Chapter 4, Medic!

In only a few hours, team 4, all but disbanded. One of them was close to kicking the bucket, at the hoofs of another member of the team no less. Member which because of his action earned the distrust of the rest, making matters worse one member, the enclave sniper Optic disappeared during their first battle, and no one can remember if she even fired a single shot. They were in a city that they knew little to nothing about, and the things they knew only helped in lowering the moral.

The city itself was under the rule of a raider overlord, and just to make things even more surreal, the raiders seemed to be more eloquent and smart than most wastelanders, and the scary thing was that they were just as fierce, savage, and aggressive as their more common counterparts.

So right now, our five adventurers, one of which unconscious, are being lead by three raider towards what they could best guess was a rival raider compound, where they would probably have to fight in order to get the medical supplies they need.

After about an hour, or two, of traveling through even more similar streets, they finally reached their destination, a small raider compound. A big warehouse, a large dinner or restaurant, and a ruined burned building, surrounded by a chainlink fence with barbed wire on top of it, and two makeshift scrap watch towers watching over everything.

True to their word, the group let the raiders go, not actually caring about future consequences of their actions. With them gone the group could focus on the task at hoof and nothing else.

Across the street from the compound, an almost intact two-story house stood. After opening the front door, and briefly checking for traps they made their way to the second floor to get a better view of the compound, and the ponies living inside.

“Two in the warehouse, two in the towers, one sniper on the roof,” Bright Flush said.

“I think there are at least these many more inside,” Solance added.

“How do you know?” Rapid asked him.

“It would make sense if you think about it,” was his reply. “So what should we do? Just hang back here and gun them down?”

“I will sneak in the back and take down the sniper, quietly,” Bright Flush said already planning the way he was going to enter.

“I will go to the roof and shoot them from there,” Rapid added.

“Ugh, I am going to stay here there, take some shots at them and I think Gallant should stay here as well, its safer.”

“Yeah, I am not going to let you alone with her,” Black Tea told Solance.

Each of them, knowing what they wanted to do, and having a vague idea what the rest were doing moved into position and waited for Bright Flush to either kill everypony, or to get caught.

It started well enough. Bright Flush moved around the raider base, keeping at least a house between him and the compound, until he reached what he believed to be a blind spot in their defense, with a flap of his wings he went over the chainlink fence, crossed the empty lot, and landed on the roof without making as much as a sound. Slowly he crept closer and closer to the unsuspecting sniper pony. Keeping low to the ground and using what seemed like a mixed of training and natural instinct, he moved within pouncing range of the unsuspected pony, and…

“What the?!” the pony turned around to see the fierce white and pink hippogriff just a few feet away from him, sword drawn, and murderous intent in his eyes.

“Fuck,” he managed to say before Bright Flush pounced on him, stabbed him, but the pony managed to avoid being hit in a vital spot. He grabbed onto Bright Flush and the two of them plummeted to the ground from the roof of the warehouse. Luckily, it seemed that the hippogriff new a thing or two about aerial combat and he managed to make sure that the pony was the first one to hit the ground, cushioning his own fall.

Two ponies armed with varmint rifles came out of the window and aimed their guns at him, but, before they could pull the trigger one of them received three pairs of twin lasers to the chest, dropping from his window, dead. Two crossbow bolts from the same building and his companion joined him.

Taking advantage of the window of opportunity Solance and Rapid created for him, Bright Flush charged one of the raiders keeping watch from the watchtower, but a shotgun butt to the face knocked him off balance enough for the raider to turn his gun towards him.

That would have meant the end of one brave pink griffin, if not for the actions of a brave white mare. In an act of badass, almost suicidal bravery, Black Tea teleported inside the small watchtower, wrestled the gun out of the raiders hooves, and with all her telekinetic might she threw the shotgun back at him, knocking him of the tower, and onto a rusty bed of nails, impaling him, and killing him on the spot, before handing Bright Flush a hoof to help him get up.

“Oi, boss! Wake up!” the raider standing in the other tower yelled. “We’ve got a bunch of assholes in our base!” A loud shotgun shot from him made sure any raider not aware of them yet, would be coming for our blood.

From within the burned building a dark figure flew out, in less than a second the a rather bulky black pegasi raider, hovered in front of Black Tea, and with a maniacal grin pulled the lever on his flamer and a stream of highly pressurized gas spew from the nuzzle, ignited by a tiny flame and started to burn the brave mare to death.

Driven by adrenaline, pain, and limitless anger [9], Black Tea, still burning, moved closer so that the long nuzzle of the flamer stood to her side, and from point blank fired her red hot .22 SMG into the pegasus face, dropping him instantly.

“THAT WAS MY FAVORITE SUIT!” she yelled, trigger still being squeezed by her magic, and bullets continuing to lodge themselves into the more than dead pegasus.

As this was going on, two more raider came to the window and because the ponies in the tower were just out of sight they started shooting at the two obvious ponies in the house across the street.

Noticing them, with a flick of his horn, Solance casted his shield spell, but only this time he made it take the shape of the wall, letting the window open so that he could shoot back. Rapid took a shot at them, but the just bolt hit the wall.

The ponies in the window opened fire with their service rifles, putting down a barrage of bullets aimed at both ponies with surprising accuracy.

“Aaaa!” Rapid yelled as half a dozen bullets hit him, making him drop his crossbow and crawl towards the roof access hatch, bleeding the entire way.

Solance for his part did not even notice the bullets, between the wall, and his shield, despite not having any armor, the bullets hurt less than a shot from a BB Gun, the wild shotgun shot from the raider sentry did even less, the buckshot not even piercing the wall.

As Rapid continued to drag his injured body downstairs, Solance returned fire, turning one of the raiders to ash, as the other ducked for cover.

“Rapid!” he yelled as he saw the nearly dead pony shambling into the room. “Fuck, get over there besides Gallant.”

He moved towards the ruined couch that Gallant was laying unconscious on, and after tearing some of the fabric he managed to at least stop some of the bleeding, while Solance continued shooting at the raiders across the street. Bright Flush pulled out his revolver, took a few shots at the pony in the other tower, grazed him twice before having to duck down to reload.

A mixture fancy shooting from Bright Flush’s revolver, and a multitude of twin laser beams from Solance’s saddle took out the last raiders, Black Tea helped as well, but most of her bullets were aimed at the dead pegasus, until the clip of the SMG ran out, then to add insult to injury she took his flamethrower and made it her own.

“We should check the the buildings,” Bright Flush said as the ponies entered the compound, except for Solance and Gallant. He decided to stay behind to act as a look out, while Gallant had very little say in the matter.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Black Tea added following the Griffin towards the warehouse entrance.

The warehouse was old, even by wasteland standards, built with brick rather and iron and sheet metal, it had at least one windowed floor, and two entrances. One was a large wooden door that did not seem to have been open in over two centuries, while the other, and a smaller pony-sized side door.

Bright Flush moved toward the door, his back to the wall, and lifted his gun up, ready to kick the door open and go in gun blazing, all he needed was a fedora and a trenchcoat and he would have looked like one of those griffins from those pre-war crime novels, Ugly Hairy, or something like that.

“The’re all dead,” Black Tea told him as she just opened the door and took a step in only to be meet with a barrage of gunfire, only Bright Flush’s quick reaction pulling the mare out of the line of fire saved her life.

“Fuck!” she cried out applying pressure to her new wounds.

The griffin peaked around the doorway, took a couple of wild shots before turning to the rest of the group.

“Three guys, maybe four,” he yelled out, hidden behind some crates. “Rifles all of them, if we could...” he paused and took a look at the state of the two unicorns next to him. Both Rapid and Black Tea were shot up pretty bad, and they had to use rags just to make sure they wouldn’t bleed out. They weren't in any state to siege a building.

“Nevermind I’ve got this. You two go to the kid and tell him to fire inside the building, that might just give me enough of a window to get in and find some cover,” he said as he took a few more blind shots into the building, not even looking where he fired.

The two of them just nodded and made their way towards Solance and Gallant.

The colt just nodded and started firing inside the building, two-three double laser rays enter through the window every few seconds, and one even managed to hit a raider that was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Taking advantage of the distraction he was being provided, Bright Flush entered the building and took cover behind some crates, and instantly killed one of the raiders. A lucky laser beam hit the crate two of them were using for cover and disintegrated it entirely giving him a clean shot, two bullets later all that could be heard was the sound of the magical energy saddle firing into the building, but no gunshots.

“Hold your fire!” Bright Flush yelled, and the compound went completely silenced.

A quick, but a lot more attentive check of the other building yielded some promising results three healing potions, some dirty water, and a few cans of prewar food.

Both Black Tea and Rapid rushed towards the potions, but found the little glass bottles yanked out of their grasp by the purple aura of Solance’s magic.

“What the fuck kid!” Black Tea yelled in annoyance. “Give them here!” All her ladylike manerism were long since gone.

“Yeah, what gives?” Rapid added while Bright Flush just had his tallon at the ready on the draw just in case it got ugly.

“Look before you go about chugging healing potions like your lives depended on it hear me out,” he wasn’t the most social of talkers. “There are the only options we have, and Celestia knows when we would get more, so we need to make them last...”

“I have like ten bullet holes in me,” Rapid plainly said.

“I have that and I am burned all over!” Black Tea yelled. “If you think I am...”

“Would you shut the fuck up and let me finish! Look, if instead of drinking the potion you soak bandages in it, and then apply them to the wounds it would have the same results, it may take a couple of minutes, but you can make at least two healing bandages from each potion.”

“Oh, so that’s how they're made,” Rapid said mostly to himself.

“Right,” Solance continued, “we need something resembling clean fabric to tear apart and make bandages, and then let them soak in the potion, we should be able to make five, maybe six from what we have on hoof.”

“What?” Black Tea asked noticing that Solance was looking at her.

“We need clean fabric.”

“And?” she asked before realizing what he meant. “No. Fuck no!” she yelled at him. “You ain’t tearing my suit to pieces. Fuck that.”

“Okay,” Solance said turning around. “I guess we could use whatever rags the raiders use for Celestia knows what, I just hope they are not covered in diseases or fleas. But hey, I am not going to be the one applying them to open wounds, or to sensitive burned skin.”

Only Bright Flush could see the smile Solance actually had on his face when he said those words, and the griffin could not help but smile, internally that is, the words you manipulative little asshole came to mind.

A shiver came across the mare as the image of a flea infested, disease piece of cloth, that some raider used to wipe their tears or other bits, being wrapped around her delicate, elegant physique, and also across her innocent pretty face came into her mind. And, without a single word, she took off what remain of her once elegant suit, now little more than tinder except for the piece covering her back, and tossing it to the colt.

“Thank you, how very generous,” Solance said as he poured the contents of the bottles of potion into an empty tin can, and, after rippling what was left of the suit right in front of its previous owner, he shoved the strippes of material into the same can, and allowed the fabric to absorb the healing liquid. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.”

While waiting for the bandages to be ready for use, Black Tea took a sit next to Gallant’s unconscious body and started gently stroking her mane, calming herself down in the process, Rapid continued work on the de-raiderfied raider armor, while Solance and Bright Flush went out to see if there was anything of value left in the compound, and to take whatever useful things the raiders may still have on them.

“Okay kid, tell me this,” Bright Flush said to Solance as they were searching the boxes in the warehouse, well out of earshot of the rest. “Why did you decide to help us? And don’t give me any of that higher force bullshit, cause I aint buying it.”

“You want the truth?” Solance asked opening a crate with his telekinesis.

“Of course.”

“Fine, the truth is that I don’t give two fucks if that mare lives of dies, it would make me feel better if she did.”

Bright Flush stopped searching and reached slowly drew his claw closer to his gun, keeping an eye on the colt.

“But,” Solance continued. “But, I didn’t want to die. Don’t get me wrong, if I got my shield up, I doubt that any of you could hurt a hair on my head.”

The griffin now had his claw firmly on the stock of the gun, and was getting ready to whip it out, and put two into the back of this arrogant little colt.

“But this city is dangerous, and I would probably die alone, and I didn’t want to take the chance. There is safety in numbers after all.”

“So that’s it?” Bright Flush said releasing the grip on his gun. “You helped us out cause you needed us?”

“Pretty much,” he replied moving onto the next box, completely oblivious to the danger his life as in. “As you said it I need you, and you guys need me. We are in this shithole together, and everypony we lose would reduce our chance of survival considerable.”

“Kid, I don’t know if I like you or not, but I think I trust you enough to not stab us in the back.”

“Nope, I alway stab in the front,” he said jokingly. “This place is a bust, most of the boxes are empty, or filled with garbage, literally. Lets take what they had on them, and see what we can do with it.”

“Right.”

“Also, Solance, my name is Solance, not kid.”

“Right...”