Cold is funny. It can freeze, it can burn, it’s one of the few things that draws energy from everywhere else. Lacking gunpowder, stick some dry ice in a cut and it’ll cauterize a wound… or, at the very least keep the pain down. For once, I was especially thankful for how very goddess-damned freezing it was tonight, I could barely feel my wings… even though the metallic shrapnel connecting with free nerve endings was a different story. It was so, well peaceful, actually - I didn’t feel like it was reality, even as each running step dug into deeper and deeper show, the warm breath from the unicorn laying unconcious on my back blowing against my neck and condensing into water, then ice, causing a thin film to develop on my mane. The hazy greenish glow slowly but surely drew larger as we approached towards it through the thick snowstorm, myself hardly able to really watch it from the wind and ice blasting in my face. Minty let off a soft moan - he’d been doing that for a while now. Come on you augmented bastard, don’t die on me…
 
“Just… a few… more… yards…” Grunting in pain, the road began to turn downhill, leading slowly towards the glowing spot of hope in the storm. My sight was still illuminated with warnings of broken bones and crippled limbs, warnings flashing every now and again telling me that I should find a doctor sooner than later. Well, no shit, you 200-year-old leg-computer. I’m surprised things like you even still work. I mean, glass screens and talismans aren’t exactly the strongest materials, let alone expected to survive an all-out war with bombs of megaspell scale… I’m talking to my Pip-buck. Before I had much time to question my slipping sanity, a new warning - meter, actually - came up in my view. Well, radiation, just fucking brilliant. One-half a rad per second… if this glow wasn’t Mooscow, then we were both pretty doomed to go the way of Mr Skritters. I stalled for a moment, listening to the faint clicking.
 
“Arrrgh, I forgot to ask about the coil!” Hoof met head met unicorn head, adn we both shared a soft grunt of pain, continuing on towards the glow down the road. I blinked a few times - is it getting brighter out? Dwah, I’m not going to question it, we need to keep moving. The little pointer on my display kept slowly creeping upwards, some patches along the road getting to as high as two rads per second - not dizzy yet, no sense in wasting a radaway just because I’m starting to get a bit hot as far as my geiger counter was concerned. It wasn’t long before shapes in the glow began to make themselves out; there was a barbed-wire fence on either side of the road here, small wrecks of carts and pony skeletons littering the roadside. I might have stopped to investigate if it wasn’t for the actual facility soon coming into view - behind a destroyed gate was what appeared to be a massive dome-like structure, surrounded by large concrete and steel circles. The whole area was illuminated in strange arcane lights, emitting enough heat to keep the snow from piling up around them. A fairly official-looking sign showed the name of this very strange pre-war facility, something that I took to reading, still feeling Minty’s warm breath on my neck and the heat from the lights around.
 
“N.E.A.M.O.: North Equestrian Artillery Megaspell Outpost? Huh?” I rubbed the back of my head, gnawing at my lower lip as Minty shifted, a quick spread of the wings… wing… keeping him from falling off. Barely. Artillery Megaspell… you mean, a cannon that fired Megaspell warheads? Or, some kind of crazy gun that used a megaspell to fire regular shells? Gah, pre-war technology can make no sense sometimes. While I wondered how big a breech it would take to hold in a megaspell detonation, a figure apparently had been trotting up from behind me, grunting in a gravelly voice that made both myself and Minty jump slightly. We turned to face the figure; his face and body was covered in an old piece of Equestrian Armed Forces combat armor, a long-barreled magnum levitated in a weak bluish field of magic, aimed at us. We stood there for a few moments, looking at each other, not wanting to flinch. I wasn’t just about to get myself killed - who would help Minty like this? The snow and wind whipped about us as we stood in the greenish glow, the ticking of the geiger counter down to it’s usual once-every-so-often click, the heat having allowed one of Minty’s wounds to open again. Blood began to drip onto the snow, something the masked figure seemed to notice. He lowered his gun, nodding towards both myself and my wounded friend, then began to turn.