The trail of blood was distressingly easy to follow. It threaded a winding path through the ruins, avoiding the worst of the piled debris and sticking mostly to the sheltered areas. Fluttershy couldn’t help but marvel at how far the injured Ranger had managed to travel.

As her and Adam followed the trail, they came across a handful of abandoned makeshift camps inside the ruined buildings. It looked like they had been built by raiders or scavengers seeking shelter from the harsh weather, but they had all been attacked and ransacked by Super Mutants.

“Why would the Super Mutants bother with all of this?” Adam asked quietly.

“They must be trying to build their numbers back up,” Fluttershy replied.

Adam shook his head. “Can’t be, me and Fawkes trashed all of the FEV vats they had in Vault 87. Unless they’ve managed to synthesize FEV from their own blood, they shouldn’t have any way of making new Mutants.”

“Hopefully,” Fluttershy said, though somehow she still felt uneasy. The Super Mutants had pulled too many tricks out of their sleeves for her to feel confident in victory just yet.

A short way further on, the duo reached the end of the blood trail. Two dead Super Mutants nearby were clearly the reason for the Ranger’s injuries. The scents were all jumbled up, making it a little tricky to pick out the direction the Ranger had come from, but the faint echoes of gunfire from somewhere up ahead rendered that a moot point.

“This way.” Fluttershy loosened her sword in its scabbard as she took the lead, heading towards the sound of combat as quickly and quietly as she could. Adam followed behind, his power-armored footsteps sounding appallingly loud to Fluttershy’s ears, but hopefully it wasn’t enough for the Super Mutants to notice. The sounds of sporadic combat slowly grew closer until the pair came to another street. Advancing cautiously, relying on Fluttershy’s enhanced senses, they pressed on until they could see their destination ahead.

Two battered buildings, a hospital and a hotel, stood at some sort of intersection directly ahead. A fallen radio mast stretched from one to the other, and a handful of Super Mutants milled around outside. Thankfully, they were too focused on the buildings to notice the duo creeping up from behind.

“Which one do you think the Rangers are camping out on?” Adam asked quietly.

As if in answer, half a dozen winged Super Mutants rose up from the roof of one building and swooped down on the other. A hail of gunfire shredded them before they could get close enough to land.

“I guess it’s that one,” Fluttershy said flatly.

“Seems so.” Adam looked up at the nearby buildings. “You go high, find a vantage point and give the Rangers some cover fire. I’ll work my way up through the buildings and take out as many Mutants as I can.”

“Right. Radio if you need me.” Fluttershy ponied up and flew up to the roof of the nearest building. She moved carefully from rooftop to rooftop, taking care to stay out of sight of either the Mutants or the Rangers, but she couldn’t find anywhere that gave her a good view of the hotel roof. In the end, she gave up and carefully flew over to the top of the hotel itself. Battered old decorative domes lined the perimeter of the roof, surrounding what had once been either an area for either outdoor entertainment or maintenance, Fluttershy couldn’t tell which.

Three people were camped out on a raised part of the area near an old fountain and an express elevator. They were dug in behind a bunch of overturned tables, and none of them appeared to be injured, but it was clear that they were all exhausted. One looked like a medic, another an engineer, and the third was toting around a modified minigun. Dead Super Mutants littered the steps leading up to their raised area.

Fluttershy carefully landed next to one of the domes above the Rangers. She de-ponied herself, unslung her sniper rifle, and settled in next to the dome to wait for any Super Mutants to attack. Barely a few seconds passed before she heard an explosion from the street below.

“What the hell was that?” One of the Rangers asked.

“Reinforcements?” Another replied hopefully.

Ignoring the chatter, Fluttershy listened out for anything else moving around. She heard Adam smash his way into the hospital next door, followed by the sounds of a terrific firefight breaking out, but she couldn’t sense anything flying around or trying to climb the walls. The Rangers were safe for the moment.

More explosions tore through the hospital next door. Fluttershy couldn’t help feeling anxious about Adam being right in the thick of it, but she trusted his judgment. Besides, she could hear everything going on in the hospital; if he ended up needing Flutterhsy’s help, she’d know about it before he did.

The faint sound of footsteps below dragged Fluttershy’s attention away from the hospital. Straining her ears, she could just about make out what sounded like a group of Super Mutants moving inside the hotel. She readied her sniper rifle just as a door slammed open somewhere on the rooftop, making the Rangers flinch and snap their weapons up too. The distinctive beeping of landmines echoed across the roof shortly before a series of explosions. Several Super Mutants howled in agony, but the survivors carried on undeterred. Fluttershy waited calmly until the lead Mutant charged up the steps to the raised area.

Her first shot punched through its throat in a welter of blood. The Rangers cried out in shock at the unexpected assistance, but Fluttershy ignored them and put a bullet in the chest of the second Super Mutant. It stumbled, snarling with pain and fury, until another shot put it down for good. Recovering from their surprise, the Rangers were quick to take down the remaining Mutants that foolishly charged up the stairs.

“That’s the last of them,” Fluttershy called down when the last one fell. “Um, for now, anyway.”

The Rangers stared up at her incredulously. “Who the fuck are you?” The minigun-armed woman shouted up.

“She’s a Rainboom, dumbass! I told you they were real,” the engineer shot. “Did Reilly send you?”

Fluttershy shook her head, trying not to blush under all the attention. “We heard your distress call. The Lone Wanderer is here, too. He’s clearing a path up through the hospital.” Just as she said it, another blast tore through the air and she heard the fallen radio mast creaking as something heavy ran across it. “Actually, I think he’s in the hotel now. As I was saying, there is a Ranger being looked after in Underworld, but we decided to prioritize making sure that the rest of you are safe.”

“That’s Reilly! I can’t believe the crazy bitch actually made it!” The minigun woman exclaimed.

The three Rangers were clearly heartened by the fact that their leader had survived, but Fluttershy’s own relief was short-lived as she heard the roof door creak open again. Instead of a mob of Super Mutants, this time she could only hear two sets of eerily soft footfalls as someone, or something, tried to sneak up on the Rangers.

Fluttershy raised her sniper rifle again as the footsteps slowly climbed the stairs. Strangely, nothing came into view despite the sounds getting closer. For a moment, Fluttershy thought her mind was playing tricks on her, until she noticed a faint haze-like distortion in the air. She fired on instinct, and was rewarded with a spurt of foul-smelling blood from the middle of the haze. Another shot brought another splash of blood and the haze slumped over as Fluttershy reloaded in a flash.

Everyone stared in shock as a Stealth Boy clattered across the floor, the haze immediately coalescing into the grossly misshapen form of a centaur. Fluttershy shuddered with disgust at the sight of its hands in place of feet and the multiple tentacle-like tongues dangling from its mouth.

“Is it dead?” The engineer asked.

“I think so,” Fluttershy replied. She couldn’t hear any breath or a heartbeat coming from it, but she hadn’t before it had dropped the Stealth Boy either, so she wasn’t entirely certain.

The minigun-armed woman stomped over and gave it a vicious kick in the ribs. “Yeah, it’s dead. I thought these four-legged fuckers were supposed to be dumber than animals, when the fuck did they learn to use tech like that?”

“Magic has been causing all kinds of weird shit around the wastes, just roll with it,” the medic told her. He warned the other two to get back behind the tables and looked up at Fluttershy. “Well spotted.”

“Let’s just hope there aren’t any more of them around,” she replied quietly.

Despite Fluttershy’s concerns, the next few minutes passed without any trouble. She kept her guard up anyway as the sound of vicious combat inside the hotel below came ever closer. Soon enough, the gunfire died down and a power-armored boot kicked the rooftop door open. Fluttershy let out a sigh of relief as the owner lumbered around to the stairs. “Adam’s here.”

The Rangers glanced at her curiously, then snapped their weapons up as a figure in blue Enclave power armor swaggered into view, several ammo boxes clipped to his hips. “Hey, Flutters, nice work. The rest of you must be Reilly’s Rangers, right?”

“What’s left of them,” the medic replied, lowering his weapon. “I’m Butcher. These are Donovan, our repair guy, and Brick, our heavy weapons specialist. You must be the Lone Wanderer.”

“I don’t know why people still call me that,” Adam muttered. He unclipped the ammo boxes and handed them to the Rangers. “I found your fallen squadmate. Sorry I couldn’t bring his body with me, but I cremated it so the Super Mutants can’t mess with it.”

Butcher sighed heavily. “I appreciate it. Now we just have to figure out a way out of this mess.”

Adam glanced at the nearby express elevator. “I’m guessing that thing’s out of commission?”

“I’ve already tried it,” Donovan replied. “It’s not connected to the main generator, and I don’t have anything that can power it manually.”

Adam held a hand up and fished through the pouches on his power armor. “Got it.” He casually pulled a fission battery out of one pouch and held it out to the engineer. “Would that work?”

“Damn right it will. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have it up and running.” Donovan took the battery and hurried over to the elevator.

The group waited, impatiently in the Rangers’ cases, as their engineer worked, keeping their guard up just in case. Just as promised, it was only a few minutes before Donovan stepped back and wiped his brow. “Okay, we’re good to go.”

“Groovy. Okay, everybody in. I’ll get in last so I can be first out and give you some cover with my armor,” Adam instructed. “You too, Flutters.”

Fluttershy slung her sniper rifle over her shoulder and ponied up just long enough to float down to the elevator, stepping in after the three amazed Rangers. The elevator creaked ominously when Adam stepped in, making everyone tense up, but it held together well enough as someone pressed the button and it started its descent.

“As soon as we hit the first floor, make a break for it,” Butcher told everyone. “Remember our rally point is the Ranger Compound. Don’t stop for anything!”

“If there’s any Super Mutants, we’ll hold them off,”Adam put in. “You guys get back to safety. We’ll find you if we get left behind.”

Donovan let out a nervous chuckle. “You never know, we might be lucky and there won’t be any more Super Mutants downstairs.”

“We’re not lucky,” Fluttershy said grimly. “There’s a group of Mutants in the lobby, at least six.”

Butch gave her an incredulous look. “How the fuck could you possibly know th-” She was cut off as the elevator jolted to a stop and the doors screeched open. A confused Super Mutant turned to stare blankly at them.

“Boo!” Adam blew a hole in its face with his plasma rifle and kicked the Mutant away before it could even register that it was dead. Roars of fury and scattered gunfire followed that abrupt greeting. Stepping out of the elevator behind Adam, Fluttershy saw that they were on a narrow mezzanine that circled the lobby. Two Mutants were on the mezzanine, firing away with hunting rifles, while the rest were down on the lobby floor.

“I’ll take upstairs, you take down!” Fluttershy vamped out and sprinted for the nearest SuperMutant, ripping her sword out of its scabbard as she went. The Mutant barely had time to react before she slammed the sword through its heart and out through its back. Bowling it over with her sheer momentum, Fluttershy released the blade and leapt off of the falling Mutant, launching herself at its companion. The second Mutant fired and missed as she barreled into it and tore its throat out with her claws.

Just as she was turning to see how the others were doing, Fluttershy heard the rumble of many heavy-set creatures approaching. “Get ready, there’s more coming!”

“You heard her, get your asses out of here, we can handle this!” Adam shouted.

Fluttershy hurried to retrieve her sword and stalked over to the corridor she expected the Super Mutants to arrive through. Taking a deep breath, she slipped the needle from the Psycho container on her armor and jabbed it into her abdomen. She shuddered as the stimulants poured through her system, making her muscles twitch, and snarled as a red mist descended.

Next Chapter: Chapter 187 - Hindsight and Hard Liquor Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 26 Minutes