“May your god bless and keep you; because this Angel sure as Hell isn’t!” - Numbers 6:24 misquoted by a crazy guardian Angel.

I was waiting for Nyota for quite some time. I watched closely as my stallion took a seat next to me and took out a sponge, starting to scrub my armor. “What are you doing?”

“I’m rubbing an anti-radiation scrub onto your armor, to hopefully detox any dust or particles on it from continuing to give you more rads.” He said, and I stopped him, shaking my head.

“No point, we’re about to go back outside. Rad-X and go. We don’t have all night.” We could hear shots in the distance followed by some sort of electrical discharge. I raised an eyebrow as Nyota stood up.

“Okay, well, no more suicidal thoughts and no more blaming yourself, then.” I froze as I looked at him. The words made my blood run cold and stopped any thoughts I had of doing anything. He stared at me, waiting for an answer with the expression of an expecting parent talking to their child.

I licked my lips as my mouth dried, and I felt the words cutting deep into my very soul. “I...I can’t promise that. There should have been a way to find a non-violent answer. Instead, I have only repeated the ultimate mistake of the past.” I looked away from him, unable to face his gaze anymore.

I felt his hoof slap me, hard. “No! You’ve done everything you possibly can, Sunrise. You’ve taught me, and now I’m going to teach you; there are some of those in this world who just want it to burn. You try to appease them, they take more!” He shouted and glared at me. “Let me tell you a story. They came to my village, my home, Oasis. They said if we ‘Funika Kaisari’ and gave half our shamans they would leave us alone. Each year they came and did this. The day we resisted and said no; they took everything from Oasis and burned it to the ground.”

He took a breath and looked me over, “If we had you there, ready with a megaspell and your fighting determination. Oasis would still be standing. Sunrise, you are a force for what is right and should be!” He called out to me and used his hoof to shift me to face his gaze; eye to eye.

“You are an avatar of what the Old World wishes it could have been. Not some ghoul preaching about how it used to be, no, you are a living being seeking to make it that way.” He released his grip and shifted towards me. “You are a force of will for change. Already you have healed a town, now you defend another! What you did, yes it was evil, setting of a megaspell is a last resort but you did it as a last ditch effort to save those whom we all care about.”

He took a deep inhale, “Now, you seem like you’re broke and have lost your way, but let me tell you right now; you are The Angel with a Shotgun. I did some research, a little reading in the journals of some of those who are gone. Then I spoke with the zebras who reside here now.” His hoof pressed up against my chest over my heart. “I fell in love with you because you are willing to do what is right, even if it hurts you later. Sunrise, you want to know the other names they call you?”

I nodded slowly and he smiled. “To raiders you are known as: The Little Green Monster. They fear you more than they fear Alguacil.” That one made me recoil and stood the hairs up on end. “To zebras you are called The Old World Shield. The Enclave has a ten million cap bounty on your head, alive only. If Alguacil found that out, he might just turn you in for it.”

Nyota let all that sink in as he raised my chin and kissed the cheek he had slapped. It was still stinging and warm to his touch. My heart skipped a beat and I felt the butterflies return for the first time since the siege had started. “I love you because you will go out there and face the worst the wasteland has to offer, yet you aren’t corrupted by it. Every single creature we have to kill, you still feel just as torn inside about it as the first. You refuse to let it change who you are inside.”

“According to your own PipBuck, it says right here: Savior of the Wasteland. It’s like even Stable-Tec knows they can’t stop you from fixing it. You don’t just fix armor, repair guns, and make megaspells; you fix hearts and change minds. Everywhere you’ve been.” I felt my spirit starting to lift and I wrapped my hooves around Nyota, clinging to him tightly and sobbing softly as I held tight to him. “You are my angel, and I am your demon, but sometimes we need to switch roles to keep the other one sane.”

As he spoke, I felt warmth returning to my body. I couldn’t mope anymore, he was right. I had done the most terrible thing because there was no choice. “Now, let’s go finish this fight and you can atone for your sins by making sure that the wasteland heals from it.” I nodded at Nyota and sighed out. Another gunshot hit our ears, then a smaller higher-pitched gun behind it. Another electric twang echoed through the air.

Nyota escorted me up to Alguacil on the top floor. The open, cloud filled night sky overhead mixed with the dust being kicked up from the recent explosion and made it hard to see. What was worse was my PipBuck clicking. Even with the Rad-X, I knew we couldn’t stay up here for more than an hour without getting cleaned.

Our clothes and armor need to be scrubbed down too, I thought, feeling the tingle and slight burning sensation of radioactive dust. Alguacil and Chifundo were both looking out with scopes. Alguacil cursed as his shot rang out, only for a purple energy field to emerge in the distance. It was like watching air become water made of purple light, and even had a ripple effect over it from where the bullet impacted.

“When in the griffins hind ass did they get shields?” He shouted out and then dove to the cold concrete floor as a return shot zipped by us. Nyota and I kept low and dashed up to the wall with Chifundo and Alguacil. I raised the face mask on my helmet and pushed it back halfway off my head so we could talk.

“Shields? What do you mean, shields?” I asked, walking up as Nyota handed both of them pouches of Rad-B-Gone as well as Rad-X pills.

We all pressed our backs to the hard concrete wall for cover from the snipers, “They have shields now? When did they get those?”

“I don’t know but most of their gun emplacements they have left along with their new command center have a matrix class shield over them. Our rifles are useless against them.” I thought about it. old world shields were quite resilient. Even a megaspell or balefire bomb would bounce off of a powerful enough one. They had two faults...

I was standing at the edge of the Stalliongrad shield. Dad was working with a construction company to repair a breach in the ground from a zebra tunnel team. I was there, helping with mixing concrete as well as looking over the charts dad made of the new engineering architecture.

He was teaching me to design everything at this point. We didn’t know how much longer the siege would last or the war would go on. We did know, however, that the zebras were getting more creative and deadly with how to penetrate the city. “Dad, why do we have to do this?”

Rainbowrise turned away from his crew he’d come out here with and trotted up to pat my head as I struggled to understand the blueprint. “Because, little wanderer, the shield has to touch down at level ground. With a breach like this, it creates a point you can crawl under it. Here, let me show you.”

He led me over to where the crew was working, “Hey, Mountain Jack, show Sunrise here where the shield actually is.” A very large earth pony, the size of a mountain himself, stood up until his construction hat hit the edge of an invisible barrier that became very visible and lined with bright red light that covered the air in a blanket; separating me from the trenchworks outside the city. Where his hat hit, an electric buzzing noise filled the air and ripples echoed across the shield as it held the hat from rising further. Mountain Jack was exactly halfway between each side of the shield as he stood in the crater of concrete bits that they were working to fill.

“Shields this powerful sadly can’t work with uneven ground, hence why there is this concrete ring here.” Rainbowrise held up the blueprint showing me a clear defined white ring that was both on the X and Y axis diagrams. “The zebras blew a hole in it here and we don’t have enough construction crews right now to work on everything. Since I got all the armored vehicles done till the next push, they sent us out here.”

I sighed heavily and hung my head, working out the details. “So, Little Wanderer, what kills shields?” Rainbowrise asked. I rolled my eyes at my dad.

“Uneven earth and anti-matrix weapons.” I replied mechanically, having listened to this lecture at least three times on the way here. We were surrounded by a squad of Equestrian soldiers near our worksite. They were armed to the teeth with Mark II combat armor plating, helmets, and various weapons ranging from battlerifles to Tommyguns. One even had a rocket launcher with twin barrels and a guidance computer attached to it.

All while six ponies worked to prepare this area to receive new concrete and put rebar in place to reinforce the molds they were making. A shot echoed, and one of the soldiers dropped as I saw the hole in his helmet, blood and brain matter oozing out.

“Oh buck! AMBUSH! Everypony down!” The soldiers shouted and I looked up in horror as one of our molds exploded, and three zebras perfectly camouflaged in the rubble erupted out. In just a few moments, I saw three of our workers flying back as zebras struck them in hoof to hoof combat.

One of the zebras had Mountain Jack around the throat, even if he was half the earth pony’s size. The red pony struggled to stay standing, then went limp with a loud sickening crunch when his neck snapped, and his blue mane fell to the ground for the last time. My heart sank. I’m going to die, I thought, as soldiers fired wildly at a sniper and into the pit, hitting our workers and the zebras with bursts of shotgun, rifle, and pistol rounds. One of the zebras burst over the crater edge and landed right in front of my dad.

He drew his .45 pistol and tried to fire it, but the colt pistol was knocked out of his wing and I saw a blow stagger my dad to the ground. My blood ran hot. I just wanted to live my life, I just wanted to have friends and not deal with the massive shield overhead every single day. I saw the zebra standing over dad, rearing back to deliver a blow to his face. My world slowed down. My blood boiled over and everything in me screamed to act. Just like I’d done with the artillery shell. I let it all out in one colossal scream.

“STOP IT!” My voice rose until it was ear piercing and drowned out the gunfire. The soldiers and remaining two zebras all stopped to stare in disbelief. The zebra raised a hoof to her ear, stunned by the deafening shriek at this range. I charged forward at him and leapt through the air.

The zebra mare raised a hoof to defend herself, but she raised it too high, and both of my forelegs impacted into her chest, staggering her to the ground with me tackled on top. I got to my hooves and just started punching her face over and over again. “YOU STUPID FUCKING ZEBRA! I just want to be in peace!” I emphasized each word with a blow right to her face. Her nose crunched under my fury, her eye was beat shut.

I stopped, huffing and puffing as she clung to life under me, bleeding from half her face as my left hoof had beaten it until she was almost unrecognizable. “Go on, kid, kill me; become the monster all you ponies are. Funika Kaisari.” I held my hoof up, wanting to deliver the blow and realizing that was wrong. I wasn’t going to kill anypony, even in a fit of rage.

A soldier ran forward and put the shotgun to her face. Without thinking, I pushed it away, “NO!”

My next shout echoed on a dull street, made silent by the sudden end of furious combat. “Kid! Get out of my way, that is the enemy and—”

“I said STOP IT! That meant you too!” I snarled and moved in his way, putting the shotgun against my chest. I knew this beast, it was the same one that had unleashed the fury upon Corners and the fury I would need to finish the siege of The Roof. I stepped off the zebra mare and turned my head, “Leave, NOW!” I turned back to the soldier. “This war doesn’t end because we keep shooting each other. This war only ends when we stop. You want to kill her, go ahead, kill me.”

Rainbowrise came to his senses and got up, quietly covering me with his wings. I turned and the zebra was gone except for the pool of blood I’d beaten out of her. “Storm Flower, call this in and tell them to get another work crew out here. Don’t report the kid.” The officer of our squad of defenders called out from the other side of the shield. “You two, get out of here. Now, before I change my mind.”

Rainbowrise started to pull me away and I looked at dad, “Come on, Sunrise, we need to go.” We ran home, not stopping until we were at the door. Rainbowrise didn’t open it, he turned to me panting just as hard as I was.

“Sunrise, what is your last memory before the war?” He asked me, and I tilted my head in a very perplexed way at him.

“Dad, I was born two days after the war started. I don’t remember any time before the war.” Rainbowrise wrapped his wings around me and covered my face with his mane. He was sobbing into my mane, I felt warm tears rolling down my neck as my dad cried and shivered, gripping onto me for dear life.

“What are we doing?” He sobbed into my ear. “I take you to work, in hopes you will get a cutie mark in something of craftspony or some constructive profession. Mom takes you in hopes you will get writing or a creative endeavor. We’ve seen the marks of your classmates.” He cried more and his sobbing got harder as he held me tighter. His grip was almost too tight till he adjusted to just cling me to his body. “Half of them are for warriors, soldiers, or of violence. One of them is for chemical warfare! A child whose destiny is to make weapons of mass destruction. Celestia help us, Luna save us; what have we done to our children.”

He kept sobbing against me, “Please, Sunrise, please, don’t become a monster like my generation. Please, Sunrise,” Rainbowrise begged through his tears and froze against me. I reached up and held my father by the shoulders, hugging him back and shifting to alleviate some of his death grip. “Please, show mercy like you did today.”

I felt waves of guilt rushing over me and at the same time, a smile across my lips. Something about seeing your loving father break down into a broken mess strikes at your very heart and soul. I felt his wound and everything in me wanted to heal it. “Dad, I promise, I promise I will show mercy to everypony.” Dad smiled a bit at my efforts to show him I was listening.

“No Sunrise, not just mercy, but love. Like I love you, my little girl.” He kept close to me. His rainbow mane that faded away to the rainbow streak down the left leg of my armor. I was back in the wasteland.

I was back out of my memory, only moments had passed. I knew what we had to do now. “Alright, we have to get on the ground, get up to the shield and find places where the ground is uneven beneath the shield; then we can get under it.” Everyone looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I’m going to go talk to Mad Mac, see if we can come up with some anti-matrix weaponry.”

“Alguacil, Chifundo, find Scopola Mina and Quick Stitch; Nyota, meet us at the gate. We’re going to go with Nyota’s plan.” I got up and sprinted towards the door, throwing my helmet back on. I staggered towards the ground when a ding echoed in my ears, a round bounced off the back of my helmet. The thick armor plating held and I got my footing to continue sprinting back inside.

Nyota caught me halfway down and I turned to him. I wasn’t used to the weight of my new armor and skidded to a halt, running into another pony carrying several lunchboxes. With a clatter both myself and the unicorn scattered across the floor in a pile of empty pre-war steel boxes. I got my bearings and noticed she was the guard, Fancy Cannon. I’d met her when I was here for the first time.

I looked at the lunchboxes and winced. They were covered in Stable-Tec and Ministry of Morale propaganda. The kind that dad was forced to hang up in his shop that was incredibly racist against zebras. I hadn’t noticed it before because I was tuning it out, but even the walls of The Roof had old posters with reminders to keep an eye out for Zebrican spies.

Nyota helped me up to my hooves and I looked up at him. Then at the propaganda. The hairs on my neck stood up, the realization finally sinking in. “You...you have such a harder time than I do; don’t you?” Nyota looked surprised and shocked at me.

“Hey! Ya gonna help me up?” Fancy Cannon asked.I nodded to Fancy Cannon and helped her up, as well as helped put her load back into a net which she headed to the kitchen with. Then I turned back to Nyota. “You have to constantly look at old posters and pieces of anti-zebra propaganda; the difference is unlike me, it is all targeted at you.”

Nyota blinked a few times and gave a slow nod, “Sunny, where are you running off too so fast?”

“I am going to Mad Mac’s place but I wanna talk to you about this later okay, love?” I could see the shield that pushed it out of his mind falter. His eyes bore a hurt in his soul from just this moment of realization how much he had to deal with, every waking moment. “Just remember, I love you no matter what the Old World stuff tells you, okay? If I mess it up, correct me, alright?”

Nyota smiled at me and just kissed me on the lips with a quick peck and a soft tear in his eye. “I got ya, Sunny, now get going.”

I bolted straight for Mad Mac’s place, stopping at the door to yell at him, “Mad Mac, it’s me! Don’t shoot!” I came inside, panting again and smiled at him.

“What in Tartarus is all the running and hurrying for?” Mad Mac demanded with a gruff cough as he choked on his cigar. He shifted his Stalliongrad jacket and I looked at him. His voice was suddenly familiar, much more than I wanted to admit. “Wait, Mad Mac, do I know you? I mean, from before the megaspells?”

He looked startled at me and coughed a bit, hiding a blush behind his hoof. “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me from before. Yeah, you know me. We’ve met twice before here at The Roof. I was actively avoiding you when you arrived last time.”

I tilted my head, “Why would you..” I trailed off. He hadn’t adjusted his jacket right and underneath the collar I could see the blue leather. The obnoxious yellow numbering on the collar of a jumpsuit under it, with the number 43 and a yellow stripe sticking out. “You, you were in the stable, MY STABLE!”

I felt the hairs on my neck stand up and goosebumps ripple through my body. I drew my shotgun and Mad Mac held up his hooves, “Hey hey hey, it’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like! You worked for them didn’t you!?” Mad Mac shook his head. I lowered my shotgun and looked him up and down. Something inside me told me to shoot him still, but something else—curiosity?—made me stop.

“I found it on a body outside of the Stable, yes it’s 43, and yes, I know where it is.” He paused and took a breath, “Because it's warm, it breathes, and it doesn't chaff." He took a long draw of his cigar and blew the smoke out in a puff. “Do you remember how cold Stalliongrad gets?”

I nodded to him and sighed, “Fine, but we’re gonna have a talk about where that Stable is; I’m gonna have to find it one day.”

I had more questions but Pink interrupted any further thoughts.“Less questions about Stalliongrad, more question cake about how to kill a shield. Preferably with Anti-matrix icing on top.”

I grumbled and gritted my teeth.“I’ll have questions for you later, you’re the first real clue I’ve had about my parents. Right now, we need to make an anti-matrix weapon. I have to kill shields.”

He nodded at me and thought about it.“I mean I had an idea but never quite put it together.” I trotted up to the counter and he pulls out several shotgun shells with sickly green bands around the middle of their red hulls. “These are plasma slugs, but if I can figure out how to change the energy field to release electro-magical energy, it can act as a new type of shell.”

I thought about it and immediately pulled out my new toolbox, popping one of the slugs open. My PipBuck started to click when the contents of the shell were emptied. “Hey now, watch out, that is live plasma slug! The wrong tick can set it ablaze and it’s radioactive outside the lead lined shell hull!” Mad Mac took a step back and then saw me just working away.

“I know that, but plasma slugs are like mini-spell matrices you find on a plasma rifle. If you adjust them you can convert it from plasma to EMP.” I replied and kept fiddling with it. The slug had a glass cover that was green on the inside with the swirling magical plasma in it. I kept working and felt it click open, exposing the plasma core.

My PipBuck started clicking faster and I looked up at Mad Mac, “Quick get me a radio transistor and a spark battery.” He hesitated and then nodded smashing a radio off his shelf and giving me one of the transistors out of it along with a battery and a set of jumper cables. I set the transistor next to the slug, hooking the negative end up to it and then hooking both ends onto the battery, taking the last positive end and steadied my quivering hoof as I slowly edged it towards the glowing pulsing core of plasma.

Too much and it will explode, too little and it won’t change the charge to an EMP. Mad Mac pulled out a bullet shield with a vision slit and slammed it into the floor, getting behind it and looking at me with a nervous smile behind his screen. I touched the positive end to the pulsing ball of plasma no bigger than a golf ball. There was an audible click, and a spark of electricity jumped, hitting me in the chest and sending me flying across the roof!

“YEOW!” My whole body seized up with pain as the spark battery sent a charge into me. I lay on the floor, unable to breathe. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even hear my heart beating. Everything just screamed in pain and I felt a rising panic as I wasn’t sure if I was going to die or not.

There was an audible POP, like opening a soda can with a hammer. I twitched on the floor, feeling my heart suddenly restart. The only sound in the room that of me taking in a deep breath. “Holy Buck, Kid! You did it!” Mad Mac exclaimed, running to help me to my hooves.

“Huh? I did?”

“Well yeah, we probably should have put on rubber gloves and grounded you first, but look.” He pointed at the plasma slug, and inside now instead of a sickly green it pulsed with a deep sky blue hue. We quickly slid the other half of the slug over it and slid it into its shell hull with wadding. The shell sensed the change and the green band on it turned to the same blue as the core now.

We made twenty-two more of those pulse slugs, as it was all he’d let me make. I headed upstairs to meet with the rest of my group, now with a secret weapon loaded as the first shell in ‘Sunray’.

I checked my weapons on the way up the stairs. Sunray was ready. ‘Celestia’s Hammer’ read 100% charge and I loaded it with the special 2mm EC rounds. I hadn’t fired it before but I knew that gauss weapons supposedly could penetrate quite a lot of armor and were the reason for personal energy shields. Lastly, my third option, ‘Newb Tube’ was loaded with an incendiary grenade. I figured the best bet to make sure we had light during the battle tonight was setting something on fire.

I arrived at the camp edge next to my friends. There was one problem: no one was sure where Nyota was. Quick Stitch and Scopola Mina had several doses of Rad-X and RadAway ready for us and passed it out to make sure we all had enough. I looked at my PipBuck, I was already at 120 absorbed rads on the geiger counter. 200 was acute poisoning, 400 moderate, 600 deadly, 800 critical, and 1000 was 100% lethal no matter what. I would have to keep a close eye on that number.

“Sunrise, good, you’re here.” Quick Stitch motioned to me, “Isn’t Nyota with you?”

I shook my head, “Check your PipBuck, where is he?”

I blinked a few times and looked at my PipBuck, I changed the setting to locate TAGs. Four of them were right here with me but the fifth one was 200 meters, outside The Roof. Towards where Alguacil had been shooting, and it proudly displayed the word: Nyota, under the tag dot.

It started raining outside and there was a blast of erie green lightning across the sky that made my PipBuck click. What the hell? Can radiation make a storm now?

Chifundo shuddered and closed his eyes, “The storm isn’t natural, it is a living spiritual.” We all turned to him, disturbed.

“Say what?” Scopola Mina piped up at him.

“The storm is a spirit, unleashing it’s wrathful merit. I cannot attempt to calm, for it raises a fist, not a palm.” Chifundo explained opening his pink eyes back up.

One of these days I’m going to find out if there are ever any spirits that are nice to us!

“Well I’m going to go with that being bad.” Quick Stitch explained, passing out more RadAway, Rad-B-Gone, and Rad-X to all of us. Another roll of thunder and another flash of lightning answered my question, three more rads registered as absorbed through my Rad-X. Alguacil turned to me, then back to the door out, “Sunrise, we can’t go out ther’ in this. Dat rad-storm will kill us all for sure!” Alguacil declared and I gritted my teeth, shaking my head at him.

“Nyota is already out there, the rain will cover our approach. Even if we have to keep just sucking RadAway through it, we have to go stop him from doing something stupid.” I hesitated and looked around. “Do any of you know why he is out there?”

Scopola spoke up, “Well I was discussin’ with him about creating a potential antidote for my gas. Then I said I’d need a sample of it and when I turned around he was gone.” I looked at Scopola, dumbfounded, and physically facehooved in front of her.

“He’s out there getting your sample. We’ll just have to avoid the gas for now and rescue him from, well, himself. He probably thinks he can sneak in there but that shield will reveal him as soon as he touches it.” I gave the order and pulled out a RadAway, sucking the orange tasting liquid down my throat immediately, reducing my rads down to near zero.

Dad, I don’t know if you will ever know this. I don’t know if you can hear me, but hold on a little longer. I’m sorry for what I’m about to do; forgive me if I have to kill someponies to save others. I just hope I will get to show some mercy before the night is over. I felt like his wings graced over my shoulders in that moment, as though he heard me and his gaze was turned to me.

We ran into the cold dark rainstorm, my PipBuck clicking with radiation warning. The air was so irradiated I could taste metal upon my tongue. I prayed to Luna I hadn’t just doomed us all.

The mud squished under my armored hooves as we fanned out towards Nyota’s tag. Alguacil flew high overhead. Quick Stitch hung back behind us, around twenty hoof steps to rush forward and heal anyone who needed it. Chifundo stayed beside him while Scopola Mina and I took the lead.

The rain didn’t let us see very much. We were closing with Nyota using my PipBuck tag to guide us. His sneaking was slowing him down while we were just hoping the rainstorm and night darkness kept us from being noticed. I cut my PipBuck light on and turned the color to a dark purple that blended with the night. Unless you looked directly at it, you wouldn’t notice the light source until it was almost on top of you.

The rain wasn’t cold either, it was warm and caused my skin to tingle under the armor. It was like an extra soapy bath. Is this what it’s like to feel something that is killing you?

“Insidious, isn’t it?” Pink offered, now suddenly wearing an executioner's hood with a yellow smiley face on it where her face should have been.

The fact that I’m being exposed to radiation and yet it feels so warm and slightly comforting?

“Yes! Think about it. Weapons of Mass Destruction like Scopola Mina’s chemical blast or the megaspell bomb; the ponies don’t know they’re dying. They die in absolute ecstacy in Scopola Mina’s case. In yours, it just makes you really wanna lay down and take a nice, sweet nap on a cloud.”

The true sickness of these weapons started to dawn on me. You wouldn’t know you were dying, unless you knew what tasting metal and the tingle on your skin meant. In the case of Scopola Mina’s chemical weapon, they didn’t know they would die from mating.

We watched the rain wash away the cloud of death still present. Well, at least we don’t have to worry about inhaling it. Just don’t fall in any puddles.

My PipBuck’s clicking got louder as we got closer to the fires of the camp. We could see the top of the shield lighting up; keeping the rainwater out. A puke green lightning bolt echoed across the sky. It lit up the night around us and illuminated our path for a brief flash. I saw Nyota, at the edge of the purple energy field, digging to try to get under it.

We approached him as a group, “Nyota, get over here.” I motioned him towards us as my PipBuck started to give me warnings of hitting radiation poison. I grabbed a RadAway bag, sucking it down as the anti-magic pulsed through my body to purge the radiation.

Nyota didn’t hear us and disappeared into the darkness. I felt an itch, a pre-emptive itch for Med-X, and pushed it away. No, not unless I need it.

“But don’t you neeed it?” Pink’s teasing did not help as my tail pulled the syringe, and I stared at her with a shake of my head.

As tempting as it is, Pink, not unless I need it for the pain. We kept creeping towards the edge of the shield when suddenly it zapped out as we got within 30 meters. The entire shield failed and rain flowed freely into the camp. Dinging of rainwater on tents echoed around us. There was a loud bang and what sounded like a generator misfiring that echoed over the rainfall.

Two bullets whizzed past me and made me hit the ground. A yelp from a nearby tent echoed above the camp. Nyota had done something, he’d taken down the shield, but someone had found him.

I have to buy Nyota time to get out. How? I looked at my available weapons. Can that act as a mortar? I dove into a nearby crater in the earth. My hooves quickly pulled out ‘Newb Tube’ and activated S.A.T.S. I aimed it up towards the sky and my PipBuck showed the area of effect as well as where the grenade would land. I adjusted the barrel’s angle like a mortar. I moved the S.A.T.S. indicator until it was directly over the largest tent.

Then I queued the attack and released the spell. With a dull thump the round fired out of the barrel. The bright flash of gunpowder lit up the night like a beacon. I watched in slow motion as the fusing grenade streaked through the darkness like a flare signalling for help. Its fuse ran out twenty meters in the air and the grenade burst into a giant wall of falling flames.

The water had no effect on the falling flames that covered the camp. Nylon tents may be incredibly good for repelling rain and elements, but fire is very bad for them. The canvas, nylon, and cloth tents ignited in a blaze that lit up the night like a lighthouse beacon. Wow that burns fast! Any thoughts of beauty I could have had by the sight of the flames was silenced by the screams of ponies on fire.

Ponies in uniforms, just as I’d seen in the trenches, ran from the three tents set ablaze, screaming out. Bullets whipped overhead from behind me, flying right through exposed heads as two of them dropped. Chifundo and Alguacil’s rifle sounds barely noticeable over the pouring rain. I checked my left with Scopola lining up her laser rifle and Quick Stitch pulling out his flamer pistol. The same one he’d used to kill the husks at Silver Fang Shanty.

I worked to reload my grenade launcher and fired off another incendiary round with the same result. My heart whimpered and I gritted my teeth, knowing that dozens were going to burn to death tonight. The element of surprise was gone; they knew we were here and the brawl about to break out was kill or be killed.

Despite the flames providing light, I couldn’t see Scopola or Quick Stitch; I only had their E.F.S. dots telling me where they were. It wasn’t comforting. E.F.S. only told you if something was alive and within 100 meters. It didn’t tell you if they were injured or what was happening. Nor could it discern range to any particular dot. There was a sea of red along my compass of the H.U.D., red dots that wanted to kill us.

I scrambled to get my bearings but the clicking on my PipBuck suddenly shot up. I looked down to see my hoof in a glowing green puddle. I lifted it out and the clicking went down, I could clearly see a piece of the core from a spell matrix, a tiny piece no larger than a single piece of buckshot. I looked behind me where the flames were illuminating, a slope down, almost a sheer slope. My heart skipped a beat.

They set up their primary camp near one of the craters! It wasn’t the megaspell crater but rather one created by a collapsing building. The bomb I’d set off was no more than 20 or 30 kilotons of TnT, but now I understood what made it all so terribly lethal. I suppressed the need to panic by putting away the grenade launcher and getting out my shotgun. My heart pounding in my head as the loneliness started to set in. My legs felt weak and I gripped Sunray tight while sucking on a fresh bag of RadAway.

I was out here, unknown where my friends were and shots were raining out in all directions. Their pips are still here, Sunrise. They’re fine, you need to get up and fight. You’ve done this before, just with others standing at your side. Then a burst of laser fire caused cries of agony to rise in place of gunfire. I poked my head above the slope. Scopola Mina was advancing, putting down a layer of burning red death, her laser rifle firing so fast that the rainwater was steaming off it from the excess heat.

I raised my shotgun and aimed, pulling the trigger, and my shoulder rippled with a much heavier than I expected thud. I hadn’t fired a pulse slug, that was something else with a lot more recoil. I hit S.A.T.S. to figure out what had just happened and wished I hadn’t. The round exiting the shotgun in slow motion was a solid chunk of crystal. The tip of that chunk of crystal was starting to pierce the stallion’s armor, right where his crotch protection was.

I could only feel sympathy and sorrow for him. Unlike my armor, which had sufficient protection for that area, he was just wearing standard freshly made Mark 1 Combat Armor. Wait, freshly made? Why does all their armor look like it just rolled off an— Oh Celestia! His FACE! I’m SO SORRY! The round punched right through and ripped open his under belly and ribs. He was sent his barrel plate and chest plate flying into the mud.

S.A.T.S. was burning out, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t help but feel his pain. His face was contorted in a final gasp of raw agony and surprise. The rain casting around him blended with the blood slowly ripping out of him as gravity took over. S.A.T.S. may have only been ten real world seconds but that was ten seconds forever burned into my mind. A death I had caused, the unicorn dropped his gun pointed in Nyota’s direction as time sped back up for me. It, along with the unicorn, dropped into the mud.

“Surrender! Give up and We’ll show mercy!” I shouted out, trying to get above the rain and the gunfire. The marauder soldiers almost turned to me in unison, not to surrender, but to kill me. Gunfire rained out in my direction, pelting my armor plating with pings and heavy impacts into my body. I ducked down knowing no one could stand up to that kind of firepower outside of power armor. I could feel the bruising under my stable suit as the pain from their hail of death told me their answer.

I fought back the tears knowing that the stallion I had killed was not the last one I’d have to kill tonight. The fire on me kept my head down until a burst of flame erupted from Quick Stitch’s oversized pistol and the gunfire was replaced with screams.

When a pony screams from being burned alive, it’s very different from some creature screaming about anything else. Broken bones don’t excite the level of torment from their lips. This was the kind of pain that only one thing could induce: the agony and panic of fire. It relays a primal fear that comes from the days we lived in caves and open fields. The fear of dying from burning to death. I had never experienced it myself, but in their voices I could truly feel all the emotional distress and raw anguish they had that moment.

There is no way or necessity to describe this type of scream any other way besides: that is the howl of a pony cooking alive. I offered them mercy! This didn’t have to happen! I stood up with a warcry yell as I pulled Newb Tube out and thumped it once, rapidly reloading another High Explosive grenade as the first detonated and shot another one out. Pony screams silenced over the roar of detonations, and even the rain paused. The battlefield was brightened temporarily by the explosions and their secondary booms from ammunition or grenades going off with them.

Quick Stitch let out a whinny of pain as a twelve gauge magnum round went off and slammed into him. Scopola Mina returned fire at the shotgunner with a volley of laser that kept going until his entire form lit up in a bright flame. As she stopped firing, left before us was an ash statue of the soldier. He was converted by the laser weapon into dust that the rain simply washed away before my eyes.

In the burning mess of incendiary rounds and the battle around us I couldn’t find Nyota. His pip was there on my H.U.D. above the compass with a lot of red pips between myself and him. I do not know if he is alive or dying, just that he is still breathing. That is how E.F.S. works, it just shows intent and a pulse. I lifted myself back above my shell hole and fired the shotgun again.

I fired at the nearest target, watching as he stiffened and fell over dead before something hammered into my shoulder with a loud pop. I staggered and thought my armor had been penetrated. I looked up to see a soldier with a gauss carbine. It looked similar to Celestia’s Hammer but had smaller magnets along its barrel. I heard the whine of the charge over the rain.

My H.U.D. flashed with warnings that my shoulder ablative plate was broken. Another hit there from that thing would punch right through. I braced myself for a shot to shred through there and ripple my insides apart. The soldier aimed and then his jaw exploded. His hoof reached up to it as his lower mouth fell to the ground. A second shot rippled through his neck. A moment later, I heard the echoing of Alguacil’s and Chifundo’s rifles through the rain.

We pressed forward, fighting through the flickering flames. Quick Stitch used his magic to mend his own wounds and then moved up to check mine. A few more bursts of accurate fire from us and the raiders around us broke. They fled.

An electric hum hit the air as smaller green and purple shields erupted from several tents. These shields only covered those tents, though. Quick Stitch moved up to me as we got to the burning tents. “Sunrise, can you bring that shield down?” He asked, pointing at the purple one surrounding a large tent with a radio antenna sticking out of it.

“You want me to bring it down?” I hesitated, thinking on just how to destroy a shield that large.

“We should find Nyota first, but—”

I cut him off by pointing my hoof in the direction of his tagged dot on my H.U.D. “Eyes forward says he is that way.” I wedged Newb Tube into the ground and angled it up. I pulled out my maintenance kit and got the bolt cutter out, using it to align and stabilize the weapon.

I looked up at Quick Stitch, “Those shields with generators like that are made to take bigger hits, but continuous damage on them overloads the spell matrix.” I explained to Quick Stitch as I popped in another white phosphorus grenade. “Light it on fire and it will literally cook the shield away.” There was a dull thud as the round fired and landed right on top of the shield, cascading blazing white hot debris all over it.

I knew the rainwater wouldn’t extinguish the flames; you need salt and sand to smother them instead. The yellow shield started to flicker and I turned to Scopola Mina, “Everything you got, fire that rifle till the shield shatters!” Scopola Mina huffed an inhale of dash and raised her rifle. Deadly precision of laser bolt after laser bolt burned through the night. The rainwater evaporated off the solid line and ozone filled our noses as the first few bolts were all it took to send the shield into overload with all the fire covering it.

The outer shield shattered with the deafening roar of glass. The laser weapon had struck right at the focal point the shield originated from. It was like standing in a glass house and all of the glass suddenly gave way from a sonic rainboom passing too close.

Scopola’s third bolt struck another shield, a green one on the inside of the shattering purple one. How many of these things do they have!? She kept firing relentlessly. I could see the signs of her AER-6 laser rifle heating up, and the barrel was white hot as she stopped when the final shields around their command tent shattered with the same eruption of glass reverberating around us. She found its magical focal point again, and again her laser rifle in overcharge mode overloaded the shield generator’s capacitors.

I’m glad she is on our side, and that the zebras never had laser weapons to break our shields like that.

“This is fun! Is there a merit badge for shield shattering?” Scopola Mina exclaimed far too enthusiastically for myself and Quick Stitch. We looked at each other, confused, and I heard a grenade from Nyota’s direction. My head snapped that way to see the number of red dots on the compass around him had gone down; significantly. When did you learn to use grenades? I thought to myself, but now wasn’t the time.

I pulled out a molotrot bomb, roughly five times the normal size of a regular cocktail. I’d made from all the extra grease and burnable liquids into a solid jug. I pulled the cork, shoved a rag in, and held it up to the end of Quick Stitch’s flamer pistol he was still levitating in the air. “Go on, light me!” I declared and he gave a short burst of flame to light the rag. I hurled it with all my might. The glass shattered upon the radio antenna and cascaded flaming jellified donut grease across the battlefield, adding to the white phosphorus and creating some primitive form of napalm that would burn all night.

Within moments, the wet nylon tent was going up in flames and ponies came out of it, fleeing while lit on fire. “Don’t let them suffer! Save them or end it quick!” I yelled out as sniper fire from Alguacil and Chifundo answered, putting down the first two to emerge from the tent.

A hail of bullets erupted from Nyota’s direction and I dove in front of Quick Stitch and Scopola Mina, trying to absorb as many of them as I could. Round after round pinged off my armor and I staggered from it. My foreleg found the mud with a heavy thud. The muscle was numbed by the impacts. I felt the bruises and prayed my left shoulder and left rib ablative ceramics would hold.

The camp was fully ablaze now. A rainstorm coming down around us as fire spread out to anything that would burn. The battlefield was a bright beacon in the night, like a lighthouse calling to all ships to avoid it. We could see the flames unyielding while rifle and submachine gun fire erupted and bullets strayed out from Nyota’s position on my H.U.D.

There were only a few red dots still left after all this. More were winking out by the moment as they succumbed to their wounds. A battle saddle wearing mare appeared with two medium machine guns pointed at us. I dove into Quick Stitch pulling us both into the mud as rounds filled the area around us. The roar of machine guns removed anything else we could hear.

Dozens of rounds riddled the mud beside us, “Someone! Help! We are PINNED DOWN!” I shouted, seeing Scopola Mina in the same mud hill as Quick Stitch and myself. The mud was being eroded by the rounds hitting it. It wasn’t a question of if we were going to get gunned down, but when the dirt and slime protecting us would be whittled away.

A round punched through the dirt and plinked off my armor; two more rifle cracks and the machine gun fire ceased. Then another rifle crack; this one right on top of us, there was a cry that pierced the night. Alguacil crying out in pain. Our sniper cover had finally been countered.

I got up and saw a unicorn mare with an Iron Hoof heavy rifle still smoking. I raised my shotgun, aiming below her red mane at the brown furred face. I wasn’t aiming to maim or incapacitate. I was aiming to kill. I screamed in rage into the trigger as I punched it. She raised her gun just enough that the solid slug that exited my shotgun ripped her rifle from the purple telekinetic field and sent it flying.

Flares guns thudded with their contents whistling into the sky. Soon the night was lit up almost as bright as day. Both the mare and myself were distracted by the flares as another high pitched firework whined to life and my shoulder felt the impact. The armor singed and burned with a crackling flare shot into me, designating me as everyone’s primary target.

The mare’s horn lit up and arcane bolts of death fired from her horn towards me. The magic missile exploded the flare inside my armor’s outer cloth into sparks as it was hit. A cascade of hot burning aluminium sparks and bits into the air around me. I screamed and staggered, dropping my shotgun into the mud. My eyes were trying to adjust and my body winces away from the white hot phosphorus that burned at my face and made me feel like I was wearing an oven.

Arcane bolts kept hitting my right leg, right above the PipBuck, driving shot after shot into my armor. My leg from shoulder to the knee screamed in pain and agony. I staggered. “Come on! Is my PipBuck a bullet magnet?” My tail took the opportunity to shoot Med-X directly into a chink in my armored leg to dull the pain. I glared at Pink but the sweet cooling chill gripped my mind. The dull haze made it easier to think and removed the pain from my mind.

A raider jumped into the way of the next volley. He had a massive bumper sword in his teeth just like the ones who had raided inside The Roof. The unnamed stallion fell over dead as the mare didn’t let up her bursts of arcane bolts for him, instead magically machine gunning the bolts of arcane death into him still trying to kill me.

Quick Stitch stepped in the way and unleashed a volley from his flamer pistol until the tank inside drained out completely. I couldn’t see anything happening, only hear the screams of the mare on the receiving end. Rainbow bursts of death from the mare’s horn bounced off Quick Stitch’s armor harmlessly, the deadly beams not finding purchase against the magically hardened Ministry of Peace medic armor.

Another unicorn emerged from the darkness and before he could charge his horn, Scopola Mina pierced him through the face and skull with repeated laser rifle bursts. The series of shots were grouped so close together, it would have easily earned a markspony badge. He dropped in a heap with smoke rising from the holes that were once his eyes and forehead.

The next unicorn from the darkness was met by the higher pitched crack of Chifundo’s rifle and punched through his skull, dropping him instantly. Nyota darted from around a tent set ablaze, a hail of tracers following him. I was glad for the plating I put on him as sparks shot off his armor from bullet strikes. He grabbed a pony by the neck emerging from a flaming tent and threw him into the way like a bulletshield. The poor raider never knew what happened while his ‘friends’ gunned him down in the fog of battle.

Nyota disappeared into another tent, this one not on fire yet. I could see a trail of blood in the dirt from him; I hoped he was going to be okay.

There was a flash of neon blue magic as a pony teleported into the battlefield. I immediately recognized her. The deep grey coat mixed with flowing yellow curly mane. Her eyes glowed a blue that pierced the night from her over use of magic and radiation exposure. She raised a Chiacolt Typewriter towards Scopola Mina. The .45 caliber submachine gun had a full drum magazine and was ready to go.

A burst of fire ripped into Scopola Mina before we had a chance to react; the submachine gun easily penetrating her armor and sending ribbons of red into the rain around us. I found a memory welling up inside me and I fought for control to shove it back down. I watched in horror as Scopola Mina dropped to the ground. The Goddess with a Gun teleported away while my heart sank to my hooves. I should have killed you when I had the chance! NO!

Quick Stitch slammed a healing potion into my mouth before I could start to scream. He sucked on one himself while dashing over to Scopola as I tried to think fast. I have to stop the teleporting! Now! Or we’re all dead! I hit S.A.T.S. and checked my inventory while the world slowed down around me. I had six improvised claymores with sprinkles. I’ve got an idea. I marked the points in S.A.T.S., carefully judging angles and distance around Scopola Mina and Quick Stitch, creating reference markers for me within my H.U.D. to plant them just right.

I released the spell and made a mad dash. My tail scooped up my shotgun while I slammed mines down in place, rigged to a series of detonators I passed my tail. Mentally noting each mine with a number and its facing. Whoo! Fortress Minecrafting! I like it: you attack the wall and it explodes like a double surprise cake! I wanted to scream at Pink to shut up, but she was correct. There was now a ring of claymores armed around us on hair triggers, waiting for the next teleport.

I had to fight back the memory from The Goddess with a Gun with all the will my mind could muster, while keeping my senses ready as I watched the S.A.T.S. recharge. I counted my breathes while the battlefield quieted down.

Raiders from behind the tent emerged with combinations of battle rifles and service carbines. The ones who had been gunning for Nyota. Scopola Mina opened up with her laser rifle even as Quick Stitch was working to remove bullets and heal her. The drugs she was on made sure she was conscious, and though her legs may not have fully worked, her horn still did.

I was quickly receiving the education on why the laser and plasma rifles were so feared by the zebras. The amount of firepower they could put down was horrific. Dozens if not a hundred bolts of rainbow core red-hot death ripped into the ranks of the raiders. One turned to ash, another two dropped where they stood from the relentless volley Scopola Mina put up. Light armor was not something that could stand up to that weapon; you needed reflective or heavy plating to survive in the open against one of those.

The final stallion dove for cover inside the tent Nyota went into. I saw his tracers whizzing out of the tent and wild machine gun fire was cut short by a loud crunch. The stallion flew out the way he came in, his rifle crumpled into his smashed face. Nyota’s hoof just barely exiting the tent flap where his full on buck sent the poor cover-seeking stallion catapulting into the mud. A dull thump on the ground was the last sound that one made.

All around me was the horror of death and battle.I pushed it out of my mind. This wasn't like Spring Bronco, I had to fight on. I had to act. I would not allow another companion to become like Buddy. Where I got scared and failed to act; and my friend died for it. It didn’t matter how many we had to kill; they had to be broken. I had to save Nyota from his foolishness and these raiders had to be broken. We had to save The Roof.

I wasn’t sure how long we could keep this up. Scopola was being worked on by Quick Stitch, Alguacil wasn’t firing back anymore. My armor was broken as I sat in my mine fortress, and Nyota was wounded as well. The next stallion to appear found Nyota on him from the tent in a flash. I watched as Nyota held him down and pummeled his face, then crushed his neck. The sharp edge of the brass shoe slicing clean through it and bleeding his remaining life essence away. He never had a chance to even respond beyond lying on the ground, bleeding to death.

My heart pounded in my ears, my mind raged against every action; wanting to retreat into a memory or run away screaming. My eyes had to look away from dead bodies only to see more dead bodies. All while we waited, waited for The Goddess with a Gun to return.

A whistle blew and we heard the sound of soldiers moving towards us, “Alright boys! Get em! Drive them into the mud!” The battle was far from over.

Level Up Progress - YOU DON'T get your XP till the fighting is over NICE TRY!

-My Badge from Bronycon by the Vendors after they heard I fainted.