire and the grenade explosion, he trained his eyes upward to see what looked like the form of an airship rocketing down from above him. Riptalon’s eyes widened. He knew of only one group as of present time that had access to airships: the GPE, short for that damned self-righteous group known as the Grand Pegasus Enclave.

“Wonderful,” Riptalon thought to himself. “Last thing I need is a group of sky-hounders ruining my day even more than it already is. Still, if somebody shot down one of their damned airships I really must give props to the pony that did it. One less Enclave Airship is really quite a boon for the rest of us.”

Taking advantage of the distraction at hand, Riptalon leaped from behind the log and plunged his knife in the leader’s skull, blood and gore spraying everywhere and splattering Riptalon’s face. The griffon rolled to the left as the Raiders opened fire with their machine guns, throwing a smoke bomb. Taking advantage of the confusion, he slit the throat of the nearest raider closest to him with a swing and a slash before elbowing the other in the gut.

He unfurled his wings and took to the sky as the smoke cleared, rocketing away toward the crash site. He glimpsed the final raider, cornflower-blue in color with a spiked mohawk style mane, clutching what once was a foreleg in pain and trying to stop the bloodflow.

“I’m willing to take my chances. Any place is better than here right now. That last one, he’s crippled from my little pineapple surprise at best so I don’t think he’ll be following me anytime soon.” Riptalon turned his Pipbuck back on the radio station just in time to hear the closing lines of narration.

“And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts,
And I looked and behold: a pale horse.
And his name, that sat on him, was Death.
And Hell followed with him.”

As Riptalon flew off, he failed to see the raider, blood pooling around what was left of his leg, reach for a radio and coughed out, “Tell… Tell them, we’ve found him. The Blackhawk.”

He shuddered, and his eyes shut for the final time. If Riptalon had seen or heard this, he would have become very worried indeed, and with good reason. Everybody from the Big 52 to Junction Town wanted a little piece of him. If they knew he was in the area, and now thanks to this dying Raider they would, they’d come for miles around just to take a shot at him. That’s not counting what would happen if they succeeded in taking him out. If they did, whoever got the lucky shot earned him or her quite the bragging rights indeed...

The wind kicked up as Riptalon pulled his goggles over his eyes to prevent grains of sand and dust from reaching them. He saw black smoke rising in the distance, billowing high into the sky as the setting sun behind him casting a red and orange glow across the land.

Riptalon took a brief moment to smile wistfully. He remembered when you couldn’t see the sun nor the moon for the life of you. Smog had covered the sky like a thick blanket, only adding to the Wasteland’s hellish appearance. It was only after Littlepip/The Light-Bringer activated the Single Pegasus Project and brought the weather back under control that hope started to return to the Wastes.

He smiled as he remembered something a pony he’d run across in a town a short while back had told him in passing: “This world is a harsh place. I have seen so much death, so much suffering. But in time I learned that beneath it is there is still a seed of hope, and good ponies willing to dedicate their lives to make that hope bloom.”

That was ten years ago, and Riptalon had scarcely believed it then. But things were different now. It was the dawn of a new age.

The griffon scoffed. Well, that’s what some Wastelanders believed. Riptalon was of the mind things would never change. Oh sure, the NCR kept the peace as much as they could, but ending war? No, war never changed. The Grand Pegasus Enclave was proof of that.

“I don’t even know why I’m going out of my way to even look at this crash site. Do my civic duty to the Waste-Dwellers and clean up any stragglers? Maybe. Probably suicide, but still worth doing if only for what they might have on hoof. The infamous “Blackhawk” chuckled wryly. “Way I figure it, anything that might have survived the crash and’s worth taking is probably more than enough reason for me to go there, stupid or not.”

Rip could see a town in the distance, beyond which lay the hulking mess of the Enclave Airship, fire burning all around the crash site and spreading to the trees catching them ablaze.

Riptalon sighed. He wasn’t a good griffon, but was he a stupid one? He sucked in a breath. Time to find out.

A gunshot whizzed by his head with a crack and he heard shouting. His sea-green eyes narrowed.

“Bucking figures, I knew I should have killed that last one from the get-go, but I figured he’d die quickly enough that he wouldn’t get word off to his buddies that I’m in the area. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?” Riptalon mentally growled and went for another grenade. “Well, once more unto the breach as they say…”