It was the most fun I think I ever had. The little run-down hotel room hadn't been quite so messy when we decided to haul ourselves into the broken building, other then the normal decayed pre-apocalypse furniture, but soon our stuff was thrown everywhere and we had occupied ourselves with a play fight.

We had pulled a blanket out of our saddle bags at some point, and it became a focal point of our fight. He had started it by tugging it off me, and I replied in yanking it back and glaring at him. He smirked in that lovely devilish way, while he yanked the blankets back and out of my reach. He didn't have to say anything, his eyes had easily asked me 'What are you going to do about it?'

I had the advantage of being the heavier one, and he had the advantage of being far more agile. At some point when I thought I was losing the battle of the blanket, one of my hooves crossed over one of his back legs. He jerked violently at that, taking a sharp hiss of breath when he trembled, and panting shortly after like he had been winded.

It was my turn to smirk. The poor colt was ticklish.

Not even blocking me with his wings was enough to save him after that. We were lucky the building didn't fall to pieces with our tumbling. Him trying to get away from me through his tears of laughter, while I scolded him for having such a silly, yet wonderful, weakness.

Hours later we were still giggling. Blanket long forgotten.

"I bet your not even asleep."

I focused my frustration on the other stallion, my head down in the dirt as the fire crackled away, stuck in the middle of no-where. The ground was far from a comfortable sleeping area, and I was already missing my nice comfortable cloud bunk. With its fresher air, my cloud pillow....

My earlier conclusion turned out to be a correct one as Stan gave a sharp snort of breath in my direction, disrupting my poor-pitiful-me thoughts. I couldn't see his eyes, but I was willing to bet anything even if he did have them closed, he was rolling them in equal frustration.

"Don't huff at me, this whole day has been one big disappointment after the next," I replied to him, even though he hadn't actually said anything. Thumping one of my hooves on the ground when I raised my head. I hate to admit, but the little violent action did make me feel slightly better.

Slowly his head came up off the ground, the same hoof he had used before pulled the hat back away from his vision. His eyes twisting to the side to check on Karma, who apparently was sound asleep laying against his side. I knew she was asleep because I doubt any pony would willingly make that snoring sound if they'd been awake.

"You don't have to be so loud.." His voice suddenly rumbled quietly, causing me to startle. He had pulled his gaze back to me, watching as I tilted my ears forward at the sound of his voice. It was kind of surprising really, a deeper passive tone, quiet, and not used often enough around strangers.

"Oh, so your not mute. Well I guess that's a good thing," said more quietly then I had before.

He didn't reply to that, simply lay there looking at me as if I had stopped mid-sentence and he was waiting for me to finish. I felt an urge to try and shift my wings in a anxious action, but made sure to neglect doing so. Instead it was the hoof brought up to my face to brush back through my mane to make up for the earlier lost action.

"So...you two seem close," I wanted to smack myself in the back of the head for the truly great conversation starter. Though I tried to play off the lame attempt with a hoof casually swerved in the direction of the snoring mare at his side. Amazingly enough, he huffed at me again, though this time I could see it was an attempt to cover a laugh as his own hoof came up to hold across the end of his muzzle.

"'Nah, just friends," Said while giving a look back at Karma, who was I'm sure, happily oblivious to the conversation in her sleep. "You should sleep, I'll stay awake," and with that last part said, his head moved to lay back down again, though he kept his hat above his eyes this time and quietly watched our continued fire, having ended our communication.

I gritted my teeth together, I was right back to square one again. I itched to be able to fly again and I was hoping having conversation would allow me to learn more about the two ponies and keep my mind from dragging back down into the gutter of my loathing for this entire situation. I ended up just sighing and thumping my head back down into the dirt.

I don't know how long I watched the fire with Stan still awake, but I seemed far away from actual real company.

I found with a slight surprise, wishing Karma would wake up.

"Why do you have to lie to yourself? I don't understand."

"Maybe I just want something better than this."

"So you'll lie to get where you want to be? How would you even know if that's what you want?"

"There has got to be something better than just...this."

I was being poked again. Enough with the Celestia-be-Damned poking!

I tossed my hooves at the poking offender. Which resulted in an 'oof!' and a larger body falling into the dirt next to me, followed up with some grumbling. I groaned and rubbed my front hooves over my eyes before looking at my sleep deprive'r that had fallen. Karma shook her head from her laid position before heaving herself back up to her hooves and stepping closer to me, regardless of the very annoyed expression I was attempting to sleepily throw her way. Our fire must have went out hours ago.

Stan was a little ways off, sitting on his rump and using his front hooves to scrape a stone across that weapon from last night that I hadn't got a good look at. From my position it looked like it might have been a street sign at one point, with the mix of green and silver. Now the metal had been folded, pounded, and welded into that massive sword. I kinda wish the one on my flank looked nearly as bad-ass, but hooves on my back interrupted the thought process.

Karma had also sat down next to my side, and was currently undoing the bandages wrapped around my middle. Next to her was Stan's saddle bag, and a small knife held between her teeth. When she noticed that my attention had changed back to her, she freed one of her hooves up to reach into the satchel and scoop out something that faintly resembled bread.

" 'rekrest ish 'sheverd," she said while tossing the maybe-bread at my muzzle, while the knife stayed between her clenched teeth. I snatched the bread out of the air, and began munching. If it was horrible tasting, I wouldn't have really noticed. Having lived off of air-borne food, I didn't really think much about the taste of anything. I was just glad to put something into my stomach.

Karma leaned down a few times to snatch at a few troubling stands of bandaging with her knife while continuing to dislodge my wings. I simply lay there and continued to eat my breakfast till it was gone, and at about the same time she had untied me completely. I tried to twist my head around to look, which caused my neck to feel a bit strained, but not nearly as painful as it had been before. A small lift to my wings caused the feathers to ruffle, but not much else. I must have frowned, because Karma suddenly reached into the bag once again, returning the knife, and out came a purple potion.

Healing potion, that should hopefully do the trick with whatever was wrong with wings. Karma rolled the potion in-front of me and motioned with a hoof for me to drink before turning back to look between my wings.

"I'm no healer, but I think that your muscles were damaged since there really isn't anything I can see wrong back here other then some burnt fur," Shrugging her shoulders and putting her hoof between my shoulder blades, right where my wing muscles began. It felt sore where she touched, like the muscles were drawn tight and uncomfortable. "Go ahead and drink."

Holding the potion between my front hooves I popped off the cork with my teeth, leaning down and grabbing the bottle gentle before lifting my head back up to pour the contents down my throat. Two hundred year old potion was tastier then what I thought it'd be.

And then my muscles suddenly felt like somepony under my skin was twisting them back around to their correct shape. It didn't hurt as bad as I thought it should have, but it did feel very uncomfortable to feel ones muscles move of their own accord. I held back a whimper from my companions as the crawling feeling forced my feathers to ruffle outwards, making me look rather puffed up for a few seconds before they settled. Slowly I rolled my shoulders back, and attempted to lift my wings.

With a flutter they lifted as they normally would have before yesterday, maybe feeling a little bit stiff, but the healing potion seemed to have maneuvered my muscles back into whatever proper position they had been in before I had been attacked. Karma scooted herself back and brought herself back to four hooves and stood near me while I gave an experimental flap to lift my body from the ground and join her in a standing position.

She lifted a hoof in a go-on gesture towards me. I couldn't help a grin as I tilted my wings back while giving a full effort flutter to lift fully into the air, letting my body slowly curve into a loop as I did backwards flip mid-air before righting myself and hovering near her. My grin was returned with a small smile from her in silent reply. I was basically back to pretty much normal.

Stan had stopped his sharpening by that point and was watching us from his sitting position. What came next felt more like an awkward silence as the three of us took turns looking from one another, back and forth. Karma scratching at the ground with a hoof, Stan tilting his head with a mildly curious expression, and finally I lifted a hoof and cleared my throat.

"Well, as much fun as it has been visiting the surface the last twenty four hours, I should head back to base and report what happened, I guess.." Letting my hooves touch-ground while folding my wings back to head over to the saddle bag that I knew had my armor in it. "Thank you two, though...um..." I was flustering a bit. Armor, guns, I think I had everything...

"I really don't think simply flying back up to your base would be a good idea." Karma interrupting my thoughts.

"Hm?" I stopped in the action of beginning to pull my armor out of the bag. At this point I noticed Stan having completely turned his attention to me with a hard-eyed expression under his hat. Karma turned to look at him for a moment before she stepped a bit closer to me.

"Why isn't that a good idea? I need to tell them what happened, as soon as possible." I questioned her again.

"Well, as far as we've been able to tell, your fellow brethren seem to have a 'shoot first, forget questioning' policy in effect with anything that even remotely gets near their clouds." She said this while motioning to the cloud-cover above us.

I wanted to argue with her, that they wouldn't shoot me. Maybe it would have been a more sane reaction to my situation. Instead I simply looked at her, knowing somehow she was being honest with me. Didn't mean I had to like it though, which must have been apparent to her when my ears slowly folded back, and she sighed.

"Didn't you hear about the rocket incident awhile back?" She said more quietly at me.

I shook my head, I doubt I'd have been important enough to have been told anything.

"No? Bunch of crazy ghouls? Rocket-looking thing?"

"Not ringing any bells." I replied with a dead-pan look to translate my even further ignorance.

"Why am I not surprised.." She said while flopping her rump down to sit, I noticed Stan had went back to sharpening his sword, but I had a feeling that he was listening regardless. "Anyways, long story short. Some sort of flying thing supposedly called a rocket. Bunch of crazy ghouls took it above the cloud layer," After this she lifted both her hooves, bringing them close together, before suddenly spreading them rapidly with a - "'Esplode! No more rocket, or ghouls for that matter."

"But...they were ghouls?" I inquired, I'd learned about ghouls, ghouls were a bad thing. "Wouldn't you have exploded a thing of ghouls if they were flying towards your home?"

"If they were the flying-zombie-pony-eating-brain kind then yeah." She said while rolling her eyes at me. Wait. Was there a different kind? "But do you think they even took the time to figure out if they were or not? I doubt the brain-eating kind would even know how to get a snack cake open, let alone a computer."

"Even more reason to shoot it?" I narrowed my eyes, the thought of intelligent-zombie-pony-eating-brain ghouls was...disturbing. Suddenly Stan leaned out from behind Karma with a wide-eyed expression that looked like fear, startling me. I never even saw him move.

"Some ghouls are perfectly pony-sane, feather head, but that's besides the point!" Raising her voice at me before stopping and blinking as she noticed me suddenly not paying her attention. She growled under her breath and turned her head to look over her shoulder to see Stan giving her that same very worried expression. "I don't have any cake, obviously!" She yelled even louder. She could get very loud.

Stan instantly relaxed, letting out a long-held breath before creeping back behind Karma to his sword where it had fallen in the dirt, looking relieved. I don't even...

"Anyways!" Karma snapped at me, bringing my attention darting back to her. "For all they know, you could be a Dashite trying to head back home."

"But I am not a Dashite...I'm an Enclave Soldier." Directing a hoof towards the large bag, still overly stuffed with my armor. Regardless of her even knowing about Dashites in the first place, I still felt strangely wrong questioning her.

"And I doubt they are going to wait for you to even get remotely near the clouds to figure out if your a Soldier, or a Dashite having stolen some Soldier armor," At this point she leaned in, lowering her tone. "For all you know, your little ballerina friend has already told them how you were the one who killed the rest of your group."

Ugh. She was right. Completely and frustratingly right.

"...so what do you think I should do." It wasn't a question, more of a statement really. By this point I wasn't in a mood anymore to argue with her, not that I felt entirely comfortable about arguing with her in the first place.

She brought her right hoof up to her chin and tapped it a few times while producing a 'hmmm'd sound to herself, before suddenly blinking as if she had completely forgotten about the pipbuck that was attached. Leaning back to balance herself she was able to use her other hoof and push a few buttons on the machine, it took a minute, but I didn't interrupt.

"Well, according to this...I believe there is a tower a bit north of where Cloudsdayle used to be...No clue on its condition, or if its even still there, but my map says it is. You may be able to use whatever technology that may be there to contact above the clouds to one of your ships...anything that would give you a chance to speak before getting shot at."

Even though I agreed with her on this information, it was the final straw in my curiosity. I leaned forwards, bringing my muzzle closer to hers and lowering my tone slightly. "You seem to know an awful lot more than a surface dweller should about pegasi affairs."

Karma blinked at this, a slightly shocked expression behind those wide eyes, before she suddenly growled under her breath and tossed her head away from me, suddenly finding a spot down the road that deserved to be looked at more so than me. "I don't have to help you, I don't even have a reason to help you. You can either take it, or go get blown up, see if I care." She thrust herself up to her hooves and away from me while turning her attention to Stan. "We're leaving!"

Stan looked up to her with his best 'I-totally-wasn't-eaves-dropping-on-your-conversation' expression.

"Hey, I..." I tried to reach a hoof out to Karma, her harsh reaction wasn't what I had been expecting. But she pulled herself even further away from me while making it out as if she was getting our bags together, throwing her suit in her bag. Afterwards she hoof-tossed my two rifles at me, which skidded and clanked into my armor bag at my side. I bit back a retort, but did my best to twist it into a sigh.

Working the bag over one wing while attempting to tie my two practically useless rifles into looping over my other wing took long enough for both Karma to grab her now single bag, and Stan to grab his along with re-situating his sword across his back within easy reach of a twist of his head. They both stepped out onto the road and looked at me.

Sadly, being crowded down with two rifles and a bag of armor was going to make flying difficult, if not even more tiring. I made a mental note to attempt to be a little less straight forwards in my assumptions, less I end up as a pack-pony again, before working my way onto the road while again doing my best not to snap at either of the two of them giving me their questioning gazes.

"I'm fine, I'm fine..." I muttered under my breath when I stepped in slightly behind Karma, who in turn was behind Stan leading the front, and starting us out at a decent trot. Karma had watched me for a few seconds before following, I was able to keep up a fairly decent pace behind the two of them. As much as I hated walking, things could be far worse.

At this time, having a better (or not so better in someponies point of view), visual view of Stan's rump, I noticed his cutie mark. The exact same hat he wore, though looking like it was brand new, marked in silver designs.

After a few minutes of silent walking, and pondering what the hell kind of talent a hat would indicate, I remembered something else. I picked my pace up a little to get more even with Karma, who looked at me with scrutiny as I leaned a little closer to her, attempting to whisper.

"So, about the See-Aie-Kay-Eee thing earlier...what's his deal?" Maybe spelling it would be better.

Nope, not illiterate apparently. Stan stumbled, coughing and quickening his pace to a much faster trot, as if he was trying to fight the urge to bolt away from the two of us. Karma rolled her eyes and groaned before doing her best to catch up and motioning for me to follow. When I got re-caught back up she turned her head towards me in our half-run.

"He is terrified of the things. It's a secret to everypony."

Hours later we hadn't even stopped for a lunch break, but at least had settled down to a normal trot. Karma had at some point mentioned that we would get food and water soon as we reached the rest of their 'gang' in a bit, but that felt like ages ago. I was looking up at the cloud cover and wishing I could take a nap on a nice comfy cloud when Karma's voice interrupted my day dreaming.

"There we are!"

And we were back to running again. I hissed out a pained breath as I swiveled around Karma to look ahead, seeing what looked like two large wagons in the distance, and a few colorful spots that I were guessing were other ponies. There wasn't much else to see as we got closer, but eventually I was able to tell one of the taller figures having turned their head to finally notice us. This same figure got to their hooves and headed out to meet us in a similar run to ours.

Stan and Karma skidded to a stop, causing me to have skidded forwards even further in my delay to find myself in a small dust cloud in the middle of the road, having tried to have looked around them before. Shaking my head I heard some small coughing in front of me, with a few blinks through the dust I noticed a tall unicorn mare.

She drew her head back slightly and tilted it, giving me that questioning look through sky-blue eyes that I had gotten used to since yesterday. Her mane was cut short, colored in stripes of that same sky-blue color and white, while supporting a coat of misty looking gray. She was easily a couple of hooves taller than me, and might have even rivaled Stan in height, with a long spiraled horn. Her tail was kept long, switching back and forth behind her before she suddenly twisted around me and made her way to my traveling companions.

A view of her cutie mark as she moved around me showed what sort of looked like three light blue tear drops, or rain drops (I really couldn't tell the difference), in a triangle pattern. She first headed over to Stan and lowered her head to give a friendly nuzzle to his cheek, causing him to grin before Karma stepped forwards and lifted herself to her hind hooves to give the tall unicorn a hug, causing them both to smile.

The happy expressions on their faces almost made me feel a little lonely. Though Karma noticed me shortly after, letting go of her Unicorn friend and dropping back down to four hooves before motioning over towards me with a shake of her head.

"That's Cloud. Cloud, this here is Momma Rainy."

The Unicorn huffed at that, rolling her eyes at Karma and at Stan's quiet snicker before giving me a small smile and nodding her head downwards in a respectful action towards me.

"My name is Rainy Day."

Karma tilted herself to gently nudge into Rainy as she stepped forwards and looked behind me. Her altered gaze caused me to look over my own shoulder to notice three more colored pony-figures heading towards us, stallions. In the lead was a poofy sunshine yellow maned unicorn with a coat of vibrant pink. To each of his sides were a earth pony of strictly navy blue, and another unicorn with a dark purple coat. The neon green mane above him made him look a bit unnerving.

As they got closer to us I saw the dark purple pony looking a little excited, but then he narrowed his violet eyes at me, looking me over as they hoofed forwards before suddenly throwing his head back into the air with a disgusted look.

"Not a mare! Waste of my time!" He yelled and did an abrupt turn-around and headed back to the wagons. Okay...

Karma snickered, and I suddenly remembered the other ponies behind me. Stepping around slightly behind her as the other two stallions stopped in front of us. The navy blue fellow was looking behind him at the purple one, before turning to look at me. Mr. poofy-mane gave me a once-over with teal colored eyes before they stopped on my wings. At this he then looked at Karma, raising an eyebrow.

"This is Cloud, he's an okay feather head," She said and tossed a hoof over my already over burdened back and wings. I gave a grunt at the extra weight. "If not a little bit of a wimp." Gee, thanks.

The pink unicorn looked at us for a moment or two longer, before suddenly grinning and stepped in quite quickly to my other side facing towards the wagons. Another hoof was brought down onto my back, and I think I might have felt something give inside of me.

"Well I guess its okay, it is Friday after all!" He yelled happily.

I promptly fell into the dirt.

"Thanks Light, you already broke him." Karma said somewhere above me.

"You weren't kidding about the wimp part..."

Life was getting better all the time.

Author's Note

(Fallout Equestria: TQF Wiki Article)

Obviously the Ghoul filled rocket is a reference to a quest in Fallout New Vegas. Other stories that include referenced to the Mojave wont be taken into account here so...in my story, this happened in Equestria.

And who wouldn't be scared of 200 year old pastries, right?...right?!