I didn’t sleep that night. It was a painful mixture of nervousness about the mission and the problem with Clouds that prevented me from getting any rest. Endless tossing, turning, and rearranging of covers did nothing for me. Being completely denied the void of sleep, I instead rolled off of the bunk bed and alighted on the floor.

I looked around in the dark at the sleeping forms of my companions. Scout, Clarity, and the new hulking figure of Arterial, all sleeping peacefully. I envied them that as I crept out of the barracks. The super secluded bunker was faintly lit by dull emergency lights, conserving power throughout the night.

When I stepped out into the hallway though, I froze. I remembered the “last” time I’d done something like this. Sucking in a deep breath, I whipped out a wing and bit down hard on the tip. “OW!”

Okay, I was definitely awake.

Hissing in pain, I shook the wing a few times before slipping it away. I meandered aimlessly through the halls of the super secluded bunker, trying to just stop my mind from spinning. I don’t know when I stumbled into Clouds’ workshop, but it was where I found myself when I next looked up.

Despite everything I still found myself feeling giddy when I looked at all the cool tech on display. The mainframe, the agriculture system, everything was so advanced it made my heart leap! Eventually I came upon the Steel Ranger power suit that I had been sown when we first arrived. Even if it meant restricting my wings, I kinda wanted to take it for my own. I’d like to see the Enclave kill me in that thing!

Looking at the suit, though, something came back to me. Perhaps something that could patch my friendship with Clouds. I turned and galloped out, heading for the elevator to Meltwater. Misting Ice had told me that the buffalo would be staying in the area of Meltwater for a few days, so I still had the chance to talk with the Chief.

It was, if possible, even darker on the surface. Meltwater may have been safe from the blistering cold blizzard, but until something was done about the Enclave they’d never see the sun. I trotted through the streets, my hooves sinking slightly in the mud with each step. Mist swirled up from the ground creating a deep fog that was practically impossible to see through. The town was dead in the night, the only sounds were the erupting geysers in the distance and the steady sqish squash sqish squash of the mud. I had to suppress a shudder. If anywhere ever needed the sun more…

By following the sound of the geysers, I finally came to the edge of town. Here the snow was at its lightest, but I could see and feel the heavier storm further out. I knew it wasn’t far to the buffalo camp and after visiting the yeti cave, the likelihood of being attacked was minimal, but still I hesitated. A thousand phantom pains ached, and I sighed. Muttering “All right may as well,” I spread my wings and focused.

Eddies of wind brushed my face as I tried to form the bubble of calm around myself, but it was hard. Making the wind spin in all directions at once took a colossal amount of effort, moving like this would be near impossible. “Damnit!” I let the spell collapse, cursing my incompetence. How was it possible that a buffalo could perform this incredible weather control spell, but I couldn’t with the snowflakes on my ass?

I knew what Misting Ice would say my problem is, but I didn’t want to think about it. Spirituality and magic were two different things because the latter was scientific, damnit! Magic made sense, it had rules!

Alright “spirits” if you do exist then how about you tell me something? Why can’t I make this work? If the Cutie Mark really is a pony’s destiny then why can’t I do this? Am I really so pathetic that I can’t do what I was born to? No answer came and I screamed in anger. “Why!? Why can’t I do this!? What the fuck is wrong with me!?” Frustration felt like an iron ball in my heart. “Just work, damnit!” I stomped my hooves like a petulant filly, pounding the mushy earth with each yell. “Work! Work! Work!”

…Nothing. Nothing came to me. No surge of power, no big vision. Nothing. I sat down in defeat, my body feeling unfathomably tired. “Please…” I whispered, looking up at the tumultuous clouds above. I couldn’t tell if the wetness on my face was rain or tears. “Please, just work with me. Just this once…”

Something brushed my mane to the side. I blinked in shock and focused. A light breeze was flowing past me. I stood up, not caring for the mud on my coat. I opened my wings and felt the wind through my feathers. Lightly, I pushed the wind to circle me, and it obeyed. The gust whirled around me, creating a small barrier of moving air.

“Ha…” I covered my mouth quickly, surprised. Still I snickered through my fetlock. Soon enough I didn’t care to stop, I just laughed. The iron ball was gone and I felt light as a cloud! “I’m such an idiot!” I choked out through the laughter. “How could I have been so dumb?” It felt so natural now! Feeling a level of confidence I wasn’t used to, I galloped into the storm, pulling the bubble along with me. Or at least I started to, before it scattered and fell apart. Okay, maybe go a little slower…

Reforming the bubble, I entered the storm, slow and steady. Maintaining the spell while moving still proved challenging, but I was pleasantly surprised at its effectiveness. My shield wasn’t as strong as Misting Ice’s, snow still fell through just at a significantly reduced rate, but it did the job.

It didn’t take long to reach the buffalo camp, the ghostly tents fading in through the darkness. The sound of crunching snow was my only warning when two huge buffalo warriors appeared on either side of me, sporting spears easily comparable to Old World trees! “Who’s there?” One of them barked.

“Sleet Gray.” I answered calmly. “I have a small request or the Tribe Hidden in the Ice.”

“It is late. Come with the sun.” The other said.

“There won’t be enough time come sunrise.” I protested respectfully. “My friends and I will be departing with first light.”

“That doesn’t matter. Make time.”

I kept my annoyance from my face, trying to come up with something to make them stand aside. An idea came to me, one that would probably work, but I felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. Still, I came here for a reason and I wasn’t leaving without it.

Spreading my wings, I called up the swirling winds, making sure to catch the snow to make it visible. “The spirits granted me protection from the storm so that I might venture here safely. Would you deny their will?”

I felt like scum for turning their beliefs against them like this, but it worked. The two warriors looked at each other nervously speaking rapidly in their own language. I kept the spell up, though the walk here had worn me out. Just cause I’d figured out how didn’t mean I could do it for very long. Thankfully they came to their decision quickly. “What is your request?” One of them asked.

I smiled and let the swirling winds die. “What did you ever do with those Enclave corpses?” The guard went to get the Chief while the other led me to where the bodies were being held. We passed beyond the tents, though not out of the bubble. In the small area between the two sat a sled, covered in a white sheet. My gut turned at the five still forms underneath, and I had to distract myself lest I be sick. “So why didn’t you dispose of the bodies?”

“There was no time for the proper custom.” The warrior explained solemnly. “Rest assured they will be properly sent to the next life.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I found myself being torn on the fact that they hadn’t been dealt with yet. They were my enemies, true, and I had hated Loud Mouth in the moments before I killed him, but they were still ponies. Not respecting them in death felt…wrong.

“I am sorry that we have not honored them in death yet, Sleet Gray.” A familiar voice said. I turned to see Misting Ice approach, looking unperturbed by being awoken. “Is there something you wished to discuss about the fallen? A way you would like to bury them?”

“No.” I answered simply, forcing the discomfort from my tone. “In the Enclave we don’t bury our dead, since you can’t exactly bury bodies in clouds.”

“So what do you do?”

“We cremate them; ashes were easier to get rid of.” I felt no spiritual or emotional connection to the practice, so I didn’t care if the buffalo followed the tradition. “Do what you will with them. I can’t send them back home, or else the Enclave could more easily find me.”

“Then what did you wish to talk about?” The Chief asked.

“I need their armor and weapons.” I said. “If there is even the slightest chance the Enclave could trace them, I need to have the data destroyed. They could have recorded our whole encounter, and I’d prefer they have as little information on me as possible.”

Misting Ice nodded and approached the sled, pulling the white sheet off. I coughed and had to cover my mouth at the smell of blood. The cold had prevented the corpses from decaying, but that didn’t get rid of the foul, metallic stench. I joined Misting Ice at the sled, the two of us looking at the bodies silently for a minute. “What do your people think of death, Sleet Gray?”

I licked my dry lips, thinking. “Death is something to be avoided in the Enclave.” I said eventually. “We don’t like to think about it, because thinking about death means thinking about how tenuous living above the clouds is. It is an existence they barely maintain, which is why useless ponies like me are such a burden.”

“Do you truly believe yourself to be so useless?” He asked. “I sensed a new confidence in you when you arrived.”

“Well, I guess I learned something.” I said, smiling. Flapping my wings, I summoned a small whirlwind of snow in front of me. “I think I finally understand what you told me. It’s about knowing what you can do and working with that, right?”

The old buffalo smiled happily and nodded. “Ah, you do understand. I knew you would. The spirits were right about you Sleet Gray. You have the potential to be truly great.”

Rather than say anything about the “spirits”, I simply bowed deeply and said “thank you, Chief Misting Ice. I can’t thank you enough for helping me.”

“You have a long way yet to go, young pegasus.” He said solemnly, but with a slight twinkle in his eye. “But you are clever and wise. Use your gifts well, and they won’t fail you. Now,” he nodded to the sleigh “take what you require and we will see to it that the fallen are properly put to rest.”

Collecting the gear from the bodies was easy enough, it was getting it back to the bunker that was the challenge. Five suits of heavy power armor were not easy to transport, but after borrowing another sleigh from the buffalo I as eventually able to drag it back through the storm. I was thankful for the deserted streets, the last thing I wanted was somepony wondering why I was dragging a huge pile of bloody armor around.

It took some work and a lot of clattering to get the suits into the elevator leading down to the super secluded bunker. After taking a minute to speed the sled back to the outskirts of the town where it would be picked up, I took the elevator down, hovering above the suits. Once I was on the ground floor, I flew out and, after a bit of scrounging; I found a tarp to transport them on.

It was still a colossal pain in the flank to move them. I needed to drag the tarp along with my teeth, scraping along backwards through the tight halls. More than once I got caught on some pipe or extension and had to shift the clunking ceramic and metal around. Eventually though, I pulled into the workshop, the huge tarp of clanging suits behind me.

“Sleet, what on earth are you doing?” A voice asked.

“Hmmmph?” I asked, my mouth full of tarp. Looking over my shoulder, I almost didn’t recognize Clouds. She was wrapped in a large blanket that dragged around her hooves, held in place by her electric blue magic. What threw me off the most however, was the fact that she wasn’t wearing her googles. I finally saw her bright green eyes, now scrunched up in confusion and rimmed with red.

Spitting out the tarp, I said. “I couldn’t sleep, so I started wandering around. When I wandered in here I spotted this,” I gestured to the Steel Ranger suit with my wing, “and remembered what you said and…well…” With a little gust of wind I blew the tarp open, revealing the Enclave armor. “I found a few of these.”

Her eyes shot wide and her jaw dropped in amazement. “You..you actually…you got…” She stopped her stammering and sniffed curiously. “Is that blood?”

“Well, I ‘found’ them.” I said, making air quote with my hooves. “I was attacked by a group of soldiers yesterday and retrieved the amour off the bodies.”

“You were attacked by five highly trained and armed soldiers and won!? How?”

“I had help!” I explained quickly. “The buffalo and Arterial were there. I had plenty of backup!”

“Wow…” She whispered, walking over and running a hoof over the ceramic armor. “This is fantastic!” Suddenly she turned to me, eyebrows scrunched. “These can’t be traced here can they?”

“That’s part of the reason why I brought them.” I said. “I think they might have recorded the battle and have trackers. We need to disable them and wipe any data on the disks that might lead to me.”

“Yeah…” She said nodding, then more firmly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah I can do that. I’d love to get to peek inside them!” Her huge smile slowly faded, replaced by awkward shuffling. “So…does this have anything to do with…earlier?”

I bit my lower lip, knowing that this was coming. “Look, my answer from before hasn’t changed,” I saw her face fall and continued rapidly “but I meant what I said when I told you you’ve been my best friend down here, and I don’t want to ever have you as less than my friend.”

“And more?” She asked meekly.

“More I don’t know.” I said, shaking my head helplessly, shaking lose how I felt. “And it kills me to do this because you’re a good pony, better than me, and you deserve better than me.” I sat down, looking anywhere but at her. My heart felt like a spinning lead ball, whipping every which way and bruising my insides in the process. “And I don’t want to hurt another pony I care about, but I don’t see a way not to.” My mane had grown long enough that is hung in my eyes, a gray curtain blocking my shame.

Clouds’ hooves clip clop’ed as she approached and lifted my head up by the chin to look at her. “Hey, you’re still my friend, right?” I nodded. “Then help me crack these.” She nodded at the power suits. “All the time we stand around talking about our feelings like schoolfillies is more time for them to find us, you know?”

I smiled wide, blinking away thankful tears. “Yeah, let’s get to work.”

At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up suddenly with a stiff neck from my head resting on the console. I sat up, the blanket sliding off of me and rotated my neck, trying to crack the stiffness out. “I feel like an old mare…”

“Sleet?” I looked up and saw Scout entering the lab, glaring at me. “The Hell are you doing out here? I thought you’d vanished again!”

“No,” I yawned “I was working on something with Clouds.”

“Working on what?”

I gestured vaguely towards the Enclave suits, still plugged into the main computer through a mess of cables. “I figured the data on those should be wiped incase the Enclave ever found them.” It had turned out that I was right, a recording of the battle had been on the suits as well as distress beacons. Clouds and I managed to successfully crack one and wipe everything before I fell asleep.

“And did you get it all?” Scout asked, trotting over to the terminal.

“I only got one, but I’m guessing Clouds got the rest.” I started typing at the console in order to check, but was finding it hard to see through my sleep-clouded eyes. “Do you have a Sparkle-Cola?”

Scout handed me one of the blessed drinks which I took an immediate swig of. I set to work as the caffeine did, feeling my brain jolt awake. After a minute of navigating menus, I found the inner workings of the suits. “Alright, so Clouds did disable to beacons and tracking system.” I said, nodding approvingly. Then something caught my eye. “She didn’t wipe the video yet though…”

I called up the video, displaying it on one of the larger screens. Loud Mouth’s voice blasted through the speakers, prompting me to turn down the volume. “SIX, FIVE, FOUR…” Faintly, my voice could be heard interrupting him, and then came my attack.

It felt surreal, watching myself zip into the air and hurl a blast of snow at the camera. Scout and I watched from the Enclave’s perspective as I dodged desperately out of plasma fire and popped the bubble. Everything spun as the pony whose helmet we were watching through was blown away by the storm, until suddenly I came into sight at high speed. A nonsense tumble of gray, blue, black and white dominated the feed for several seconds before the crash. “YOU…YOU BITCH…I’LL TURN IN YOUR HEAD MYSELF!”

“I don’t think my brother would appreciate that.” A voice I hardly recognized as mine came through the speaker. I sounded so…cold, so uncaring. White filled the screen as the recorded-me summoned a blizzard on Loud Mouth’s head. Frost crept in to the edge of the camera, blocking everything in swirling cold and death…

I slammed the button to stop the playback, freezing it on a white screen. Silence reigned for a long minute before Scout spoke up. “Like I said, scary.”

“Shut up.” I snapped. Working fast, I wiped all the video footage on the suit, not wanting anypony else to see that. “Let’s get moving.” I said once I was done. “You have everything ready, right?”

“Yeah, we’re packed and set to go.” He confirmed. “I got the suits and Tarps from Clouds, and Clarity and Arterial are ready to move out as soon as you are.”

“Then let’s not waste any time.” I said, trotting for the door.

“Don’t you want to say goodbye to Clouds first?”

I stopped for only a second before saying. “N-no.” I shook my head to clear the stammer. “No, it’s best if we just go. She stayed up later than I did. She knows we’re leaving, let her rest.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” I jolted in shock as the devil I spoke of burst into the lab. “Hey, wait, I’m here!” Clouds said, skidding to a halt, dressed in her usual goggles and giant scarf. “You can’t just go trotting off without me!”

“Sorry, I thought you were asleep and…” I was so caught up in spinning my words I almost didn’t note what she said. “Wait, ‘without you’?”

“Yeah! And don’t worry, I’m good on sleep. I got, like, two hours, more than enough.” Her horn lit up and she opened the saddlebags strapped to her sides. “Took me a while but I got…” She trailed off as she pulled out one of the rad suits. “The last one! I already had a deal with Knick Knack to get them, just cashed in early!”

I got a bad feeling in my gut, but asked anyway. “Clouds, why did you get that?”

She must have heard the warning tone in my voice because her smile frosted slightly as she said “Because I’m coming with you! It’s a great chance for some field testing!”

“No you aren’t.” Scout said for me.

“I expected you to say that.” She said proudly before amending. “Well, I expected Sleet to say that, but still…” She held the suit up to show us the glass face dome, fiddled a few buttons and displayed how it lit up. “These things have a rudimentary E.F.S.!”

“And?”

“And, even if you leave in the middle of the night, split up to throw me off, or go some crazy direction, I can still follow you.” She paused at that and her face lit up. “Oh wow that sounded super stalker-y…”

“Even if you can follow us,” I interjected “you don’t want to go where we’re going. It is way too dangerous.”

“Oh, I know where you’re going.” She said confidently. “The Crystal Empire!” Her self-satisfied smile returned at our jaws hitting the floor. “C’mon, you kept talking about a super radioactive zone, there’s only one place like that in the whole Frozen North! And you have a crystal pony with you, I don’t need to be Sherclop Pones to figure that one out!”

“If you know that that’s where we’re going then you should want to stay behind!” I said exasperatedly.

“It’s exactly because I know where you’re going that makes me want to tag along!” She argued. “That’s my last reason for wanting to go, not just for field work but because I’m worried.” Her shoulders hunched and spoke more quietly. “Do you know how much it sucks to be on the sidelines? To not know if your friend is hurting or dead when maybe you could do something about it?”

“I know.” Scout said, shooting me a look that made me shuffle uncomfortably.

“Well that’s how I felt the entire time you were gone hunting yeti. I had these nervous attacks and…” She shuddered violently, looking like she was coming apart at the joints. “I need to come along, if only so I’m sure you’re okay.”

“That said though, we can’t afford to babysit.” Scout said.

“You won’t have to.” She said. “Cause, think about it. Sleet’s smart, she solves a lot of problems. And I’m smart, and solve a lot of problems. So if the two of us work together we’ll solve all the problems!”

Goddesses damnit this can’t happen! I was not allowing this! I needed to convince her otherwise. “But what about Lights?” I asked gently. “Do you want him to go through that?”

“Lights is more outgoing that me. He has some friends in Meltwater that he will stay with while I’m gone.” No matter how hard she tried I could hear the tremor in voice. She was scared, but still wanted to go through with this. “I’ve done field work before, and I didn’t tell him where I was going so he has no reason to think it’s anything unusual.”

“Sleet,” Scout said, placing a hoof on my shoulder and leaning in to whisper “if she follows us it puts everyone in danger, not just her.”

I bit down hard on my lower lip, stopping only when I started to taste blood. “You really want to do this, don’t you?” I asked after a long silence. She nodded firmly. I squared my shoulders and adopted the authoritative tone I’d heard my father use a thousand time. “If anything, ANYTHING, goes wrong, we pull out. All of us.” I turned and strode to the door, hiding the uncertainty. “Let’s go.”

There was little preamble to our departure. Wrapped tightly in individual Thermo-Tarps, we entered the blizzard. We stayed grouped up by tying a sturdy rope around everyponies’ right front hoof (or talon in Arterial’s case). It took some time to adjust to the constant tugging and slackening, but we eventually settled into a single file train. Scout was on point, leading the way with radar and map while the rest of us brought up the rear.

There was no time or opportunity for talking, the Tarps and snow prevented that. Our only companion was the wind and cold, biting through even the triple-layered protection. Several times I felt my heart skip a beat as the rope leading to Scout went slack and didn’t tense again, but he was either reorienting us or scanning the radar. “If a yeti got me, you’d all know because you’d be dragged along.” He yelled over the blizzard when I expressed my worry.

Even without freezing to death in the open storm, I lost track of time as we walked. It had to have been several hours judging by how much my legs hurt. For once I was free of the tugging influence of sleep, having had my first peaceful night in weeks the previous evening. Now it was boredom I contended with. Boredom, ha! I thought. I’m on my way to the biggest lump of radiation in the world, surrounded by death and devastation and I’m bored!

I remembered an old study I read about one day while I was perusing the Old World index I’d found Cauterize in. Something called the stable happiness theory, no matter how crazy the situation was, a pony could adjust to a standard level of excitement. Some things never change, not even at the end of the world.

Scout’s rope went slack again, breaking me from my trance. It was only then that I noticed the wind had become a distant sound, quiet and forgotten in the distance. “What is it, Scout?” I asked, stepping up next to him and pulling my Tarp off.

I sucked in a cold breath, eyes going wide at what lay before me. Two crystal obelisks jutted from the ground, forming a gateway. The crystal on the right was broken half way up, the broken off piece laying just a few feet from me. The other was leaning toward us at a mad angle, like a bowing butler or a giant recoiling in terror. Three smaller crystals, two purple the other blue, lay scatted in between the broken gatekeepers like a broken necklace. But they were not the thing that gave me pause.

It was what they led to.

Beyond rolling hills burnt black by roiling balefire stood our goal. Rising from the ground like the blade of a titan’s sword was a colossal palace, still adorned with symmetrical spires on either side that reduced in height as they approached the “hilt”. Hundreds of smaller crystals rose around it, radiating out from the palace, the homes of crystal ponies in ancient times. Now they resembled gravestones, macabre markers placed around the great blade of the palace, reaching up to piece through the enigmatic cloud cover above.

And all of it glowed the sickliest shade of green. The nauseous tint of balefire rose from the crystals, casting their malefic glow on the high clouds. It was the Crystal Empire, once a magnificent bastion of light and hope.

Now it looked closer to Hell.

“We’re still outside the radiation zone.” Scout said, checking his PipBuck. “Background rads are a little higher, but not enough to affect us.”

“But, how?” I asked, gesturing to the evil glow. “If this place really did project magic across all of Equestria, why isn’t the whole nation like this?”

“I was told as a little filly that the Empire always enjoyed eternal spring.” Clarity said stepping forward. “The magic that created that must still be working and containing the radiation. However…” She turned to look at the Empire and shuddered, her coat darkening. “Being this close…I can feel it. The corruption poisoning the land…”

“Will you be okay?” I asked, placing a hoof on her shoulder. “I don’t want you going in there if it will hurt you.”

She took a few deep breaths. “I’ll be fine. It’ll be hard, but I can close myself off from the Heart’s influence.” She smiled sarcastically. “It might make me a real bitch though.”

“A small price to pay. Just don’t go punching anypony in the face. We can’t have the suits tearing in there.”

She laughed lightly, trotting away from the gate. “I’ll need a few minutes to get ready. Scout, didn’t you say we passed an old train station a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, I’ll lead you there.” He said, looking up from his PipBuck. “Don’t go in without us.” He told me firmly, like I had a history of wandering off without him or something.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I said, placing a wing over my heart. Once they were out of sight, I turned back to the Empire and spoke to my two remaining companions. “If you two don’t want to continue, I won’t blame you. You can head back to Meltwater and wait for us there if you want.”

“Not happening.” Arterial said. “Letting you out of my sight screwed me over once. It’s not happening again.”

“How sweet.” I growled.

“If I had a gun that would destroy the Enclave with one pull of the trigger I’d go to the same lengths to keep it safe.” He said dispassionately. “There is nothing sweet about that.”

“I already gave you my reasons.” Clouds said. “And they haven’t changed. I’m going with you.”

“Fine.” I said, closing my eyes tightly. After savoring those few seconds of peaceful darkness, I opened them and pulled out my modified rad suit. “Let’s get ready and get this over with.”

I had to take off my coat to get into the suit, which was disconcerting for me. I didn’t know what we would encounter in there, but not having the armor plates made me feel distinctly vulnerable. But no matter what it was preferable to dying of radiation poisoning, so I donned the neon-yellow garment.

The heavy rubber material tugged painfully against my fur, mitigated only by padding at the joints, presumably to prevent chaffing. Clouds did a good job modifying it to accommodate wing sleeves, I had full range of motion and could easily hover over the ground. Once I was zipped in, I pulled on the face mask, covering my head entirely. The glass face plate was really more of a dome, which caused everything out the corner of my eye to elongate. I clicked the clasps that kept the mask in place, sealing myself within the suit.

I stood for a minute, adjusting to the feeling. The suit was fitted more closely to me, but remained baggy enough to move in which caused this weird sensation of only wearing it on parts where it bunched against me. I flew an experimental circle around the gate pillars, pleased that I could still fly. Once I was sure I had adjusted to the suit itself, I turned it on.

That was when the real fun began. The face dome lit up, fuzzily displaying static for a few seconds before sorting itself out. Lines of commands ran down the dome as the internal computer fired up.
>Boot up, running diagnostic
>Scanning wearer…

I felt the suit tighten slightly and a shiver ran down my spine as it examined me.
>Classification: Pegasus, female.
>Select designation, please enunciate clearly

A flashing cursor appeared in the center of the dome. “Um…Sleet Gray.” I said experimentally. The suit went silent for a second before continuing.
>Designation accepted. User registered as Sleet Gray.
>Activating environmental control…

A rush of cool air hit my face as the built in SCUBA system turned on and began scrubbing the air. It would grow stale after a while, but it would still be breathable. Next came a buzzing noise as the rad dampeners activated, triggering a radiation meter to appear in the top right corner of the dome. Finally came a circle in the upper left with a sweeping radar arm spinning through it. As it passed, a small green dot appeared in the bottom left quadrant labelled with SC. I turned the way it indicated and saw Clouds running through the start up on her own suit. When she saw me looking, she waved and started talking, though no sound escaped her helmet.
>Activating short-range radio

“…really fascinating stuff! It’s got your initials over the little dot! See? A little “SG” right there! How cool it that, huh?” Clouds voice was suddenly playing inside the helmet, coming through as a tinny noise in my ears.

“Clouds? Can you hear me?” I asked.

“Loud and clear! Are these things awesome or what?”

“Definitely.” I said with breathless wonder. I turned a little circle, watching Clouds’ dot move accordingly. “It’s like a full-body PipBuck!”

“Slightly less advanced, but yes.” She agreed. “We’re missing the full-body diagnostics and inventory management, but we have what we need for this mission, namely the rad counter.”

Another dot popped up, this one labeled with a single “A”. Turning, I saw Arterial had gotten his suit up and running as well. “This is uncomfortable.” His voice growled through the speakers.

“It’s not exactly built for griffons.” I said. “But at least you have your wings and talons.” Clouds had managed to reshape the hooves of the suit into griffon talons, they were missing the usual sharpness but were just as prehensile.

He clacked his beak in irritation, taking to the air. “I’m testing how well I can move.” He snapped before flying high.

“Are you worried he’ll run off?” Clouds asked. I glanced at the top of my screen where a message reading “private channel opened” had appeared.

“No.” I answered simply. “He has nowhere to go except with me. Neither of us like it, but for him it is either follow me or die.”

“And for you?”

“I’d prefer he keeps our working relationship as metaphorical, rather than literal.” Clouds paled inside her suit, so I rapidly changed the subject. “How did you do that by the way? The secure channel?”

“Oh it was a little add-on I did while tinkering last night! Here, I’ll show you how…”

By the time she finished teaching me how to open and maintain secure channels, two more dots appeared. One was labeled “S” and the other “C”. Scout and Clarity, the respective dots, came up to us wearing their suits. Scout had somehow managed to get his suit under his PipBuck, allowing him to wear both at once. “These things suck…” Clarity said through the radio. I could see the effects of her preparations through her faceplate. Her skin remained shiny and crystalline, but opaque and hard to see through. She had mentally walled herself off, not letting anything in, especially the corrupt Heart.

“Where’s Arterial?” Scout asked briskly. I could tell from his voice and the way he held himself that he wanted this to be over with. I didn’t blame him one bit.

“Here.” The griffon said, his dot appearing on the radar as he dropped to the ground. “I patrolled ahead. It doesn’t look like anything is waiting for us, but something is moving around in there. Maybe a lot of somethings.”

“Alright, then we approach with caution.” I instructed, walking up to the broken gate crystals. “Our mission is the Crystal Heart. We need to clear a path to it and prepare it for cleaning and extracting at a later date.” I turned to the group, all of them looking alien in their suits. “This is just preparation for something much bigger, so be wary of everything. We are only here to do one thing, anything else is secondary and should be avoided if possible.” My “team” nodded and I felt the weirdest déjà vu. Years ago I had watched my father brief a group of soldiers he was taking on a mission. I was still young then, barely a year past gaining my Cutie Mark and had thought him impressive, brave, and sure of himself.

Now, in the same position, I realized how scared he must have felt. The weight of the lives of those in front of him. The weight that settles in one’s stomach, knowing that you were telling those before you to risk their lives, perhaps lose them. Storm Banks had borne that weight long before I was born, and though I hated him I felt an odd understanding. “Let’s go.”

I turned and walked through the destroyed crystals, glancing at the radar only long enough to be certain that the rest were following me into the mouth of Hell.
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Footnote: Level up!
New Perk, Winter Weather Pony (Rank 3): They call you Ms. Ten Below! At Rank 3 you can easily make cold winds blow, chill a room, even summon a light flurry with no effort. Larger workings now require even less strain and can affect greater areas.
Speech Skill at 100!

Author's Notes:

Aaaaaand it's up! Just in time for spookiness month we are heading into the hyper-irradiated Crystal Empire. I'm pumped for next chapter because one of the major events I've been planning is coming up quick! Brace yourselves fillies and gentlecolts, we're going in hot!

Special thanks go to Kkat as always for creating the much-loved source material and to Mobius the diligent pre-reader/idea-giver. by my calculations November 21st is our next chapter, though I may have to upload sooner because that is the same day Pokemon ORAS comes out. Keep your eyes peeled everypony, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. Like if you did, dislike if you didn't, and leave a comment explaining why!