Fallout Equestria: The Ranger of Seamane

Chapter 29 – Research Station Twenty Three

“Bad things always come in three’s.”

        We had finally made it to the outskirts of Research Station Twenty Three after a few days of walking through the mostly lifeless expanse of the Unbound. Honestly if I didn't know that it was the cold that was making everything hide away I would have scoffed at the place being considered so dangerous. To put it simply, with winter still in effect most life was hidden away, beyond the occasional group of warm blooded critters. Still though, nothing had been that dangerous out here, if anything all we had encountered were critters with a greater perception than you would find else where in the region. Somewhat annoyingly the critters of this area of Seamane also had a decent bit of agility over us. I guess that is how things didn't go extinct out here.

        Now we were relaxing for a bit before making a trail into the station and starting to get an assessment of the station’s current condition and reactions to living entities attempting to enter it. While we rested, and I handed out tea to my companions then made myself busy with my DMR spotting any potential targets on the surface, which wasn’t easy due to the snow drifts.

        “Hmm... Hey Foresight, did the surface have turrets guarding the facility?” I asked as I spotted several almost perfect domes just outside of the chain link fence that marked the parameter of the research station.

        “Yes, but, even when leaving they weren't hostile towards me, I don't even think they get any power nowadays.” Foresight answered.

        “Alright, you three stay here, I’m going to see if they’re still active, EFS after all will tell me that much. If I can, I will also dismantle them, it would be nice to not have them fire upon us if we need to retreat, or just get some more parts and ammo.” I explained as I slung my DMR across my back and began to walk out towards the buried turrets.

        “Be careful, it maybe winter, but, we still are in the Unbound and next to an automated and abandoned military base so don't let your guard down, even for a moment.” Foresight instructed as he took up position to keep an eye on the turrets from our makeshift camp.

        “I know, I walked to Fillydelphia alone, and escaped it.” I answered before turning to the snow drifts ahead of me, I had learned a lot those first few weeks out of Saint Clover.

        A few minutes later of walking and eventually crawling forward I felt my hoof brush past a familiar disk shaped object. There was a minefield here, something that would have been nice to know about before hoof, but, with a light step it was safe enough for me. I gently moved the snow off of the mine by my hoof and proceeded to carefully and slowly disarm the explosive. These mines didn’t have a LED atop of them to indicate if they were live or not. Either time had disarmed them before the arrival of the Steel Rangers, or Foresight and his allies had found a path that was clear. Though it hit me that Foresight and the Steel Rangers likely had come up via a road of some sort that led to the base, that wouldn’t have mines and would have an opening in the fence.

I frowned, my friends didn’t have a light step like I did, which meant I needed to clear a path through these mines if I didn’t want to have to wade through the snow to whatever entrance Foresight had used. The method that made the most sense to me would be to head to the turrets, disable and remove what parts I could from them, and then go back the way I came to my friends so I could take my time and use a fire lance to at least melt the snow along the path to expose the mines if not outright cause the explosives to detonate and leave a nice safe path to the station.  Or I could just shovel the snow with my telekinesis, I felt the latter of the two would be most time and energy efficient.

“I really am getting tired of this snow, but, it shouldn’t be too much longer until it clears up… Maybe once we hit Saint Clover I will just sit on my rump until it all melts away, it would nice to get out of the weather for a while. That or maybe Dune City, I do have a room there…” I pondered to myself, aloud, as I brushed aside snow and mines, a part of me wondering if I could skip the mines on water thanks to their disk shape.

I let out a happy sigh a few minutes later as I finally neared the chain link fence that signaled finally having crossed majority of the minefield.

“Alright, not much longer…” I muttered to myself, my breath steaming out of my mouth as the chill of winter continued to heavily lay itself upon the area. Then I saw a red light in my sight, and then I felt rather warm, I threw snow with my magic into my front arc towards the turrets.

“So fucking much for not being powered!” I swore as I checked where the gatling laser had hit me. “I am so fucking glad I bought some burn ointment, though I expected flamers not fucking magical lasers beams.”

I quickly built up a mound of snow until I heard the laser turret stop firing and then tended to my wounds. Thankfully most of my injuries were just a bit of singed fur and some burnt skin below it where the laser hadn’t hit my armor.

“Alright, so just how the hay do I deal with this?” I asked myself, due to the large number of turrets I couldn’t just pick one off, I had to make a gap in the defenses, invisibility I had yet to test on machines and didn’t I feel like being turned into a pile of ash today.

“If only we had mortars…” I muttered to myself before shaking that thought out of my head, a better idea struck me and I got to executing the plan.

I lifted the snow I had piled around myself and turned the foxhole into a hovering bunker with me inside of it. I proceeded to forward towards the turret, quickly the turret opened fire upon me, I quickly began to shift the snow and water around me to keep a nice thick and cold layer of snow between me and the turret. Thankfully there was a healthy drift of snow covering where the next two turrets would have likely been so all I had to worry about was this one gatling laser turret.

“I am going to strip you down, take your gun, and just leave you pointlessly clicking at me as I trot off.” I explained to the turret as I approached it, the snow having now turned into mostly a dome of water and ice that I held in my magic. I grabbed the turret with my magic to prevent it from tracking me any further. I let my magic go so the water and ice dropped around me, but I was careful to not let it drop on me because hypothermia would be rather unpleasant to deal with out here. I also was uncertain if I could get back to my friends safely and in time for them to treat me if I did go into shock due to ice cold water soaking me if I had let the water drop upon me. Either way, the turret got a few shots off at me charing the combat barding I wore, but, my magic firmly held it in place and I moved around to the back panel on the turret and went to work on shutting it off.

It only took a few moments to open up the turret and power it down as well as unhook the gatling laser. I smiled as I set up my universal battle saddle that I grabbed from one of the bandits we had killed at the gas station a few days ago. Within minutes I had it humming with life, though, the gatling laser made me a bit unbalanced, so no trying to aim and fire the thing while galloping.

“Alright, well, now I just need some rockets or missiles for the other side and I will be good for taking down those damn sentry robots.” I happily said to nopony in particular. “Alright, enough drooling over this fine piece of hot death I just so recently, and easily, acquired, there is more work to do.”

I let out a laugh as I realized I finally had a decently powerful energy weapon on my hooves. “Oh, that is some luck I must say. Though… my luck being my luck I have almost no power for it. Well guess it is time to finish clearing a path to the research station...”

I frowned as I began to plow my way forward to the exposed entrance of the research station.

“If this place is as cleared out as Foresight said it was, there is a good chance there will be almost no ammo in there. Fuck… Well lets hope that we can rip open those robots and take their ammo without much trouble. Though... Knowing my luck they will be all armed with gatling lasers and missile launchers. So, once I finally manage to bring them down all their ammo is either going to be damaged and useless or expended. It is after all my luck…” I finished with a sigh.

“Well I could go for another turret or two, I could balance out my load, though, lack of ammo is going to be a real pain in the ass… Well a third and fourth would allow me to have them in better condition so they should do fair bit more damage that way… Just have to make the shots count, won’t I?” I sat down and stopped my plowing of the snow to make certain there were no further mines for my friends to trip over on the path to the research facility. “Oh fuck it, it‘s worth the trouble.”

With that I took down three more turrets with the same tactic of using snow, ice, and water as a shield then grabbing the turret, walking out of its line of fire and powering it down so I could stripping it for parts. I was able to recharge some power cells for the gatling lasers, but, not much. Thankfully I was able to get my battle saddle evenly loaded with two good quality gatling lasers almost in mint condition, as mint as you can get in the wasteland.

“Okay, that went quite smoothly and quickly, now… I should finish plowing a path for my friends.” I smiled, feeling a bit warmer and livelier than I had in a few days as I was getting to do something that had a visible change on things, also I was getting to do something more than wading through the snow. I turned to my task and began the mind numbing work of clearing the snow and landmines, which sometimes exploded due to being flipped over in the process of telekinetically being plowed with the snow. I slowed as I saw the great hole that marked where the Steel Rangers of Seamane had blasted their way out of the research station, and marked our primary entry method into the facility.

I crawled up to the edge of the hole and made myself invisible before peaking over the ledge into Research Station Twenty Three. From the camera’s on the MASEBS tower I had gotten a decent view of the destruction that lay below me now, but, to see it in person... I let out a slow whistle at the destruction. There were numerous bodies of Steel Rangers, robots, native wildlife, and a fair number of equine skeletons whose tattered clothing barely clung to their remains.

“Damn, they really fucked up these first three floors real hard… and there is a lot to loot here… Well guess I am earning some more caps today, that I have no use for.” I whispered.

I swiftly returned to my friends who paused at seeing my newly aquired gatling lasers strapped to either side of me.

“What, did you expect me not to loot fully functional energy weapons?” I asked with a snort, which rewarded me with a few snorts and giggles. “Come on, I cleared a path through the mines and turret defense grid, we have a clear shot to the hole in the roof of Twenty Three. I would fancy getting below ground before a storm or something nasty comes along.”

“Too bad there is no guarantee that there isn’t something nasty down there waiting for us.” Foresight replied as my three friends moved to take up positions around me, Rose taking up the back of our diamond formation as we headed back into the facility’s grounds. Anabel was keeping to the ground as we now knew the turrets were active around here and we didn’t want to see our feathered friend reduced to ash or roasted turkey.

“True, but, being underground we will be warmer, and, there will be less directions for things come at us from. I also think we are well armed enough by now to handle most things. After all we are a small nimble fireteam and not a platoon or company of ponies stuffed into tight hallways while wearing power armor.” I replied to Foresight as we made it to where I had found the first mine while walking in. Not crawling about made the trip fair faster, plus walking on solid dirt instead of snow helped a fair bit as well.

Foresight just gave a sigh from behind me.

        “Sorry, just…” I fell silent, knowing I had more or less mocked Foresight’s dead friends, family, and compatriots. “Yeah.”

        “Shush, Moony, you cleared a path for us, lets just get there and figure out how we are getting down to that security door that Foresight mentioned.” Rose suggested from beside me, having gotten close in the few moments I had been distracted by regret for what I had said.

        “Yeah, right, lets focus on the mission. Foresight, you alright with looting Steel Ranger bodies?” I asked, I knew we would likely need the supplies, but, they were his…

        “Yeah, it’s fine, I’ll do it, don’t worry about it.” Foresight responded, a bit of life coming back into his voice. “Just keep whatever is down there off of me so I can get the armor open, there should be medical supplies and ammo, and maybe we will take a suit or two with us. I think I can probably train you how to use it, maybe Rose as well, though, I don’t know of any suits of armor that might be here that you could wear for training.”

        “We’ll make do with what we have, that is what we always do, it is the wasteland after all.” Rose replied. “Thank you though.”

        We took a few more steps in silence before Foresight spoke up again. “It’s the least I can do for you helping me out.”

        “Hey, it isn’t a tall order, just solving a mystery is all we are doing, and by the sounds of it, it shouldn’t get anyone after our head.” I replied, glad that really we shouldn’t be drawing the ire of any player in the region to us with this, if anything we were causing those who were watching us to grow bored at our random and pointless actions.

        “Unless someone is sitting in the Steel Ranger bunker and doesn’t take kindly to us entering without asking.” Foresight replied.

        “Well, I will go in first, since I can do the whole invisible thing, while not invisible to E.F.S. it still is frustrating to any foe trying to target me.” I replied. “First things first, we need to loot this place.”

        “Right, lets not get ahead of ourselves, and keep our heads cool and on our shoulders.” Anabel said.

        “Yeah, alright, lets see how this looks up close.” Foresight said as we got sight on the blown out roof of Station Twenty Three.

        We all crawled up to the ledge of the blown out roof and looked over while I did my best to camouflage us from anything that might look at us. Though the strain of making all four of us even slightly obscured was quickly getting to me.

“Spot the path we need to take. I can’t keep us all invisible for long, even when we aren’t moving.” I said before I felt myself start to sweat from the strain.

        “I know where to try looking, first we need to get down, which might be a task in it’s own right, I see a few robots moving about that are outside of our E.F.S. range, bonus and hindrance for us.” Foresight replied. “Drop the spell and catch your breath, Moony.”

        I let out a deep breath and dropped the spell as Rose pulled me back from the ledge.

        “Rose, carry her, yeah I know she has a stupid amount of equipment, but, she is your marefriend, and you are the strongest of us.” Foresight ordered.

        Rose, to her credit, lifted me onto her back without a blink and seemed to effortlessly carry me.

“She isn’t that heavy.” Was the only thing Rose said.

        I just stared at Foresight who looked slightly confused about this, as was I.

“Well, good to know you can effectively carry a pony in full power armor on your back with no ill effect.” Foresight said, slightly dumbfounded.

        “Come on you three, my feathers are standing on end with anticipation.” Anabel replied having found our way down a portion of collapsed roof that gave a nice ramp downwards.

        “We really shouldn’t have you carrying me into combat, Rose.” I said to Rose.

        “You are just an odd battle saddle, nothing more, Moony. One with some nice extra features.” Rose chortled.

        “Alright then, at least I can patch you up if you get hit as soon as you get hit.” I said with a smile.

        Foresight, who I hadn’t seen move of, popped his head up from a hole in the ground, said, “looks like this will hold for us, come on we got our way down, Anabel with me, lets clear the robots, use spark grenades if you got them, we are going to need the ammo and weapons.”

        “Gotcha.” Anabel replied before reloading her grenade launcher with the blue banded forty millimeter grenades meant for crashing spell matrices.

        “Rose, Moonlight, take up the back, you two are our medics and tech experts, we need you two alive for the rest of us to stay alive.” Foresight commanded, showing me once again the reason why the remnants of the Seamane Steel Rangers followed him.

        Rose got us down two levels before I heard the boom of Anabel’s matrix disruption grenades going off followed by the sound of metal being torn apart. I figured Anabel decided to use her talons to quicken the pace of disabling the robots that were out here. I heard a few bursts of automatic gunfire, more than one set of guns, it sounded like Foresight had joined the fray.

        “Rose!” Was all I was able to say before she was bolting forward leaving me to hang onto her with my forehooves as she moved with uncanny speed that beguiled her size. She ran to the ledge of the second level, as she lept of the edge I hit S.A.T.S. and got a still image of the battle arranged before me, like a commander in some turn based strategy game I had a birds eye view of the fight, more or less, and picked my targets, since I wasn’t the one moving it was easier to target what I wanted to.

        Time crawled forward as my twin gatling lasers spooled up and unleashed hot red death upon our automaton foes. The lasers did little per beam, however, the sustained fire quickly sliced off arms of Protector-Ponytrons and those creepy floating spider bots. Anabel was using the deactivated body of a Ponytron as cover from the onslaught of robots coming out of a doorway that was likely the one we needed to go down, it was also the only one I could see. While time kept crawling slowly Rose finally landed as I switched to firing my fourth and final burst of automatic lasers. Two more robots had pushed through the doorway and Anabel had sent another grenade soaring across the intervening air at them. Battle in the slowed time of S.A.T.S. had an odd beauty with it’s muffled sound and crystal clear clarity as things progressed at an extreme fraction of the normal pace of time. While many times I had used S.A.T.S. and marveled at it’s effects on the world around me, it was always jarring how the hectic mess of combat which usually took a minute of a second to resolve took seconds from my perspective.

As S.A.T.S ran out for me I could tell Foresight and Rose had opened up using S.A.T.S. as well with their respective pipbuck’s ensuring that this combat would be over before I could even hop off the back of Rose and get to re-position myself in cover.

        As time resumed its normal pace I felt physics bounce back to existing as momentum dragged Rose and myself towards the ground as her knees bent from the landing. She didn’t push back up and instead went down hard and stayed down under me. At first I was scared she had gotten shot while coming down and I hadn’t seen it while in S.A.T.S. or in the few moments I had been out of the effect of the magical program. Instead she just groaned as I heard the last robot’s braincase explode and capacitors pop.

        “Rose, are you okay?” I asked as I slide myself off of her.

        “Yeah, just came down a bit too hard, can’t possibly imagine why though.” Rose said with a small laugh to punctuate my added weight had done her no favors on that landing on the loose debris we were now both laying in.

        “Alright, let me look you over. Foresight, Anabel, I need to get Rose back on her hooves, you two secure that doorway!” I barked at my two mobile allies. “Once Rose is back up, Foresight you loot what you can, then we get inside and find what we are after!”

        “Righto, Moony!” Anabel called back as I heard the two quickly move for the doorway as I got Rose on her side so I could check her ankles. She didn’t require much medical attention, if we were somewhere else or in another time period it would have been ice and a day or two staying off of them, but, here and now, no such favors were given. I gave her a healing potion and a tablet of Buck. “Lets get moving, Rose.”

        Rose simply nodded and got up after the Buck hit her and her ankles had begun to lose their swelling.

        I went straight to the doorway and Rose assisted Foresight in acquiring ammo and equipment from the bodies and machines that lay here. One interesting thing I saw get strapped to the back of my marefriend was a Balefire Egg Launcher. One hell of a fun toy, for someplace not so cramped, as well as I should make that thing have a folding rail so it can fit easier on the back of her, she looked right with heavy artillery on her, maybe that was just her large frame speaking to me.

        “Moony, I know that look, yes you can work on the launcher when we have time. No, you can’t use that time to work on me, this place is too dangerous for that.” Rose said with a wicked smile on her face. I blushed.

        “Wrenches still are not meant for that and that is highly unsanitary, and I don’t know why you thought clamps were a good idea!” I stammered.

        “I really didn’t need to hear that.” Anabel and Foresight said together.

        “There you go again, Moony, telling everyone about our sex life, tisk tisk.” Rose said mockingly.

        “Get in the hole and clear me a path to the door or I am going to start making you all dance with my twin-linked disco lasers.” I barked at my friends, they laughed for a second before the hum of my gatling lasers powering up sent them running as I started to maddeningly laugh.

        I stopped laughing a few moments later and sighed happily. “Okay, so maybe my love of weaponry is also useful in social situations.” I giggled before a breeze cut through my lab coat, armor, and furry pony coat below that. “That is really cold…”

        I shivered and headed through the doorway to hear distant bangs, pops, and other sounds of combat as my friends were clearing the path ahead. I stopped and looked both ways, the sound wasn’t traveling quite right as neither direction sounded closer than the other.

        “Are the acoustics here just weird or what…” I mumbled to myself before checking the floor for fresh tracks. Which didn’t work out, there were tracks in every direction in the dust that lay here. “Well buck me…”

        I frowned and looked at the two paths I could take, left was even, right was odd, I Looked at the time readout on my E.F.S. the last digit was odd. “To the right we go, I guess.”

        As I headed right the sounds of fighting continued, and didn’t draw any closer, nor did they drop off, it must have somehow been whatever was left of the ventilation system, or some sort of enchantment.

        “Great, not ten minutes into exploring this place and I am already separated and lost.” I huffed in frustration as I entered an office full of desks, the whole place burnt with likely the balefire that came from the desperate escape of the Steel Rangers years ago. “And nothing of use in here.”

        I tried a desk drawer to find that it was flash welded shut, I took a glance around and saw that the rest of the desks showed the slightly warped signature that this one did. “Fucking useless. Alright, other way I guess.”

        I then caught something moving in the doorway to the left of me. I grabbed a desk with my magic and attempted to throw it, only to find that the slight melting of the desk had also fused it with the floor as well. The field of my magic broke upon the immovable desk in a shimmering blue fog that was quickly sliced apart by lasers and a missile. I, with my highly exercised reflexes, shoved the missile off course into an adjacent wall and opened fire with my own lasers, I also grasped at the reloading mechanism on the sentry bot’s missile launcher with my magic to prevent it from properly loading another missile. I heard a loud thunk and then the sentry bot exploded, I felt bits of metal ting off of my armor.

        “Okay, that was far more of an effective tactic on these things than I expected. Though…” I trailed off having galloped up to the destroyed sentry bot. “There is barely anything to loot thanks to the secondary explosions.”

        I kicked on my E.F.S. hostile tracking feature that I had turned off at some point after I had checked the time. There were red bars everywhere. “Oh… well shit.”

        I then paused, I had never turned any function of my E.F.S. off, this place had disabled it, which was how the Steel Rangers likely got into such a dire situation, this place had the ability to trigger partial spell matrix crashes, and likely full matrix crashes on anything that wasn’t shielded like power armor and pipbucks.

“Oh… this is bad, really, really bad.” I muttered. “Okay, regroup first, then the sealed door.”

My E.F.S. politely tagged my friends and the door, I was right, I had gone the wrong way, but, only for getting to my friends, I was going the right way for the door. I grabbed one of the spark grenades I was given and threw it down the hall that lead to the door then charged with sword and pistol drawn back towards my friends. If anything I would draw attention away from my friends and towards what was likely labeled as a high security section of the facility. Of course that was gambling on the computers controlling the robots here still worked and the robots weren’t set to just kill anyone who didn’t belong while randomly patrolling the hallways.

I returned to the hallway I had taken the wrong turn at to find two floating spider bots already closing on me, hacksaws first, flamers and magical energy weapon arrays tracking me as well, their bars were red.

“I really wish there was some way to tell distance with E.F.S. of hostiles!” I cried out as magical energy and fire was flung my way as I dashed to the side of the doorway. The fire spilled out and around catching my coattails and my tail, two desks caught the M.E.W. bolts and melted into green goo. I quickly smothered the lingering flames on my tail and spooled up the gatling lasers. I had a feeling these spider bots were tougher than the usual ones. I sat waiting for the bots to come after me for a full minute, instead occasional gouts of fire and bursts of pale green bolts of energy passed through the doorway.

“Of course they are smarter than the usual robots.” I cursed as I prepared a spark grenade to toss at the robots so I could get out there and either cripple or power down the two robots.

“Eat this you robotic fuckers!” I shouted as I tossed the grenade through the doorway as I darted to the other side of it in the office I was in.

A gout of fire and plasma seared past me and then there was a small bang, some clattering, and an electric hiss or hum with a burst of static that flowed through me making my fur stand on end where it wasn’t covered and my mane to become annoyingly fuzzy. I peaked my head around to see the two Mister Gutsy robots still functional, but, temporarily shut off. I galloped up to them and quickly put my power hoof through their weak combat inhibitor panel and to finish them off. I quickly went and yanked out the flamer fuel, flamers, plasma pistols, and energy cells. I would make use of them later, the flamers would likely be handy with dealing with local wildlife and raiders once we were headed to the Steel Ranger bunker and then into Seamane. For now, I had to get to my friends.

My ears twitched at the silence. Silence was bad, it meant either my friends were down, or they were further away, or trapped behind a door.

“I need to get moving, quickly, damn it why did I let myself do that.” I cursed and berated myself for making my friends run ahead of me, and go the wrong way. “Alright, lets catch up.”

I quickly moved down the hall, ignoring the possibilities of any traps as my friends would have likely set those off already, and my light step would let me bypass any that were still around and not magic or light based. With galloping I came across where my friends had been fighting several sentry bots as well as Mister Gutsy’s, I frowned and looted the downed robots for parts, we likely would need them, or I would, or something.

Two minutes later the robots were missing their weapon clad limbs, their entrails looted for spare parts and ammo. I adjusted the ever growing sack of parts, weapons, and supplies that sat atop of my battle saddle and back.

“Okay, forward, again, still no shooting, no crying, and the tag is still marking where my friends are, which…” I frowned. “I haven’t been paying attention to so I don’t know if it has moved or not. Whatever! Time to move!”

With that I began galloping again, passing destroyed doors, desks, chairs, chest high walls that were used for easy to hide behind cover, and a lot of destroyed robots, full of holes. My attention being elsewhere I slammed full gallop into a chest high wall, sending me up and over it, landing on my back, the various poky parts of my looted equipment poking at me in my back jabbing between plates of my armor under my labcoat. My horn still rested on the lip of the cover holding my head up as I lay there for a moment just groaning.

I slowly rolled over and double checked nothing was broken or requiring immediate treatment. I heard an explosion echo off the hallway I was in, I looked and saw the tags for my friends moving again, there was still a rather worrying amount of red bars, but, I could make out their blue bar’s ever now and again. I had no time for whatever bruises I had just given myself, I rolled too my hooves and began running with reckless abandon to catch up with my friends who’s tags were drowning in a sea of red bars.

As I galloped down the ruined hallways I took a corner at full speed my hooves landing on a metal panel of a destroyed robot making me slide into the wall across the hallway as the sound of fighting grew twice as loud and I saw turrets and robots still smoking from combat. As I hit the wall I heard something crack in my shoulder, apparently my armor and padding in my coat wasn’t enough to prevent injury. I groaned as I got back up, I saw a grenade bounce into the other end of the hallway and I grabbed the plate I had slide on and held it as a blast shield against the impending grenade detonation. I felt the pressure wave roll over me as shards of metal pinged off of and embedded into my makeshift shield.

“I need to get a proper ballistic shield.” I swore to myself over the ringing in my ears as I moved forward and ripped out a still intact chest panel of several sentry bots and held them together in my magic. I would need some time and heat to forge them together and give myself a nice shield to protect myself, but, for now it would help. However, I knew that if any missiles or other explosives were thrown directly at me I would be in a hard place. I secured three of the panels on my back and kept one out as I ran forward with my gatling lasers humming with power.

The scene I ran into was chaos, as any fight truly is, my friends were pinned down, Anabel was stuck hiding in a doorway, Foresight was huddled behind another one of those automatically raising chest high walls, and I couldn’t spot where Rose was, I had to guess she was obstructed by one of the seven different robots who all had their backs to me. I bit the bridle mounted trigger for my gatling lasers and sprayed tens of red beams of burning death into the backs of the robots. A few of the robots turned on their once allies as I destroyed their combat inhibitors, one out right just went limp as I finished it off. I kept the bit tightly between my teeth as I continued to fire into the machines, one turned a brilliant red as it fell apart at the atomic level and became nothing but ashes. With the chaos of my arrival my friends began to open up against our armored autonomous foes. With our combined firepower as well as the frenzied robots fighting one another we made short work of them.

“Moonlight, is that you?” Foresight called out from the other side of the battlezone.

“Yeah, how is everyone, anyone need medical attention?” I called back as I began to scavenge off of the downed robots, having another chance to get my hooves on some military grade hardware.

“Rose is down, you might want to take a look at her before those robots!” Anabel called back, halfway through her saying so I had already smashed through the remains of the robots with my telekinesis into the walls so I could get to my Rose. The tags in my vision clearly showed where Rose was, I barreled past Anabel, nearly tripping her as I passed through the doorway she was standing in.

Rose was laying, but, breathing on the floor, there was a worrying amount of blood staining her armor and coat, and a frightful amount. I saw a rather large piece of metal sticking out of her barrel.

“Rose…” I quietly murmured as I walked up to her, feeling numb seeing her so badly injured. “Rose?”

She didn’t respond.

I did see she was breathing regularly, though, shallowly. I got next to her before my legs gave out, but, I didn’t try to keep myself up to take care of her. I pulled out one of the medkits I had prepared and began to get to work addressing her blood loss. First came stabilizing, so I needed to do what I could to prevent her condition from getting worse, at the moment blood loss seemed to be the biggest and most troubling problem for her. But, I didn’t have a way to quickly take care of her wounds as a great deal of shrapnel was still protruding from her, and there was the threat of broken bones. No, I had to use bandages. I began with using my magic to apply pressure around each wound one by one and using my teeth to pull out the shrapnel that was stuck in Rose’s body. I quickly began to taste her blood on my lips as I kept working furiously against the creeping specter of death. Quickly wrapping each wound with a bandage I switched to another bleeding injury on her. I soon found myself stripping her heavily damaged barding off so I could get better access to her underside where a large piece of metal was caught.

“Oh sisters… please let this have missed her internal organs.” I prayed to our fallen princesses. I quickly wrapped my magic around the wound, deep into Rose making certain to hold everything in place before I began to pull out the terrifyingly large piece of metal that had embedded itself in my marefriend’s stomach. The blood and guts I had worried about coming out never did, my magic held everything that was supposed to be inside, inside.

        I gulped and remembered the fact she still had a great deal more injuries with bits of metal in them, and her bones weren’t healed, and yet, she desperately needed this wound to be closed up, and while I could mass shove things with my magic, doing fine manipulation on dozens of spots was beyond me even at the best of times. Right now I was doing everything I could to figure out a solution so Rose didn’t bleed out on me. The only thing that I could do was hope pouring a healing potion into the wound and then holding said wound closed would be enough for now.

        I reached into the medkit and pulled out a healing potion, I pulled the stopper out of it and help the potion by it’s neck in my mouth, I started to pour it when it slipped from my teeth and fell, shattering, the healing mixture swirled with Rose’s blood on the floor.

        “Anabel! I need you to help, I-I can’t do this on my own!” I cried out, giving up on being able to do anything more than hold my marefriend together in my present state. Anabel swooped in and must have understood what I was trying to do and did what I could not. She saved Rose’s life while the stress of seeing Rose like this and my fear of losing her consumed me.

        Things blurred and spun in my sight all I could smell was Rose’s blood, I could taste her blood on my lips. She was right next to me and she mattered the most to me out of everything in the world, and when she needed me most I couldn’t help her because the weight of screwing up paralyzed me with fear. I couldn’t lose her, I couldn’t fail myself and her. I couldn’t risk screwing up so I had to let someone else take care of her in the end. But, wasn’t that more of a betrayal of her trust in me, I had the best of knowledge and skill in medicine out of our group, I should be saving her life.

        But I had, I just couldn’t do the rest. I had stopped a large amount of blood loss, I had removed an injury that would have killed her, I had saved her life. I just couldn’t finish the job. It still hurt though, not being able to help the one I loved most because I couldn’t keep it together, because I couldn’t handle the thought of losing her, the stress of the idea of losing her enough to make me panic and be unable to use my skills to their fullest extent. Nopony would blame me for it, except myself, because I didn’t like losing my ability to control myself.

        “Moonlight, keep an eye on Rose, Foresight and I are going to seal up the door we just came through. She needs rest, we need to patch our armor, and I think you have some mental wounds to lick.” Anabel said, I didn’t look up, I just moved closer to Rose and buried my muzzle into the fur on her neck. “Get some rest.”

        I woke up a while later, the dim flickering halogen lights that remained in their fixtures stumping my sense of time, there was no source natural light to aid my mind in figuring out what time it should be. I blinked a few times trying to wash away the lingering hold of sleep on my sight. I looked around the room to see that Anabel and Foresight were actually asleep as well, and that the equipment in the room had been stuffed against all the doors leading into our room that Rose had collapsed in. I looked down at my hooves to see them and my coat stained with blood, I looked at Rose who I had been using as a pillow to see her breathing deeper, more regular, and no noticeable rasp, covered in bandages. I lay my head against her chest and listened to her heartbeat, to her breathing. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

        I checked my E.F.S. to see what time it was, again my E.F.S. had crashed and I turned it back on, grateful for the shielding pipbuck’s had. I smiled gently seeing we had managed to stay safe for the past twelve hours. I pulled off my gear, as well as what remained on Rose and began to clean the two of us up. There was no point to have blood and the smell of blood upon us, even if we were only expecting machines here, it would be best to clean it up for the sake of hygiene as well as once we go surface side again, smelling of blood tended to attract nasty things.

        It dawned on me that we had several options for how to proceed. Rose was going to need more time to heal, but, she and I had both been given keycards, and so was Foresight. It dawned on me even though there was a significant part of me that wanted to send her away on Anabel’s back to Dune City for proper healing. However, we needed both Anabel and Rose to get past that security door, unless we wanted to blow a hole in the side of the ruins. Though demolition work wasn’t the best idea as this place was likely not far from having another collapse. What might be a better idea is finding some sort of map and head for a medical area. While supplies may not be here, I doubted they took all the machinery. While Operation Stardust seemed to have been the removal of equipment from nonessential facilities to, I guessed, stockpile them where they would be used in an attempt to wait out the end of the world, I doubted they would take operating tables.

        Then again, who knows how well stripped this place was. There were still terminals, though burnt, desks, chairs, and robots. Hell, why did they not just have the robots follow them out when they looted the place for Operation Stardust? Something about that just didn’t add up, why lock a door further in and leave ageless guardians?

        It dawned upon me. “Of course, because there is something of far more value than just a few tools and some supplies they couldn’t take with them. They wouldn’t risk moving data, the only copy of data on the eve of the apocalypse.” I whispered to myself, as to not awaken my comrades.

        Slowly though it hit me how useless that was. Data for what? Long abandoned and dead experiments in how to develop weapons and armor that I could not hope to reproduce with the imprecise and crude equipment of the post apocalyptic world that I inhabited. It stung a bit, to figure this out and realize in the end there was little benefit to getting the data from this place for me.

        “But of course…” I muttered, remembering the horrible cyberpony we had met heading towards the Unbound outside of Colt. “Somepony has the resources to make use of the knowledge hidden here. But, how are they going to get it from us?”

        Then it hit me, that stallion had abducted Rose and myself from Mixers without issue. They would simply connect to our pipbucks and grab the data, even if I did some tricks with encryptions that wouldn’t last long. So who would it be best to have it on? Hide it on some scrap electronics? Or maybe my dog tags, or… oh yes, we put the data either on a hidden chip in the Pipbuck Zero that Anabel had, or, I embedded it within my powerhoof. Both would be places that weren’t looked at, though I figured my Powerhoof would be the best place, now I just needed to get the brains of a robot big enough for the archive, though, we needed to first see how big said archive was.

        I had a plan to fool those using us, and a plan of where to head next in this facility. I turned EFS back on and was greeted with a rather barren read out of tags. There were the three around me, tied to the blue bar in my vision showing my friends. There were maybe two or three red bars, hard to tell when they got too close to one another, and then three more markers. One for the tools, one for the door, and the last one I figured popped up when I had thought about the medical facilities. Because seriously with how far away this place was by hoof from anywhere else, they had to have their own medical facilities, hell, there should even be living quarters, food stocks, which I imagined would be long bad by now, and an armory. This wasn’t just a hole in the ground for research, it was a military base that had research done in it.

        “Guns, science, medicine, ammo, tools, information, and food. This place has it all, doesn’t it?” I asked quietly to the silent room, filled only with the hum of ventilation systems.

        My ears twitched at my noticing of the ventilation systems still being functional, as well as the lights for the first time. “Oh, well now… Why leave ventilation on? I can understand the lights to a degree, but, why the air…”

        “Because the systems are automated, and without anypony being around dust wouldn’t accumulate, plus, while you might not notice it, while the air is rather stale down here, and in this room as well. However, it hasn’t been getting worse, but, the filters are clogged to all hell.” Foresight quietly answered for me. “Nopony else is alive here, just us and those robots. Which it seems those robots have forgotten about us, once the others are up, we need to get moving again. I think everything of use is past that door so drag Rose with us once Anabel is up.”

        “You two take the lead and quietly keep the path clear for me and Rose?” I asked, I got a quick nod from Foresight. “You two keep focused on staying quiet and hidden, I am going to just run my invisibility spell and get Rose and I there. In fact, I am going to take her now, there is no point in waiting. I still have a spark grenade, and worse case scenario I do have a lot of weapons.”

        “I know, how about you get your battle saddle loaded out with something other than those gatling lasers, while they are nice, they didn’t seem to do much unless you got a lucky shot off with them.” Foresight suggested, moving quietly over to me from where he had hunkered down.

        I frowned then nodded, I moved a bit away from Rose and then got about stripping off all of my bags and the battle saddle itself. With Foresight’s help we got my battle saddle set up again, and with a bit of fancy wasteland engineering got a nice array of weapons set up. Rocket launchers for serious explosive destruction, incase I needed to blow out a wall, or a tank, and then an array of plasma pistols for some nice armor ignoring death. With the bit of use I had gotten with the gatling lasers, and my general lack of skill with energy weapon handling, we were able to put together one fully functional gatling laser out of the two I had. Apparently with energy weapons you had to be careful about overheating the delicate internal components as well as the barrels. That or I was built to destroy, but, that didn’t seem likely with how long my good old gunpowder guns seemed to last.

        “Now, energy weapon battle saddle configurations aren’t typical for Steel Rangers, but, the Enclave, or Ministry of Awesome as they once were, love their energy weapons. But, I figure you have your own style, and that style is whatever is most killy. I would say, that you are now set up to be plenty killy.” Foresight said with a smile.

        “No such thing as overkill, well, I guess overkill if it hits yourself or your friends, since that is killing not what you want dead, which is bad.” I replied smiling as well. There was an odd glow though now thanks to the arrays of plasma pistols, their green sick light reminding me of Stable Twenty Three’s reactor core.

        “Bringing back some not so fun memories, Moonlight?” Foresight asked after I had been staring at the plasma pistols for probably longer than I intended.

        “Yeah, it is the same color as those rings back in Stable Twenty Three, the one inside the reactor room, and from the reactor itself.” I replied, my eyes still fixed on the plasma pistols. “Not entirely the best memories I have, but, I do have worse.”

        “I know, but, I guess this is something you will get used to pretty quickly, right?” Foresight probed.

        “Yeah, I should, just, a bit mesmerizing is all, just like it was in Twenty Three.” I replied before shaking my head to break my focus on the sinister green glow of my plasma pistols.

“What you said something back in Hoofington about a not so good thing or effect connected to Starmetal, do you think that plasma weapons use a directed form of that effect?” Foresight asked, I blinked at him glad to have a thought provoking question asked of me, something that wasn’t life or death, or focused on our current situation.

“Well maybe, but, that the field of death, enervation, that is emitted from Starmetal when energized, even the disruptive green field that one can see doesn’t have any effect on inorganic materials, otherwise Stable Twenty Three, and probably a good chunk of Manehattan, and quite likely a lot of other places, would be glass or worse. As it is, energized Starmetal, if you could focus and narrow the field of enervation into a cone even, if not a solid cylinder, would make a nasty weapon allowing one to ignore armor, buildings, and even vehicles. Hell… It would be the next step in megaspells. I mean, think about it, a bomb or directed beam of death, that just kills, it doesn’t destroy infrastructure, it doesn’t ruin power lines, steel mills, power plants, roads, rails…” I trailed off. “Maybe the world ended just at the right time to have not have been worse than what we see today…”

        “What if somepony had though made a weapon with starmetal?” Foresight asked.

        “Well, given its non reactiveness to other materials, a blade would work quite nicely, apparently specialized bullets exist down south that make you lose your limb if you are lucky, if not, well... you will die a rather painful death due to Starmetal Poisoning.” I explained. “Though, if you made a projectile weapon out of it, that was energy based, I don’t know, would be a potent energy source so you could probably pump the energy levels in a small or any scale energy weapon that could fire pretty far and never have to reload. Hell, probably could make a constant beam out of it that just burrows through whatever is in front of you, or make it wide dispersal and just melt everything like one of my melta blasts from my horn when I get the time to build up enough magic.”

        “Right, that spell you were doing back when we got pinned in Hoofington, that you used to give us cover to escape with.” Foresight said as he recalled events from roughly a month ago. “I also seem to recall seeing a beam arcing off the roof of Tenpony, I am guessing that was you once your horn got fixed?”

        I beamed, remembering how it felt to use my magic again, almost orgasmic in how exhilarating and liberating it was to have that core piece of me back. “Yes, that was me, going a bit overboard.”

        “And here I thought all I had to worry about was you throwing heavy things, maybe we should just bypass that door and have you melt us a way down.” Foresight said before chuckling.

        “That… wait, you are joking not being serious. I was just about to explain how in several ways that was a horrible idea.” I said giggling along side him.

        “Moonlight, how long has it been since you ate.” I heard Rose say from behind me, I stood up a bit straighter as I froze, I felt my face go flush with embarrassment at the thought I had just woken up my critically injured marefriend with my laughing and excessive rambling.

        “Um… since before we entered this place.” I said meekly as my stomach growled loudly that I was certain Anabel’s movement was her stirring from her sleep.

        “You should eat then.” Rose replied, dryly.

        “Actually, you should eat a lot, Moonlight. Anabel and I had to take the liberty of using some of your blood to replace Rose’s since you weren’t awake to walk us through dealing with major blood loss.” Foresight replied.

        “Is that why I just slept for twelve hours straight after panicking and breaking down?” I asked, a bit frustrated, but, understanding of my two friends quick thinking.

        “You didn’t think that you’re stressing out over Rose’s situation warranted that much sleep, did you?” Foresight asked. “Here I thought you were the medical expert among us.”

        The smile on his face almost made me deck him, with my powerhoof fused hoof.

        “Be happy you got me in a good mood earlier with asking me those questions and helping me with the battle saddle or you would be in a Foresight shaped dent in the wall.” I hissed before moving to get myself a heavy meal to make up for about a missed days worth of eating.

“Oh I am happy, I like not getting beat up then patched up by the same person, it is quite disconcerting.” Foresight replied before hopping back out of my reach as I swung at him with my powerhoof. “Alright, I’ll let you eat in peace, I’ll plan out our course with Anabel.”

I simply glared at him as he trotted, no, pranced off to talk to Anabel. “We are all mad down here, I swear.” I muttered between bites of canned apple slices.

“Well it takes a strong mind to not go completely off the deep end in our world. And nobody is truly sane anymore, the state of the world doesn’t allow it.” Rose said to me as she broke out some food for herself.

“Yeah, well, sometimes I wonder if the element of laughter is just trying to find a new home and making ponies do weird things to see if they are worthy of it.” I replied. “And for that matter where are those damned elements, the world is going to need them if we are to clean up our home again and make it liveable.”

“Getting ahead of ourselves again, are we not, dear?” Rose asked as I moved to lay with her as we ate.

“Yeah, first we take care of this place, then investigate what happened to our local chapter of Steel Rangers, then… yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on our list to do before saving the world and being the big fucking heroines of the wasteland.” I said looking down at my can of food.

“You know the wasteland doesn’t really need a whole bunch of heroes, it needs more of, well, well intentioned individuals.” Rose said, giving my cheek a nudge with her muzzle.

“It has a lot of plausibly well intentioned extremists already. I guess we are just weeding out the competition before taking center stage and trying to get the place working the way we think it should work…” I frowned. “It isn’t going to work out, is it?”

“We won’t know until we get there, don’t dwell on it, just focus on clearing those who would willingly do harm. It is the best we can do, maybe by making room for ponies to act without so many things pushing and pulling them in so many directions they will make the right choice and we can start dragging ourselves out of this miserable chapter of ponykind.” Rose offered.

“Maybe,” is all I said.

An hour later and everyone was ready, and I hadn’t said anything further, or really thought. My mood had darkened and my thoughts clouded and failing to resolve into anything beyond mere vague feelings. I finally wrestled myself back to coherent thought and donned my newly armed battle saddle. The green glow from the plasma pistol arrays I could vaguely see, but, it was to the point it was more like the light from a pipbuck lamp behind me instead of that baleful glow those plasma pistols reminded me of. I figured I would need to put some sort of shield over the glowing bits so I wouldn’t give myself away to anything smarter than a tin can.

I shook my head and focused on what needed to be done, we had to make our way back to the sealed door and get past it by whatever means necessary.  Of course worst case scenario would be we melted through the door or the wall around it, possibly the floor. Honestly, the main thing that scared me was what lay behind that door, and what was between here and the door. These robots were hardened, meant for combat against military grade rounds and equipment. Plus as I had earlier concluded there had to be something worth protecting here that required keeping the place online and guarded as well as sealed. Whatever it was, it was decided to be worth enough to leave this much hardware to protect it.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked as I finished tightening the final strap on my gear with my magic.

“As ready as I ever will be, Commander.” Rose responded with a hint of sarcasm. The other two just gave me a nod to indicate their readiness.

“Alright then, lets move out, I am taking up the front, I still have the smallest profile of all of us still, somehow, Foresight, you take the rear, Anabel behind me, Rose, you should know where you will be in the line.” I explained as my companions moved into a single file line behind me as I looked at them. “Okay, lets get to the door and get back on track, enough screwing, around we have a job to do.”

With that I opened the door that Foresight and Anabel had sealed off. The other side looked as I remembered it. I paused checking for anything moving, checking my E.F.S. for any movement that might indicate our being detected again or a patrol moving towards us.

“All clear, for now, lets get moving, my coat is beginning to crawl with paranoia.” I said as I began down the hall keeping the bit for my plasma pistol array at the corner of my mouth, this place was one of the first actively and truly hostile places I have gone where I could fight back. Stable Twenty Three had invisible fields of death, Fillydelphia there just were too many to fight, and Hoofington was a thing that was just not something I could fight, it was an entire fucking city, an entire location, not a small isolated area, or an object, or a group of people, it was a thing, a really big thing with lots of parts that to even get close to was certain death.

Honestly I prefered my neck of the woods or Manehatten, both places were more straight forward, you had ruins that generally had something in them that wanted you dead and all you had to do was make them dead first. Then you loot the place, lick your wounds, and move on. Yeah I couldn’t really take on a settlement, barring Raiderville that I took out on my own, but things like Dune City, Saint Clover, Colt, Slate’s settlement, even Oakmare. But, half of those I didn’t want to hurt, one of them I was going to avoid as best as possible, and the last one, Oakmare, I needed to do something about eventually. The keyword being eventually, it might just be pressure through leaning on some traders to just avoid Oakmare until things changed to my liking. Of course that was if I could get Dad into power at Saint Clover and able to convince ponies around Seamane to see things my way and help make those of Redeye’s forces loosen up.

With the slow pace we crept towards the door. We had managed to avoid several patrols while thinking about everything. I finally shook my mind off of distant places and things that were without meaning in the immediate context of our environment. I needed to focus on not dying and not letting my friends die. I also needed to focus on not getting shot in the face with magical energy.

I screamed as a Mister Gutsy set my head alight with fire from its build in flamethrower and moved in with its Buzzsaw. I rolled and tried to put out the fire as I heard a pleasant volume of firepower open up into the rogue robot. I heard the damn thing clattered to the ground as I felt magic wrap itself around my head, I gasped for breath and found none. I quickly gathered what was happening, Rose was using her magic to smother the fire that was burning my coat. A few moments later I felt the magic lift and I took in a deep breath and opened my eyes. There was an odd blue light now illuminating the corridor.

“Why is there a blue light?” I asked as Rose looked at me slightly perplexed.

After a moment Rose opened her mouth and responded to my question. “Your mane, it is… on fire.”

“But, it doesn’t burn, and you smothered it…” I replied before looking at what bits of my mane lay at the corners of my vision to see the edges of it having the quality of a blue flame in slow motion, and oddly translucent and glowed incandescently.

We stood there for a moment in quiet contemplation and bewilderment at my now slightly flame like hair that gave off a soft blue light.

“This is going to make going unseen a lot harder, because I am now a light shining in the dark, literally.” I finally said breaking the silence that was marked with the subtle thrum of the ventilation system and light hum of the lights.

“We’ll figure out something, I guess it just took a while for that mutation to fully present itself, I mean, you did several times flake ash in embarrassment as well as have your mane and tail catch fire when emotions ran high…” Rose replied.

“Maybe when we get into a situation where we don’t need light it will go out on it’s own.” I offered, hoping to be proven right later on, I really didn’t want to have to hide my mane and tail whenever I needed to sneak around in the dark.

“At least you will be a lot easier for us to spot.” Foresight said. “Come now, I will take the lead, you take the rear.”

I nodded and let the group go ahead of me and then walked slowly backwards behind them covering everyones rear with my body covered in layers of armor, weapons, and random bits of gear. I realized once again, I tended to gather a ton of things on my person whenever we went out. Then again, it really helped our caps bag, however pointless that was, whenever we hit a town or someone willing to trade.

We silently made our way to the door we had meant to open yesterday.

“Alright, Moonlight, Rose, with me, lets get this door open. Anabel?” Foresight asked, pausing for Anabel to look at him. “Smash.”

Anabel just rolled her eyes. I walked up to the imposing door that showed a slight bit of aging, various scrapes from being opened and closed in the past, the sides of it having hazard stripes painted on it. There was nothing but a simple card reader on the side. The card reader didn’t have any read out other than a red bar saying everything that needed to be said. I fished out my card from my pack, Foresight and Rose did the same.

As I had my card out first I approached the door first and pressed my card against the panel that lay below the red light. With nary a sound I heard a faint affirmative beep and the light went green.

“Well, one down, two to go.” I said as I stowed my card and took a couple of steps to the side. “Who’s next?”

Foresight made his way to the card reader with his card, I lowered my stance ready to charge and fire at anything on the other side of the door. The quiet drone of the ventilation system was the only sound beyond our breathing and the quiet hoof steps of my partners. I glanced over my shoulder to see that Anabel was standing on her hind legs while holding her grenade rifle. I turned back to see Foresight push his card against the reader and the quiet affirmative beep went out as the light went green again.

“Alright Rose, last one.” Foresight said, moving away from the card reader and taking up a defensive stand, his battle saddles cycling ammo to a heavier load, I saw the hint of green on the shells. I refocused my sight on the door and what might lay beyond it.

Rose finally approached the card reader, as she does I feel I hear something moving behind us and start to tense. I steal a glance at Foresight who I can see by the look on his face he heard the same and has tensed up greatly as well, I look back at Rose who had paused and was looking behind us.

“Quickly, if we get through the door we can close it behind us and keep whatever is out here away from us.” I hissed at Rose, she shook her head and quickly pressed the card against the reader.

“Beep”

The door slowly slide open, almost silently, the other side was a yawning gulf of darkness, and absolutely silent.

“Go.” I whispered, as I crept forward, my mane and tail lighting the walls in faint blue light. We made it in and then suddenly the door loudly slammed shut, I turned to see Anabel safely with us, millimeters past the door.

“Well, now we just have to navigate our way through here, anyone need a light?” I asked.

“We are all veterans of scavenging, Moonlight, we all have at least a lighter.” Anabel replied.

I nodded. “Alright, Foresight, how should we go about this, who with who?”

“Well, lets find a layout for this place first, then we will split up to find things.” Foresight answered.

“Alright.” I answered and then paused listening and hearing nothing. “The ventilation… it is off.”

        “Well, this place is rather large, I don’t think that will be an issue, unless we spend a couple of weeks here.” Foresight replied, then I saw his head turn as he looked at me. “Though, maybe less with your mane and tail as they are, everyone keep down how much you fire, we need to be careful, who knows how much breathable air is left in here, it might behoove us to put on air masks for now.”

        I nodded and pulled out my gasmask and secured a fresh filter on it after I put it on. I looked at my companions and they were busy doing the same.

        “Foresight, we should have grabbed you one of those Steel Ranger’s suits of power armor.” I said my voice now distorted by my gasmask.

        “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Foresight isn’t.” He answered, I could tell he was smiling under his gasmask.

        “Alright, enough quips, if we are on the clock for how long we can survive down here we best get moving or find a way to increase how long we have.” Rose commanded, I gave a curt nod and took the lead on finding a way to either a mainframe, a security room, or a map.

Footnote: Sixty two percent to next level.