"Yeah well, whoever you are, I just dispatched a verti-assault team to your location. Have a nice day."

"This is Angel one seven! We are going down in Stratusburg sector Alpha Tango seven niner! Mayday!"

Gone...

It was just... gone. Everything. Everypony... I've never seen so much fire in my life... Stratusburg's governing headquarters... it was there one minute, and gone the next... just consumed by the inferno, and-- Oh gods... I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched the entire structure collapse, right through the torn open cloud layer. The blast was so large, it even took down the vertibuck sent to try and contain the fire. A whole squad of pegasi... gone!

I sniffled, wiping my nose with a hoof as tears began to sting my eyes behind my visor. I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe, as the glow from the plummeting building slowly faded below the new crater in the cloudcover. So many ponies... my friends, my neighbors, my parents... Skies above, mom and dad! They're all gone...

The mare... she seemed innocent enough. It'd only been a week since I stepped off my family's sky chariot for my first ever assignment. I was at my post, with orders to check everypony's ID as they entered the HQ. That's when I saw her.

Oh, how am I going to explain this to everypony!? I couldn't help it, I had such a hard week! One embarrassing face plant in front of all the other recruits... and another in front of my superiors... within the first week, I had already earned the nickname 'Private Klutz!' I was just so tired and upset and... humiliated! I probably looked like a pitiful mess, because when she saw me standing guard, she asked if I was okay...

It... it meant a lot after the last few days.

I tried to say it wasn't a bother, but... I guess it was too obvious. I'll never forget what she said to me with that caring smile and silky voice as she tilted her head to let her pretty mane hang adorably over one side, "Well, that's just terrible! I don't think you're a klutz. Those ponies should be ashamed of themselves." And if that wasn't enough to warm my heart, she asked if we could talk more after my shift, maybe share a meal together in the mess hall! I felt like I was about to make my first actual friend in the Enclave!

She was so sweet and kind, and I was so excited that I-- I-I... I didn't think I'd need to ask for her identification... I managed to catch a glimpse at her flanks when she trotted by, elegantly swaying back and forth without a care in the world. She must not have realized her uniform had sagged a bit on one side...

Even then, I don't think I realized I'd just made the gravest mistake of my life, but my heart still sank to depths I didn't know possible, when I saw the brownish charred scars of a cloud and lightning bolt where her cutiemark should have been. I may have been fresh out of flight school, but I knew what that mark meant. I was about to chase after her, but... I second guessed myself. She didn't seem suspicious at all! She was sweet and conversational. And I... I didn't want to scare off the only friend I could possibly make here. Besides, it couldn't have been what I thought it was, right? Maybe... the light just made it look that way...

It only took a few minutes for it to happen. The shock wave actually blew me a good ten feet from the building. Celestia, if it wasn't for my power armor, she would have killed me too! She must have set it off at the base where the clouds were generated and where lightning powered the structure, as one explosion set off another in a devastating chain reaction that sounded like a continuous clash of bone rattling thunder.

I heard stories about Dashites, but... but THIS!? How could somepony have done that to so many innocent ponies!? Half the city worked in that building, and now... it's just gone!!! It was so loud... the screaming was so loud! And my parents... Gods, I was just talking to dad before my shift! Mom had told him to fix my armor again. They had a meeting with our Chancellor, and before he left, dad... he hugged me and told me how proud he was. It was so embarrassing in front of all the other recruits, but now... I'd give anything to wrap my hooves around him right now... but, I... I'm never going to see him or mom again, am I? And it's all my fault... Skies above, what have I done!?

"Sweep the area!"

I gasped sharply out of my daze as I heard the officer's stern voice shout through the thick fog of glowing ash, still floating above the clouds around us.

"I want all survivors brought to me for questioning!" He snarled.

Oh, I am SO dead... What the hay am I going to tell them!? I could just barely make out his handsome looking uniform and cap through the ash, occasionally covering his mouth with a wing as he coughed. He looked distraught, and lost in the smoke and ash, yet the intimidating pitch black fabric and silver trim of his uniform told me he was hellbent on holding whoever let this happen responsible.

"Report!" He coughed again, before scolding a group of power armored pegasi behind him. "I want a goddamned report! There was a mare on duty! I want her here like YESTERDAY!!!"

I winced, spreading my wings on sheer pegasus instinct as fright drenched my whole body. With a single flap, I was off my hooves, before several more zipped me behind a cloud big enough to hide behind. My ears perked as I heard their voices close in.

"Sir!" One of the soldier mares yelled. I peeked behind the cloud to see her just a few yards away, staring down the giant hole in the cloud cover. "What if she was killed in the blast!?"

The officer flew above with a look so fiery, he could have turned her to ash. "I said bring her to the barracks! I didn't say whether I want her alive or not! Somepony is going to pay for this!!! Head or no head!"

I watched them continue their search for me, until I swore one of their bug-like visors swiveled toward my hiding spot and looked right at me. I quickly ducked down, slapping a hoof over my mouth to quiet my breathing. But even that couldn't silence a petrified whimper from escaping my throat. I clenched my eyes and bit down on my hoof, praying that they didn't see me. Oh please, PLEASE tell me they didn't see me!

"Private Kluuuutz~" The soldiers began to tease as I heard their voices spread across the cloud layer. My heart beat like an off-tempo drum as I tucked my legs, wings and tail against my body and curled up in a pathetic ball.

Okay, think Sky! Once they're spread out enough, I can... escape...

E-escape? Escape to where!? It's not like they'll just give up searching for me here. They'll start showing my face on the news from here to Thunderhead! I'll be a fugitive. A Dashite! Oh crap! I don't wanna be a Dashite! But what am I going to do!? The only other place to go, is--

THUD!

The sound made me squeak in undiluted horror. Something... something just hit my cloud...

My eyes snapped open to see two pairs of flamingo pink hooves standing in front of me. Oh guardians, this is it! They found me and their gonna brand me! Every fiber from the tips of my hooves to my wing feathers anxiously trembled as my gaze traveled up the pony's dapperly dressed body. He was definitely a stallion... but he didn't seem to be military. He didn't wear any type of armor or uniform, but his black suit and tie absolutely screamed 'important pony', while his longer black overcoat, which successfully obscured his cutiemark, seemed to whisper back 'none of your business'. The silver E, wings, eyes and arch enclosed by a circle of stars of the Enclave government, was pinned tightly to his lapel. His gold eyes nearly glowed in the night, while his short and styled navy blue mane flapped against the smoky wind current. And his smirk... He was SMIRKING!!! Time felt as if it had disappeared as he stared down at me, remaining silent and almost... charming... It made me feel sick.

His smirk suddenly turned into a sneer. I was so paralyzed with panic that I hardly acknowledged that he'd actually spoken to me as he grabbed my hoof with his own and pulled me up with an aggressive yank. My lips finally quivered in response. "W-what?"

He rolled his eyes with a demeaning laugh. "You got feathers in your ears, darlin'? I said you better start flyin' or I reckon you'll make this too easy..." He gave my chest a hard push before pressing his forehoof to his ear. "Target spotted in sector 17..." My nerves were so shocked, it took me a moment to realize he was talking into an earpiece, and another to realize that this... was sector 17. I must have still looked like a frozen stuffed pigeon, because he looked back at me with his face nearly aghast. "You still here, feather brain? FLY!!!"

I took a step back, spreading my wings as if to follow his baffling order, but hesitated to commit. Tears began to fill my eyes again. I had so many questions, but my voice felt as if it were stuck in my chest. "W-where?" Was all my flat lungs were able to squeak.

The mysterious pegasus scoffed as he grabbed the back of my mane through my helmet, making me wince, as he pulled me in his suggested direction. "Where do you think?!"

My eyes widened to horrified saucers as I followed his forehoof to the giant crater. "Down... there!?" I was in disbelief. "N-no... No no no! I can't just--!"

I was suddenly cut off by the stallion throwing me further towards the daunting exit. A one way ticket to the surface. To the wasteland! I tripped over my hooves and face planted, as several more thuds landed on the cloud behind us. I nervously raised my head to see the officer and soldiers from before, galloping passed him to aim their magical energy battlesaddles at me. "Just who do you think you are, cadet?!" The officer jeered. "You're in a whole heap uh'trouble!"

The suited pink pegasus suddenly laughed. "Well what are you waiting for, Captain?" His wing put a cigarette between his smug lips, striking a match to light it with his pinions. "Brand that traitor already."

...t-t-traitor?!

My heart stopped as every fiber of my being seemed to snap into place. The turmoil of emotions were suddenly replaced by one focus. One choice... Fly... or die. I twisted back to my hooves and leapt into the air.

"OPEN FIRE!!!" Was the last thing I heard through the vortex of adrenaline pulsing through my head. The wind beat unforgivingly against my visor, my mane and tail flapping in my wake, as I dove through the crater. I thrashed my wings relentlessly as they pushed me at a speed I didn't know possible until now. I couldn't even see where I was going. I had no direction or strategy but to just fly down. I didn't care if I slammed into the ground and broke my neck... I just had to keep flying down! I felt cold and empty... believing I wouldn't even notice if I were hit. That naïve belief shattered around me with the rest of reality as I felt the electric burn of crystalized energy strike the back of my head. And just like that, the whole world turned black as I fell into its dark abyss...

"Ow! Owowowowow!!!" I stirred awake to the base of my left wing twitching from a painful crunch.

Agh! I hate wing cramps! Must have tweaked it in my sleep during my... M-my nightmare...

I tried to stretch my wing, but all that did was elicit an agonizing holler as its joint was struck with more pain. "M-mom? Ow! My wing is cramping up again!" I cried out, while making an excruciating effort to fold the appendage back to my side. Yeah... I'm NOT flying anywhere anytime soon. I better take today off. Hope Captain Short Fuse doesn't mind too badly...

I gave a defeated groan at that thought. Who am I kidding? With a name like Short Fuse...

I waited for Mom to come rushing in with her tender voice to ask if I was okay... or for Dad to make some embarrassing comment about preening my feathers more often... but, when nopony answered my cry, I opened my eyes to see--

"Gyaaaah! AAHH!" I was greeted by a uniform... a captain by the look of the two silver bars on her handsome looking black uniform with its silver trim and matching cap. I instantly tried jumping out of bed, but... wait... Why am I on the floor? I shook that thought away as soon as it came, instead focusing on snapping to attention. But... for some reason, my armor was harder to move...

Oh crap, did I fall asleep in my armor? Ugh! Doesn't matter Sky Bliss! Just salute the Captain before you get punished even worse! Probably fell asleep on duty again, you klutz!

"Private Klu-- Grrr! Sky Bliss reporting... ma-am?" I gave a confused blink when I realized... she wasn't standing.

She... O-oh... Oh no... Gods, she's dead! My heart sank with grief as I stared wide eyed at her cold and lifeless body. O-oh crap! W-what's going on? This... this is morbid! She was laying down against a bunch of rocks with her neck... It... it looked like it had snapped at a rather excruciating angle.

It was so terrible, it-- ...wait... ROCKS?!

I looked around, only to realize that I was no longer on the fluffy cloud layer of Stratusburg... Just rocks, dirt, and... Oh gods... OH GODS!!! Everything from the HQ's destruction to me falling from the clouds, came rushing back to my memory. I shuddered as more glowing embers and toxic smoke clouded my senses. I coughed into my forehoof and fanned the smoke away with my right wing, while my left remained useless and crippled against my side.

Where the hay am I?

I decided to trot forward to get my bearings... or at least I tried to. It became harder and harder to move with every step. I chalked it up to my own exhaustion at first, but when a red warning flashed in front of my HUD, I knew it was something... bad.

POWER LEVEL CRITICAL!

That... can't be good...

My power core must have taken damage when they shot me. And my wing... I must have landed on it pretty bad when I fell. Oh, why do rocks have to be so... hard?! It doesn't only hurt when you crash into them, but... jeez, the ground feels so uncomfortable under my hooves. Nothing compared to the soft clean cloudcover. And who would have thought that dirt would be so... dirty! I groaned in both disgust and pain as I trotted further through the smoke. I had no idea where I'd landed, but I got a pretty good hint when my forehoof suddenly reached out to a terrifying emptiness.

"W-woah!" I wobbled forward, nearly losing my balance before backtrotting away from the edge of... whatever part of Equestria I apparently landed in. Because that's exactly what it looked like as the smoke cleared enough for me to peer out at the horizon. The sun was completely covered by our cloudcover, so I couldn't tell whether it was dusk or dawn. I last remembered it being night, but... who knows how long I've been out. I was undoubtedly on the surface, but... everything was still up high as I looked down on Equestria below me, complete with charred fields, dead grass and ruined buildings that poked above the horizon like jagged teeth.

Was I... on a mountain?

I looked up to see the hole in the cloudcover still there. I must have drifted for miles before I finally hit the ground. Directly below it was what looked like some kind of run down shack village, set ablaze by... Oh gods, that's the Stratusburg HQ! It looks like it's still partly intact! Maybe my parents are still alive! I spread my wings, ecstatic to fly down there and search for them, when--

"Ow! Damnit!" Right... broken wing... really hurts... NOT flying... I'm gonna have to get to that village another way. They could be hurt, or... or worse! But, there's no way I'll be able to make it down this mountain with my power armor locking up. And with no way to repair it, I'm gonna have to leave it behind sooner or later.

I coughed again as I turned towards the source of the smoke, prompting me to gasp as shock hit me like an angry storm cloud. "Angel one seven..." I said with a gloomy whisper as I came across the burning vertibuck wreckage. Several bodies of armored pegasi laid around the debris, and... just like the officer, they were all dead. These pegasi, however, appeared to have met a much more gruesome end than their captain. By the look of how their power armor had all been fried to a crisp, if the impact didn't kill them, then I had no doubt that the fires did. I despairingly slapped a hoof to my mouth as I saw that one of the soldier's helmets had been knocked from her head, allowing her hallow eye-sockets to forever stare at the pony who helped cause her death. Me...

I... I think I'm gonna be sick...

I tried to backtrot away, but my armor had nearly locked from the lack of power, and I ended up falling on my haunches. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but my armor wouldn't even allow me that. "I'm... I'm sorry..." I whimpered, "I didn't mean to! I-I was just-- I'm so... so sorry..."

I'm not sure how long I sat there... but, in all the time I was there, I found it impossible to tear my eyes away from the carnage, or stop apologizing to ponies who had long since lost the ability to hear me do so. The thought of even being partly responsible for this... it made my stomach twist and my chest ache. I could have sat there until I starved, but something inside me, a familiar voice, demanded that I suck up my blubbering. I found the little pony inspiring, as she always had been when I was a foal, and with another shuddering sigh, I slowly began taking off my armor before it locked me in completely. I peeled the leg plating away first. After that, I was able to move much easier, moving to my flanks and chest plate. I had to be careful with my back so to not injure my wing anymore than it already was. But, when my hooves began lifting my helmet off...

"OW! What the--? Why did that hurt?" The back of my neck felt as if something molten had welded my hide to my helmet. I quickly trotted over to the front of the vertibuck, seeing that the right windshield was still intact. Thank the skies for small favors, I guess... After getting as close as I could to the glass... Well... the reflection it showed me was NOT what I was expecting.

I gave a mournful gasp as I saw the awful result of getting shot by a beam rifle. My once longer and styled mane would usually stick out the top of my helmet and droop over the side of my face. Now... the lavender and magenta hairs were singed beyond repair. The blast was direct to the back of my head, and nearly butchered everything exposed from it. I sniffled, tears once again welling in my eyes. The once pretty and cute and... rather unsoldierly style, was a bit embarrassing compared to the cooler and butch manes of the more hardened troopers... but mom had worked so hard on getting it nice... and now it's completely destroyed!

With a painful scream, I pulled my helmet off, taking a patch of my neck with it as I cringed from both pain and the natural light stinging my pink irises. I tried to ignore the blood dripping down my ghostly purple coat, no doubt leaving a permanent scar behind, as I got a better look at the damage.

My once long sweeping forelock that hung down passed my shoulders was gone, replaced by short and uneven spikey bangs that couldn't even hang passed my eyes. The back of my mane was even worse, singed and messy. I used my hooves to try and style it as best I could, but the only form I could get it in was a somewhat organized chaos, with... -sigh- ...more spikes. At least I had a little bit of mane left to hang off my neck, but... gods, I look like--

I paused, blinking at my reflection in disbelief.

I look just like my sister...

I sniffled, trying to ignore the tight feeling of grief in my chest. Sky Vapor... well... Let's just say I felt I had big horseshoes to fill after we got her devastating telegram. She was one of the most talented fliers in all of Stratusburg. Probably could have became a Wonderbolt if she wanted to. Meanwhile, I barely passed the flight exam. I was an... amateur flier at best. Which was a huge disappointment to my drill sergeant. Apparently, Sky Vapor's portrait is hanging up in the hall of fame somewhere with one of Stratusburg's fastest flight course records. Yet, when I finished the course, I was rewarded with, 'You're a fucking embarrassment to the Enclave, cadet!' Even her cutiemark set the bar pretty high after shooting through all the clouds around us so fast, she turned them to vapor! (-ahem- hence her name, heh... funny how that works out.) It was awesome! I, meanwhile, got mine after hugging a cloud. One cloud. Nothing special or magic about it. Just a big, soft, fluffy and (in my defense) an incredibly-comfy-to-hug cloud.

I instinctively looked back at the heart and cloud on my flanks, conflicted in both embarrassment for it being so girly and relief that it hadn't been branded off... yet. Unsoldierly was one thing, but now that I'm down here... in the wasteland... I'm probably about the weakest looking thing out here... And without my armor, I'd get torn apart by... who knows whatever is watching me!

I was ready to start another round of mournful sobs, when a strange sound suddenly caught my ears. I knitted my brow as I tried to make out what it was. It took my senses to recover a bit before I recognized the tinny ambiance of pianos, guitars, and drums echoing around the mountainside. It was... music. Not the usual patriotic orchestra music of Enclave radio, but... actual songs.

I wasn't exactly in the mood for music, but my ears betrayed me anyway and unconsciously perked, forcing me to listen to the final beats of the song. The melancholy tune just made me want to cry some more... but the little Sky Vapor pony in my head told me to cheer up. It was hard, but... I managed to hold back anymore tears for the remainder of the song. I looked to where it was coming from, but the source only drew my gaze back to the dead captain. Even in death, the officer was still intimidating. She was the only pony spared from the fire...

I guess she'd flown through the left windshield on impact and broken her neck. I solemnly trotted back over to her, only to follow her eternal empty stare, still longing for a radio just feet from her outstretched forehoof. The same radio she was screaming into when the vertibuck went down.

Did she switch frequencies at the last second? Was... was this music the last thing that she and her squad heard? Whatever she did, her actions were probably what saved the radio from the crash, her own body likely absorbing the impact, even after it looked to have been ripped clean from the vertibuck's console in the cockpit.

The song finally began to fade behind the radio's speakers, only to be replaced by--

"Good morning, wastelanders! This is DJ Pon3! With today's musical wake-up call!"

Author's Note

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! For those who read this in Alphabet Soup, you probably noticed that this is only half of the chapter I originally posted. The reason is that I'm gonna try to organize it a bit more with the advantage of having multiple chapters, along with a few edits to hopefully make it a little easier to read. The second half will be updated shortly after a quick proofread.

As for regular updates for this story after that... I'm gonna try my best.

As always, if you can leave some feedback on my work so I can improve my writing, that'd be awesome!