Fallout: Equestria - Benchmark

Smoke, I could smell smoke. My eyes shot open as the thundering sound of the first explosion ripped through the quiet of what must have been early morning.

The fog in my head was drowned out by the sudden cacophony of automatic weapons and explosives from outside. I could hear screaming ponies, all suddenly awoken by the noise. I could hear Tracks shouting something, but it was muffled and I was too groggy to make it out.

Finally I managed to drag myself to the door of my shack, head spinning, in time to be blown forward by the force of another explosion. Splinters peppered my flanks and back as half of my shack was obliterated. I felt the flames lick at my tail as a tumbled forward, the air forced from my lungs as I tried to stand. I screamed as a sharp pain shot through my leg. I didn’t know if it was broken or just sprained. What I did know for sure was that it hurt, a lot.

My ears were ringing as I forced myself to move, where? I didn’t know, only that I had to get away from what ever was causing all of this.

I caught sight of the body of my neighbour. Half of him was missing, replaced with a scorched bleeding mess where his lower half used to be. It was then that it finally clicked in my hazy mind; we were under attack!

A sudden terrifying thought hit me as I began to look around franticly.
“EMBER!”
I called out desperately, as I limped towards where her shack was, or where was supposed to be. My heart stopped as I saw what remained of it. It must have taken a direct hit as that remained was a burning pile of scattered rubble.

I looked around frantically.
“No, no, no…”
I felt numb as another wave of explosions sounded at the other end of the town, a steady rhythmic thumping, each followed by an ear splitting BOOM.

I tried to dig into the rubble, but the fire around it was too intense. I yelped as a puff of flame licked at my shoulder, scorching my coat and forcing me to back away.

My rump hit the earth as another barrage of shots peppered the buildings next to me. I heard a mare scream and another volley of explosions as I stared into the flames.
A voice, far off in the chaos snapped me back to reality, a wonderfully familiar voice, one only an instant ago I had thought id never hear again.
“BENCH! BENCHMARK! Where are you? BE-”
Her words were cut off by another wave of gunfire and my heart froze again. My head snapped around to where it had come from, and I saw her. A small orange mare, silhouetted against the fire with tears streaming down her face. She was galloping towards me.

Relief flooded over me as she reached me, embracing me and holding me tight as yet another thunderous explosion demolished the building in front of us. The building had once acted as our school, hospital even as a jail at one point. Seeing it destroyed seemed to snap me out of my mental paralysis. “We have to go!”

With Ember supporting me, we half limped, half galloped away from the burning wreck of what, for so long, had been our home, and made for the relative safety of the darkness, away from the burning walls and shacks of Trackerton, and into the unknown of the wasteland.