The entire planet began to howl. Various screams, groans, and roars rang out from every crevice in the ground. Every tunnel, every sewer grate, every gap in the soil carried the resounding war cry that signaled their arrival.

It was as if they knew the world was theirs. Those cries could have very well been taunting towards anything still unlucky enough to struggle against them, letting them know that there was a new king in town who demanded the spoils of its conquered kingdom.

The cries could have also been a warning - a headstart for their prey to begin running - so the hunt was more interesting. They never seemed to stay the same. Every night they changed - no, they evolved. They were learning from him. The last time he encountered them, he spotted them doing something no creature like them should have known how to do.

Pushing the sheet of metal out of the window frame as quietly as possible, a steel blue helmet and glowing purple visor emerged into the light of the steadily setting sun. The rest of the armored stallion stepped out of the crumbling structure through the frame where a glass pane had once been.

Glancing overhead and to the south, he watched as the cluster of thick clouds drifted further from his location. Even from his current distance, he could still see the flashing blue streaks hammering away at one another within the cluster. Though he couldn’t hear it from his position, he imagined the sound of violent crackling and sparking never dissipated entirely.

He called them flares. Relentless electric storms that bred all sorts of nasty weather conditions that torched everything in their path. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught on the surface in the midst of one had two options; retreat into the nearest crevice - as he had done - and wait until the flare had passed or pray that whatever you were wearing at the time could withstand the wrath of nature.

His suit would have easily withstood a dozen blasts from the flares - the lightning bolts weren’t the problem - that would be the debris thrown around by the blinding winds that could shatter his saving grace that was his suit. As if getting caught in a flare wasn’t bad enough, they had built up ways to stay on top of the food chain even while visibility was limited. It didn’t matter how much armor or weapons he possessed as they were useless if he couldn’t see what to shoot at.

Regardless, the flare had passed but it had come at the worst time imaginable. It hadn’t even been ten minutes before his suit’s five o’clock alarm was scheduled to go off that the destructive storm had found him. He wondered if the storms could actually track a living creature. It wasn’t likely, but the stallion always felt like the flares seemed to hunt for him just as they did.

Speaking of them, He was now nearly an hour into their time of night. Nearly an hour into their domain and he was still miles away from what he called a home. The booming clap of the flare had drowned out the howls and cries of them initially, but now he was ironically wishing he had been able to hear those routine sounds of his possible end.

He could tell a whole lot from their sounds. Each variant had their own tone of roars, cries, and growls that would let him know which type he was dealing with and possibly even how much distance he had from them. He would rather know the painful truth than be told a beautiful lie - or nothing at all for that matter.

Part of him wanted to sprint for his “home” and attempt to outrun them. After all, the longer he stayed out here, the more of them came out to roam. But time had molded his patience into that of a hunter. In a way, he was one. He had long since learned that if he didn’t pick a target then he was likely the target of something else.

Managing to put his growing unease aside, the stallion opened his suit’s purple holographic interface to reveal a 3D map of Los Pegasus and the surrounding lands. He scanned for the quickest - and safest - route to the bay of South Luna Ocean. A purple line darker than the screen appeared which directed said route from his current position to his future destination.

The stallion followed the map for what seemed like hours, but in reality it couldn’t have been much more than five minutes. He made sure not to draw any unnecessary attention to himself and took it slow. Some things never changed.

He had been coming out of an alley between an apartment block and what looked like some sort of restaurant when he heard it.

CLANG!

Some unseen object that was likely metallic in nature had fallen over in what couldn’t be more than half a block from his location. Instinctively, he readied his weapon and slammed himself back into the alley, against the edge of the brick wall.

For hours he waited, or at least it seemed that way. Time never seemed to feel consistent when the sun went down. However long he crouched there against the wall not daring to move or make a sound except his barely audible breathing.

Another clanging sound broke out from the same direction as the first one. It was followed by a wet sound of something being torn. The stallion pressed a button on his suit’s chest piece that deactivated the tiny mechanical locks on a rectangular device stationed next to the chest piece. This device had a purple light similar to the segmented chest ring and ear-mounted module. The device gently hovered as it was levitated by the stallion’s ear module.

The tiny device floated around the alley’s corner as the stallion did his best to position it in the general direction of the sounds. A small window appeared within his helmet’s HUD that displayed a live feed from the device’s perspective.

Through the transparent purple glow of the device’s camera, he could see multiple overturned and destroyed carriages and chariots on the street. Trash and decade old newspapers with headlines such as Solar Flare Cannon fired upon the Undiscovered West and Hundreds killed in a hidden research facility in the mountains littered the road and sidewalk.

At the furthest end of the street - about forty feet away - a debris covered intersection sat in front of what was once a hotel. The culprit of the scattered rubble on the ground was an airship wedged into the upper floors of the hotel. It looked like a photo frozen in time. A time where everything had changed.

But the sight of the intersection’s surroundings wasn’t what caught the stallion’s attention. It was who or rather what resided in it. On the sidewalk right underneath the ravaged hotel stood three figures. The setting sun was shielded by the hotel, making it nearly impossible to discern any physical features other than the shape of their bodies. The sharpened appendages on some of their backs was enough of an indicator as to what they were as the stallion had memorized many of their shapes.

The definite sign of what they were flashed as one of them scanned the streets around their position. The bright glow of two blue orbs wall all the confirmation he needed. No matter how much they changed, no matter how much they evolved, the eyes were always the same regardless of the number.

By some stroke of luck, the one scanning it’s surroundings didn’t notice the tiny faint purple lights of the stallion’s floating device. No cries signaling he had been spotted caused him to realize something. He had been holding in his breath the entire time until now.

Letting out the quietest exhale his lungs could produce, he continued to scan over the scene before him. Three of them were all gathered around a fourth figure. While they never seemed to stand still with the appendages swaying back and forth or their chests rising rapidly - letting out pained breathing that he thankfully couldn’t hear from his position - the fourth figure didn’t move at all.

Zooming in with the device’s camera, the stallion was finally able to make out that the fourth figure was a mare. She had a light green coat with a two toned yellow and brown mane. Her eyes were blue, but they were seemingly drained to a dull grey with only a shred of the former color remaining. In fact, almost all of her colors were dulled and it was clear why.

She was a corpse.

The three of them stood around her, two of which were lifting her up to sit on her haunches as they positioned her facing the hotel and away from the stallion. The third one continued to scan the three streets, its piercing blue eyes somehow holding both the determined patience of a hunter and a savage animal that hadn’t eaten in weeks.

When the mare’s corpse was placed to their liking, one of the creatures began placing boxes of ammunition and canned food next to her. Whether the containers were empty or not wasn’t the stallion’s priority as he continued to observe them. That same one then laid flat on it’s chest next to the body with its head down, hiding the blue glow in the safety of the concrete ground.

The other one who had helped position the corpse raised it’s strange shaped tail - which resembled more of a rope with a circular point at the end - than what he had been accustomed to with most creatures. The orb-like point flashed a familiar blue before the creature’s body disappeared from the stallion’s sight.

Well… not entirely.

The only remaining features of the creature were its eyes which still glistened despite the rest of it’s transparent camouflage body. The eyes backed up a few steps before the owner closed them.

The final one that had likely been watching for any approaching threats climbed into a nearby chariot and out of his sight.

They had set a trap! Nothing like them should have been able to know how to do that. They looked and acted like savages in the first few years, but were somehow capable of learning from others. They had likely learned that from him. He had been setting up custom snares for any remaining critters around the parks and forests for months now.

They must have been watching him set the traps, or maybe they watched something get caught in the traps - or both. That haunted him. The realization that they had been watching him without his knowledge chilled him to the bone. Had they done this before? How many times had he been trying everything in his power to avoid them only for them to still have the upper hoof in this game of cat and mouse they were playing.

Were they watching him now?

Deciding not to stick around for that answer, the stallion tethered his device back onto his suit’s chest where the tiny locks wrapped around it, folding around the device like spider legs as they snapped together and held it in place.

He then headed back through the alley as the suit automatically recalculated the next route to his destination. The sighting of them made him think about the state of the world, which was something he tried to avoid often.

The knowledge that the world was only hanging on by a thread wasn’t a secret. The few - if any - survivors always succumbed to fate. Starvation, suicide, or another creature ended up killing them in the end. The world was damned. Everything in it was damned. Those unfortunate enough to become one of them were damned by whatever long dead God inflicted this fate upon them.

Damned. While it wasn’t an official title, the haunting word stuck with the survivors of the early days. No one was sure who started calling them by that title, but as time went on and the word passed from lip to ear like an infection, it ended up sticking.

The stallion slid through alleys, behind buildings, and around chariots as fast as he could without ringing the dinner bell for the Damned. Running into them was unavoidable, he knew that much.

They were like a schoolhouse bully that most younger ponies dreaded coming into contact with, but knew it was inevitable. They would run into each other eventually whether it be in the halls, on the playground, or Celestia-forbid they share a classroom together. In a way, it was the same as the old world. Nothing much had changed despite the stakes being ramped up considerably.

Over the years he had learned the few consistencies they all shared. The first one was the glowing blue eyes, but that could have been identified by anypony or any creature easily. The second consistency was their hierarchy when the sun went down.

They would always send the smaller variants out in the first hour. The ones that were roughly pony sized - maybe a little bigger or smaller. These were the most common ones he encountered as it was suicide to stay out longer than neccessary for that was when the bigger variants came out. These creatures were formed with larger hosts. Diamond dogs, dragons, and even multiple bodies of ponies fused together. He didn’t ever see them until about two - sometimes three hours into the night.

It was clear that the Damned showed signs of extreme intelligence for the standards of something like them. At first glance they looked like glowing corpses, which one would expect them to be mindless but surprisingly they were able to pull off battle tactics that had taken members of the old Royal Guard years to master.

Their ability to make organized attacks was what he assumed ultimately led to their conquering of the old world. How they were able to coordinate said attacks was unknown to the stallion. It didn’t matter if he took out a whole group of them, somehow the next group had learned from him despite not even being present for the fight with the first one. Or where they?

He heard their cries again, but they were louder this time. Closer this time. He had finally made it to the edge of the city where only a single road - surrounded by a few large buildings - led to Ponyville to the North East if he was willing to make the day long journey.

He wasn’t.

His destination was straight down south. It was one he had learned to call his home for as long as he could remember. Once he passed by the Los Pegasus Mall, the stallion could make out the tall structure that sat on a hill which overlooked the South Luna Ocean. This structure had faded stripes running up it, almost like a candy cane which were interrupted at the top where the structure bulked out into a more disk-like shape with a large orb at the top.

The building that had been his saving grace for the past few decades was a lighthouse. While the lantern panes at the top had long since been shattered and the light bulb within burnt out, the balcony on the gallery was completely intact and made for the best lookout tower one could ask for. With it’s back to the ocean and front only being obstructed by a mall and a couple of trees, there was almost no chance of anything sneaking up on the structure.

It was finally in his sight. Only a about two miles left until he arrived, then he would be out of this mess for the night and-

BOOM!

The sound of an explosion followed by a sizzling crackle caused the stallion’s ears to perk up as his head swiveled around to see it. About less than half a mile to his left was a sea of dark clouds that were rapidly approaching his position. Blue streaks flashed briefly within the clouds before they disappeared only to be replaced by three more each time.

A transparent red drop down box appeared in the center of his helmet’s HUD that read;

WARNING: HOSTILE WEATHER CONDITIONS DETECTED. PLEASE SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER.

The stallion knew the flare - and the Damned for that matter - would be upon him before he would even reach the halfway point to the lighthouse. Glancing at the mall, which was not even ten steps away from him, he cursed under his breath and rushed over to the side door.

Locked.

He tried using the weight of his body and suit to force the door open, but it was clear the door had been barricaded from the other side. He didn’t have enough time to stay there and hope he would be enough to make it open.

The stallion made it to the front doors which were made of glass, allowing him to see the mountain of large objects placed behind them as a makeshift barricade. The flare boomed again as a blue streak of lightning struck the ground right next to him. The storm was now directly over his head as rain droplets and hail pelted his suit and made audible thunk! Thunk! Thunk! sounds against his helmet and shoulders.

He knew the suit would protect him from the storm - he made sure of it with how long he had perfected the suit - but the hail would eventually wear down the more vulnerable parts. He had to act fast.

The stallion frantically looked around for any possible entrance. It was clear now that any and all doors would be barricaded from past occupants, so regular doorways were out of the question. What if there was a-

A glowing shard of bone hit the wall, barely missing his head by an inch, and breaking the stallion out of his thoughts.

Spinning around and activating his weapon all in the same motion, the stallion didn’t see anything. There was nothing staring him down with a hungry glare. No being stood before him posed for a second attack.

That was all he needed to know what was there.

Instead of panicking or fleeing as many had before him, the stallion didn’t move an inch. He stood completely still and scanned the darkened, raining landscape with only his eyes. Another flash of lightning pierced his surroundings and that was when he saw it.

Two blue orbs.

The two pinpricks of light held an immeasurable hunger, but not for sustenance. They hungered for him. Those eyes made it clear that this thing's only mission was to “take” the stallion before it. They wanted his body, even if it was a corpse by the time they were done.

They couldn’t have it.

The owner of the two eyes let out a screeching sound as it knew it had been caught by its prey. A third blue light formed directly centered above the eyes. This light was more of a cone shape with ridges spiraling up it.

A horn. A unicorn horn.

The horn sparked as a brief blue aura washed over the thing’s body revealing that it was indeed equine shaped. The rest of “thing” came into view as it’s natural colors formed in the wake of the blue aura.

The creature that stood before him was one he had seen many times. If he had to bet on them, he could count on it as being one of the top five most common Damned out there. The creature’s previously activated camouflage and tendril-like tail ending in what resembled a cuffed claw made it clear what it was.

A Hunter. That was what he had dubbed this particular variant, but there was a reason for that title.

They never hunted alone…

Two more sets of eyes came into view - one crawling out of an overturned taxi chariot and another leaping over a small pile of rubble - and approached the first creature. The other two “decloaked” and joined at the sides of their brethren, backing the stallion against the front entrance to the mall.

The Hunters didn’t even have to signal or speak to communicate as they fanned out to give him no escape options. It’s like they already knew the best tactic to bring their prey down. Whether countless decades of practice or something more sinister was the answer, the stallion didn’t care. He only had one goal…

Survive.

All three creatures raised their tails over their heads and poised the sharpened tips at their target. Simultaneously they all fired bone-like spikes at their prey. The shards closed the already small distance in mere seconds.

That made the creatures all the more stunned when they discovered that the stallion had seemingly moved at lightspeed to dodge their array of serrated death. Somehow he had dashed past the projectiles and towards the proximity of the creature in the center of the group.

Before the central Hunter could even react, the stallion had grabbed it’s head with his right hoof, before a compartment on his left hoof opened and in a second, a wickedly sharpened blade extended out of its case. The blade was the last thing the creature saw as the stallion quickly plunged the blade into it’s left eye before dragging it through bone towards the other eye and destroying both effectively.

The Hunter fell limp with the blade still embedded deep into the creature’s skull. The other two hunters had their tails raised and aimed again. They fired once more only to see a hollow and segmented part of the suited stallion’s back light up and flash violently as the stallion was propelled forward.

In the act of dashing, the stallion also swung the Hunter’s corpse around to intercept the other’s projectiles, causing them to release growls of frustration. The two creatures reared up on their hind legs and roared, displaying their anger towards their prey before their horns flashed and they disappeared from his sight.

The blue voltic flashes from above made it nearly impossible for the stallion to make out the creatures’ eyes now. He was about to fire at their last known location when he felt something slam into him from behind.

The attack launched him into the taxi chariot that one of the beasts had emerged from earlier. The battering combined with the impact was almost enough to knock the wind out of him even with the armored plates of the suit tanking most of the damage.

The stallion quickly scrambled to his hooves as he stood up and fired straight ahead. The pained screeching in front of him and flashing blue equine-like figure was enough to confirm that he had hit one. But where was the-

Another flash of pain filled his body as he was slammed from the side.

Instead of knocking him into something, this Hunter pinned the stallion to the crackled road as it decloaked itself and raised its tail high above it’s head. Then the hammer dropped.

The stallion barely had time to avoid the strike of the creature’s spiked appendage as it was dug into the concrete below. The creature howled in anger as it unhinged its jaw while trying to dig its tail out of the concrete. The Hunter’s jaw bit down on the suit’s helmet, causing the visor to slightly splinter where the teeth attempted to sink into his flesh.

Multiple red flashing warning signs and drop-down menus appeared on his HUD as the stallion tried to keep the creature’s head at bay with both hooves around its neck. His options were minuscule. His hooves were busy keeping him alive, his head was pinned, his body was pinned, wait - His hindlegs! One of them was free!

With all the strength he could muster, the stallion brought his leg up and activated his suit’s leg-mounted thruster, causing the creature’s teeth to be ripped out of his helmet and sent flying over his prone body.

Instead of getting to his hooves again, the stallion’s ear mounted device glowed as a purple aura grabbed his discarded weapon and aimed it at the down Hunter that was just getting up out of the concrete. The stallion was about to fire when the other creature sent a bone-like spike into his chest. It hurt like hell, but he barely had time to register the pain as he directed his aim towards the second creature and fired.

The creature moved it’s head to dodge the shot, and it succeeded. Well… sort of.

He wasn’t aiming for the head.

The creature attempted to fire another projectile at it’s prone prey, but found no such result. Bringing its tail up to it’s head, the creature was met with a stump that was spewing both a crimson and blue substance.

It didn’t even have time to change tactics as the stallion fired another shot, this time directly into the creature’s eyes. It was hard to miss with a slabbed barrel. The second creature dropped dead before him.

The third one had gotten to its hooves and had created a small blue shield in front of it’s eyes with its horn as it began charging the stallion who was already in the process of aiming at his assailant. But he wasn’t aiming for it’s eyes.

The stallion pulled the trigger three quick times while posing the weapon towards the creature’s forehooves. Both limbs were sliced through by the heated rivets of the rifle as the creature fell flat on it’s front half. It lifted up its tail and prepared to fire only to have that shot off as well.

The Hunter looked up at the stallion with anger in it’s eyes as it’s prey-turned-predator approached its downed form. A flash of lightning from above broke the inky black landscape for a brief moment, blotting out the purple glare and revealing the suit's visor - giving the creature a look into the owner’s eyes.

The last thing the creature saw would have sent chills down any other being’s very fiber. The look in the stallions eyes held no remorse, no mercy, no - the stallion's eyes held only one thing...

Hatred.

Hatred for all that had been taken from him. His family, his friends, his memories. It had all drifted away over the years. The anger - no, the hate - was formed out of the fragments of what he once held on to. He wouldn’t have even known what year it was if his suit didn’t display it for him.

The Hunter attempted to verbalize it’s anger but was swiftly silenced as the stallion’s hoof slammed down on its head, crushing its skull and pulverizing both eyes in a single stomp. The stallion barely even registered that his muscles were tense and he was slightly shaking. Whether it was due to fear or anger was anyone's guess.

More demented cries rang out from behind him. The stallion spun around to see over two dozen sets of glowing eyes approaching the warzone. A flash of electric blue lightning from above revealed the different variants for some of them flew with winged appendages, others trotted with their clawed hooves scraping against the concrete audibly, and a few more Hunters decloaked upon arriving at the scene.

The stallion could hold his own, that much was clear, but he knew this was suicide. He had stopped counting when the number of creatures had reached nearly three dozen. He quickly reloaded his weapon using his ear-mounted device’s tethered grip as the creatures continued to gather around him.

Changing his stance to one of a more grounded pose, the stallion kept his weapon at eye level indicating he had no intention of giving in without a fight.

They stared at him. He stared back.

They roared a battle cry that shook the night.

He flipped a switch on his weapon that made each barrel extend and aim at a different target within the horde.

They charged.

He fired.

Suddenly, the stallion’s vision was filled by a blinding white light that devoured everything. The road, the chariots, the Damned - they were all swept away by the light.

Everything was white. Not blank enough to be solid white, but more like he was seeing through a white suit visor - and speaking of which - he found that his suit was missing. He was laying on his back with limbs at his sides.

Trying to move proved to be fruitless as the stallion found that his body wouldn’t listen to his commands. He thought fear would have consumed him - that he would be trembling at the prospect of being bound by an unseen force with nothing to protect himself - but he was calm, almost at peace in a strange sort of way.

Out of seemingly nowhere, a figure appeared to the right of his supine form. This figure was almost indescribable. It seemed to be constantly moving but still at the same time. It was alive but also not at once. The only thing he could actually make out was the figure’s two concentrated eyes that scanned over him.

The figure’s gaze made him feel like an appliance that a customer had opened only to be disappointed as if it was broken upon purchasing. It continued to stare at him for a moment until another figure exactly like the first appeared at his other side.

“Is it ready?” The newcomer asked it’s brethren at the stallion’s right side.

“Soon…” The first figure replied as it’s gaze remained locked on him.

“We don’t have much time or options,” The second figure continued as it turned to face his body. “If it is not ready by-”

“It will be ready.” The first figure cut in, clearly agitated. “Tell the others. Prepare yourselves for our transition.”

With that cryptic line, the first figure raised a hoof - no, some sort of strange digit-covered appendage to the stallion’s head.

A distorted ringing noise filled the stallions ears and his vision swam as the appendage reached his head.

The stallion found the white filter over his vision was gone as were the strange figures. The familiar faint purple blur of his visor was now all that altered his vision. Through the thin slits he saw destruction.

Where a horde of three dozen Damned once stood poised for taking his life was now a scene of gore and carnage. Severed limbs, appendages, and heads littered the streets, one Damned was impaled on a broken street light pole. It was writhing in agony as it tried to pull itself off of the pole to no avail. The creature finally noticed the stallions stare as their eyes met. It showed something he hadn’t seen from the Damned in all of his life.

Fear.

The creature was struggling violently to free itself while a fearful expression was plastered on it’s demented face. The stallion ignored the creature as it was doing no harm towards him - at the moment - so instead, he continued to survey his surroundings.

More scattered remains of the creatures here and there. He then looked down to his suit, finding that it was coated in both crimson and blue substances along with multiple scratch marks and gashes.

He didn’t even realize that the flare had passed in his.. What was it? Mental absence? A daydream? Whatever it was, somehow he wasn’t even harmed and the Damned before him had all been slaughtered.

Did he do that? He couldn’t have. Whatever did this was savage. It was brutal.

It was worse than them.

He would have noticed if he did anything like that? Right?

A resounding roar in the distance broke the stallion out of his thoughts. He knew that roar too well. The bigger ones were coming out now and he didn’t plan to be around when they arrived.

Galloping as fast as his hooves could carry his frame and suit, the stallion finally arrived at a large steel gate that surrounded the titanic lighthouse that loomed over him. He had once read that lighthouses were once seen as a beacon of hope for lost ships during a storm. It was almost ironic that it was now his beacon of hope in the middle of whatever “storm” awaited him.

A clearly custom-made steel gate was firmly sealed and blocked his path in the middle of the wall. The stallion slammed the stock of his weapon on the gate three times before calling out.

“Maverick!” He yelled to the other side of the gate. “I’m back, open the gate!”

No response.

After a moment of silence, he got a response, but it wasn’t one he was hoping for. A loud roar from a few miles away met his call.

The stallion swung around with his weapon raised. After not seeing anything within his immediate proximity, he pounded on the door again.

“Did you fucking fall alseep in there?! Open the gate!”

“Damn thing’s jammed!” A high pitched male voice finally responded from the other side. “Can you do anything from your end?”

Quickly scanning the wall revealed a small cut out in the wall that was guarded by steel plates that were screwed in place. Placing his weapon on his back, the stallion reached into a compartment on his suit and pulled out a screwdriver as he undid the plating and examined the circuit board before him.

After a few seconds of rewiring, the gate gave a metallic groan as it began to slowly open. The stallion knew he had to hold his position a little longer and keep the wires lined up properly, but the increasingly closer growls from behind weren’t making it any easier.

When the gap in the gate was large enough, the stallion sprinted for it as the gate began to rapidly close. He activated the suit’s thrusters and leapt through the opening just as it slammed shut.

The stallion rolled onto his back as he let out a sigh of relief. He could hear a single set of approaching hoovesteps, the owner of which he knew very well. A violet hoof reached down and he accepted it, getting up off the dirt.

A thin, but tall pegasus stallion with a desaturated violet coat, black and red mane, and warm emerald green eyes greeted him. The pegasus was also wearing an ear-mounted device identically to the stallion’s own. Tethered in its grip was a rifle with a segmented scope that almost reached the weapon’s full length.

The two embraced in a brief “buddy hug” as the violet stallion known as Maverick chuckled.

“Forget to watch the clock again, Storm?” He began. “We were this close to placing bets on you returning.”

“Yeah, I was just looking for something.” Storm’s unamused response came.

Maverick’s carefree expression dropped slightly as his tone changed. “Dude, seriously? This is the third time this week.”

“I know, I know. It’s just-”

“Hey!” A playful mare’s voice rang out from the direction of the lighthouse. “Look who’s back!”

“Looks like somepony missed you.” Maverick said punching Storm in the shoulder.

“Great.” Came his monotone response as the two headed for the lighthouse’s residential cabin.

The mare waiting for the two was slim, sporting a petite frame with a white coat. Her aqua blue mane was done up in a ponytail on the back and her matching blue eyes seemed to sparkle. Maverick walked past her as he entered the cabin and placed his rifle by the doorway.

“Find anything, Stormy?” She beamed attempting to reach his gaze despite being an entire head shorter than him, which was amplified in the suit even more so.

“For the last time, I’m not risking my life for a bag of hay fries, Ivory.” He said. He was joking even if his tone almost betrayed him.

Ivory giggled.

“I know silly, I was talking about anything for them.” She replied with her tone switching from playful to serious and almost pouty instantly.

Storm sighed and shook his head. “No. I checked every damn house in that section too.”

“That bad, huh?” Maverick joined in as Storm shut the door behind everyone.

“Pretty soon we’ll have to start going further out.” Ivory replied shivering at the thought of that.

At least they knew what Los Pegasus was like. They had no idea how bad the rest of the world was, but the lack of communications, television, and radio was enough of a sign.

“Storm can handle it,” Maverick chimed in with a pat on the mentioned stallion’s back, “right, buddy?”

“Guess we’ll find out.” Storm replied as he groaned while stretching his word out limbs. “We have to find something for them.”

The others shook their heads, silently agreeing.

Moving a hoof to his chest piece, Storm pressed the largest button on the interface. The hiss of pressurized air filled the room before the steel plates began to fold into one another as the helmet was retracting into a bulky section on the suit’s back.

An exaggerated gasp came from Ivory after the removal of his helmet, causing Storm to turn towards her.

“What?” He asked.

“Ouch.” Was all she replied. “That looks nasty.”

Storm, still confused, walked over to a nearby mirror and gave his appearance a lookover. His medium length black and pigeon blue mane was coated in sweat and disheveled and his beard was no different. His gray coat was mostly clean with the exception of a small, but deep gash on his cheek underneath his right eye.
How the hell did that get there?! He thought. Storm hadn’t taken his helmet off until now so there was no way the Damned could have done that to him.

The puzzled stallion continued to stare at the cut until something happened that made him freeze.

The cut began to glow.

But it wasn’t the glowing itself that alarmed him. It was the color.

The glow was blue…

Author's Notes:

Now we are finally into the swing of things!

Couple things I wanted to say. I know a lot of events in this chapter will have confused some readers, but trust me when I say that everything will make sense in time. If you are willing to put fourth the effort to remember and understand, then everything should satisfyingly click a little early for you.

Also for anyone raging at their screens, Storm couldn't have just used his suit's thrusters to fly back to his base. The thrusters aren't completely flight capable yet and are primarily used for a brief dash. Even if they were flight ready, the flare would have torn him to shreds with him being that close to the heart.

I'll try to update this story every two - three weeks and am even thinking of putting some artwork for certain scenes in the mix for future chapters. Let me know what you all think and like, favorite, and share the story if you want it continued!

-CCS