Chapter Two, Pain is Game.

"Pain is game kid, if you can't get back up and act tough then just stay down and give up."

Almost all of his body was numb except his right leg which had pain that burned like nothing before. He'd always been trained to right himself as quickly as possible when shook up from explosives but they never accounted for when you stepped on a mine and got pretty much sent through the air and landed right on your head. He could hear muffled yells, screams, gun shots as he began to slowly lift his head up. He saw a raider. A big, disgusting looking raider who was coming straight at him wielding a huge fire axe in his magical grip, about to swing it into Cobalt's forehead. He closed his eyes knowing that it was most likely the end.

After about a minute of nothing happening, with hearing coming back, he opened his eyes in confusion. He didn't see the raider infront of him anymore, infact, he saw the axe lying on the ground nearby. Though it didn't sway his fears for long as he saw raiders coming up the street and firing their weapons, but suprisingly not at him. He heard shouts from behind him, and the sounds of heavier weapons firing as well. He knew who they were.

"Slavers..." He pretty muched coughed, with his senses starting to come back to him, he suddenly felt that burning pain in his right leg even more, and it was challenging to prevent himself from groaning in agony, he knew it must be broken, but he didn't anticipate how badly the damage was until he looked at his leg.

His eyes widened in shock, looking through the shattered eye pieces of his banged up helmet, he saw the remains of his right leg, utterly shredded armor with some pieces of his armor had been sent into his leg as well. Decimated, and was bleeding very badly. He needed to get out of there, he was in a warzone now, and he needed to find a safe place to huddle into and attempt to heal. Or, bleed to death and that be the end of his life.

But as he began to move something pulled on his armored tail, next thing he knew he fell down into a hole in the street and blacked out again with a terrible ringing noise.

***

"Ugh... what happened...." He groaned getting up feeling like he broke his spine.

"Well you fell off a building, tried to right yourself, then hit the cloud floor at I'd say... acouple miles an hour?" Someone said landing nearby. A Griffon. "Good job. That'll make you a flight captain of your own wing before you know it." He snickered.

Cobalt shook his head as he slowly got up from the fluffy cloud ground. "Can you hold your jokes back for later Kieos? I think I'm really hurt..." He groaned stretching his wings a little as he felt the agonizing pain in his back.

Kieos chuckled then got serious and just picked Cobalt up and plopped him on his back. "Yeah let's get you someplace where we you can get you help. Rather you not die before you even get in flight school." He chuckled again as he opened his own wings and took off into the air. "Oh and, mind not bleeding on me?" He said abruptly.

Cobalt was confused as he lifted his own leg and looked at it feeling a pain, he saw his shrtedded leg and shrieked which ended the dream.

***

Some pony was holding him down to the table and was making very weird noises that sounded like speaking but more like gurgling at him as he was yelling back and trying to get off, utterly confused by his surroundings and in terrible pain. The pony kept pushing him back down until she got a syringe of morphine and jabbed it into the torn up leg.

This confused Cobalt in some way, nopony could take off power armor unless they're a Pegasus, or at least very smart. He knew those raiders were neither of the above but his thinking began to change as the morphine took it's effect in his body, and he became way more relaxed.

"Who are you! Who am I?" He asked lazily, trying to move but instead wiggling his body and giggling like an idiot.

She grumbled something and pulled out acouple tools and moved them to a small platform next to the table he was laying on. The pulled out a scaple and took his leg and began to pick out pieces of shrapnel and his own armor.

The still confused Cobalt watched her use her magic to presicely move the scaple and cut into his leg and use tweezers to removes forgien pieces of metal lodged in his still bleeding leg. At some points she couldn't see the pieces because his leg was so bloody and kept bleeding feriously. She then put the blood covered scapel down and got a piece of cloth and tied it tightly around the the base of Cobalt's leg and knee area, stopping blood flow but the already existing blood remained where it was so she covered it in another piece of cloth and applied pressure, cleaning up some of the blood.

Now his leg wasn't bleeding as badly, and she continued to remove pieces of metal from his torn up leg for about the next hour or two, taking out about 67 pieces of metal and then sewed it up surprisingly well for being in a rush. She then injected him with something again which made him extremely tired, a general anesthetic most likely.

He slowly closed his eyes as she continued to bandage his leg up. "T-t-thank you...: He stuttered to her, only getting a grunt in response.

Another hour had passed of Cobalt sleeping, he hadn't slept for days in fear of waking up with a knife to his throat, again. He learned that lesson not to sleep when exposed pretty easily, and quickly. And nearly paid with life for it. Now he was so paranoid of everything that he was surprised that he even trusted the orange mare who was fixing him up, but when he saw her medical cutie mark with absolutely nothing relating to gore and murder, he felt somewhat more comforted that at least some other pony wasn't going to kill him. Well, hopefully.

"Seriously now..." He groaned as he slid over to the side of the table and began to get up. Being out of his armor which helped strengthen his body felt weird. Weaker maybe, well, he'd always been the weak one in the family, and even in his company, he unwisely relied on his power armor. He was extremely thin, black coated with a dark, coalt-blue mane and eyes, with a cutie mark of a gear with olive leaves in it. Though he was an extremely talented sniper, his true talent lies in creating weapons, customizing, and a lot of the technical shit that the company didn't want to do. He could either blame his field work in the wasteland on the fuck-ups of the higher ranks, or on the help he had getting on there. But there was something about his cutie mark that stood out. The big symbol that had been burned into his flank, right over his cutie mark, his Dashite branding by his company before he quit the Enclave, wanting to move to the ground.

She looked at his cutie mark curiously but still didn't say anything, she was pretty quiet, and for any other stallion she looked like'd be a good mare for them, except for the scars all over her body, and how a part of her horn was chipped. She was filthy, and looked like she was in pain too, how she walked an everything showed it. But she still didn't speak, just made a grumble.

"Are you okay?" Cobalt asked getting up but stumbling a little due to his weak stature and wounded leg, she helped him stay up. "Thanks..." He mumbled.

Her horn lit up and the piece of cloth floated up and a knife, the knife cut her leg a little causing a small blood flow and she wrote on the cloth with her blood.

'Can't speak, tounge cut out. Throat, damaged, raiders. She wrote before cleaning up the small cut on her leg and floating away the cloth.

"So, you're mute?" He asked and she nodded. "I'm really sorry for you, truly. To me it's just a surprise there's another pony in this city who doesn't want to rip my guts out or slap a collar on me." He said with a slight chuckle and she shook her head disapprovingly, making him confused.

"And I'm going to guess you don't want me leaving anytime soon, right?" He asked her getting a nod as a reply from her. He sighed. "I need to get out there." As he said it there was a loud explosion from above and the place shook, gun shots were still going on from above, though more muffled now. "Well... I guess I have to stay until that dies down..." He groaned looking around the small room, which from the looks of the place, and the slight smell, a mateneince room in the sewers below the city.

Great, most likely means ghouls are down here too. But if she pulled me out of the streets, then she must know her way around them, and around this town. Wonder who she is too... He thought to himself as kept looking around and spotted his equipment, the remains of it. He quickly trotted over to it and picked up pieces of his armor.

"Great, now my armor is as damaged as Steel Ranger equipment..." He scoffed looking at the torn-apart leg armor that just barely protected his right leg from being torn right off. "Once again, thank Celestia for power armor..." He grumbled look at the damage on all the pieces of the armor and weapons. He notice one of his plasma casters was bent and severly damaged, most likely the blast form the mine damaged the weapon and the flip out caused the bending of the long barrel.

Though, most of the damage was to the suit of armor itself, he noticed his Anti-Machine rifle was still in great condition. Luckily it was on his left side. Fixing his armor wouldn't be too hard if he had some metal around, but of course all the metal in this city was either broken, rusted, or too weak for armor. He knew the torn up leg piece was useless, to hazardous to wear less he wanted to cut himself on the pieces sticking out. But other than that the armor was still useful, some pieces of it were hit by bullets enough to dent it pretty badly, but nothing he couldn't spiffy up when he headed back to the tower.

Then it hit Cobalt, he quickly found a mirror and painfully unfolded his shot wing which was bandaged up. Didn't look too bad, maybe a day or two to heal it. But that's not good enough, it's damn hard to survive down in the streets of this city, too many mines. Unless... "Does this sewer system go all around the city?" He asked her and she nodded. "Even under the stadium...?" He asked curiously, she nodded again. He felt really stupid. He'd never thought of hitting them from underground, only from the sky.

"I might be able to use the sewers to my advantage... Use it to hit and run the slavers primarily until they are at their weakest... And including with causing massive raider attacks on them, costly yet..." A loud explosion interuppted him, most likely a Mini-Balefire Bomb. "Effective... Plus it somewhat gets rid of the raider problem...." He had a bit of an evil grin that slightly creeped out the mare.

"Perfect..." He grinned and picked up his armor, looking at it more. She put a hoof on his back and shook her head disapprovingly.

"I understand, I'm wounded. But I need to get to work, or things that I have to do might not go exactly as planned. I know how I can do this." He said putting on the pieces of his armor except for the severely damaged helmet and the damaged metal boot, he laos removed the damage plasma caster to lighten up his load and made sure he had a plasma pistol with him incase his back was against the wall and he needed a secondary.

When he was ready, he noticed the mare had two saddlebags on her and s type of coat, looked like a factory coat that was slightly armored. "You're coming with me?" Cobalt asked and she nodded unlocking the door. "Fine by me, you know thus place better so I'm trusting you." He then glared at her. "But I swear, do something that makes me mistrust you, and I'll literally drop you into a camp of raiders. I know where they are, so don't try me." He growled at her a little and she rolled her eyes and walked out of the room, Cobalt followed, making sure the door was closed behind them.

The stench was aweful. The sewer was full of bodies, both chard remains or skeletons. He looked at them all, they looked like they were huddled together, like they died here together... "So, why didn't they go to a Stable?" He mumbled to himself wondering why they had all went down here. "Possibly they didn't get there in time? I haven't seen a Stable pony around here ever, interesting." He mumbled to himself as the trotted through the sewers, occasionally passing a grate in the sidewalk which made the sounds of warfare outside louder, but more evidently were talk ramblings of Raiders who had gained ground over the slavers at high costs of life, but since when did Raiders care for their lives?

Fighting was still very active outside as the passed through the tunnels, occasionally encountering a ghoul or two. Nothing serious. Until Cobalt stopped, and pushed the mare back a little seeing lights dotting the dark floor of the tunnel. Small little, blinking lights.

Mines. My worst enemy...

Normally Cobalt would be able to disarm them, but they all reminded him of what setting off one does to you. And plus a huge clunking metal pony isn't exactly light hoofed. He didn't want to set off the mines, which would draw attention to them, collapse the tunnel, or bring every fucking ghoul in the tunnels to them because of a loud fucking noise in a really goddess damned confined space. He sighed, and slowly crawled to the nearest mine and began disarming it taking the risk. You're in the wasteland, you HAVE to take risks, or you'll never survive.

It's the biggest mistake a pony can make, other than trusting somepony with your caps or letting a pony put a collar on you telling you it's pre-war tech that can make you immortal, is not to take a risk. If you don't take chances, you'll live your life in fear of what you'll lose if you don't choose to risk it and for the gain. He'd heard a Colonel comment on the Steel Rangers once; "Those who try to defend all, lose everything." And that's a value he takes seriously.

The first mine was diarmed fairly quickly, he pushed it back to the mare who in turn placed it in her saddle bag. They might to be of some use later on. He then moved onto the next mine cautiously, hopefully his time in Tech. School for the military would pay off better than Flight Academy or Combat Training, which of course, both we're the hell of his life.

Well except when he defected. But you know, it's more interesting than patrolling miles of empty clouds or looking for a non-existant stable dweller who supposedly breached their territory or that, "escaped Fillydelphia." Whatever that bullshit was that the pony on the radio spoke of, either he's lying and being an ass trying to make everypony in the wastes feel better or create some type of uprising of good ponies, he didn't care. All that mattered right now was survival, and no Stable Dweller was going to save his ass if he got into a fix like before, maybe a mute pony will help, but he doubted she'd help him twice.

Which brought him to another question. "What's your name?" He asked as he slid the second disarmed mine over to her. She went into a saddle bag and pulled out a piece of paper, guess she's rehearsed this situation before. Cobalt looked at the name on the paper. "Amber huh. Nice to meet you I guess, Amber." He said getting a nod from her and he went back to disarming mines.

Until, he head a dreaded screach from behind them. "Ugh... Ferals..." He groaned, he was already an inch away from the mine, he had to finish disarming it. But there's a good chance the ghoul that was now charging, by the slapping sounds of rotten flesh, could just push him straight into the mines infront of them. It was tough, but when he felt his plasma pistol ranked off of his armor and fired quietly at the ghoul and the dying sound of it, he actually began to trust this mare, Amber, a little more. Or until she decides to turn on him atleast.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk -- Swift Learner: You are indeed a Swift Learner with this Perk, as each level will give you an additional +5% bonus whenever you earn experience points.

Author's Note

Hey hey hey! I hope you enjoyed the second chapter! Pretty soon huh? Well the first chapter seemed to of gotten some nice responses so i decided to post the second one early. 3K words in one day, whew! That's a lot of class time wasted, huh?

So I hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading.

As always, love you all!
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