Fallout Equestria: Old World Dreams

by KDarkwater

Chapter 1

Darkness. Silence.

Now a faint, steady thrum in the air.

Head swimming in empty, wordless thoughts, desiring only to return to nothingness.

But a spark refused to yield to the darkness, and began to ignite into a flame. Neurons and higher brain functions began to stir from rest, and the ignorant oblivion of deep sleep began to recede from her mental grasp. Slowly, reluctantly, her body began to respond, legs sliding about beneath the comforters in aimless stretches as their aches and tension became too much to bear. Her head, still desperate to escape the coming of the light, began to burrow into her pillows.

In an instant a blinding white light attacked her eyes through her eyelids, a sharp stinging prick that reached back into her brain and quickened its awakening. Her revitalizing thoughts began to take coherent form, carrying words into her subconscious. Bed. Slight rattle in the air vent. A misfiring stream of energy in the light panel above. Mane frayed and rustled through a night of her body tossing about in her sleep.

Now she was awake. Sort of.

Her mouth cursed the timing mechanism of her bedroom with unkind words as she oozed herself out from beneath the warm embrace of her blankets, fell to the carpeted floor with a soulless thud. Though awake, her body still refused to submit to the commands and desires of her energizing brain. Only with great effort was her nervous system able to get her rear legs to prop themselves up and began pushing the rest of her uncooperative body along the floor. A meek voice wondered silently how silly she must have looked with her rump being the only part of her actually standing up.

The door whirred open with a hiss of hydraulic pressure, and her muddled senses barely acknowledged the slotted recess in the floor as she scooted through the doorway. They only knew that her brain desired to move in this particular direction, and that something good waited for her if she got there. So her legs pushed onward, shifting to the left to make a crude right turn, and then shifting back behind her to continue the journey. A steamy thought strayed from her enclosed memories, recalling several rather enjoyable minutes of her life the last time she assumed this position when she was awake enough to do it willingly.

Within moments, however, even this raunchy effort by her brain to rejuvenate her body was stifled by her arrival at her destination. Her nose touched upon the cool, thick cushioning of a large bean bag chair, and then her body was tumbling itself over onto its side in order to land in the middle of the bag. The bean bag chair’s magic touch began to turn her body into weighted lead once more; pulling her brain back into the dulled, quiet mass of organic matter it had been five minutes earlier. Her limbs felt the release of relaxing chemicals seeping into the rest of her body, and her mind finally succumbed to the incessant, physical desire of her body to ignore the world for just a while longer.

Just five more minutes…

Her ears flicked wildly the moment they heard the door pull itself open behind her.

Holy stars Mom was awake!! This was so cool and so strange, Mom never woke up when her room lit up at the pre-programmed time every morning! Never! She thought she’d have to go and wake her up with the pans again, but now she could just put the things up and surprise Mommy with her favorite blueberry pancakes and apple juice and fresh buttered toa—

WHUMP!

…nevermind, she corrected herself, feeling her excitement die almost as suddenly as the sound of a pony’s body hitting its favorite napping spot. With a disappointed sigh she refocused her telekinesis spell, the effort itself little more than a half second’s afterthought, and soon two well-worn sauce pans were in her magical grasp. Sometimes it was funny, but this morning it was just…sad. She wanted to see Mom’s face light up with glee when she saw her favorite breakfast waiting for her at the table. She did not want to see that confused, terrified, wide-eyed stare that popped up when she had to be scared into waking up, even if it made her laugh.

And she calls me lazy?! She huffed mentally as she silently shifted around and began creeping up towards her mother with the two beaten sauce pans.

As was the case every time she had to do this, she found it hard to resist the urge to just put the pans up and let Mom sleep. She looked so happy when she curled up in her bean bag chair like that, even had her face buried into it this time. Her indigo mane was such a mess, but her teal blue coat was barely ruffled. And she looked soooo comfortable…

Any other day, the urge to just give up and let her be late for work might have won out, but the warm, sweet scent of the blueberry pancakes gave her enough incentive to go ahead and do the cruel thing. And so she sat down on her hindquarters and with one slight alteration to her levitation spell, swiftly smashed the sauce pans into each other about an inch away from Mom’s head.

It was hard not to be amused at the reaction, so she didn’t fight it. Her squealing laughter echoed off the steel walls alongside the harsh clang of the sauce pans as her mother’s body went from slumbering to shooting straight up and off of her bean bag, crying and shouting in garbled words for about four feet before coming back down—

WHUMP!

—and the look on Mom’s face was, as always, simply priceless. The frightened eyes, the heavy, terrified breathing, the rapidly swishing tail made it too easy to laugh at her misfortune in her presence. It helped that Mom liked hearing her laugh and enjoy herself, but usually not at her expense.

And she was always quick to point that out. “El-Tee!! How many times now?!”

Even Mom’s angry roar couldn’t dull the volume of her high-pitched chuckles. “Two hundred and sixteen!” she announced with a massive grin, promptly trotting back to the cabinets to put away her “Wake Up Mom” tools. “Ya flew higher than Miss Teakettle’s cat that one time when she stepped on his tail!”

“Then you are grounded for the two hundred and sixtee—“ Mom began to threaten ominously, her bean bag muffling the sound of her four legs pushing her body up into a standing position. They stopped moving entirely once her nose began sniffing at the air and picked up the scent of the one thing that would make her stop in her tracks. “…are those…actual blueberries? In a pancake?”

“With fresh toast and apple juice!” she answered proudly. By then she’d deftly slipped the dinged, dented cooking pans into the cabinet and slid the door shut, and began hopping over to her side of the gunmetal gray table. “Was gonna get some buttered hot rolls to go with it, but we didn’t have the ingredients for it, so…”

As usual, however, Mom was not paying particularly close attention to her, but rather to what was in front of her. She had managed the impressive feat of slithering from her bean bag chair to the pile of cushions on her side of the table, grabbing hold of a fork with a levitation spell and poking at the warm pancake and the slice of melting butter sitting atop its doughy surface to ensure that it was real.

“….I guess the lack of hot rolls can be your punishment this time,” Mom relented at last, setting the fork back onto the table, next to her plate. “Stars, it’s been six months since I got to nibble on a blueberry anything.”

Lie, she knew almost immediately. Her mother would probably tell her she couldn’t have that apple snack she liked to have every afternoon after school. But sitting here on her plush cushions, watching Mom’s face light up as the scent of the baked blueberries wafted up into her brain through her nostrils, watching all the monotony and stress of the daily life of a grown-up in a Stable fade away with the simple scent of a decent breakfast, she got this odd feeling of contentment and decided that missing an apple a day for a week was probably worth it. Now all she had to do was figure out how to stay a filly so she wouldn’t need pick-me-ups all the time.

“Well, dig in then!” she prodded gently from across four feet of table, matching words with action as she delicately lifted a butter knife and a fork to her own breakfast. “That pancake won’t eat itself!”

One scrumptious breakfast later, she was seeing her filly off to the one-room school on the eighth level of the Stable, mildly distracted with the incredible ease at which the child could escape punishment by making one feel like complete dirt for doing it. She could still taste the sharp, hot blueberries in her mouth. The kid could cook! Better than she could, sadly. How could such a smart little filly be so content to stay in a classroom where she was probably three grade levels ahead of all the other children and bored to death for nearly eight hours at a time?

The answer’s obviousness smacked her in the snout when she got to watching her Light Tail bounce away down the hall with nary a care in the world. Why, because she sees how miserable I am coming back to quarters from work every day and realizes growing up isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

“Be good this time!” she called out after her only daughter, her eyes briefly overwhelmed by the streak of electric blue in the little filly’s indigo tail as it swished upward in a wild arc. “Another stunt like last week and I’ll never hear the end of it!”

“Bye, Mom!” the child shouted back over her shoulder, likely purposefully ignoring her warning. “Try not to go mad at work!”

“Insufferable child,” she muttered under her breath as she set the lock code for her living quarters. Still, the kid wasn’t all bad. Blueberry pancakes and muffins. Couldn’t beat that.

And she worries for my sanity when everypony else just takes it as the way things go.

But then, that was Stable life. Living in a massive underground fallout shelter with no contact with the outside world had taken its toll over the decades. Air recyclers that once ran quietly without a hitch now sputtered and rumbled loudly as the maintenance techs salvaged every usable piece of scrape and metal possible to keep them running. Their steady supply of water purification talismans had dwindled to a small fraction of their former numbers; there was talk of more extreme rationing measures being discussed or contemplated within the next two years to stretch out what was left. The number of repair bots had dwindled as replacement parts were used up—only two were left from the Stable’s original twenty-five roughly two centuries earlier. The ones that broke down beyond repair were taken apart and used to keep other vital systems going.

Keeping oneself amused was also rather difficult. She’d read all the books in the tiny library several times over, even the boring ones. And one could only take so much chess, poker, and blackjack before losing interest in it for a time. She wouldn’t even get started on the in-Stable broadcasts of the same thirty-odd songs it started with when its massive door sealed shut.

This left procreation. But the first time she’d indulged in it during her last year of school, she ended up bringing her filly into the steel gray world of the Stable, and she learned the hard way why one shouldn’t be so carefree and wild about it. Still, it turned out to be the best blessing she could ask for in this depressing life. At times she felt more like an older sister than a mother, and she couldn’t decide whether that was wrong or not.

But as long as Light Tail kept making her laugh and smile just by existing and doing the things she did, she didn’t really care in the end. So what if half the Stable thought she was a terrible, undisciplined mother with the mating morals of a whore? The little filly behaved herself quite well most times—the only trouble she got into was when her “cutie mark crusading” got out of hand and wrecked stuff. Like last week when she thought her destiny might’ve been as the Stable clown and tried to prank Wheat Hooves’ colt with a firecracker in the boys’ lavatory (with predictably messy results). Or two months before that, when her attempts to re-arrange the library in record time wound up misplacing two-thirds of the unicorn history section into the fiction section and mixing up the earth and pegasus history sections so badly that the library index actually had to be dragged out to begin the arduous process of putting everything in place. Parchment was still looking for that book on herbal and natural remedies and two of the three books they had from the Daring Do series. Light Tail’s favorite books, no less.

And she had to admit, despite the problems that sprung from Light Tail’s antics, she was always looking forward to hearing the next crazy thing she’d no doubt be doing at some point in a week. And her job as the Stable armorer and quartermaster was about as unexciting a position as one could get in the security department. Mind-numbingly boring forms and “paperwork” whenever guards checked their gear in and out using terminals with barely functional commlinks to the central mainframe, sporadic drills with “snap caps” in their small arms arsenal because they couldn’t afford to waste ammunition for mere target practice, time-consuming detail stripping of weapons for function inspection and replacement of worn or cracked parts, or periodic inspection of their ammunition stores for aging or corroded rounds to take out of duty rotation.

Oh stars, how she wished for something that would actually offer an interesting change of pace from one day to the next. As it was, life in a Stable was all about monotony and lack of change. Because changes usually meant something had gone horribly wrong, thus endangering the Stable’s ability to sustain its population.

So if she lived the rest of her life without some major change affecting the flow of things, she could at least die in the knowledge that she had actually lived. Maybe not an exciting or important life, but a life all the same.

So secure and orderly was her routine that she’d even managed to make it to the armory without ever really paying attention to where she was going—before she knew it was happening, she was stepping through the door with an absent-minded telekinetic tapping of her entry code into the terminal on the wall. The front room of the “armory” itself wasn’t much bigger than the living room/kitchen of her own living quarters—the counter three feet away from the door was enclosed with high-grade security grating, with a slot in the bottom at the counter where armored barding, batons, and ammmunition (only by the Overmare’s order) could be slipped between guard and quartermaster. Imbedded beneath the counter was a drop box where sidearms would be deposited once the guard had signed for his gear if a pistol was handed out, and where they were returned when he checked them back in. Ammunition and sidearm were never transferred across the counter together. She never thought to ask why—these were simply the procedures she’d been taught by the previous quartermaster, and that’s what she went with.

She trotted around the counter to the side-gate entrance, stopping just long enough for her telekinesis to slip her iron key into the lock and twist it sideways before pushing the fenced door open with a light push of her head. Once inside the enclosed alcove the door clicked shut behind her, and she dropped the key back into her Stable suit pocket and took a few moments to give the Stable’s arsenal a quick visual inspection.

Four racks of 10mm semi-automatic pistols near the front of the counter, ten per rack for a total of forty sidearms, one for every guard in the Stable. None of them had any serious issues beyond the unavoidable effects of time and holster wear on their exterior finishes, though pistols #15 had a rather large crack in its age-hardened wooden grip when Stick Shift dropped it down a flight of stairs last month chasing down “Crazy” Moonshine again. Rose Glade thought #4 had a bad recoil spring the other day when she ran a function check on all thirty-two 10mms, but a detailed field stripping found the culprit to be little more than accumulated debris that required about four minutes to clean off.

Four racks of 9mm pistols right next to the 10-mils, ten per rack for a total of forty. Enough to hand out to a few civilians if they needed to, but if it ever came down to that they were probably better off flooding the Stable with noxious fumes and suffocating themselves. They were rarely used and still in excellent shape, though #31 had shown a drifting point-of-impact the last time it was test-fired. The problem had been narrowed down to a loose rear sight—the mounting screw had gotten loose and refused to be re-seated in a tight manner, forcing her to requisition a new one from the maintenance department…eight months ago. She was still waiting for it.

Two racks of pump-action 12-guage shotguns a couple of feet away from the pistols, five per rack, with extended magazine tubes installed for an 8-round capacity. Their synthetic forends and stocks held up to the passage of nearly two centuries’ worth of time much better than wooden materials might have, and had no discernible or distressing cracks and stress marks as they’d barely been fired in the last thirty years. The forends weren’t silk-smooth, but the action bars had yet to bind in manipulation drills, and the magazine tube followers and springs never failed to work as intended when using dummy rounds to practice shell changes and unloading/loading drills. Two were missing their front bead sights, but they weren’t meant for long-ranges anyway. She was planning on soldering new ones in place regardless.

Two racks of R-series automatic rifles near the back of the enclosed armory, 5.56x45mm, six rifles per rack. Introduced mid-way through the war that eventually rendered Equestria asunder with megaspells , these were considerably more difficult to keep running and maintained, and it showed when the entire battery had been taken out for test-firing last year. Rifles #5 and #11 had rather terrible accuracy problems that were eventually traced to large knicks in their muzzle crowns, #7’s gas piston had to be completely taken apart for a detailed cleaning and replacement of a piston rod before it would run reliably, and #3’s bolt never properly ejected spent casings. She suspected either an aged recoil spring or a bad claw extractor—all the magazines tested out just fine in the other eleven rifles—but getting maintenance to manufacture new parts for firearms was pretty low on their list of priorities compared to, say, indoor plumbing or power flow. So #3, 5, and 11 were out of duty rotation, and would probably be broken down for spare parts for the remaining nine if she could get a pass from both the security chief and the Overmare. She wasn’t confident that they could get #5 and #11 re-crowned, and #3 was probably in the best shape out of all twelve rifles (notwithstanding the suspect parts). And it would give her something different to do for a couple of weeks, even if it was just more boring paperwork cataloging and filing lists of new replacement parts.

Two racks of .308 rifles on the other side of the armory and directly opposite the rack of R-series rifles, five per rack. Once fielded in the war with the zebras, their .30-caliber diameter bullets left rather large and destructive wound channels in their targets, but could hardly be controlled in full-auto fire. They were eventually rotated out of the front lines in favor of lighter-recoiling 5.56mm rifles like the R-series, but the .308 rifles hung around in town militias and the round even found a new life in a sniping role. These battle rifles were one of the most reliable long arms one could get their hooves (or horn magic) on—even two centuries after their manufacture, these ten rifles had few issues beyond the expected weathering and wear on their paint and exterior finishes, and their wooden furniture had been replaced with hard synthetic materials long enough. The carrying handle bits were mounted in slots machined into the upper receiver, but almost never used—the rifles themselves were either mounted in battle saddles or fitted with slings for unicorn users. #6 had a wider spread than the other nine rifles as its bore was considerably more worn, suggesting it had actually seen service in the early years of the war before being retired to militia garrison duty. But the rest had easily kept their hundred-yard groups within two inches when they were test-fired six months ago. Probably the best weapons in the Stable arsenal.

These thoughts crossed her mind in the twenty seconds she spent inspecting the collection of firearms, and when she was content that no other issues were apparent she moved on to the suite of armored barding in a separate room, accessed through a door in the back of the armory. As the armor was checked in and out only when a need for it arose, the wear and tear was considerable light—a few tears in the outer cloth, a missing button or rivet here and there, but for the most part intact and fully functional. There were just enough sets to outfit every guard in the Stable, with twelve left over. The same couldn’t be said for the ballistic helmets—only twenty, but never used and well maintained.

Batons, they had enough of to pass out three to every resident in the Stable and still have spares, so keeping the security armed with something was never an issue. Pretty difficult to repair a one-piece impact weapon, though. When one broke, the usual response was to either apply one-fourth of a roll of duct tape to piece it back together, or send it to maintenance where it could be recycled and re-purposed for other uses. She usually did the latter. Boring paperwork, but ultimately more useful to the Stable as a whole.

It never crossed her mind that it took her less than thirty seconds to assess the entire armory’s contents of weapons and armor. Ammunition stores were next on her list, but that could wait. The shift change for the security mares (and four stallions) was coming up in a few minutes, and she needed to get the terminal booted up and hopefully in a cooperative mood by the time the graveyard shift ponies came by. Yet another morning filled with the endless monotony of a drone’s paperwork. And tomorrow would be the same. And the day after that. And the one after that. No new wonders. No changes.

How I wish I could be a filly again….

Uggggggh. So BORED.

And it was only….

A quick glance at the analog clock above the chalkboard made her wish it had been put somewhere else. Eight-thirty?! Oh stars, today sucks already!

Outwardly, she looked about as bored as she felt, but made sure that her attention shifted from the hundred-year old re-printed book on her desk to whatever Miss Amethyst was doing on the chalkboard (amazing that they still had usable chalk!). She could have skipped school for at least two years, come back, and still not learn anything new that she didn’t know already. But she didn’t want to grow up that fast. Not when she saw how miserable Mom was every day after work. Being a grown-up sucked.

No, what she really wanted to do was go back to the library and check out all three of the Daring Do books it had. If those books were even halfway based on reality, Equestria That Was must’ve been a really neat place before the War. Nothing like this stupid Stable. Never mind that she’d read the books so much she had them memorized word for word. It wasn’t the same as actually holding the book in her levitation spell and soaking in the words from the aged pages, letting her imagination color in the world piece by piece until she had every detail laid out in her mind’s eye. When one lived their entire life in a metal construct in the ground, just imagining what the world outside looked like was the only viable escape from the maddening sterility of it all.

And Daring Do herself was awesome! Always going to exotic places and discovering new things, and learning all sorts of neat stuff about ancient pony and griffon civilizations! She even knew things about the zebras that nopony else knew (which wasn’t hard). And she looked so pretty too. She dressed funny, but she still looked pretty. She went so far as to have her mane and tail styled after Daring’s, even if she couldn’t dye it gray and white. Daring Do was that awesome. She did look like the Ministry Mare of Awesome herself, after all. Why wouldn’t she be awesome?

She just wished they had more than those three books. She knew there was a whole series of them, but for some reason the library only had the first three. Not cool. Did any copies of the others even survive the War? Did any of the Stable’s first dwellers even write down how many books were in the whole series?! Did anypony even know wh—

A sharp, ear-splitting ram of a hoof into her desk snapped her out of her daydreaming so suddenly that she leapt straight up off her hindquarters and landed on the floor nearby, much to the amusement of all the other kids in the classroom.

If only Miss Amethyst could be just as amused….

“Light Tail, are you zoning out on my class again?” the amethyst-shaded earth pony mare inquired sweetly, a light undertone of suspicion and impending doom still managing to get through.

Light Tail did her best to ignore her aching rump and re-settled herself onto her rear hooves, trying (and failing) to look back at her teacher without fear and without being blinded by those overhead lights in the ceiling that never seemed to go out. “U-uhhh….k-kinda…sorta, maybe?”

Miss Amethyst’s head began to hang limply upon hearing her wishy-washy excuse, a sigh of exasperation heaving out of her lungs. “I’ve told you a hundred times to pay attention in class, young lady. This is very important, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”

Actually, you’ve told me two hundred and forty-three times, Light Tail almost blurted, but thankfully her teeth clamped down on her tongue before it could betray her and get her in even more trouble. She shrank back into herself in a show of submission to her teacher’s words, hoping it would get her out of this mess a little faster. “…I-I know, it’s all that’s left of Equestria That Was. We’re all that’s left. We gotta learn to do it right again someday.”

“We all do,” Miss Amethyst agreed, her tone becoming slightly more sympathetic at the mention of Equestria. “And that starts here, in class, paying attention. So can you tell me what I was just discussing with the rest of the class?”

Oh crud, of course you’d make this difficult! the light teal-blue filly cringed mentally, her hunkering down now an actual genuine reaction as the other fillies and colts began laughing again. She stole a quick glance at the chalkboard when she noticed that Miss Amethyst was looking away from her, probably at Sun Star or Lumberjack on the other end of the room—

—perked up when she saw the crude, but unmistakable image of the original unicorn pony tribe’s flag alongside the pegasus and earth pony flags, forming a triangle of sorts around the image of the old Equestria flag, and took a shot at her teacher’s question—

“You were talking about how Equestria That Was came to be,” Light Tail answered meekly, watching Miss Amethyst’s head turn back to stare down at her as she continued. “About how unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies used to hate each other, and how it destroyed their original home.”

Miss Amethyst’s eyes betrayed a brief flash of surprise before her neutral, smiles-and-sunshine stare came back to her, and Light Tail knew she’d nailed it correctly. Everypony had stopped laughing at her. “And how did that happen?”

“….when a blizzard started and wouldn’t stop, they all blamed each other. Nopony trusted each other, the earth ponies had to give food to the pegasi and unicorns in return for them controlling the weather and bringing about the sun and moon. In the end they had to leave ‘cause the blizzard never stopped. ”

The mare’s eyes had a little more trouble hiding their surprise, but at least no one else in class noticed it. “Very good, Light Tail,” her voice beamed with pleasant approval. “It seems you were paying attention. Just…try to stay awake, and go to bed earlier from now on.”

Yeeeeees! Scott free!! “Workin’ on it, Miss Amethyst,” she yawned instead, quickly climbing back into her desk chair with an awkward leap (but still favoring her sore butt, that solid metal floor hurt whenever she hit it!).

And just like that, class slugged along without a hitch. She didn’t dare go off daydreaming about Daring Do again, which made the morning drag on for far longer than she’d ever thought was possible. She kept her eyes off the clock for a while, just to see how bad it was, and when it felt like an eternity had passed by she glanced up again and felt a little pin popping the bubble of hope inside her chest.

Eight-fifty one.

Her head slumped over onto the desk, begging for relief from this endless torture by the gods. I hate Mondays…

Lunch time. Forty-five minutes of blissful release from the brain-draining imprisonment of grade school. Forty-five minutes of wondering how the Stable was able to keep growing new crops every year with artificial light. Forty-five minutes of chowing down on her wheat bread and two carrots.

Forty-five minutes of plotting her next prank with her two best friends.

“Light Tail did that last week and it was funny, but gross!” Emerald snarled quietly, moments after last week’s spectacular firecracker prank was suggested yet again. The red-apple coated earth pony filly was not one for the gross stuff, and for once Light Tail had to agree with her. That firecracker was probably the worst idea she’d ever had. “Plus all the firecrackers got locked up after that, there’s no way we could get ahold o’ one again so soon.”

As Light Tail chomped another piece of her carrot off, the purple-coated pegasus filly beside her spoke up once again. “I still have one left,” she said softly, keeping her voice to a soft whisper so as not to allow anyone else to overhear her and ruin whatever plan she’d had as a back-up. “We could—“

As amusing as exploding objects could be, Light Tail didn’t want to push their luck using them two weeks in a row, and quickly moved to put an end to the idea of a firecracker anything. “No, no firecrackers. Wheat Hooves really didn’t like it and if we use another one we might end up in a lot more trouble. I nearly got thrown into the Overmare’s office for that stunt, y’know.”

The mere mention of the word “Overmare” was enough to make Grape Jam stick her firecracker ideas back into the depths of her brain. “Oh, crud, I didn’t know that! I didn’t mean—“

“It’s fine,” Light Tail assured the panicking filly quickly (even though it wasn’t). “We just gotta be a lot more careful this time around. Like, stop planning these things here in the diner, even. How ‘bout we just wait ‘till after school and meet in the library?”

“Parchment’s still miffed at ya for tryin’ to re-arrange the whole library for her!” Emerald reminded her sharply over another crunchy bite of her carrot. “She still hasn’t found those Daring Do books you love so much!”

That stung more than getting her hoof burned on an open stove. She hadn’t read The Griffons’ Goblet in almost three months and she couldn’t stand the thought of it lying unnoticed in some dark shelf corner, ignored and overlooked by everyone in the Stable. Those three Daring books were probably the most popular, judging by how often they got checked out.

“Well, maybe we could help look for ‘em!” Grape Jam suggested next, nudging her empty plate forward to the center of the table while shooting an irritated glare of her eyes in Light Tail’s general direction. “So long as somepony promises not to try getting a librarian cutie mark again.”

Jeez, I’m getting more grief over that than I am over that firecracker in the boys’ bathroom! “Okay, okay! Relax, I don’t think she’d let me help her again anyway!” she shot back defensively. “I don’t wanna find out if she really would clip my tail off!”

“She’d probably just take half of it and mount it over the door as a warnin’!” Emerald giggled, her eyes shut tight as she no doubt began to imagine what such a tail mig--….no, scratch that, she was imagining it, that grin on her face was one of pure satisfaction. “Ah can almost see the tiny little thing now, bobbin’ up and down with every step you take and looking really, really stubby and short—“

Grape Jam couldn’t hold back her snickering any longer, and even though it annoyed Light Tail to no end to hear her friends having a good laugh at her expense, she remembered when she was laughing at Mom’s misfortune earlier in the morning. Complaining about it happening to her seemed a little hypocritical—

She snorted a mild laugh through her nose herself when she found Emerald’s mental image jabbing itself in front of her eyes without invitation…and discovered their next prank. “…yeah…that’d be pretty funny-lookin’. And I just happen to know a pony in need of a new look!”

“Besides Sun Star?” Grape Jam muttered amidst her quiet snickering. “Do we even keep a list of pranked ponies, Emmy?”

But Emerald shook her head in a sharp sweep, her amusement dying in an instant. “No, not here,” she rebuffed with a raised hoof. “El-Tee’s right, we shouldn’t be talkin’ ‘bout this stuff where everypony could hear us.”

Yeeeessss! Light Tail cheered loudly inside her devious mind, finishing off her carrot with one final gulp. “Library, then. And if you guys find the Griffon’s Goblet or the Sapphire Statue I’ll be your personal slave for like, a week.”

“Oh, will you?!” Grape Jam’s voice cooed with an exaggerated sweetness, killing the unicorn filly’s joy at the impending antics of the afternoon. “I could use an extra set of hooves to clean up my room later!”

Oh crud, me and my big mouth, she thought darkly, but answered the pegasus’s faked happiness with a sugary smile of her own. Can’t be worse than what Mom’s day must be like though….

Noon.

All necessary paperwork filled out, filed onto the terminal, and submitted to the central mainframe. No e-mails from the security chief down the hall on potential clerical errors this time around that needed editing/correcting. No e-mails or orders from the Overmare authorizing the issue of a sidearm. No security issues reported by the 3rd shift ponies, as usual. No current issues reported by the 1st shift ponies. No impending fights with maintenance over limited resources and energy. No authorization to solder on those new front bead sights on shotguns #2 and #9. Her inspection of the ammunition stores showed no new changes in the preservation talismans keeping the rounds safe from the ravages of age and environmental corrosion. She didn’t even have a broken baton to tape together from her last half-roll of duct tape for the month.

She was literally left with nothing to do but stare at the walls for the next three and a half hours, until the next shift change. And even then she would have everything sorted out in fifteen minutes. And so she simply sprawled out across the cold floor, her sense of direction and sanity dulled and lessened by the sheer power of complete and utter boredom. She couldn’t even think in clear, concise sentences, her mental musings coming across in broken fragments and extreme displays of emotion.

Am so. Freaking. BOOOORED!!!! Must stay awake!! Stay awake…

And just like that, her mind began to drift away into a state of semi-consciousness. To stimulate it, she attempted to raise her right foreleg and swipe at the back cover of a repair manual, opened up and set down next to the terminal at the counter. She struck the dangling hardback cover with the tip of her hoof, jostling it slightly and setting it into a half-second swing before it came back to a stand-still. But that movement alone shifted the book across the counter, bringing it a tad closer to the edge….and allowing that back cover to drift down a tad. Just enough to allow her to give it a good smack with her hoof, rather than just the edge of it. So that’s what she did.

The impact pushed the book off the counter and sent it tumbling towards the floor, only to be caught in a field of indigo magic as her horn mindlessly released a minor levitation spell. With practiced ease she floated the book back up onto the counter and set it back where it was, already bored with smacking it about the room. And she honestly shouldn’t have been hitting it to start with; there were only three copies of it.

And so she was back to simply lying on the cold floor, with absolutely no other job critical tasks to complete or tend to. Scheduled cleaning of the firearms was next week, not this week. What had she done in a previous life to deserve being afflicted with such astounding levels of boredom and inactivity? If not for her Light Tail, she might’ve offed herself by now, unwilling to live an entire life of doing nothing but this six days a week.

But there, at least, was the saving grace of her sanity. At the end of her work shift, she could saunter on back to her living quarters and be amused and uplifted by the company of her daughter for the rest of the day. Was it wrong to want to spend all her free time with her kid? Was it unhealthy?

Did it even matter?

With the detached demeanor of the condemned, she finally bothered herself to rise from the floor, using her listless limbs to steady her lead body as she thumped back towards the terminal. At this point her mind had begun to blank out, becoming little more than empty space as what was left of her consciousness sought out a random task to carry out. A gentle flow of cool magic through her horn began to press at the keyboard, bringing up the morning’s shift change report for the fifth time for no real reason other than to give her eyes something to read for a few minutes. But the cold, monochrome green letters and numbers barely registered to her, and within moments a second flow of magic returned the report into digital oblivion.

A line of text in the lower right corner blinked, morphing into a slightly different number for her viewing pleasure:

12:01 P.M.

Her skull collapsed onto the counter with a soft thud. Time itself seemed almost frozen, her sense of the world around her feeling as though it were stretching out to make itself appear much larger than it actually was. All it did was depress her.

Hate. MONDAYS. SO. MUCH.

Her plans to get back at Lip Jam for calling her mother such a horrible name the other day got put on hold.

School had barely let out for the day when Grape Jam’s mother swooped in and took her away to the infirmary level two floors up. Emerald’s dad was likewise really quick to collect the little green-eyed filly before she could escape from the hallway. And a disappointed and disheartened Light Tail had no choice but to walk back to her quarters on the eighth floor. There was no way Parchment would let her into the library by herself, not after how badly she’d screwed up all the shelves and stuff.

Her saddlebag was quickly slung off of her body and tossed onto her favorite spot on the couch as she strolled through the door, her stomach grumbling for sustenance in any available form. Yet even as she latched onto the refrigerator door with her jaws and pulled it open, she felt almost no joy at the impending snack of sliced apple.
It was hard to be excited about coming home when no one was waiting for you.

Mom wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. And really, Mom had it worse. School was boring, but at least she got to do something. Mom didn’t even have that most of the day. She always came home so…lifeless. So brain-dead. Like her body was dragging itself along without the help of input and direction from her head. They wouldn’t even let her bring books to work, just stuck her behind a cage for eight hours and hoped for the best. So when Mom came home, she was getting pounced and tickled and gently gnawed on. And then maybe she might feel like teaching her a couple more spells out of that bookcase stuffed with entire tomes of them.

Until then, she was on her own, no matter how much she hated it.

She nudged a pair of milk bottles aside on the top shelf, revealing a plastic container in the back of the fridge which held six red apples. She picked out the healthiest one of the bunch and floated it up to the counter in a levitation field, along with a sharp-edged knife and a small plate, and had it sliced up into eight pieces in about as many seconds. With no homework for the day, no friends to hang out with, no mother to pester and play with, and no Daring Do books to read, she settled for the fifth best thing she could find to kill the time until Mom came home.

Gently cradling the plate of apple slices between her teeth, she trotted back into the living room while simultaneously focusing a levitation field towards the bookcase against the wall to her right. When the field began to waft over the books she refocused her hold on it, picking a book off of the shelf at random and pulling it along behind her as made her way back to the couch. She stopped just long enough to set the plate down on the coffee table before leaping up onto a well-worn depression in the couch, and brought the book up closer to see what prize she’d claimed:

A childish squeak escaped her throat as she flicked the book open to the very first page. Somehow she hadn’t read this one yet, and now was as good a time as any. And sometimes this epic fantasy stuff could be pretty darn cool. Daring Do was still the best, though.

The book immersed her in its intricately crafted world, absorbing the entirety of her attention for the next two hours. The tale was one of a unicorn pony, drawn to the ruins of the old royal castle in the Everfree Forest in search of an ancient artifact once guarded by the alicorn sisters from all who sought it. Long forgotten in the chaos of Celestia’s battle against Nightmare Moon, it had come to the attention of a guild of sorcerers and brigands who worshipped Discord and wished to free him from his petrified state. It was said that this ancient artifact held the power to undo the effects of the Elements of Harmony, and a guild of unicorns known as the White Lily Society had sent one of its own to retrieve it on behalf of Princess Celestia.

Like any good story, it wouldn’t have been a very exciting one if everything had gone as planned. From the moment the heroine Starlight had waltzed into the Everfree around chapter five, her adventure took one wrong turn after another—first her enchanted cape and dress were mauled to pieces by a pack of timberwolves, forcing her to begin her mission without the aid of their magic-enhancing effects. Then she’d stumbled into a patch of poison joke and found that it turned her voice high and tinny, ruining many of her verbal-based spells until she’d stumbled upon the shack of an earth pony stallion who was able to brew a curative potion. She was so taken in by his kindness and gentle demeanor that she decided to stay in his shack for the evening.

The story picked up from there in the morning hours, where the heroine found the majority of her supplies gone and the stallion nowhere to be seen. Her fury shook the ground for three miles as she began to hunt for the thief with the use of a scrying spell (easily attuned to the stallion thanks to her…intimate familiarity with him, as the author put it), eventually tracking him to a riverbed where he was discovered to be meeting with agents of the cult of Discord. Though the magic-heavy battle that ensued was lengthy, her possessions became hers once again. Light Tail’s mind even briefly sketched together from scratch an image of the silver-coated mare standing in the river, soaked to the bone, as she turned the water around her into a watery visage of Princess Celestia herself and charged it straight into the trio of cultists. Afterwards the stallion learned the hard way why it wasn’t a good idea to get on a unicorn mare’s bad side, and the telekinetic vengeance of the mare gave her the shivers all over. Ouch! That even feels painful…but….why hit him there? I don’t get it.

Still, it had served the purpose of fulfilling Starlight’s desire for payback, so she left it alone without further thought. Someday, though, she was going to make Mom explain why it hurt colts so much to be smacked there.

Chapter nine ended with the unicorn leaving the stallion to writhe and twitch in agony by the river, and that was as far as she would get in the story today. Her ears perked up at the sound of the door’s massive pistons engaging to retract it inside the doorway, and she quickly set the attached bookmark inside the tome’s pages before setting it down next to her empty plate—

—hopped up to her feet and crouched down as Mom’s body began to stroll through the doorway, exhausted and drained from the mind-numbing boredom of sitting in a cramped room for eight hours—

—the second the door dropped back down, Light Tail leapt off of the couch, using her hind legs to give her pouncing attack the extra distance she needed to reach her mother—

“BOO!” she screamed out as loudly as she could—

—she broke into a fit of maniacal laughter as her mother’s body jolted in place, the mare shooting her a look of complete shock and surprise just before the little filly collided into the side of her body. While Light Tail didn’t really have the strength to knock her over by herself, her scare tactic gave her all the leverage she needed. Mom wasn’t standing on four legs anymore, and when that was combined with her flying tackle, the much larger pony was soon tumbling down onto the carpeted floor with a meaty thud, ripe for further torture with a tickle attack to the neck—

—Mom’s screams turned into frantic shrieks of laughter as the filly’s little hooves found those two ticklish spots along the side of her neck and the one underneath her right foreleg, and Light Tail knew immediately that any evils and foul moods had inhabited her mother’s mind were no longer there.

“Ahhhh!! That makes me so squeamish and girly—“

“Good! Makes ya easy for a little filly like me to handle!”

“Ahahahaha stoppit that tickles really bad—“

“Not ‘till you surrender!” And just because she could, she decided to reach over and attack another ticklish spot on her stomach—

Her mother’s legs began to kick against the ground, losing almost all control over herself and left at the mercy of a filly about a third her size—

“Eaaaahhh okay okay stoppit you win hahahahahahhAHAHA—“

The moment Mom surrendered to her tickling assault, Light Tail halted her torturous efforts and clambered off of her, grinning madly at the results of her hastily planned attack. “The great and powerful Light Tail wins aga—“

Almost as soon as her hooves touched the floor, however, her entire body began to grow warm with the touch of an all-too-familiar levitation spell, and she was being lifted up into the air before she could even attempt a counterspell—

“—aaaaiggghhhh wait wait this isn’t how it goes—“

Mom’s body scuffled against the carpet as she rolled over into a sitting position, her face now sporting the same evil grin that had moments ago adorned the filly’s visage—

Uh-oh. “W-wait Mom! Can’t we talk ‘bout this like civil ponies?!”

“No,” Mom answered flatly, but that evil, evil smile never left. If anything, it became even more insidious. “In fact, I think I’m going to reward your treachery with some of mine.”

Oh crud not th—

The attack came even as she realized what was about to befall her. All at once, every ticklish spot in her tiny body was attacked by what felt like a dozen separate telekinetic spells, all masterfully controlled and manipulated as though the feat was mere child’s play. As cool as it was, it didn’t make it any more bearable. Her body was paralyzed by sharp, contracting waves that slammed into her nerves and seeped into her deepest bones. The funny, fuzzy feelings washing over her even hit her in places she didn’t know she could be ticklish in. It was all she could do to keep from turning the carpet yellow, and even that was getting harder every second.

Not that her screaming laughter allowed her any space to complain about it. Yet.

“How do you like me now, ya sneaky little devil?!” Mom’s voice laughed darkly, filled with sick amusement.

“Ahahahaha oh stars I can barely breathe—“

“Really? Must’ve missed a spot.”

Now she was really doomed. A thirteenth telekinetic spell began to apply its subtle pressure on one last spot, right between her shoulders, and now all she could do was laugh herself hoarse and feel her legs bucking and kicking in just about every direction physically possible. It didn’t take very long for her to start feeling a loosening of pressure, and the slight panic it induced gave her enough self-control to at least start begging for release through her continuous laughing.

“Hehahahaha okay okay you win I give up just—hehehe—just let me go already hahaHA!”

“I fell for this trick once before, squirt!”

She wasn’t sure if it was the word ‘squirt’ that did it, or the relentless assault on her tickle spots, but she thought she felt a very slight wetness begin to creep out, and her panic doubled. “Hahahaha no Mom I’m serious I’m gonna pee myself if you don’t stop—“

Mom’s hold on her fourteen separate spells died almost immediately, allowing the little filly to plummet to the floor free from further tickling. The fuzzy, funny waves bleeding into her bladder rescinded, but she didn’t want to wait to see if she’d retain control of her biological urges for much longer.

She pushed herself back up to her feet and began trotting (quickly) towards the door into the hallway, still chuckling away from Mom’s tickling. “The great an—heheh—the great and powerful Light Tail will get you next time—SNNRKK—hahahaHAHA!”

Light Tail hopped and laughed all the way out into the hallway and turned right towards the lavatory/shower room in the center of the floor, and all at once the brain-draining despair of a monotonous Stable life drifted away into nothing. She was home, where she belonged. Where somepony she loved more than her own life had been waiting for her. Where she wished she could stay. As it was, she only got a few hours with her daughter every day. She spent the rest of it working or sleeping. It didn’t seem fair to her.

Like most things about life in this Stable.

With one last snickering laugh she finally got back onto her hooves and walked over to the couch where Light Tail’s sneak attack had originated. An empty plate tainted with the faint smell of Stable-grown apples was the only real mess left behind, and likely left there because the filly had been too engrossed by the book right beside it to bother putting it away when she was done with it. What was her little bookworm reading no—

Oh, this is a good one! The mother beamed with delight upon seeing the title printed on the top half of the cover. Maybe not quite up to the more adventurous tone of a Daring Do book, but still good, and it definitely had its fair share of action and intrigue. There were even a number of spells in it she wanted to try out just to see if they really could be done. She couldn’t think of a reason why they couldn’t be done, at any rate. She simply lacked a natural environment to toy with as the book’s heroine did. But one could dream.

Unfortunately for Light Tail, she also remembered enough of the last two chapters to decide to apply a localized censoring spell on its content (primarily involving rather….raunchy moments between the heroine and her lover). It took her a couple of minutes to find the paragraphs in question and set the spell upon them, but once it was done the magically-imbued runes sealed themselves into the paper in place of the questionable paragraphs, which quickly faded out of existence. The filly wouldn’t like it when she got to this point in the story, but there were some things she didn’t want her daughter reading or learning about just yet. And once the squirt was old enough, it was a simple affair to remove the spells and restore the paragraphs.

She never got the chance to tell her about it, however. Light Tail had just waltzed back in from the restroom when the Stable PA speakers fizzled to life, its static-laced message carrying with it a foreboding sense of doom and unease.

“All adult Stable residents, report to the auditorium by eighteen-hundred hours,” the Overmare’s voice dutifully requested. “Attendance is mandatory, as this is very important.”

The auditorium was the most lavish (and comfortable) space in Stable 115. While built of iron and steel like the rest of the Stable, it was given incredibly well designed carpeting that was still comfortable to the hooves even after nearly two centuries. In addition, the three hundred mahogany-framed, two-cushion sofas arrayed in front of the elevated stage were also designed so that the pony occupying it could simply lie down rather than be forced to sit on their hindquarters. For “town hall” meetings such as the one about to get underway, these sofas allowed the five hundred and eight-six adult ponies of the Stable to be comfortable for the proceedings so long as nopony minded being crammed onto a sofa with another pony.

Without Light Tail to keep her company, she was forced to make do with the presence of a pegasus mare named Cloud Wind, who bore the distinction of being the only friend she had left from her childhood. And despite the roar of a hundred-plus conversations happening at once around them, the sky colored pegasus showed a remarkable interest in trying to get her hooked up with somepony. Again.

“So I hear Quill Point is on the rebound,” Cloud teased when it was clear that nudging the unicorn with her hoof wasn’t going to get her attention. “Buttermilk apparently wasn’t his type, but she was impressed enough with his bedside skills to talk to me about it He could be just what you need to get you out of your quarters once in a while.”

“Cut it out, Windy,” she growled darkly, refusing to even acknowledge the pegasus’s touch. “This isn’t the time or place.”

Cloud refused to pull away from her, though the teasing, playful tone in her voice was noticeably lessened. “Oh come on, I’m serious, for once. You haven’t gone near a stallion since the last one you went to bed with knocked you up. That’s the reason you’re going insane, not your job.”

“I don’t need a stallion in my life.”

Cloud’s flank pressed up against hers until their cutie marks were mashing against each other. “Cute,” she whispered through a sadistic grin. “So you’re saying you’re into mares now? ‘Cause if you are, then I’d just like to say that I’ve always liked the way you swish your tail back and forth when you walk…”

A rush of blood and heat swelled up in her cheeks as she scooted herself away from the pegasus and into the side rest of the sofa. “By Celestia, you’re insatiable. And they call me a whore.”

Cloud’s gunmetal gray mane was brushed aside with a hearty laugh. “I’m just having fun with you! It’s just kinda sad to see you cooped up in your quarters all the time. Your kid can do fine without you for a few hours now and then. When was the last time you had some “you” time? Or the last time you even had a date?”

“The day I got pregnant with Light Tail,” she muttered back with a flat voice. “On my couch, no less.”

Cloud’s face scrunched up in mild disgust as she withdrew herself to the other end of the sofa. “Ewww, a little too much information there. Wait ‘till the squirt finds out.”

“I washed it afterwards!” she hissed quickly. “And you’re the one who asked.”

“I only asked about the last time you had some “you” time or the last date you had, not where you got laid! A mare shouldn’t kiss and tell.”

“Then don’t ask. If anything we ought to be asking how much longer we’re going to be here.”

They weren’t forced to wait very long for their answer. Just moments later the familiar red-apple mane of the Overmare emerged from behind the massive show curtain behind the speaking podium, trotting forward in her 115 jumpsuit with a look of weariness in her eyes. Either she had terrible news, or she’d spent another night doing just about anything but sleeping.

At the Overmare’s appearance, every voice in the auditorium promptly shushed themselves, filling the room with an eerie silence in which the Overmare could speak clearly and concisely.

“Thank you for being so prompt in your arrival,” the Overmare’s voice greeted the Stable. “As we all know, with our communications capabilities ruined on the day this Stable was sealed, we have no way of knowing the status of Equestria That Was without sending somepony out there to find out. Roughly thirty years after that horrific day, we began our tradition of doing just that. Each generation, we send some of our own to leave the safety of our Stable and try to discover what’s happened out there. To this day, sadly, none have ever returned home.”

The tone of grief in her voice caused most ponies in the room (herself included) to bow their heads in a silent prayer to the royal princesses. None dared bring up the fact that the last soul to embark on the Last Journey was the Overmare’s own mother, who had left the Stable in her daughter’s capable hooves before leaving five years ago.

“While this tradition keeps our numbers from being depleted beyond sustainable levels, it also means we end up waiting a minimum of twenty years between each Selection for news from the world beyond,” the Overmare continued after a few moments of mournful silence, her tone becoming steady once more. “And as we approach the two hundred year anniversary of this stable’s sealing, it’s become apparent to me that we can’t afford to wait this long anymore. We need to speed things up. And with that goal in mind, I’ve made the decision to initiate the next Selection this week.”

For the first time in her life, she heard the sound of complete and utter silence fall over her hearing, all rational thought brought to a brain-numbing halt. Even the oxygen in the room seemed to sit still in the air. Everypony dreaded Selection, dreaded being the one to have their name drawn from a flimsy cardboard box, condemned to the mysterious outside world where none of their predecessors had ever managed to come back from. The previous Overmare had sidestepped the process by actually volunteering, but the end result was still the same. She stepped out through the Stable door…and never came back.

Just like the nine Wanderers before her. Nopony wanted that fate. To leave their families behind to vanish in whatever cruel world waited beyond, to be gobbled up in its terrible maw. The Last Journey was a suicide mission, and they all knew it.
As the Overmare likely expected, the hopeless silence didn’t silence. Almost as quickly as it had died, the noise of hundreds of voices returned, their fears and horrors realized despite their hopes that they would live out a good portion of their lives without seeing the wheel of Fate spin again. The message from the Stable’s population was clear.

No.

“Are you crazy?!” a young tan-colored stallion at the front yelled up at the Overmare. She couldn’t see his cutie mark from where she was, but it sounded like Deck. “This stable’s lost ten ponies across a hundred and seventy years to this “tradition” and for what?! What have we ever gained from it?!”

“Deck’s right!” a second stallion joined in, confirming her suspicions about the first one’s identity, but she could tell where this new dissenter was speaking from. “We’re all safe and sound down here, there’s no need to put that at risk! Whatever’s out there isn’t worth any of our lives!”

The Overmare’s hoof slammed down onto the podium in front of her, the sharp echo thundering into everypony’s chest as though she’d smacked them herself, and the shouting died again. “We’re safe now, yes,” she said in a loud, authoritive voice. “But what about tomorrow? Or next week? Our families and ancestors have lived in this underground shelter for nearly two hundred years, and it’s remarkable that we’ve been able to keep it running fairly smoothly for so long. How much longer can that last? Ten years? Twenty? Fifty? I know for sure we can’t do it for another two centuries.”

“What if we’re all that’s left of ponykind?!” a mare in the back screamed out over the crowd. “What if all the Wanderers walked out into a world that can’t even support life anymore?! We’d be better off dying out in here than choking to death up there!”

“If that were the case our oxygen recyclers wouldn’t have had anything to suck in from the outside for two centuries, and the First Families would have suffocated in the first three hours,” the Overmare barked back sharply. “The environment outside has survived, somehow, even if Equestria That Was died in the last day of the war. If nothing else we should at least be seeing if it’s possible to re-settle the land around us. There will be a day when this stable won’t be able to support life anymore. We owe it to our children to give them the best chance we can.”

Bringing up the possibility that everypony’s little filly or colt could face a bleak future seemed to dampen much of the combative attitudes that had been threatening to boil over the poor Overmare. But it was also obvious that very few souls present had ever even thought of the possibility that the stable wouldn’t last forever. It was as though they preferred the illusion of safety to the reality of keeping an underground shelter running with only the parts and supplies it had started with two hundred years ago.

When no further voices of discontent aired themselves to the Overmare, she took it upon herself to close the matter before anypony else could get the nerve to speak out. “I don’t expect any of you to like it, but if we want future generations to survive we have to do this. I’ll make my final decision on who to send out by Thursday. That’s all for now. Security department, stay behind if you would, I’d like to discuss some other matters with you while you’re here. That includes you, Sling Shot.”

Great, the teal-blue unicorn bemoaned to herself as the crowd began to file out of the auditorium while the security ponies remained seated. More bad news. As if Selection wasn’t bad enough on its own.

“Ever notice that no one’s called you by your actual name for the last eight years?” Cloud Wind whispered in a seditious manner. “I thought your special talent was spell mastery, not guns.”

“And who says a mare can’t be good at more than one thing?” she whispered back, though she couldn’t shake off an ominous feeling dread that seemed to linger at the Overmare’s eyes.

Once everypony that wasn’t security had departed and sealed the doors behind them, the Overmare dropped any pretenses she might have been holding up about the nature of her next topic. “Starting immediately, every one of you is to be armed with at least a sidearm at all times,” she said quickly. “Earth ponies and Cloud Wind may opt for a long arm if they prefer. Maintenance is worried that another radroach infestation in the vents may be coming our way.”

“Did they find a nest?” Chief Farsight asked almost immediately, alarmed that such a security risk had not been brought to him already.

The Overmare nodded once in his direction. “Level two, just above the atrium. They’ve already put fire to it but several of the eggs had already hatched by the time they found it, and the vents in the atrium lead down to both floors on level two as well as level three. From three they could get into half the Stable. School will be shuttered until we have confirmation that the threat of infestation is past us, and I’m instituting a night-time curfew for all ponies and departments except security since radroaches seem to be more active during minimal lighting hours. Third-shift security will be authorized to detain any pony caught outside quarters, but I’d much prefer it if you just walked them back to where they’re supposed to be. Be nice about it, if you would. In the meantime, if maintenance team members should happen to ask for sidearms during their search of the vents, oblige them with an escort instead. I don’t want panicky ponies roaming our vent systems with guns they aren’t trained with.”

“Might be a good idea to get them trained,” Cloud Wind suggested politely. “There’s only ten to twelve of us per shift at any one time. We can’t be everywhere at once, and if the radroaches start making personal appearances in the hallways we’ll have our hooves full. We can’t afford to be even one pony short. Teaching them how to shoot will free us from having to foalsit them.”

“Or we could all just pull twelve-hour shifts until the infestation is handled,” Farsight added with a business-like tone, much to everypony’s disappointment. “That would double our numbers on patrol and give us a much better chance of containing an outbreak before somepony gets hurt, or worse. And I’d rather save the nine millimeters for the militia force if things get out of hoof anyway.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” the Overmare snapped briskly before anypony could object, and just like that, Sling Shot’s chance of spending any time with her daughter was scuttled into an airlock for the foreseeable future. As important as it was to keep the stable safe, she couldn’t help but feel hurt at having her time with Light Tail cut short like this. “Ten millimeter pistols for unicorns, and as I said, Cloud Wind and the earth ponies may use long arms mounted on a battle saddle if they find it easier to work with. No long arms on unicorn security unless we find enough nests to warrant the extra firepower. And if that happens, the entire Stable goes on lockdown and every resident will be handed a baton. It’s not great, but it’s better than being left to fend for themselves with just their bare hooves and rudimentary levitation magic. We’re not all at Sling Shot’s level, after all.”

“Oh ho, praise for the resident ‘immoral whore’,” Cloud Wind jested lightly in her ear. “Now I know we’re in trouble.”

“Third shift, consider yourselves on duty immediately until six o’clock tomorrow morning,” the Overmare continued, oblivious to Cloud Wind’s side commentary and the small murmur of discontent amongst the security department in front of her. “Half of second shift is also on duty until that time. First shift and the other half of second will be on duty from six in the morning to six p.m. Second shift, you have about two minutes to decide which half of the day to work. If necessary Chief Farsight will make the shift assignments himself. Stay in contact with maintenance and keep a close eye on the ventilation systems. I’ll make the announcement to the Stable at large in a few minutes. Stay safe, and keep us safe.”

“Hey, cheer up,” Cloud’s voice consoled her gently as they trotted back towards her quarters. “At least we’ve finally got some excitement going on here. Who knows, you might even enjoy work for a while.”

But Sling Shot was having none of it. What could possibly be exciting about giant mutated cockroaches with a taste for pony flesh? They were easy kills with a BB gun, so anything more than that was overkill, but if there were enough of them they could do a lot of damage very quickly. She still had nightmares from the last infestation five years back. That poor colt…

“I wanted to enjoy some time with my kid,” she growled back over her shoulders. “Now I may not even get to see her for more than a couple hours a day.”

“It’s not permanent,” the pegasus reminded her tiredly, growing slightly frustrated with the unicorn’s unhappy disposition. “And by Wednesday I’ll be on the six-p.m.-to-six-a.m. shift, so I can keep her company while you’re on duty. I was lucky that Rose Glade was willing to trade shifts with me for today.”

I guess that’s something, she admitted silently as she turned into the left hallway at the t-section for the final stretch to her living quarters. At least the kid won’t be left alone all day. And that thought alone began to make her feel guilty for being so harsh a few seconds earlier.

“…thanks for that,” was all she could think to say, her foul mood becoming lost in her guilt. “I’m moody, but it’s no excuse for taking it out on you.”

“It’s just that time of the month for you, I’m sure,” Cloud uttered casually, dismissing the matter almost effortlessly and with zero fanfare. “Come on already, you still got a couple hours you can use to pester the squirt before bedtime.”

That, ironically, was what she was afraid of. The Overmare’s announcement on the PA would leave the curious thing full of questions for her mother, and she wouldn’t like hearing about her new working hours. But she was smart enough to hopefully understand that it was necessary.

Hopefully.

The two mares had barely reached the door when it slid open, revealing the light teal-blue filly on the other side with what looked like blotches of flour and margarine on her face and the front half of her body. “Awwww yeah!!” she exclaimed happily at the sight of Cloud Wind, shooting her left hoof forward and up. “Whut up, Aunt C?”

“Nothin’ but the rain, El-Tee!” Cloud Wind squealed back, shooting her own left hoof out and tapping it into the filly’s. At the moment of impact the two childish ponies promptly jerked them back towards themselves, their mouths mimicking the noise of a small explosion before bursting into a short fit of laughter.

“Got some grub goin’, won’t be long!” Light Tail announced with gleeful cheer once their customary greeting had been concluded, and promptly turned around and hopped her way back towards the kitchen space. “You two lovebirds just chill out on the sofa. I won’t watch, I promise!”

A flustered Sling Shot growled at the world around her as Cloud Wind laughed heartily at the filly’s brave (but foolish) teasing. “El-Tee, have you been talking to Hayseed again?!”

“Oh calm down, Sling!” Cloud chuckled in the filly’s defense, subtly brushing their flanks together as she passed by the unicorn. “The little joker’s just trying to lighten your mood.”

Her face still warm with fresh blood, Sling Shot sighed in exasperation and followed the sky blue pegasus inside. She liked to tease her this way now and then, but this time she’d followed it with actual physical contact. And not the kind that could be dismissed as simply trying to pass through a narrow space, she’d meant to cross their cutie marks together like that. It was enough to make her wonder if she was just taking her teasing up a notch or if there was something more behind it.

“So whatcha cookin’ up this time?” Cloud asked the budding child chef as her wings unfurled from her sides and began to stretch themselves out. Being a pegasus in an underground fallout shelter didn’t leave a lot of room for flight practice outside the three-hundred yard room at the bottom of the stable.

“Got lucky today, Wheat Harvest came by with our weekly ration of grain and flour before goin’ to that meetin’ you all had!” Light Tail replied with that same cheerful glee in her words. “So I’m whippin’ up those fresh hot rolls Mom and I couldn’t have this morning to go along with the chopped lettuce salad, annnnd for kicks I sliced up a carrot and put a cube of that block of mozzarella to the cheese grater. Think we still got some grape juice left too, if it’s in the back of the fridge like I hope it is!”

Sling Shot’s mouth began to water and drool at the thought of the meal her filly had thought to start cooking while she was going, and even Cloud couldn’t hold back an appreciative whistle. “Dude, even telling me about it satisfies my hunger pangs! How do you not have a cutie mark in cooking, kid?”

“It ain’t for lack of tryin’!” Light Tail giggled sweetly, preparing to take a ladle into her mouth to pepper the salads with shredded mozzeralla the moment she finished talking. “And I had a funny feelin’ you’d be coming so I’m makin’ enough for three! Like I said, just chill out and pretend I’m not here, if you can!”

Hearing how happy and upbeat her child was pushed her into postponing the ‘bad news’ part of the day, for the moment. There was no need to ruin a good meal by raining on the kid’s parade jus—

“Oh, wait, don’t pretend, I gotta ask you somethin’ about that meetin’!” Light Tail changed her mind in the next instant, spitting the ladle out of her mouth and into a waiting levitation field, and began peppering the salads with cheese by the magic of her horn instead of by hoof. “The Overmare said there’s a night curfew on ‘till further notice, and that security would be doubled up and armed. Does that mean you two are gonna be workin’ extra hours for a while?”

Sling Shot’s face fell into a deflated posture, unable to keep up the weak charade of contentment she’d just started to put up. Sometimes the crazy child was just too smart for her own good. “I’m afraid so,” she answered, slouching her neck in a sign of disappointment. “I’m sorry…”

Light Tail’s cheerful outlook faded away in an instant, and she sighed to no one in particular as she set the ladle back onto the counter, having finished preparing the three salad bowls. “It’s not your fault,” she tried to console, but her dejected voice made it clear she was still mildly upset at the prospect of not having her mother’s company as often as she was used to. “Just wish this hadn’t happened now that I got to readin’ that awesome book. I was gonna ask you to teach me some spells…”

Hearing the filly’s mild request made her heart skip briefly. She’d never really complained about the lessons on the levitation spell, but she’d never really shown any further interest in magic studies. Even if it was just another one of her “cutie mark crusades”, it would be worth the effort and energy to see if the family talent for magic had successfully passed on or not. “We’ll work it out once things get back to normal,” she promised.

Light Tail’s body perked up slightly at the promise, and though she didn’t return to her overly joyous mood, she wasn’t moping about anymore either. “No rush,” she said. “It’s not like ya got picked for the Last Journey or anythin’, right?”

Sling Shot’s heart screeched to a terrifying halt, having almost completely forgotten about the subject up until that point. It was true that the Overmare hadn’t chosen anyone just yet, but she’d also neglected to say anything about it on the PA system, most likely to keep from panicking the children at such a late hour. And she wasn’t about to ruin dinner with such a subject. So long as Light Tail didn’t suspect anything, she wouldn’t do or say anything to bring such suspicions to the surface.

And if Cloud Wind’s dipped wings were any indication, the pegasus had been thinking the same thing. She even betrayed a brief glare of dismay as she turned back to look at her friend in the eyes, as if trying to silently ask how they were going to even tell the kid that Selection was coming over two decades earlier than it was supposed to.

All Sling Shot could come up with was a weak, half-hearted smile, one she hoped would be mistaken for being disappointed at her new working hours rather than the possibility that this week would be the last one she’d ever spend with her daughter. “Yeah….that’d be pretty awful.”