At the base of what was once canterlot mountain a small encampment of heavily armoured pegasie is just waking to the dawn of their first day in a new squad. Their radios tuned to recieve orders while they gather their suplies, they will be shortly heading out to eradicate a bandit encampment 2 clicks from their current location.
"We are moving out in 5! These bandits are theorised to be working a trade with the Brotherhood! These trades need to be stoped, permanently. Leave none alive!" A stallion in hellfire commanded through the radio, pronouncing brotherhood with obvious hatred.
Shortly after this there is nothing to show there was ever a camp there, the group of 5 Enclave elites marched towards a ruined building. It is a factory building, five floors and filled with bandits.
The small squad of Enclave elites, led by their commander in hellfire armour, stopped at a nearby ledge and observed the situation.
"Possible Brotherhood intervention, sir!" One of the elites says while looking through a pair of binoculars.
"From what direction?" The commander asks
"South, only scouts by the looks of it. 1 click from the objective, Skyfire sir." The elite replies.
"Probably about to make a trade. We intercept the Brotherhood caravan, then move on to the bandit scum." Skyfire orders.
The group take to the air and fly towards their unsuspecting foes. By the time the Brotherhood caravan notice the Enclave soldiers they are allready under attack. They pull out 10mm pistols and machine guns, to face power armoured Enclave elites with plasma rifles. Within a minute the Brotherhood caravan is dead and searched for any usefull infomation and ammunition before being left as they were.
The Enclave elites make their way to the front of the factory doors and Skyfire holds up his hoof to signal the squad to halt. "These filth may nave been taught how to wear power armour, be ready for anything!" Skyfire says and places his plasma rifle onto his back and quickly replaces it with a customised gauss rifle. Even though he hasnt adapted it majorly, its easy to tell it apart from the rest of the gauss rifles. His gauss rifle is a dark blue colour and the magazine has a black slodge with a cresent moon in the middle. On the side of the barrel is a picture of his cutie mark, sparking gears with two crossed gauss rifles behind them.
"You love those, dont you, sir?" One of the elites asks Skyfire as he equips himself with a basic gatling laser.
"At least im accurate with mine." Skyfire responds with a slight chuckle.
"Well lets see who will get the first kill then, sir." He says to Skyfire wjth obvious mirth in his voice.
"Challenge accepted, but I will win and you know it!" Skyfire retorts.
They burst through the doors and are met with two Brotherhood Paladins with miniguns aiming at them. Bullets tear tnrought the ground as the take cover besind the door.
"Looks like I get first kill, maggot!" Skyfire laughs as he turns the cornerand takes the first paladin down with a lucky shot. The head of the paladin rolling through the door leaving a blood trail on the ground.
"Nooo! You bastard! You wont live for taking breeze from me!" The last Paladin shouts as he proceeds to run through the door and get turned to green sludge from the three elites with plasma rifles.
The squad of Enclave elites then start clearing ojt the whole building, luckily al, the bandits in there were at the bottom of the building and are left in peices or as piles of green sludge.
As they reached the top however, three more Paladins fired of rocket launchers and killed one member of the squad. The rest pile in and behind cover. Voleys of fire are the sent back and forth until one paladin goes down screaming in pain as he stares at his sethered foreleg. Two high explosive rockets then kill three of the elites who were hiding behing a overturned table, all of which were allready badly injured as it was.
Yelling, Skyfire poped out of cover and blew the head of one of the last paladins shoulders. "If you leave now you can die with dignity! If not then your men will not even be buried!" The Paladin yells and fires a rocket at Skyfire. Seeing this comming, he leaps to the side and finnishes the last Paladin by making a hole through her neck with a well places gauss round.
"Are they gone?" A small voice whispers a group of seven earth pony foals crawl out a vent and look around for anypony that survived.
One of them, a larger red one with a pink mane, look round the overturned table that Skyfire is currently hidding behind and squeaks. As he starts to run back to the vent he feals the barrel of a gun against his head. Turning around slowely, he comes face to face with the gauss rifle. Pannicking he bowls over and cries, through his cries Skyfire hears the young colt begging for his and his siblings life.
The gauss wavers then leaves the foals head. "I, I cant kill a harmless foal... only a monster would do that. I, I'm sorry, I wont harm you or your siblings again if I can help it. I promise!" Skyfire says and quickly gathers the dogtags of his squad and leaves. His fairst squad, on their first mission together and allready they died on him.
"What do you mean you let them live! You do understand what you have just done, DONT YOU SOLDIER! YOU DISSOBEYED DIRECT ORDERS FROM-"
"I FAILED TO DO WHAT ONLY A BANDIT WOULD DO! I SPARED THE FOALS! WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE GENERAL!? KILLED THEM LIKE SOME SORT OF HEARTLESS MONSTER OR SPARE THEM AND PROVE THAT WE ARE NOT THEMONSTERS THE WORLD THINKS WE ARE! PROVE THAT WE WILL NOT STOOP AS LOW AS THE BANDITS OR THE MUTANTS!" Skyfire cut off his General and glares at him as the general is left speachless.
"This is not over, Commander." The general growls and stalks out the office, his office.
The next day, while Skyfire is on patrol around the cloudlayer, a group of Enclave soldiers headed by his General march up to him.
"Commander Skyfire. You are under arest for failing to complete your mission and have been marked a traitor. You have 3 hours until your execution. Have a nice 3 hours Commander, they will be your last." The General says with a smirk.
"I will, thank you General. At least I will die knowing that I died loyal to the pony race as a whole be sparing those foals that you would of had me kill like the heartless monstrocity you are." Skyfire reponds with a snear.
Skyfire flies as fast as his wings will carry him to his room, there he picks up his gauss rifle and as much ammo as he can carry. Along with 45 stimpcks he takes a few freshly picked fruit from the ground bellow the cloud layer. Having done that, he proceeds to dig at the clouds bellow his floor.
The door to Skyfire room is knocked down by a group of Enclave elites, who find his room completely empty and the tracker in his armor in a bookshelf.
"General, hes gone. The tracker in his armor has been removed and is on his shelf. It apears he has dug a hole in the cloud layer and taken all of his equipment with him. Sorry sir we lost him." A hellfire armor waering pagasus says through the radio.
"Luna curse you and you incompitance! How did you let him escape!?" The General yelled.
"Sir, he wasnt here when we arrived." The commander points out.
Skyfire landed just outside a cave that he is sure is out of sight of the Enclave fortress in the cloud layer. He walks inside and heads to the very back of the cave, where a giant rusty steal cog blocks his path. The cog hasthe number 15 in yellow in the front and a yellow pannel next to it. This is the enterence to vault 15...
Skyfire sat 3 meters away from the vault door controls, staring dumbly as though it were some technology he had never seen before, expecting something or some pony to jump out and show this as an illusion. As much as he wanted this to happen, it never did, he just couldn't believe that he accidentally found vault 15, one of the unknown number of bunkers unaffected by the war.
After what could have been anywhere from 10 seconds to 3 hours, Skyfire broke out of his stupor with a shake of his head. Having had enough of just staring at the control panel, Skyfire trots up to it and pushes a lever on top of it with his right, hell fire Armour clad, hoof. His action finishes with a beep followed by a red light turning green on the console, starting the opening mechanisms for the giant gear shaped vault door. With a "Thunk" and a "Clunk" sound, shortly followed by the ear piercing scream of metal grinding against metal, the vaults sealed door is pulled backwards and rolls sideways.
Bright light spills into the once dark, damp cave, almost blinding Skyfire with the rapid change. As the light fades to a bearable level, 3 armored ponies come into view, all 3 are earth ponies in combat Armour, armed with varmint rifles at their sides. They trot towards Skyfire, who is now drawing his customized Gauss rifle.
"who are you? from where do you hail? state rank and faction. refusal to comply will end in immediate execution." one on the ponies ask, unable to see their appearance through their armor.
"Gentlemen. I am Captain Skyfire, of the Pegasus enclave. Well, i used to be. Before i was sentenced to death for refusing to kill harmless foals. But, how did you know i am a soldier, without leaving the vault before?" Skyfire asked through the hell fire armors helmet.
"We have hacked into..." the guard that was speaking is quickly silenced when they are knocked to the ground by the guard next to them.
"We are sorry but that info is classified." The other 2 guards say at the same time, clearly scowling at the now injured guard.
"I wish to meet with your overseer. Or at least talk to them through radio." Skyfire declares, receiving nervous glances from the guards.
Nodding, the guards lead Skyfire over to a intercom on the wall and press a small button on the speakers frame with their muzzle. "Overseer, sir. An Enclave exile is here, he wishes to speak with you." the guard whispers, voice only now losing its conviction and revealing that this guard is a young mare, probably not been a guard for long.
"Ma`am, how long have you been in your vaults guard unit? You seem rather effective at disguising your voice. So, would you kindly take me to see your overseer?" Skyfire asks, placing great emphasis on the words "would you kindly".
"Y, yes. Right away sir!" she replies and hurriedly brings Skyfire to the overseers office via the maintenance tunnels that run through the bottom of this vault.
