> Fallout Equestria: Days after the End
>  by Random Grunt
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1. What's left of EEA
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.3.2
CANTERLOT-EEA-HQ/STORAGE/5
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.

Entry 1. Day 2 after the end. Loading...

We've been attacked, Canterlot is destroyed.

The EEA building in Canterlot survived, but just barely, the upper floors are compromised. 

There are fifty ponies in here right now. Nineteen are sick. We can't identify the sickness.

The Chancellor took control. He is the eldest of us, so I guess that's fair.

As his first action, the Chancellor divided us into working groups. He and his inner circle are now Management, ponies who go scouting deeper into the EEA building are Retrieval Teams. Then there is Research Team, Food Management and then there is me. Inventory Management and Record-Keeping.

First, I'll introduce myself. I am Cold Fritz, I work (or is it worked?) as an EEA assistant. Haven't been here for too long. Hoped to get a stable income out of this job to save up for a Stable ticket. It didn't really work out that way.

I'll be keeping the record of the surviving members of the EEA.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 2. Day 6 after the end Loading...

We lost eighteen ponies. Only one recovered after the sickness. We are growing short on food. The Chancellor overestimated how much we had. The Research Team is looking into it, but we don't have food to waste on research.

We have recovered some of the old EEA relics and spellbooks. The rulebook among them. We are forced to rely on some of our magical relics for survival. One of them, "The badge of EEA" has proven itself useful, it was created to close schools that didn't follow the guidelines, but we used it to seal off dangerous parts of the EEA HQ. 

A lot of relics are in Research right now, meaning they can't be listed as inventory. The Chancellor hopes to store the relics away. What they did to Canterlot messed with all the magical items we have. Two items have already been discarded as corrupted, we lost a member of the Research Team to find that out.

On a brighter note, terminals from the storage have also been recovered. Ten working ones and three broken. The terminals are to be repaired and sent to each working group. And, of course, I'm the one that has to fix them. I already have one working. As a matter of fact, I am using the working one to do the record.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 3. 1 week and 3 days after the end. Loading...

It has been a week and 3 days since the end. Most of us are having nightmares. Luna has left us, now there is nopony to guard our dreams. Every night it's the same, it's that day. Everypony was on edge, because of the constant missile strikes, but thanks to the Princesses we were safe from the zebras, or so we thought. It was as normal a day as any other during the last few days, but that all ended when the Cloud came. It was everywhere, coming from the vents, the windows, even the walls. I can't forget the panic when it started, it all happened so suddenly. We had to run downstairs into the deeper parts of the building. The air filters there were supposed to be a lot stronger than those on the top. We got down here and the Chancellor sealed us in. But even though we were safe and deep underground we could still hear the screams. They didn't stop for hours.

The only survivor after the sickness, Nova, started to emit the Cloud. We had to seal her off in another room. She's a good pony, I hope she makes it.

Anyway.

The terminals are fixed and distributed. Those things actually took me some work, hard to fix technology you never held in your hooves before. The damn things were impossible to take apart, it's like they were made to withstand anything. 

One of the books has been given to me for safekeeping. I've been flipping through it for a couple of days now. It has our history. It's incredible what EEA used to do before Luna and her Ministries. I thought we were just controlling schools before, but that's not even half of it. We used to guide our youth, to keep ponies safe from forbidden knowledge, we had our own relics for Celestia's sake, we were the Equestrian Education Association! I guess it's a story worth keeping, a story of the EEA. Mind, I joined the association a year before the end, so I can't tell how it really was way back when. But when I was hired, this place was a propaganda machine in the hooves of the Ministry of Image. Our spells were used to cover accidents after the Ministry of Morale. Our relics were put to use in the military. Some of our brightest minds were taken by the Ministry of Arcane Sciences. We didn't guide the youth towards a greater Equestria, we guided them towards this.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 4. 2 weeks after the end Loading...

We lost two ponies while digging up the lower floors. There was some unexpected resistance. The old wardings were active. Incinerated our guys instantly. Silverstone and Shimmers aren't getting through. Another mistake that cost us dearly.

Nova's still alive in that room, our spells are keeping the Cloud from leaking in for now. I'm visiting her every chance I get. We talk about how the world used to be, before the war. She seems to be fairly fine, though she gets angry from time to time.

The book I was given has also proven quite useful. It mentioned a few secret chambers on the lower levels, one of them was in our controlled perimeter. It's a library or an archive of sorts. So my "department" was moved there. A plus of working alone, it doesn't take long to move. I still have to move the terminal and some paperwork. 

As of now, the Chancellor has tasked me with exploring the library for any useful knowledge, he thinks it could really benefit us. I have already sorted some of the books and scrolls that could be potentially useful. "Classification of Dark Arts" grabbed my attention immediately. Maybe there is something on this Cloud there. 

There are lots of other books that may be interesting, but the diary of an ancient Chancellor is first on my list, the thing was just laying in the middle of the unlocked chamber. The diary may contain knowledge vital to the future of Equestria, and I must get that knowledge.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 5. 2 weeks and 1 day after the end. Loading...

We are running short on food supplies. This building is massive and incredibly durable, but it wasn't meant to be a bunker. The Management debates sending a team higher into the building to scavenge, but they haven't decided yet. It could be the end for us.

Nova is still alive, but she's getting worse. She forgets things, things like her name, why she's locked, where she is. I think she's losing her mind in there.

All the things are finally moved into the new room. My new "office", is cluttered with scrolls, books and heaps of paper, I'm starting to think this was some kind of study. Most scrolls and books here aren't worth the time, "The Migrational Patterns of the Jackalope" or "The Dangerous Wildlife of Equestria" wouldn't be helpful right now. 

The Chancellor's Journal dates hundreds of years back and I'm guessing that this room does too. The entire book is written in old Ponish and I'm not planning on translating the entire thing, so I'll just mark all the important information in these logs, sorry to any future scribe or clerk that'll have to dig through my records. 

I've read the first few chapters of the diary, it belonged to Chancellor Night Twister. She just moved into these chambers and felt uneasy doing her work so deep underground, but she also states that her work must be done away from other ponies. No idea what "work" she is mentioning, hopefully, something we can use.

I've started on THAT book. The Classification of the Dark Arts. It's hard to put into words. The things described there are horrifying and there is nothing even similar to that Cloud there yet. That book also had a few references to some other tomes on the same matter, I've been searching for those books everywhere but there's no sign of them here. I hope I'm not going the same route that led Equestria to where it is today. 

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 6. 2 weeks and 2 days after the end. Loading...

Yesterday I finished all the inventory management that had to be done, so for the next few days, I plan to be completely focused on the books. First I'll finish the Diary then the Dark Arts.

I've been reading Night Twister's diary today. I translated a couple of pages and there is already a thing that spiked my interest. She mentions a second door in this room and how she had to sit on the opposite side of the room from that door. I couldn't find that door or any mark of it. That is the only thing I managed to get out of that text today. Most other things in there are just some very complicated magic theory notes.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 7. 2 weeks and 3 days after the end. Loading...

Night Twister describes herself as a unicorn with "extraordinary" abilities and finally sheds some light on her goal. She's something like a researcher doing some, well, research. She also mentions the same books that the "Classification of Dark Arts" mentioned. I couldn't translate anymore today, her words just didn't make any sense to me.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 8. 2 weeks and 4 days after the end. Loading...

I couldn't help myself. I simply needed to know. Today I read more of these Dark Arts. The things on those pages. They are horrible. Yet I can't help but wonder if those things could help us survive. I think I'll bring this book up on my next meeting with The Management, if I get some people from the Research to look into it, maybe it can help. 

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 9. 2 weeks and 5 days after the end. Loading...

The Chancellor rejected my idea. He told me to forget about this book and focus on something actually useful.

I tried to read the diary today, I really did, but I couldn't get myself to translate, something just didn't click. I want to follow The Chancellor's orders, but every other moment I find myself wandering to that darn book. Thinking of throwing it behind a bookshelf or somewhere where I wouldn't be able to read it.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 10. 2 weeks and 6 days after the end. Loading...

I haven't slept since the last log. I've been reading the Dark Arts. I think I'm starting to understand why I was told to stop. It mentioned an easy spell that any pony with a horn can do. It's an easy "Cover" spell, but the book doesn't explain what it does. I'm debating if I should try it. One tinny spell can't really hurt anyone, plus my room is far away from where the others are staying, so if it hurts any pony it'll be just me.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 11. 3 weeks after the end. Loading...

I did it. The spell itself was easy, almost natural. When I used it, all the bookshelves in the room disappeared like they were never there. The books were still in their places. 

I could see the door Night Twister wrote about. Although I wouldn't call it a door, it's closer to a wall being taken apart by magic. Brick by brick the wall deconstructed itself. It was dark inside, unnaturally so. There was just one thing I could see in there. A black leather-bound book. It had an ill presence to it, like the book itself wasn't supposed to be. I tried to open it, but the second my magic touched the cover I was thrown back into the room with an immense force. I flew right into a wall at the opposite end of the room. I raised my head and couldn't look away from the book. It was mesmerizing. I fell asleep looking at it. 

The nightmares were unbearable. After I woke up screaming, I wrote this log. I can't really go back to sleep, so I'm thinking of walking around the building for some time. Maybe I'll visit Nova. Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

"We will not fail Equestria again."

The EEA assistant, Fritz Cold.

Entry 12. 3 weeks after the end. Loading...

That was a mistake. I took the camera recording so that no one would be able to know what happened. I'll store it on this terminal as well, nopony checks these logs anyway.

SECURITY FOOTAGE EEA-5F66. Loading...
SECURITY FOOTAGE EEA-5F66 NOW PLAYING





The green screen flickered a couple of times before showing the recording. A window in a wall and a unicorn putting his hoof against it.

"Nova, are you in there?" the voice belonged to a stallion, he sounded scared.

"..."

"Nova? Can you hear me?" there was no reply. Slowly a pony appeared on the other side of the glass.

"Your eyes..." said the figure on the other side with a raspy dry voice, "Your eyes... Eyes, eyes, eyes," the pony started to repeat themselves over and over again, getting louder and more aggressive with each repetition, until finally, they started to beat on the glass screaming. The unicorn started to shift further from the glass.

"EYES!" she howled with each hit on the glass.

There was an audible crack. Something started to seep through it. The unicorn recoiled and ran off. The recording goes on for a few more seconds, but then abruptly cuts off.

END OF FOOTAGE EEA-5F66

Entry 13. 3 weeks and 2 days after the end. Loading...

I think I've recovered enough to do another log. Nova is gone. So is Mist, she died while they tried to put Nova down. I haven't slept since then. She was just fine the day before, but the moment she saw me something went wrong. Nopony knows that it all happened because of me, and we'll probably die before anyone decides to check my work, but I still feel like everybody secretly knows that I did it. It's killing me.

We've run out of food completely. Tomorrow we'll have to unseal ourselves and send somepony to get food. We've run out of other options.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
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It's hard to believe that it's been almost a month. A month since Equestria died. To be completely honest, it's hard to comprehend that Equestria doesn't exist anymore, that everypony is dead. This country endured for a thousand years, it felt like this peaceful life would never end. And now that everything we ever knew has failed us, what are we meant to do?

The morning alarm sounded and knocked me out of my thoughts. It was time to wake up. But getting out of bed was the last thing that I wanted to do. I say bed when in reality it's just an old red sofa covered in even older books. The surrounding room wasn't much better, old books and scrolls everywhere and a desk with a terminal in the corner.

As much as I would've loved to sleep for a few more hours, it was time to get up. Today was important, today we were going to break the seal separating us from the floors above. I really hoped that we wouldn't just invite the Cloud back in. By the order of the Chancellor, everypony must be present there. Guess to keep the morale up or something like that.

I got up from my "bed" and slowly trotted out of the room, there wasn't really anything for me to do before going to the seal. The corridors of the EEA building were almost all the same, made of dark bricks, narrow and with pretty high ceilings. It's easy to get lost in these halls if you don't know where to go and which turns to take. Thankfully I knew these halls by heart at that point, though it still took me a couple of minutes to get to the place where we sealed ourselves off.

I entered the room pretty early, there weren't a lot of ponies there yet. Just a few folks from the Retrieval Team, nopony was talking. All of them stood opposite the magical insignia blocking the way to the upper floors. Before the End, this room was something like a cafeteria. There was no food left there, of course, this was the first place we looked at. Some food trays still littered the area. I backed against a wall like everypony else and started to wait.

It didn't take long for everyone to get there. The Chancellor and two of his advisors came in last.

"We had a rough few days and the days ahead are going to be tougher," started the Chancellor, " but as members of the Equestrian Education Association, it is our duty to survive. Today we send away our bravest and strongest to ensure our survival. We all hope for your safe return. And without any more useless ranting," he raised the badge, turned towards the magical lock that had kept us safe from the Cloud for almost a month.

Then the chains holding the barrier together started to snap one at a time. When the last one snapped the magic disappeared leaving an open entry. For a second everything fell silent. Then we heard it. Low rumbling, it grew louder, we heard a growl, suddenly we heard hooves. A lot of hooves getting closer to us. Before long we saw what was making that noise. Pink eyes in the dark, tens of them, then hundreds. Then it began.

A figure emerged from the shadows, then another and another and another. I lost count somewhere around the moment when the first thing leaped at the Chancellor and bit down on his neck. We all panicked. I ran out of the room with the crowd. I could hear screams coming from behind, not everypony managed to get out. We all ran our separate ways, everybody was trying to get to their rooms, maybe we thought that these monsters wouldn't hurt us there, maybe we just didn't have anywhere else to run. I was no different.

I don't even remember how I got to my room, it's all a flash. The second I was in my "office" I shut the door and moved the sofa to block it. I frantically searched the room for anything that could help. Terminal? No, even if it could somehow help, I didn't think I had enough time to figure out how exactly it could help. The scrolls? Most of them were blank, too old to read, or too convoluted to be useful. I heard something scratching at the door, time was running out, I had to do something. Then it suddenly came to me, the wall, I could hide in there. I cast the spell to open it, the shelves disappeared, the bricks in the wall flew out. I stepped into the dark and cast the spell again to close the wall. The bricks fell back in place and the bookshelves appeared. It was just me, the darkness and the book. Thinking back on it, locking myself in there might not have been that best decision.

It was quiet in there. I could barely hear the scratching. Then there was a bash and the door gave out, I could hear the things getting past the door and the sofa, could hear them starting to scratch on the bookshelf that I was behind. They knew where I was and I had no way out. For the third time in ten minutes, I began to panic. I didn't know what to do or where to go. It was the End all over again if only a bit smaller and with less pink clouds.

The book, the only other thing in the room, it was different now, somehow less scary. Maybe, compared to real danger some spell on an old book is just not that alarming. I thought to open it, no magic this time, after all, what else could I do. I picked it up, it was a heavy tome. Opening the cover I read the title, "Custos ex Somnia". I turned the first page. It was, unexpectedly, in modern Ponish, still, most of it was gibberish, but I could make out a few words. Then a few more, until the whole page started to make some sort of sense. It was something like a spell, a weird one.

You see, I was never the best spell caster or magic wielder out there, but I could cast spells. Quite a few actually. And most of the time I could understand what a spell was for. If you think about it like music, every spell is a composition and it's like you see your notes and you kind of hear them in your head. Well, this spell was off beat.

I didn't trust it, I should've just closed the book and died in that room, but I didn't. I tried to use the spell. There were a few sparks at the end of my horn, then a poof, then nothing. It felt like playing the lyre, but you strum the metal part. I tried again, calmly.

There were no sparks this time. This time it worked. Tendrils colored like Luna's mane crept from my horn. They dragged themselves down covering me. Then, all of them melted into a clear night sky. There was no ground, nothing but the sky and the stars. There was no fear of death there, no End, no Equestria. It was so peaceful. I closed my eyes.
> Chapter 2. The Tunnelers
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I opened my eyes. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. There was a small cottage in front of me. One floor, a little garden in the back. 

I ran a hoof over the garden wall. It felt just like I remember. I trotted over to the door and tried to push it. It was locked. But she never locked the door. I tried again. It wouldn't budge. I calmed myself down. There's a back door, it doesn't even have a lock . I jumped over the fence and into the garden. 

The flowers were in bloom. Walking through her garden I saw a bucket and a pair of clippers lying in between a pair of tulips. That's unusual, she'd kill me if I left them out like that. Walking out of the garden and into the green back yard I saw the door I was heading for. It was boarded up.

I took a closer look at the house. The windows were broken and covered by planks. I turned around. The grass was dead, the tulips were dead. The sky was no longer blue, but a mess of gray clouds.

It started to rain.

I stood there in the rain. None of this makes sense, I thought. She would never let this happen.

Then I smelled it, like acid dripping into your nose. I saw it come from under the boarded door, slow pink mist melting anything it touches. I ran as fast as I could, but I was frozen in place. The Cloud slowly reached my hind leg. I saw it disappear in the thick fog. It slowly covered me.

Everything was pink. My lungs felt like a dragon took up residence in them. My skin burned, I could feel it melting and going down my unmoving legs. Every second lasted for days and I could feel every sting, every moment engraved itself into my head like a chisel striking a rock.

But with time it all started to feel numb, the Cloud no longer burned, the skin was no longer melting, the dragon moved out, even the chisel turned to light tapping. The heat of pain changed to cold numb nothingness. The pink slowly turned to purple, then a little light showed up, then another until they filled up the night sky.





I was lying on something cold, my eyes refused to open, the entire body felt like I'd just run from Manehattan to Ponyville and back. Suddenly I felt a light push.

"Hey. You alive there?" there was another poke. "Hello! Ya there?" one more poke, "Is he dead?"

"Maybe? How am I supposed to know?" said somepony else. The second one was definitely a mare. Her voice was coming from the opposite side of the other one.

"Aren't you the so-called medic?" he replied.

"I was a vet. We treat animals, not ponies."

"You keep telling that to yourself and we'll all die because of a rusted nail!"

I tried to get up, but my legs were too weak. Couldn't even move my head.

"Oh, shut up, he's alive," said the vet.

"Phew, don't like to snatch stuff from dead ones. Gives me the creeps. Let's take a look-see at what he's got," the one poking me said, then he pushed me on my back. "There's some weird book and that's it."

"Take the book, the Boss likes books," the medic responded.

"Well, that was obvious. What's we gonna do with the dude?" I heard the first pony say.

"We're taking him. Can't just take all his stuff and leave him to die, can we?"

"Technically-" the first one started.

"Shove you're 'technically' "– she sighed – " somewhere deep. We're taking him and that's that."

Suddenly my body was lifted in the air and put on somepony's back. Then they started moving.





It felt like at least a couple of hours of walking in silence. I still couldn't move a muscle. That spell sucked everything out of me.

We were going through some sort of tunnel judging from the echo.

"Hey! Do you think the Boss'll like the book? I just flipped through a few pages and it's all gibberish nonsense," the first pony said suddenly.

"I think the books are just to remind him of the old days," answered the vet.

"Think he'll give us more food for it?" he said flipping through a couple of pages.

"I don't know and to be honest I don't care," she mumbled. "I just want to get back and drink myself to sleep."

"So, it's drinking then? Thought you're a pills kinda girl. Wanna get a few shots together?" asked the one carrying me.

"Shut up, Jester, just shut up. I don't want to drink with you, I don't want to speak with you. You're an embarrassment and I don't even know why we keep you around."

"Alright, sheesh," he jerked himself in the opposite direction from the vet.

I didn't really know what was happening to me. First the spell, then the garden and now this. Where was I? Who were these ponies? Where were we going?

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud scream.

"Oi! Who goes there! You're in Tunnelers' territory. You better get out!" the voice was old and hoarse.

"Saddles, you damn idiot, open the gate," said the mare with quite audible frustration.

I could hear grumbling coming from the old pony. Then there was a loud bang and murmuring of a generator. The gate rolled to the side. We went inside and through a few doors.

I felt the touch of somepony's magic picking me up. Then, a sharp surge of pain as I was dropped on the floor. A metal door slammed shut. I tried to stay awake but was quickly pulled back into unconsciousness.





The concrete was cold and a little wet, the wind blowing in my face didn't make any of this easier.

A particularly strong gust of wind woke me up. I was barely able to open my eyes and see where I was. The room was small, lit with a single table lamp standing on the floor. There was no door to this room, hence the wind. But the worst thing was that I was lying in a cage made of rebar and road signs. I couldn't really see much of the room, the signs covering most of the cage.

"Look at this, the little Princess woke up," said a dark blue unicorn standing near the entrance to the room, "Now, I'm gonna be brief. You are with the Tunnelers now, so you either work good, get fed, and then maybe join us as a full member or you die in this cage. The choice is yours," he looked at a broken clock hanging on the wall, "You've got, let me think, an hour or so to decide. Have fun!" he finished while leaving the room.

Well, that was unexpected. It's only been a month and there are gangs already, I thought. Joining wasn't really an option, they already took my stuff and locked me in a cage, who knows how far their craziness goes? Maybe they eat ponies for dinner, and they are just calming me down so that I didn't panic and ruin the taste. Maybe they were zebra spies and now they were going to make me a part of their weird rituals? I began to panic. I needed to escape. Yes, that way they couldn't sacrifice me to their spirits or whatever it is that zebras sacrifice to.

I wasn't in a good place or a good state for that matter. Every muscle still hurt after using that spell. Plus I was locked in a makeshift cage, that wasn't great either.

The lock was the first obstacle in my way. It didn't look well-made, they probably put it together themselves. I could probably use my magic to simply take it apart. It not that hard really. This goes here and that bolt goes out, then we simply bend that bit halfway aaaaand.

There was a click and bits of the lock fell on the floor. That was surprisingly easy, these Tunnelers definitely don't know how to make locks. Maybe that's because they were expecting me to escape? Maybe this is some sort of test?

After taking a quick look around the room I came to the conclusion that there was only one way out of here. The way that unicorn went. Now I just needed to check if anypony is in the next room, then try to get out of here.

I started to move to the door, seemingly an easy task, a hundred times easier than taking apart a lock or casting a spell from an ancient tome, but I somehow couldn't do that, because I stumbled over the only thing in the room. The Celestia damned lamp, I didn't pay it any attention until my front leg touched the hot bulb and I reflexively kicked it into the wall. Being sneaky was never my strongest side.

Not a second passed after I kicked the lamp and I heard a commotion outside the room. Somepony was definitely going to check on me. I got as close to the entrance as I could. Maybe I could do something. Think, Fritz, think! Maybe if I do this? Yes, that could work.

I picked up the lamp with my magic. Yes, this will work.

"Hey! What's going o-," the unicorn from before was just about to enter the room. But then his leg got caught by the lamp's cable and he went face-first into the concrete.

"That works, I guess," I poked him to check if he was still up. Luckily the fall knocked him clean out. That wasn't what I had in mind, but it worked just fine.

He didn't have any weapon with him, which is strange considering he was supposed to keep ponies in that cage from escaping. But then again, it's not like anypony has any experience in keeping prisoners. Well, besides the Ministry of Morale workers. Those ponies sure know how to keep someone under a lock.

I took a peek into the next room, it was empty, thankfully. Just a small sleeping bag and a radio. The room itself was completely made of concrete.

I carefully made my way into the next room avoiding any cables or other tripping hazards. Once inside I noticed a closed metal door to the left and a corridor to the right. This building, whatever it was, made little sense to me.

Getting close to the metal door I put my ear close to it to hear anything from the other side.

"I tell, you listen. All clear?" a loud voice with a thick accent boomed from the other side almost knocking me over, "You build cage, but is all wrong. Cage has more bars, so nobody escape. And cage has roof! I mean, come on, did nopony teach you how to build cage when you were little?"

"Ummm, no? And it's not like a lot of ponies know how to escape a cage either way, so it doesn't really matter" said a confused voice a lot quieter.

"What? Ponies here don't know how escape from cage? You definitely kidding me, right?" the loud one asked. There was no answer.

"That at least explains your failure with building. How can you build cage if you don't know how cage work? Now, you lucky you have me, I know how cage works and I can teach. Like my father teach me and his father teach him and his father teach him..." I pulled my ear away from the door. Corridor it is!

I looked into the corridor, it was so dark there that I couldn't see a damn thing. The second I raised my hoof to take a step I saw a bright light shining into the corridor from the left. Then it started moving. It looked like the corridor had something like pillars instead of a wall on the left, because every five feet the light would go behind something only to appear again just a couple of feet away. When it reached my end of the corridor it quickly returned to the other side and began moving towards me again. It looked like somepony was keeping an eye on this route. But I had no other place to go, besides the cage or the cage builder, that is. And these options seemed less pleasant to me. So I decided to stick with the corridor.

I waited for the light to swing back to the other side, took a deep breath, and began to sneak my way to the first pillar to hide behind it. My heart was going wild. I had to be very slow to make as little sound as possible, so by the time I was behind the first pillar the light was already on it. The pony swinging the light seemed to focus on the pillar for a few seconds, but they soon returned to doing circles with the flashlight.

Again waiting for the light to be on the other side, I made my push. Slowly and silently I got behind the second pillar. I sat down. It was going well so far, but I was starting to shake.

The light passed by.

I got out from behind the pillar. Only two left. I carefully placed my hooves on the wet concrete. Step by step I made it to the next one. Again the light was just behind me as I hid. I couldn't even wipe the sweat off my forehead my legs were shaking so bad.

The light went by again and I started to move to the last pillar. I turned my head to see where the light was coming from and who was swinging it. It was an old-looking unicorn in a high-visibility jacket. He was sitting on what looked like a subway bench, but somepony sawed it in half. The pony was looking the other way and was moving the flashlight with his magic, so I sped up a little and got behind the last pillar.

At this point, stepping into the tiny puddles of sweat was a potential danger and the shaking wasn't getting any better. But I needed to push a little more, and hopefully, after that, I wouldn't have to sneak anymore.

I raised a hoof to take the next step, but suddenly the old stallion turned his light away from the corridor and towards somepony coming to him. I didn't listen much to their conversation. Only a couple of steps separated me from the end of this corridor. I could barely see what was waiting for me there in the shadows, but hopefully, it was better than the zebra-worshiping-pony-eating-cage-obsessed crazies that locked me in here.

Finally, I got completely out of the flashlight's way. It was pitch black. I stretched one of my front legs and slowly went forward.

For a few seconds, there was nothing. But then my hoof touched something. It was wet and cold, like everything there. I felt my way around that object. There was a strange protrusion if I moved my hoof to the left, like some sort of a stick. A cold metal stick. I tried touching it. It moved. Just like a door handle. That was a door.

I let out a sigh. This was stressful. There was nowhere for me to go, but into that door. But first I had to open it, I prayed that it wouldn't be closed.

It wasn't. But apparently, nopony has tried to open this door since Celestia was a filly. Because when I tried to open the damn thing it squicked louder than a train engine.

"What in the... Who's there!?" I heard a voice from somewhere back. I started to push the door harder, but the thing wouldn't budge.

"Ha! Hey, guys, we've got a runner!" said presumably the flashlight pony.

Using a combination of what little magic I could muster and force I managed to open the door just enough to squeeze through.

"He went in there! After him! Finally, some action!" screamed ponies behind the door, "Open 'er up! I wanna catch him!"

I turned the other way and ran as fast as my tired legs would carry me. It was some sort of a room or maybe another corridor, I stopped paying attention right when I heard a gun discharge somewhere behind. Then another. They were shooting me now?!

I ran like crazy room after room, it all looked the same, just gray concrete here and gray concrete there. 

"Hahahahah! That's a dead-end, you idiot! There's nowhere to run!" howled the ponies chasing me.

But being a little panicked, I didn't pay any attention to their war cry. Or at least I thought it was some sort of war cry. Suddenly I saw a large pile of rubble right in front of me blocking the path. The part had caved in. I heard the shooting and screaming get closer.

I trotted on the spot not knowing what to do. There had to be a way out. I couldn't just die like this. Then I heard the floor under my hooves break and I saw a small crack travel from the cave-in right to me. I tried to move away from the breaking concrete, but it crumbled right around me and I dropped down right after the floor itself.

It was almost silent for a second. The sound of grinding stone and metal stopped. I decided to get up from the ground. Placing my front hooves firm on the concrete, I started to move my hind legs into position. And the floor collapsed again.

I lay on the floor surrounded by chunks of stones, bits of concrete, and a lot of stone dust. I didn't feel much honestly. But it was hard to move and every attempt made a surge of pain go through my body. So I, being the smart pony that I am, decided to lay there for some time.

Then I saw lights shining above.

"Oh, damn. The idiot fell a good way down. That's what you get when you don't join the Tunnelers, right boys?" one of the Tunnelers said, his voice sounded familiar.

"Jester, shut the hell up. You're not helping," I heard the mare from before, "Now, who's gonna tell the Boss that we lost a potential member and wasted ammunition?"

They quickly moved back not wanting to end up the same as me. The lights were gone and I was left alone, in the darkness, with nothing to my name. Great.





I spent some time fumbling in the dark. Without any source of light, it was hard to find my way around. It didn't help that every couple of minutes I'd bump into something and run back to the hole to the upper floors. It gave off the tiniest bit of light, not even enough to distinguish color properly. But a little light is always better than no light.

I decided that I couldn't stay near the hole forever and went into the darkness. The floor here wasn't wet or dirty or anything like the floor above. The place itself was deathly quite. There was nothing but the sound of my hooves hitting the tiles on the floor. Then suddenly my hoof got caught in something. It felt like a cable, but it definitely wasn't one. Cables are not supposed to move by themselves.

I tried to get free, but the more I yanked my leg the more it got stuck. It felt like some sort of snake was coiling around me. I struggled, tried to help the first hoof with another, but it got tangled up as well. There were more of those things now crawling all over my front legs.

The things were starting to hurt a lot. It felt like the damn thing was slowly getting tighter and tighter. Regular telekinesis didn't help, but instead made it squeeze harder. I didn't want to use proper magic, it could be dangerous plus I didn't recover from that spell yet. But this situation was getting out of control really fast.

At this point, these things were all over both my front legs and they were tight enough to draw blood. I didn't really have a choice whether to use magic or not.

The problem that only now became apparent was that I didn't know any spells that could help. The EEA didn't really teach employees any combat spells. We got a lot of other types of spells, mostly related to paperwork. There was that one thing they taught us like a week before the Cloud. It was a simple stun spell to "stop any anti-Equestrian spies", it's supposed to be easy to do and shouldn't take too much effort. But I never bothered to learn it properly and after we got stuck in the EEA building I didn't really have a chance to.

I concentrated. A spark appeared at the end of my horn. The spark grew into a small ball of energy. The ball shrank as the things around my legs tightened. I drew every bit of focus I had in me into that ball of light and I released it right into my leg where the cables were thickest.

I'll admit that shooting a stunning spell directly at myself wasn't my brightest idea, but in my defense, there wasn't really any one thing to shoot at.

The spell worked like a charm... or like a spell... because it was one. My head was a little dizzy and I couldn't feel my leg. But I could feel the grip around me weaken. The things stopped moving. Suddenly sparks started to come out of it, the spell wasn't supposed to do that, it was supposed to stun things not burn them.

I could somewhat see what it was. Some kind of metal wires, all leading under a tile in the floor. Throwing the sparking wires off of my legs I hobbled away from the trap. It looked like the tile was about to go off, it was red-hot and sparkling all over the place.

Then a robotic voice announced.

"Overload in testing cell 03. Repeat. Overload in testing cell 03. Deploying fire preventing measures. Repeat. Deploying fire preventing measures," the voice boomed from somewhere above me. There was a little hissing sound right above the tile. Then nothing happened.

"Error. Error. Fire preventing measures are deactivated. Please contact a Stable-Tec engineer to fix the problem. All workers are advised to leave the perimeter," the voice was being very helpful. Then the tile just gave off a small poof sound and a little waft of smoke rose to the ceiling.

"The problem has been resolved. All personnel is to return to their workstations immediately," the voice reassured me.

Although I wasn't being killed by some defunct household robot prototype, I still had just fallen two stories down and I now had spirals cut into my legs. And the cuts were bleeding, mind you. The cuts weren't too deep, but there were a lot of them. Thankfully I couldn't feel at least one of my legs, so that's at least half the pain.

Oh, and on top of that with the cables no longer sparkling I once again couldn't see a damn thing.

But this time I kinda had a solution to the darkness. Right before I shot myself, I saw that the ball of magic was giving off some light. And I thought that it wouldn't be too hard to keep the spell prepared as a crude flashlight.

Now that I think about it, a flashlight spell would've been a really useful thing to teach an EEA worker, but for some reason, the upstairs decided that light is not something we need. Because the EEA building sure could've used a little more light, there wasn't even electricity on most of the lower floors.

The energy appeared around my horn again, it formed the little ball of light and I could finally look around the room I was in.

It was a big room with a window on one of the walls. Besides the weird tile-thing, there wasn't anything interesting there. There was a door like the ones that Stable-Tec promised to have in their Stables. I don't really know if these doors were in the Stables since I, you know, never got enough money to buy a ticket. Far as I remember these doors are supposed to open with "but a press of a button!", or whatever the ad said.

I found said button and pressed it. The ad didn't lie, the doors did open with a push of a button, how convenient.

The door slid open and I walked into another room, this one had a lot more stuff in it. A bunch of strange equipment was all over the room: binoculars, blowtorches, some screwdrivers, and even some sort of a helmet. There was also a terminal on a table overlooking the window into the cable-tile-thing room. It was on, but the brightness on the screen was set to a minimum. Weird, you can barely see what's on the screen.

"Well, I got nothing better to do. May as well check it out," I said to myself so that it wasn't too silent.





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.5.1
STR-TSR-LAB-012/RESEARCH/DEFENSE/ONYX
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Onyx Storm

Entry 1. First day on the job. Loading...

It is the first day of the "Thestral Specialized Research". I've just been moved to this facility. We're developing some bat pony specific tech. I assume it's something like lamps that have a low-intensity mode or maybe radios that are very quiet. I even got a few ideas of my own. To be completely honest, I'm kinda excited to be working on a civilian project, all of this war stuff doesn't really work for me.

Entry 2. Okay, that's not what I expected. Loading...

I got my hopes up for nothing. We're developing some military tech so that bat ponies could be effectively used on the battlefield. Day-vision goggles, earplugs, and stuff like that are already taken by other ponies here. So I got, and I quote, "low visibility based perimeter defence measures". What do they expect me to give them? Any defense measure is better when you can't see it.

I'll try to come up with something. Loading...

On a separate note, the idiots running this facility decided that getting rid of every light source that isn't a terminal is a good idea. To accommodate our bat pony friends. It's just a stupid way of doing things, bats don't even come to this part of the lab, they tend to stay in their rooms unless they are called for.

Entry 3. Eureka!. Loading...

Yesterday I got tangled up in some cables some moron left out in the middle of the floor. I even had to go to the med bay, thankfully it's near my work station. And then I got an idea. I already have all the things I need to build it.

Entry 4. The first prototype. Loading...

It took me a few weeks to finally build it. I call it "Wire trapper", the name's not final. It's inserted into the floor and when activated will throw out a bunch of metal wires, it's easy to overlook them. Then when somepony touches any of the wires it sends a signal to slowly wrap itself around the target. It's silent, non-lethal, and doesn't require a lot of energy to run.

It has some problems, that I haven't come around to fixing yet. The thing is easily overloaded, if the current is a bit bigger the thing will fry. It didn't pass magical stress testing, but zebras don't exactly have unicorn magic, now, do they? And above all, this thing caught the eye of some thestral big guy, he was somehow connected to the Princess I think, he said he liked it.

AUTOMATED FACILITY-WIDE MESSAGE. Loading...

Sorry to inform you all, but this facility is being closed down. The TSR project is being moved to another location. Don't worry, you're all still employed, you're just being relocated because some pony higher up suspects that zebras got their hooves on something really dangerous and this place wasn't meant to be a vault. Please copy all of your blueprints and terminal information. Anything physical stays here.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY
STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.





After the automated message there was nothing. And the last date was like two or three months ago. So this place was 

supposed to be abandoned. Well, that's a relief.

The terminal mentioned a med bay and that's just what I need right now. It may not hurt now, but if I get some sort of infection... Without professionals, I don't even know how I'd get that treated.

So, I set out on my way to find the med bay. It was supposedly somewhere nearby.

After a minute or two of me hobbling around, I found the med bay. The inside looked like any typical doctor's office, well, plus all the darkness of course. The only light source besides my improvised flashlight was the dim terminal. I tried to look for some sort of cabinet. And I found one pretty quickly. But it was locked. It can't ever be easy, can it? Maybe the terminal has an answer to where the key is?

No luck, the terminal was locked with a password.

I really didn't want to go around with a bleeding leg, so breaking the lock was the only solution.

Looking closely at the lock, it was a thousand times better than the Tunnelers' one, but no lock could stand before my might. I just looked at the door keeping the cabinet locked and took it off of its hinges. They really should've invented a better way to lock a cabinet.

There it was, the healing potion, the sweet pinkish goodness. I didn't know if it was actually sweet or not, but that's beside the point. I downed the entire bottle and it took effect immediately, the spiral cuts on my front legs started to close up. Then came the bandages. A lot of them. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I knew nothing about how to bandage properly. I just wrapped it around the cuts and that was that.

I then came up with a genius idea, if I had some sort of a saddle-bag I could take these potions, bandages, and whatever else is in that cabinet with myself to use it when I'll inevitably get hurt again. It's not like there was anypony in this place who could need them. But without a bag, I couldn't carry more than a few potions with me.

So I left the med bay until I could procure myself a bag.

I wasn't in any rush and could peacefully look for any kind of bag or a way out of this place. Both would be just fine.

My search was stopped when I found the head researcher's office. It was, unsurprisingly, better furnished than any other room I've seen so far. There even was a nice red sofa, not unlike the one I slept on back at the EEA.

The head researcher's terminal was my goal. It just had to have something useful. Ponies tend to keep some interesting information on their terminals, I know that from experience.

I turned the terminal on and was faced with the same problem as before. A password. Maybe this researcher kept it written down somewhere just in case?

I checked every drawer in the room, every piece of paper, but there was nothing. Sitting down before the terminal, I checked every surface of the table another time. Maybe I missed something? Then I decided to take a look at the terminal itself, it wasn't the standard model, this one had a custom case with some additional buttons that weren't on the regular ones.

I pressed one of the buttons just to see what would happen and wouldn't you know it there's a secret compartment in the casing. Inside, Bingo!, the password, and other things that I presume were the researcher's personal things: a hair comb and a hair pin. The password was a combination of random letters and numbers.

With the terminal unlocked I could finally learn what it was hiding.





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.5.1
STR-TSR-LAB-012/RESEARCH/HEAD/DERELICT
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Head Researcher Derelict Light.

Entry HR-1. Loading...

I am Derelict Light, a Ministry of Arcane Sciences researcher. By the order of Princess Luna, I have been assigned as the head of the "Thestral Specialized Research" project. The project itself was created on the demands of the Captain of the Lunar Guard. They requested a lot of new bat pony specific tech. The Captain wants the Lunar Guard to be an elite unit and claims that they can't be one without "specialized equipment". It's all filly nonsense, in my opinion. My skills and the skills of the researchers under me would be better spent on more pressing matters. But I can't really go against orders here.

Entry HR-3. Loading...

The progress is going steady. Most equipment that the Captain requested will soon be ready for testing. Developing the gear was a breeze, the traps and weapons on the other hoof have proven quite hard. The pony I put on traps hasn't come up anything yet and the guns aren't fearing much better. They have a design at least, it's some sort of a needle gun because we stopped the attempts to make silent solid slugs or magical guns long ago.

Because of the Captain's stupid idea to get rid of all lighting in the facility we had to get night-vision goggles for everypony working here. We'll give them out from the guard post, I think, all the ponies go through there and I don't want to gather anypony up for such a minor problem.

Entry HR-4. Loading...

Most of the tech that was tested was found safe enough to be sent off to production. We had a few accidents involving permanent blindness and hearing loss, but the Captain wanted it in production, so we had to comply. I barely managed to convince him that the traps and weapons must be tested thoroughly. I must admit, I am not feeling good working under these conditions. We're at war and I understand that, but it seems to me that the Captain just wants new toys to play around with.

Entry HR-7. Loading...

We have a breakthrough with traps. It's silent, it's non-lethal, it's all I could have hoped for. And it doesn't even involve explosives.

Entry HR-8. Loading...

I had a chat with the Captain. He wants us to relocate and continue our project, says that his ponies have more requests for personalized equipment. It's not an order yet, but he's thinking it over. I'm afraid my team will be reduced to nothing more than his personal tech developers.

Entry HR-10. Loading...

It's an order now. Officially, we are moving because this location proved to be unsuited for our research, apparently if a research center can't take a megaspell head on it is considered "unsuited" nowadays, whatever that means. I believe it's so that the Captain could keep a closer eye on us. I've sent a network-wide message explaining the situation. We'll be moving shortly. I leave all access codes on this terminal for anypony unfortunate enough to be working here after us. Sometimes I question the Princess' decision to assign me to this project.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY
STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.





The last message was also somewhere about a month before the end.

After reading the entries I now had a solid goal. Or as solid a goal as I ever had. I needed to go to the guard post to get myself a pair of goggles. The spell might not be hard, but keeping it up for a long time might not be the best idea.

It took some searching, but by this point, I somewhat understood the layout of this place, so it wasn't all that hard.

The guard post itself was just two tables and a few chairs blocking a corridor. There was a bag on one of the tables labeled "TSR Property". I peered in and there it was. A singular pair of goggles. They were a lot bigger than I expected, I imagined them to be something like a pair of glasses, but with some magical glass or something. But this was a whole headpiece with wires and lenses and Celestia knows what.

I put them on and nothing happened. I took the goggles off and examined them, maybe they were broken? There was a small button, it got pressed immediately. And the goggles turned on.

"Now don't I feel stupid," I said to the now green-tinted walls around me. The thing didn't really sit comfortably on my head and it was quite heavy.

I took the bag to the med bay and filled it with all the potions I could find and then tossed a few other meds in just in case. It was time for me to get out of that place, the longer I stayed there the likelier it was that the Tunnelers would decide to check out where I'd fallen. And I really didn't like the idea of meeting them again.

After packing up all the potions I could carry I went past the security post and into the unknown.
> Chapter 3. Celestia station
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tunnel was long, no doors, no turns. Only me and the concrete walls.

Half an hour or so of walking later I was nearing some form of an end to the tunnel. There wasn't any door, only a brick wall with a switch on it. I switched the switch, as one does, and the wall slid upwards. On the other side, there was a small room, almost a closet. Looking closer it WAS a closet. A broom, a bucket and some other cleaning supplies were neatly placed against the wall on the right proving once and for all that the room was, in fact, a closet.

As soon as I walked into the closet the wall behind me closed as though nothing was there.

Exiting the room I felt a wave of heat wash over me, then a putrid smell hit me not a second later. This wasn't a good sign.

The air felt like a warm moist rag being dragged across my entire body and the smell that I couldn't even begin to describe, it burned my nostrils.

Trying to keep my eyes open I looked around. It was a big space. There was a broken metro train right in the middle of the room coming from a tunnel on the left. The only light source in the room was a still working headlight on the train.

The platform was littered with benches. But on those benches...

There was something on these benches. Wet and dripping something. These things were all over the station. On the benches and the floors and I didn't want to guess what these were.

The smell was getting worse, the putrid stench was choking the air out of the station, it was getting harder to breathe.

Looking around the rancid station I saw a plain metal door on the other end of the platform. It was a long ways away, but I focused every fiber of my being to go straight to it. I couldn't stay in that place for much longer.

The stench was getting unbearable. With every breath, I thought I was going to puke. It felt like there were little things crawling under my skin. Every next step was harder and harder to take.

The door was the goal, I just needed to get to it.

Only look at the door, only the door. There's nothing else here, only this door. Just look at the door and take steps. Step and a step and a...

I slowly raised my right hoof to see. It was covered in something greenish. The something slowly dripped down from it to the ground. I stood still watching it drop from my hoof to the floor.

My throat was on fire, my last meal was trying to get free. I tried to swallow the bile, but it was too much, the stench of rot, the warm putrid air and the disgusting greenish things, all of it was just too much for me. The half-digested chunks of a carrot fell on the already awful floor.

I tried to force myself to look away from the grizzly image under my hooves. It was horrid, it was revolting, but I couldn't look away. The intricate shapes of this disgusting puddle, the small bits of carrot floating in it, the small dots of red poking out from under the top layer. This was weirdly mesmerizing.

I shook my head. It was getting even harder to breathe. I have to get out of here, now, I thought.

The door was still a good few feet away from me and the puddles on the floor didn't make it any easier.

Step by step I moved myself to the door and swung it open running out of the disgusting station. The second my tail crossed the door I slammed the thing shut with all the magic I had.

I took a deep breath, the stuffy air of the metro tunnels was a thousand times better than the dead stuff inside the station. I wanted to stay there a minute to catch my breath, but I couldn't stay there knowing what's behind the door.

Pressing onwards into the tunnels I tried flicking the mix of every bad thing imaginable off my hoof, but it just wouldn't come off. And the smell, oh Celestia, that smell was disgusting, I almost puked multiple times in the first few minutes of walking.

The gray walls of the tunnels embraced me again. The unchanging empty corridors of concrete felt welcoming, even comforting. This comfort didn't last long though, my right hoof was beginning to itch and the stench was becoming even worse.

The tunnel seemed to go on for a very long time and there was only one direction to go.





Hours passed by as I traveled the empty tunnels. I was about to collapse when I saw a small light at the end of the tunnel. It was bobbing up and down. A little glimmer of hope.

I sped up to a trot. The light meant that there might be somepony there. At this point, some friendly company would be just the right thing. After all, it couldn't have been another crazy gang, could it?

The light started moving from side to side and it was getting closer too. Then a young mare started speaking.

"Who's there?" she was still getting closer to me. She sounded friendly enough, so I decided that talking with her wouldn't hurt.

"My name's Fritz. I'm kind of lost here," I said simply. And I wasn't even lying, I had no idea where I was.

"Well then," she lowered her light to the floor allowing me to see that the light was crudely taped to a gun. How did she even get her hooves on a gun?

"Um, if you don't mind me asking, why are you armed?" I inquired. Ponies with guns never were my crowd, too dangerous.

"Because the gun safe on the station we settled in was malfunctioning after the huge spells hit in the distance, something to do with the magic of the explosions," she answered calmly. But that "huge spells" part made little sense.

"The spells?" I continued to ask questions. 

"You know the super spells, or whatever they are called, that those zebra bastards threw at us?" she answered once again. It seemed likely that the Zebra Empire wouldn't bomb places other than Conterlot with things like the Cloud. It made sense that the zebras would use something as deadly as the Cloud on the biggest target. But at the time my brain wasn't working as best as it could, so I'm guessing the look on my face wasn't a clever one. Seeing that I still wasn't understanding anything the mare continued.

"The ones that almost levelled Stratusburg? You know, the city we're in?" she explained. With that revelation, I lost the ability to construct coherent sentences for a second or two.

This far!? How could a spell that takes so little effort to learn do that? Why here? Why in the subway?

Several seconds passed while I was staring at the armed mare in disbelief.

"Are you alright? You sure the rads didn't fry your brain or something?" the mare returned me to earth.

"Yes, I-I'm sure. I'm alright. Just a bit shocked that's all," I responded.

"That's an understatement, you should see your face right about now. But, let's get to it. I'm not standing here for nothing, I'm guarding the Celestia station," her expression changed. She turned around and started going in the direction of, presumably, the station, "You coming?" she asked, cheery again.

"Yes. Didn't get your name by the way," I followed after her. I was going that way anyway, so a mare's company would be quite a good thing.

"Well, don't see a reason not to tell you. I'm Cheeky Rose. Me and a couple of my friends are staying at the Celestia station, trying to build some sort of a safe house. We got insanely lucky with the place, it's full of supplies and weapons, it's like this station was some important military base or something," Rose told her story. I was walking a little ways behind her and without the gun being aimed in my direction I could properly look at Cheeky Rose.

She was a red-ish unicorn in a technician's overalls. She was quite cheery for somepony living in the metro tunnels after the end of the world. I liked that.

"We even got connected to the metro's power grid, apparently the thing mostly works. So we have everything a pony in these times may need. But we lack one thing, ponies. I don't think that all that many survived the hit on the city. And even fewer are going around looking for a group to join," Cheeky Rose continued as we kept going to the station. I sensed a pattern here, the same as the Tunnelers, these ponies were about to ask me to join them. But unlike the crazies, these ponies seemed to be more civilized. And I wasn't locked in a cage this time, that kind of changed things too.

"But look at me, where're my manners. Tell me about yourself, we've got some time till Celestia," she changed the subject.

"As I already said, my name's Cold Fritz. I'm from the EEA-" I began my not so long story, but was cut off right when I mentioned my place of employment.

"The EEA? I thought that the EEA joined the Ministry of Image," Cheeky interrupted.

"We were a separate entity, but the Ministries had power over us, it doesn't matter anymore," I answered quickly to avoid that subject. That topic is quite a beaten one for anypony who worked at the EEA for more than a week. Every third call we used to get was about some things requested by MoI."

"Oh, that's something new. I really thought that MoI just took everypony from EEA," she paused, "You were saying?"

"So, I worked for the EEA. And I was at work when it all went to heck, pardon my language. We got stuck on the building's lower levels for an entire month with almost no food. And just recently, thanks to some weird EEA magic I got teleported here. That's about it really," I finished telling Rose the compacted version of my misadventures so far.

"Sounds like you got lucky, we've got a bunch of food here," Cheeky Rose responded, "You just need to talk to Gears, he's running the station. I'm sure he'll be happy to see a new face around."

Rose was weirdly bright for what was happening. Not quite happy, but she was still positive. And I wanted to know why. It was a good thing to see someone be in a good mood and all, it just seemed weird.

"If you don't mind me asking, with all the things going down in the past month, why are you so, well, positive?"

"Well, it's a bit of a story, but we still got time. The day the spells hit my friends and I were walking around town. We needed to get from the town center to the border of town, a friend of mine lived there. We had a party planned and all. We decided that the subway was a good idea. That decision, literally, saved our lives, we were close to the station when the sirens started blaring, quickly ran in with a couple of other ponies, it was the middle of a workday, so most ponies were at work. We got down and the staff locked the doors.

"We were scared. The staff tried to get in contact with the authorities, but everything was silent. We had nothing to do, but wait. A few minutes later, it hit. Everything was shaking, the ceiling started cracking and the loudest noise you ever heard filled everything. Apparently, something around our little town was important enough to get bombed. After a minute or so, it settled down a bit. 

"We were even more scared than before. Most of us were panicking, running around like crazy. But then Gears started a speech.

"He told us to focus on surviving, on the "now" rather than on the "before" or the "after". He got us all together and started ordering ponies around, assigning tasks and getting everypony doing something. He even got the workers to listen to him. Got us all fed and equipped. He may be a bit straight-to-the-point, but he kinda saved our butts, so we don't mind. He runs the station now and everypony focuses on work instead of mopping about. And that's why we all try to keep a positive outlook. Look where being serious got us?"

We chatted a bit more as we got closer to the station.

We stopped right before a big makeshift door that blocked the tunnel. Rose knocked on the door a couple of times and the thing slowly opened.

"Welcome to our little humble abode," said Cheeky Rose showing me the station. Celestia station was a lot bigger than the previous one. The roof was at least thirty feet away from the floor, golden arches were decorating the walls and the lighting here was kind of ethereal. This definitely looked like a Celestia station to me, regal and big, just like the Princess. My admiration, however, was stopped by Rose.

"Um, you'd better visit Gears before too long, wouldn't want to keep him waiting," she said while pushing me towards, presumably, the place where Gears was. Just one turn away from the station proper in the utility tunnels, then a flight down and we were there.

Rose led me into a small office room. She didn't come in, instead choosing to stay in the door.

The room was nice, for an underground office, it was quite a let down after the station itself. There was a table with a terminal in the middle of the room. A blue stallion sat behind the terminal.

"And who might you be?" he asked me, his voice was stern, but not aggressive.

"I'm Cold Fritz..." I didn't really know what else to say. You usually say something during introductions, right? But what am I supposed to say?

"Mhm, Cold Fritz, you are a survivor and as I understand it you're looking for a good place to stay. And as it so happens, we here at Celestia station have all the things you might need to survive," he almost repeated what Rose already told me word for word, "But you already know that, don't you? So, I'll be brief, I'd like to share our supplies with every pony who comes here. But I can't. We're not a charity and our supplies are limited, and I'm sure you understand that. And so, I have a deal for you. You see, we have a problem that needs solving, after the zebra fuckers hit us some of the wildlife moved to the city, and some of those critters got into a good few of our rooms. And I can't take any of my ponies off of their things to deal with the critters, everypony here is doing something necessary. So," he paused for a second, "if you help us deal with our little problem, we'll provide you with food. Sounds fair?"

This did sound somewhat fair, he didn't have free hooves to deal with this problem and I was getting quite hungry. It's been around a day or two since I last ate. I didn't know exactly how I would get rid of the vermin. I had a few ideas, a stun spell and some Luna's mercy could work, but breaking necks of small woodland creatures wasn't really a thing I was comfortable with. But I wanted to eat, badly.

"Yeah, that sounds fair enough," I said still not sure of how I'd get the thing done, "Give me a couple of minutes and I'll be ready."

"Oh, that's just wonderful, talk to Cheeky when you are ready, she knows where the little boogers are," Gears informed me and went back to his terminal.

I walked out of the room. There was a thing I needed to do before doing any kind of work. Visiting a toilet or any other place where I could clean myself a bit and take the bandages off.

I asked Rose about it and she showed me the way. They still had running water, so it didn't take long to clean off my hoof. After it was as clean as it would ever get without some magic or chemicals, I took off the bandages, they'd done their part, there were no traces of the wire cuts from earlier.

"I'm ready to go. Where are the rodents?" I asked Rose while walking out of the toilet.

"The little devils took two rooms. Sub generator two and the employee lounge to be exact. The generator room is important for obvious reasons, and while the lounge itself is not that important, besides being a nice place to eat, the only way to the water pump goes through the lounge. I wasn't joking when I said that we've got everything to survive. The problem is we can't get to it," Cheeky explained to me while we were going deeper into the station. After some time we came up to a closed door.

"The generator is in there. After you're done with it, there's another door that'll lead to the lounge, you can't miss it," she explained and started to walk away, but turned to say, "And good luck."

She trotted back where we came from and quickly disappeared behind a corner. I was alone, without weapons and I still needed a plan. Gears didn't mention what kind of animals were in there, maybe it's harmless?

Opening the door I walked into the generator room. It was dark there, a big generator stood in the middle taking up most of the room. I heard something immediately. Like a chittering sound. Then I saw it, a little pair of bunny ears behind the generator.

"Phew, it's just some little bunnies. Gears's just a little panicky," I sighed with relief. But suddenly the ears started to move towards me. It hopped out into my line of sight. This wasn't a regular rabbit. It had a bright red coat and had a pair of antlers on its head. And it was staring right at me with its bright glowing red eyes.

There was a moment of silent realization. This was not a rabbit or a bunny, this was a Jackalope. And it looked like the carnivorous variety. Red eyes, sharp teeth, pointy horns and a bright coat, yup, that's the dangerous one.

The Jackalope leapt trying to impale me with its horns. I dodged to the left, it just about missed me and flew into the door, knocking itself to the ground. Then the little devil just stood up, shook its head and continued trying to impale me. He lept at me again, but this time I didn't have room to avoid him, the generator was on my left side and the wall blocked the right. I got as close to the wall as I could, but one of the horns still caught me cutting a thin line across my left side. These things were sharp.

Now, I never was an angry pony, especially to little animals. But all of that changes the moment an animal does something like that. For a second I simply stopped thinking about that Jackalope as a living breathing creature. It was just a ball of danger and pain. So I resorted to dealing with this problem the old fashioned way, I caught the bastard into my magic grip and hurled him into a wall with all the strength I had.

I heard its horns crack on the wall. The thing didn't get up. My side wasn't looking much better, there was a jagged line going from my shoulder all the way to my cutie mark. It was bleeding. I drank one of the potions from my bag and the bleeding slowed down almost immediately.

Standing up, I looked the room over now that the immediate danger had passed. There were cracks in the wall where the Jackalope landed, these things were a lot more powerful than you'd think. The generator itself seemed fine if a bit banged up, presumably by the monster rabbits.

There was a second of silence as I looked over the room waiting for the potion to take full effect. While I was looking around I noticed something scurrying under the generator. I came closer to see the Jackalope in there, but the small bastard jumped at me as soon as it saw my leg. This one was much smaller than the previous one and the horns were really small, but that didn't make them any less sharp. Its head hit me right in the legs knocking them out from under me. I fell face-first into the generator.

As I already said, I never was an angry pony, but these little daemons were bringing out the worst in me. Grabbing this one just like the first I flung it right into the opposite wall. But as I hurried to get back up on my hooves a third Jackalope skittered its way onto the generator prepared to leap towards me. I didn't want to wait until this one hit me, so I quickly hurled a stun at it. The ball of light hit the little creature and it went limp falling off of the generator. With a little effort and a snap the varmint was dead on the ground. 

When all the little monsters in the room were dealt with, I finally noticed the door Rose was talking about and with this room cleared I opened the door and went in.

Another corridor. Long, dark and narrow. Thankfully, the night vision goggles were still working, so darkness wasn't really an issue. The other problems with this corridor, sadly, couldn't be fixed by the goggles. With a grunt, I continued into the corridor.

I closed the door behind me and started walking, but I didn't even get a couple of feet away from the door when I saw the next Jackalope, this one was small with little horns. I couldn't see its color because of the googles, but I was quite sure that it still was in the reds.

The monster jumped at me, but this time I wasn't about to try dodging the attack, I caught it mid-jump. It was trying to get out of my grip, shaking its head to attack, but there was nothing to attack. I turned my head away. There was a loud crack.

Once I was done, I threw the corpse to the floor, there still was a room to clear.

To be completely honest, these little things got me all riled up like I never was before. It wasn't hatred or cruelty. I didn't kill them just because I wanted to kill them. It's hard to explain. I didn't need to kill them, I could've easily stunned them and then thrown them away. But I didn't. The second the first one cut me I knew that none of them would survive the encounter.

Another door was in front of me, the same metal door as any other door in the metro. But I could hear chittering behind it, there was more than one there.

I entered the lounge. It was a small room with a couple of exits and two tables in the middle. There were a least five critters here, but I could hear more. On the table, I saw the biggest one of them. It was unnaturally big for a Jackalope. The horns were almost twice the size of the thing itself. It was staring at me.

It snarled in my direction. Got up to its feet. And lept at me.

It was too big to just catch it out of the air, the momentum would just carry it to me, but I had just the spell for that.

First the sparks. Then the ball of energy formed. And I quickly hurled it at the flying rodent. It was a precise hit, right in the body. The big Jackalope flopped to the floor and I heard all of the lesser ones scurrying away from me.

I picked up an empty Sparkle-Cola bottle off the table and broke it over the King's head. Then I stuck the broken bottle into its gut, twisted it and dropped the dead Jackalope to the floor. 

My skills in animal cruelty seemed to impress the other rabbits. All of them were gone, presumably the same way that they got here. I sighed in relief as the last one scurried off into a small hole in the corner of the room. I looked around for a second, there were still a couple of things on the table. Most importantly for me, an unopened Sparkle-Cola bottle that stood at the far end of the table. I opened the bottle and having nothing else to do there I headed back to Gears. I tossed the empty bottle away near the toilet.

I returned to Gears drinking another potion on the way back. The first bugger got me good, it'd take some time to heal. But at least the pain was gone.

I knocked on the door to Gears' office.

"Come in."

I opened the door, Gears was far more relaxed than before. He looked away from his terminal.

"I saw how you did there. The rooms are clear and the generator's fine. As far as I'm concerned you've done you're part, time for us to keep our end. Go back up to the station, you'll see a bright yellow unicorn there, her name's Bright Glow, she watches the food pile. I already informed her that you'll be coming," he said and quickly went back to doing his terminal thing.

Closing the door to the office, I went to get fed for the first time in what felt like years.

Bright Glow was standing in the middle of the station proper. She was exactly as Gears described her, yellow and a unicorn. He neglected to mention the Pinkie Pie styled mane and the smile like the Ministry mare herself. 

"Hi! I'm Bright Glow, but you can call me Bright, or Glow if you want to. Gears told me you did the thing with the little critters, I sure hope that wasn't much trouble," she chirped happily as I approached her, "So, what's your favourite colour? Is it grey? And what's your favourite food? Oh, no, no, let me guess. It's cupcakes, isn't it?" she paused for a second as if to let me answer, but I didn't have enough time to even open my mouth before she continued, "Well, that'd be bad if you like cupcakes, because we don't have any. But we've got a bunch of other stuff like carrots, apples and daisies, maybe we can even find you a box of Fancy Buck Cakes, but I wouldn't count on that."

With that, she happily trotted off. I followed Bright Glow until we came to another door. It probably led to their food pile. She went behind the door and I stayed near it waiting for her to come back with my "payment". Never expected to get paid in food, to be honest.

I shuffled through my bag while I was waiting. I only had a single potion left and with the speed, at which I seemed to use them I'd definitely need more. I quickly thought about asking for a couple of theirs, but that would probably lead to some other menial task that'd end with me being hurt.

I only started thinking about myself getting hurt when Bright Glow returned with a small saddle-bag filled with food and a carrot she was eating.

"Here," she passed me the bag, "come with me, I know a good place to eat around here. It's a little nook I found a week ago, there's a great view of the station from there."

She led me behind one of the arches propping up the walls and there was a ladder there that went along the arch all the way up to the ceiling. Bright went up pretty fast skipping some of the steps and cheerfully munching on the carrot. I on the other hoof, was a bit slower. Placing my hooves carefully I moved up the arch levitating the food behind. The arch was steady, but it had no guarding rails, so I tried to be very cautious while Glow just hopped up without a care.

On the top, there was a flat platform with a sleeping bag on it. She sat on the bag and focused on eating her carrot.

I sat down and opened the food bag. There were four carrots, three apples, a box of cakes and an actual hayburger. The burger caught my attention immediately. I got it out of the bag and started munching.

"I like this view, it reminds me of the time before the war," said Bright Glow still eating her carrot, "I used to work as a history teacher, believe it or not. This station was constructed to celebrate another hundred years of peace under Celestia," she paused to look at the glimmering station. The station was quite long, from the nearest wall to the one at the furthest end was at least two or three hundred feet. The walls of the station were covered in a gigantic painting that depicted Celestia at the very top of the ceiling surrounded by golden light and crowds of cheering ponies closer to the ground. Some pegasi were flying above the crowd, cheering to the Princess above. There was no Luna on this one, it was probably built before she returned.

It was quite ironic, now that I think about it. A station dedicated to a Princess that left her post the second things turned bad. Luna proved to be a better leader when things came to it. Not that a better leader was enough to save us in the end.

"I used to love my job, telling the kids what happened in the past was amazing. If you do it just right something as boring as the history of the Wonderbolts becomes the most interesting thing ever. But then the Ministry of Image came with their propaganda, you couldn't even publish an article in the local newspaper without it getting re-written to "fit the current climate"," Glow sighed.

"Oh, don't even tell me about that. I used to work for the EEA. The amount of crap the Ministry of Image made us implement is just unbelievable, to be honest. And don't even get me started on the official communications with the Ministries. You mistyped a letter, now you are a spy. It's honestly such a joke," I let out a sigh of relief at finally having someone from a similar field to talk to.

"The EEA? The making the school guidelines EEA? Weren't you assimilated into the Ministries?" Bright Glow asked the question. Well, it wasn't a single question, but that's not the point. Every time you mention the EEA ponies ask if the thing still exists. This question becomes a little easier with the world gone, but still two ponies that I mentioned my job to in the last day and both of them asked almost the same question.

"Yeah, the EEA, it still worked. Celestia stepping down took away almost all political leverage the EEA had. Even had to change the Chancellor, the old one wasn't happy with Luna's policies. And with the Ministries getting all the power we were just taken for parts basically and what was left just did its job under the "guidance" of the Ministry of Image. Most of our scholars joined Twilight's Ministry, the relics were taken by the Ministries as well. The only good thing is that when your organization exists for hundreds of years and for all of the time it exists it makes powerful magic items, it becomes almost impossible to take all of them," I gave a little chuckle at the end.

"Ooo, magical relics. Like what?" the expression on her face was like a filly in a candy shop.

"Well, we had a lot of stuff. Like the Seal, which is just a medallion used to lock schools down. The robes themselves were a magical item of sorts, the owner would spend time to add little trinkets and baubles to the robe. After years of work, some of the Chancellors had so many things that the robes turned into an armour of sorts from the sheer amount of metal things on it," I explained with a smile.

"So, some ponies were just walking covered in medallions? They'd make a lot of noise, wouldn't they?" Glow asked. I was all too happy to answer.

"You wouldn't believe how loud they were, some of the old scholars were almost impossible to miss. You'd hear the ringing minutes before they'd get close to you and they weren't fast walkers. That helped avoid them in the halls, they'd get all grumpy if you were blocking their way," I told Glow. She chuckled before changing the topic.

"Sooo, what are you planning to do next? We could really use a pair of working hooves around here, especially somepony with your experience," she asked.

"I don't know really. I haven't thought about it yet. Ever since I got into Stratusburg I haven't had time to think about what I was going to do," I answered, "Don't get me wrong, you guys are fine and all, but I don't think staying here is for me. I've been cooped up in the EEA building for a month, I don't think that staying at any place is a good idea for me now. I might try to get further down the subway, maybe find something interesting," I thought out loud.

"That sounds like a great idea! Maybe if you found something cool you could bring it here? Or come back to us, so that we could send ponies to look at it?" she loudly approved of my idea.

We set up there looking at Celestia station for some time. The hayburger was gone before I knew it. Always was a sucker for hayburgers.

After my little snack, I got off the arch leaving Glow there to watch the station. The way back down was as nerve-wracking as the way up. I got down without major problems, checked if everything was in place. I wouldn't want to stay too long at this station. But it never hurts to just enjoy the peaceful moment.

There were some ponies walking around the station carrying things around, some ponies were having a lively chat and one earth pony was even playing some games. It was a good place. Sad that it didn't last that long.

BOOM!

The gate that I came in some time ago flew off the hinges and onto the rails. Three ponies emerged from the smoke. They were armored and armed. All of them had rebar wrapped around their bodies and road signs tied to the bars. There was one word legible on their signs, "Tunlrz" written in red paint.

The unicorn in the middle had a weird looking blade in his grip and the two earth ponies around him held big chunks of concrete on rebars.

The middle one was covered in blood. And the only pony who was that way was... I stopped myself. The trio started moving towards all the other ponies. Most just stood there and did nothing, they were too naive or too shocked to do anything.

The guard that stood at the door, a young stallion with a pistol shot at the knife-wielding attacker. The bullet simply bounced off the armor. Then the blood-covered unicorn lept at the guard and twirled around him keeping the knife at the guard's neck. The guard fell to the ground clutching his bleeding neck.

The panic started. Everypony tried to run somewhere. This felt familiar almost.

I took off the second the blade touched the poor guy's neck. I already had experience with this sort of thing.

I remembered the tunnels that lead to Gears's office, everypony was probably running there. He saved them once he'll do it another time.

But that way wouldn't work for me. I needed to get out of this station. I needed to get to the utility tunnels, it'd be easier to avoid pursuit there, tight space, even a little empty bottle on the ground might slip somepony over.

I needed to think this over quickly. Every station has at least two directions to go in. I came from one and the Tunnelers came from there too, so that's a no. So the utility tunnel must be... That way!

The door was at the other end of the station. A good three hundred feet or so away. And there were at least three ponies behind me ready to end my life. I was running like crazy to the other side, ponies were still screaming behind me, some a lot louder than others. I heard hooves hitting the tiles behind me. One of them was following me. I tried speeding up, but it sounded like the Tunneler was still right behind me.

I got to the door, grabbed the handle and opened it. Then I was pushed into the room like a train hit me in the back. I stumbled inside.

"Look who we have here. Our little runner," the stallion pushed me to the ground, "Done running now? Our policy on new members has changed. You missed your chance. Prepare to die."

He took the pistol that the guard used into his mouth and aimed it right at my head.

Time seemed to slow down around me. My life was going like a flash before my eyes. Childhood with my parents in a small village on the northern borders of Equestria, school with my friends at Canterlot, uni with new friends, the war and my job, then the last month. And then there was the barrel of this gun.

I snapped out. He fired the gun. I swung my head to the right grubbing his weapon with my grip and ripping it out of his mouth along with a few teeth. The bullet flew, the gun was ripped from his mouth. Instantly turned to his head. He looked right at the barrel with horror. I pulled the trigger.

He fell to the ground. Blood was coming out of the hole in his head.

The pistol dropped to the floor, I was over-ventilating.

This wasn't happening, I didn't just put a bullet into another sentient being. No, no, no, no, no! It can't be happening. I never held a gun before, nevermind killing somepony! I've seen ponies die before, but to do it myself is just, just wrong!

I wasn't fast enough his shot went straight to my shoulder. It was bleeding and fast. I backed into a corner facing the body, I was sweating and shaking. My heart was pumping hard, I could hear it.

Panicked I looked for a way out, a door, a vent, anything. Then I felt what I backed into. It was another cold metal door. I flung it open flying into the tunnel as fast as I possibly could.

I ran like crazy for what felt like hours. I could only hear my heart pumping. The corridors were as I thought, narrow and long. I threw out every empty potion bottle I had on the floor. One of them shattered.

Then suddenly I dashed past something to my right. I stopped. Maybe it could be my way out of this one. I backed up to the thing. It was another door, a utility closet.

I opened the door, got inside and locked it shut, also placing everything in the room to block it. The shelves, buckets, mops, everything.

I sat there silent hoping for the best. Minutes past. I did not move. My heart was beginning to settle down.

I heard it. Clattering of hooves. They were running. At first, they were barely there, like distant drops of water. Then they got closer, turning into a stampede. Then, they were right at the door. I prepared myself for the worst.

They darted past my closet. Then their clattering disappeared somewhere to the right.

I sighed. I could focus on myself now. The Ministry of Peace educational tapes always said that you shouldn't drink healing potions with things in your body that shouldn't be there. I needed to remove that bullet if I didn't want to bleed out in that room. But I needed something to get the bullet out.

Thankfully, the closet had the perfect set of pliers. Not sterile, but I didn't care.

Jabbing the pliers into the hole, I groaned from the surge of pain. I felt around, found the bullet. But the pliers would not grab the damn thing. I tried again and again until the entire tool was covered in blood. But in the end, I got it out.

My last potion went down my throat and the second the bullet was out of me. The pain was getting intense.

I took a bandage and tried to cover the wound, but it's not that easy to bandage a shoulder. It took some attempts, but in the end, the bandages were on.

I was sitting on the floor, exhausted after all that had happened. The fatigue finally caught up with me. I moved my hooves around lazily trying to find a good position. It was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open. The Tunnelers weren't here and the door was locked, I was as safe as I was ever going to get.

With a yawn, I dozed off to sleep.
> Chapter 4. The heart of Stratusburg
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was pink everywhere. It burned and melted everything. I saw nothing but pink.

I was alone in the Cloud. No ground, no sky, nothing. I stood there not moving. I couldn't move, my legs weren't listening to me. Hours passed as I stood, then days, then years. 

Slowly the Pink Cloud started to clear. I could see little glimpses through the Cloud. There was a door, a regular metal one. 

There were gunshots and screaming coming from behind that door. A lot of screaming. 

The cloud receded to the corners of my vision. Like a small reminder that it is always there. I was in a small room on the floor stuck looking at the door. It swung open and an armored Tunneler came out of it holding a gun. 

He approached me saying something, but I couldn't understand a word. I was too focused on the barrel of the gun to pay attention to words.

The world stopped, the Tunneler stopped, the sounds stopped. It was just me and the barrel. I could see the bullet inside. 

I sat like this for a long time. Suddenly, it all started to move slowly. The bullet started to move, there was a flash of light, intense pain and everything went white.





I sprung up covered in sweat looking around the room. It was as dark and as empty as when I fell asleep. But my heart was still pounding. The nightmares were getting worse.

I was already awake and there was no way I was going back to sleep. Not like I could after the nightmare. I needed to get going. Every minute I stayed in that closet the chances of me getting found out increased.

Standing up I spent a good minute stretching, then ate a carrot. I checked the battery on the goggles, it still had some juice left in it. It was going to be a long day. 

Silently opening the door I checked the corridor, it was empty. I closed the door as quickly as possible and with all my possessions with me started moving to the next station. Hopefully, it wasn't taken by the Tunnelers yet. I wasn't sure if I could get through them. 

The corridor was as always long and gray. Nothing special about this one, apart from some "Tunlrz" graffiti on the walls. It wasn't looking great for the next station.

With the thought of them already being one step ahead of me I continued on my not-so-merry way.





After some time in the sweet-sweet darkness of the utility tunnels, I saw the regular metal door leading to the station. 

The thing was covered in scratch marks and the handle was blown off. They were in there. That was bad. But I didn't have any other way to go. It was either in there or back to Celestia and I did not want to go back to Celestia.

Carefully pulling the door open I snuck in. The place was trashed, benches turned over, tiles smashed, graffiti everywhere. There was a small barrel set on fire in the middle of the platform, three Tunnelers were sitting around it. They were talking, but I couldn't quite hear what they were saying.

I moved silently behind them heading to the underbelly of the station, I guessed that there'd be something like Gears' office on this station too. I was hoping for a terminal that would lead me somewhere, anywhere.

One of the ponies around the fire exploded with laughter.

"Hahahaha! Are you serious? Where did the Boss get so much shit? We've been starving for like a month and now out of nowhere he gets a shitload of new stuff and tells us to go apeshit?" asked a Tunneler, "That doesn't just happen, right?"

"I dunno, after Jester and Doc returned from their last run Boss got all excited an' shit. Didn't even explain why. They prolly just changed his mind or somthin'," answered the second. 

"Does it even matter why he decided to let us loose? We got food, we got water, we got guns and we got new "recruits". Seems to me that it's working. Well, that and the fact that we get to play with those that refuse," finished the third with a chuckle that made me feel sick. 

"Ah, shut up, you just like it because there were a lot of chicks in the last catch. I'd love to see your face when you have to deal with a buck!" jabbed the second one while I was painstakingly making my way from broken bench to broken bench. 

The tiles were impossible to walk on without making a sound. The Tunnelers didn't seem to mind the noise as far as I could tell. If they did I assume there'd be a lot of lead flying my way. 

"It's probably mice or something like that," one of them excused my poor sneaking. How nice of him.

"M-maybe it's a Jackalope?" another muttered, "I heard there're thousands of them in the forests."

"Pft! Jackalopes aren't real, are you stupid? I mean come on, dude! You're what, in your twenties - something like that - and you still believe in some hoax? That shit was debunked years ago..." I went out of earshot as one of them went off on a tangent.

I snuck my way to the door that led below, it got blown up too, so getting it open wasn't a problem. Whoever blew the door open didn't do a good job. It was mangled and a good portion of it was stuck in the floor. It wouldn't budge. The lower part was mangled hard and it looked like I just may squeeze through. I tried, but the saddle bags were in the way. Stuffing them in first I barely managed to squeeze my way past the door.

The place behind was identical to Celestia station. I knew where the office was. A flight down, a couple of turns and corners and there was yet another door in front of me. The same plain metal door as always.  

Opening it, the office was a carbon copy of the one in Celestia Station. The same table and terminal, the same empty walls, everything was the same. The terminal was shining green light on the wall. The password was already put it, thankfully. I spent a few minutes checking what was on that thing. Notes, memos aaaaand a map of the metro. Bingo!. 

I just needed to understand which station was which, since somepony wasn't good enough at their job to label them. That wasn't hard though. I spent enough time in there to somewhat understand what's what. The tunnels from Celestia station were long and winding, but the tunnels to Celestia were winding and long. It might seem the same, but it's really not.

In the end, I figured out where I was on that map. The station was near the center of town and there was some sort of building right above it. 

But I couldn't wrap my head around this one thing with the map. There was this little bit right off the station, it didn't lead anywhere and unlike every other corridor this one was clearly added to the map after it was done, the newer part didn't have straight walls, they looked like a foal's drawings. And it was blocked by a wall with no door, that was strange too. 

The map of the city looked promising, there were a few places that sparked my interest. Mainly the two gigantic buildings on the opposite sides of the city and what I assumed to be a factory of some sorts not that far from the center.

I searched the terminal for a few more minutes and, what do you know, there was a command to "unlock secret door", but it didn't work, not without an ID of some sort.

Now, the terminal belonged to the station's security chief and I assume that any sort of required ID would be on him. The spells hit on a workday, so the chief was probably working when it all went down. So, I just need to find him or what's left of him.

Thinking about it, if he survived the initial explosion than he died from radiation or the Tunnelers. His body would likely be in one of two places. In his office - where he wasn't - or on the platform somewhere.

I had a target in front of me. Find the body with the keycard, open the wall, find out what's behind it and deny that thing to the Tunnelers. I really didn't want them getting their hooves on any more government property. Plus, if I was the only one with access to the secret door, I could put something between me and the Tunnelers.

Getting out of the office I closed the door and went back to the platform. The Tunnelers were still there, sitting by the barrel and talking about something. 

Looking around the station I found three potential places where the body could've been. On the rails or under one particularly broken bench. The third guess was that it was in the barrel, but it didn't smell like there was anything on that fire, so I ignored that possibility.

Checking the rails to the right of me there was nothing but some small pieces of debris. The left one was completely clean. 

With the sides of the station checked there was only one place I could think of. There was one bench that I passed while going to the office that looked very different from others.

Getting to it would take some finesse though. The bench was stuck in a hole and one Tunneler was leaning on it. The others probably wouldn't see me if I did everything quickly enough.

It was two or three feet away from me and there were no benches to cover behind. If any of them turned they'd see me. Carefully I began sneaking to the hole. Getting closer to it, my theory was confirmed, I saw small patches of blood. 

I was right over the hole. The body was inside, he was crushed by the bench. It looked like a unicorn bashed the poor security guard into the ground. I could barely tell that it was a pony. There was a little keycard poking out of a piece of the uniform. I hoped it was the right one. 

Turning around silently I began sneaking back. The first few steps were nice and quiet. I was as silent and as quick as I possibly could've been, but my best just wasn't enough. I stepped on a dislodged tile and it broke with a loud crack.

"What was that? Checkers, go check that shit out, it's getting fucking annoying!" yelled one of them. 

"Why do I have to get up?" said presumably Checkers.

"Because I'm too lazy to get up unless it's something serious," responded the one leaning on the bench.

I was trying to find somewhere to hide, but there was nothing close enough. Then I saw Checkers, she was a white unicorn with a strange black mane. The mane was, as her name implied, buzz-cut to look like a checkers board. Her mane wasn't the only eye-catching thing about her. She was covered with blood from hoof to horn. But the most bloodcurdling thing was her eyes, I can't find words to describe the sheer terror I felt when looking into those eyes. They were like the eyes of a doll, big and unmoving. And her maniacal grin only made it worse.

"Then get your ass up, we got a visitor!" she screamed to her friends while smiling madly at me.

I ran like hell to the office. The first door was flung open as far as it would go, then the second and then I was in the office right where the hidden room was supposed to be. I inserted the card into the terminal. Their screaming was getting closer. They still took their time. They were playing with me.

The terminal took its sweet time as well. It was scanning the card. I could hear them getting closer to the office door. Trying to hold the door shut with my magic I looked at the terminal. 60%. Damn it!

They started to bang on the door. 70%. This wasn't going fast enough. I held the door with all I had, but the three of them were trying to pry it open. 80%. I needed more time.

Think, Fritz, think! There's got to be something here. Table? No, the terminal's cables run through there. The lamp? No, it wouldn't do. The chair? That can work. Just need to do this and a little bit of that.

I set the chair up so that it would prevent the door from opening for a short while longer. 90%. Why was this taking so long? I could hear the chair start to break, the door was slowly opening.

100%.

I selected the "unlock secret door" option, pressed "yes" and the back wall of the room slid down. There was no time to look around first, I pulled the card out and the wall started to rise. I jumped in right as it closed.

I heard the chair break into splinters. The door flew off its hinges. But I wasn't there, gone just like magic.

"What the fuck was that!? H-He's not here!" the Tunnelers were in shock.

"Just like a fucking ghost! A second he was here and now he's not!" continued another one. I couldn't quite get which one, I could barely hear them.

"You're not that stupid, right? What kind of ghost hides from ponies?" I heard the voice of reason.

"The kind that wants to be left alone!" the first one said. 

They continued to argue while I looked around the place I got stuck in. There was a set of elevator doors and a panel. The elevator seemed to be working fine. I pressed a button hoping to call it down, but with a sound of whirring motors, the whole room started to slowly go up.



 

The elevator ride lasted forever. The thing moved unbelievably slowly. But it gave me time to catch my breath after the encounter with the Tunnelers.

I finally had some time to think. Mostly about what happened to the Tunnelers to make them so aggressive. When they kind of kidnapped me they were a bit odd, yes, but they were nothing like now. What could've happened to them in a day or two that I was ahead of them?

Suddenly my thoughts were cut short as the elevator stopped and the doors in front of me opened into a big room of some sort. Right in front was a reception desk with a couple of old fashioned terminals. I got out of the elevator and looked around.

It was a foyer from the look of it. There were these huge windows leading outside and they were, strangely, intact. The place looked nice and expensive with red sofas and red-ish carpets covering most of the floor.

A terminal on the desk was turned on. Luckily there wasn't a password on it. 





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v2.4.5
STRATUSBURG-CITY-HALL-TERMINAL/RECEPTION-DESK/2
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Velvet Lotus.

Entry 1. Loading...

The mayor just bought equipment for the building. This stuff is ancient. He didn't even hire anypony to install them. Had to spend some over-time yesterday getting it all set up. At least now we can work like any normal administration. 

Entry 2. Loading...

Gloomy Shade is just confusing me. He couldn't get us normal terminals, I have no idea where he dug up this junk, but now he has all the money to build a main-whatever-it-was in the back. They have already begun construction. 

Entry 3. Loading...

Finally, the mainframe room is done. No more loud working noises in the middle of the day. They just finished setting up the security for the room. They had to remove one of the windows to get the huge door into the building, so there's still some things that need fixing around here. I guess that means me and Moonlight will have to sit in the draft while they get the window back in place.  

Entry 4. Loading...

Gramps from the second floor got stuck in the mainframe room today. Think his name's Astral, we don't talk often. Apparently, the mayor installed this security system that locks the room down if an alarm is triggered. And get this, he connected that system to ALL alarms in the building, including the fire one. As far as I understood it, Sky was doing something in there with his magic and that triggered the alarm. And that's only half of it! The doors only open with a special override key and a password. And the mayor didn't give it to anypony, he's the only one with the key! We had to wait for like three hours until Gloomy returned from his "walk". And he was then irritated that we interrupted his day. Sometimes I wonder how that pony got elected.

Entry 5. Loading...

Now nopony wants to go into the mainframe room. The mayor took the three hours Sky was locked in out of his paycheck. We talked the mayor into leaving a copy of that key in the building. Gramps has it now since he was the one to get locked in. And these pre-historic pieces of junk he got us are starting to fail, the second receptionist, Moonlight, already lost some of her files.

Entry 6. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 7. Loading...

We got a new guy. Bolted Gadget, I think. He takes care of the IT problems around here. Already fixed the terminal for Summer Burn on the second floor. I don't really interact with him much, he spends most of his time in the mainframe room keeping an eye on things there.  Nopony told him about the incident, obviously.

Entry 8. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 9. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 10. Loading... 

If it wasn't for the decent paycheck I would be out of here! And even that paycheck is getting smaller every month. The mayor just installed a lift from the station below to the foyer because he didn't want to walk far when he was using the metro and he doesn't even use the metro that often! I don't think that text portrays this right, he built an elevator for himself, and only himself, so that he didn't have to "walk far"! The metro exit is right in front of the building, Celestia damn it! I swear this pony is worse than the zebras.

Entry 11. Loading...Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY
STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.





I had to thank that mayor, his elevator practically saved me. Well, it's also the reason I got caught in the first place, so I really shouldn't thank him too much.

Knowing some of the story of the place I easily found the mainframe room. To the back of the reception and a bit to the left, there were giant closed bunker doors with a sign on them marking the mainframe. The doors themselves were as high as the ceiling and looked like they weighed a ton each. The alarm probably went off when the city got hit. 

I also found the toilets and I'm ashamed to admit it, but I went into both looking for anything useful. And the worst part is that I found quite an assortment of stuff. Some pills labeled "mint-als" were thrown behind a toilet, a bottle of painkillers taped under a sink and some yellow tablets in a tray taped to the backside of a toilet lid. I was very impressed by how much stuff there was. With my new toilet loot, I returned to the foyer.

Back behind the reception desk, there was a second terminal and I needed to get my mind off of the things ponies hide in the toilets.





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v2.4.5
STRATUSBURG-CITY-HALL-TERMINAL/RECEPTION-DESK/1
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Moonlight Meadow.

Entry 1. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 2. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 3. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 4. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 5. Loading...

This cute stallion from the second floor keeps flirting with me. Summer Burn. Back in Filly, we don't have studs like him. I think I just need to play it cool. 

Entry 6. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 7. Loading... File damaged...

Today asljiia figahpaugsdiab  aispdfuah21-7y4198hfo jha 91heh9dhae hd91hda me out!!! SAidhnoawbnduabv 19e871b hdsbaid 1u 0d01676&@77215VY !&(TYddh198y a9d18y--(*^@(hg91 hsauhd!!! We're going to the bar tonight!!! I ccantasoidwiy192yfdb i971g9dghadh(*Y@(GHd98h9





The second terminal wasn't as insightful as the first one.

With the foyer explored I went to search the rest of the first floor. The toilets were now empty and the mainframe still closed, so I walked around the floor looking for anything that would catch my eye, but there was nothing save two meeting rooms, which were empty. With the first floor explored I headed to the second floor.

The ladder was down the hallway and to the left. I trotted up to the second floor. It was an open floor with offices covering the walls. There were around ten offices, but only a few of them had name plaques on the doors. Taking up an entire side of the floor was the mayor's office. The door to it was locked. Some kind of electric lock, I didn't even know how to open a thing like this.

Well, there was only one office I was interested in, the one that belonged to the old pony that had the key to the mainframe. Other offices could wait.

I simply started walking from the closest room to me.

Clip Board, then Ember Skies, then Berry Muffin, then Summer Burn, I think that's the one the reception terminal mentioned.

Then there was Snow Lilly and finally Astral Sky, the EEA representative. Things were getting interesting. That was the pony I was looking for.

The door looked old, like one of those classical Manehattan doors with the top part having a glass window. I tried opening it and at first, it seemed locked, but after I shimmied the handle a bit the entire handle with the lock came out of the door. I dropped the lock on the floor. 

Entering his office I looked around. It was quite small, with a terminal table in the middle, some bookshelves and a small wardrobe closer to the entrance.

The terminal table instantly attracted my attention. There were piles of papers on it covering almost the entire table and the terminal. I set on the chair and turned the terminal on. The password was written on a sticky note. It was "MagikRulz". The screen flickered green and I began reading.





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v2.4.5
STRATUSBURG-CITY-HALL-TERMINAL/OFFICES/ASTRAL_SKY
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT. 
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Astral Sky.

Entry 1.  Loading...

Gloomy brought us these terminals to use for the work, but the darn things are too technological for me. All these buttons and passwords are quite hard to remember. I much prefer my old paper. But if the mayor wants us to use these I guess I will give it a try.

Entry 2. Loading...

Forgot to use the terminal for a week or two. But I'll recap some things, so it'll be on here, just in case.

About two days ago a pony I used to work with, Crystal Spark, contacted me with a job. And a good well-paying side job at that. Said he works in the Ministry of Morale now, how some folks change, and they need a special set of spells developed for them. The funny thing is, they could have asked the Ministry of Arcane Technology or whatever that girl decided to call it, but they still prefer the ol' reliable me. Go figure.

Entry 3. Loading...

There are a lot of spells that MoM needs to do its thing as it turns out. I have already started work on the first spell and seeing as I am already done with most of my work for the next week or so I will be able to devote myself to magic. Thankfully, the city hall has that big open room on the first floor, I will need space for some of those spells.

Entry 4. Loading...

The work for this city is minimal, the mayor seems to do most of the things himself. Most ponies on the second floor have nothing to do. At least half of us have some side jobs. Talked to the veteran, Ember-something, can't remember right now, she is going crazy in these walls. She lost a wing in some battle with the zebras, was discharged and sent here. That has got to be tough on a pegasus. 

But that's not the most important thing in this entry! I started a book with the spells I am making to keep it all in one place, the terminals just can not get the intricate details across. My old colleague came in to check on how things are going. We even managed to catch up a little. Turns out he has himself a family. Anyway, he was blown away at how fast I have been working, said the things I have done so far are great, but he will need to test them with an operative. He will bring one the next time he checks my progress.

Entry 5. Loading...

The mayor is having some building down on the first floor. Probably just renovating that big room. We also had a lot of new paperwork to do, so the office will be very busy for the next couple of days.

Entry 6. Loading... Data corrupted. 

Please contact your local Stable-Tec technician for help.

Entry 7. Loading...

I have been working for the Equestrian government for as long as I can remember and it has always treated me right. Back in the EEA, I had everything a scholar needs, the short time I spent working for the army wasn't as good and peaceful, but at least it was work where I was treated right. I am thinking of going full-time for MoM. At least they know how to deal with an emergency. 

At least the girls from reception talked that idiot into giving me the key. Sweet girls they are, it is a shame they work here. 

NOTE TO SELF. Loading...

The key is in the robe. You know which one. Just don't mix the keys up.

The passcode for the door is automatically generated every hour. Can get it at the girls' terminals.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY
STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.





At least he left a note saying where the key was. Old ponies and their reminders. Now I just needed to find a robe with the key.

Opening the wardrobe, I was in awe of what Astral Sky had there. A set of EEA robes! It was my lucky day, I didn't bother putting on my robe back in Conterlot and now there was a clean set of them right in front of me. Going around naked was getting quite dangerous.

It may seem a little strange to want those robes, but those are the best clothes a pony can wish for. They are light, warm, have lots of pockets on the inside. Well, that and the enchantments on them. The EEA robes are a majestic combination of clothing and practical magic. They don't get wet, you can't burn them. I didn't know how well robes can protect from a knife or a bullet, but they weren't made for that, so I wasn't expecting too much out of these robes in that department.  

Getting the robes out of the wardrobe I took a good look at them. They were perfect. I expected an old scholar to have a lot of little trinkets on his robes, but there was nothing in the robes except a small keycard in an inner chest pocket. 

I quickly got into the robes and it felt good. The only thing bothering me was the high collar, never was a fan of it. It made turning your head a little harder. But besides the high collar, the robes were amazing.

I checked the room for any more pleasant surprises, but besides some weird old-timey gum there was nothing interesting. The gum tasted awful, just to be clear. 

With the taste of old socks in my mouth, I got out of the office. The lock was still on the floor where I left it. The mainframe was next. Nopony has a set of bunker doors guarding a pantry, there was bound to be something good in there.  The information on a mainframe alone could be useful. I was hoping for a good map of the city, maybe even a location of some place I could rest. And unless I got into that room its contents would forever remain a mystery.

Running down to the first floor and to the terminals again, I checked if I had missed anything. I didn't see any passcodes or passwords when I checked the terminal the first time. And to my amazement, there was a new option. The password was "42223224" and would be changed in twenty minutes. That should be enough to get in, learn whatever is in there and get out. If I could get it locked again afterwards that'd be amazing as well.

At the locked mainframe door, I inserted the key in the slot. There was a click and a small keypad opened. I put in the numbers, a light blinked green and the huge door started to slowly slide open. After a couple of seconds I could get a look inside.

The room was dark at first, but quickly the lights sprang back to life. It was a big space filled with all sorts of tech. Walls of some sort of banks or other kinds of storage, terminals on almost every wall and other things that I couldn't even begin to understand. There was a familiar smell though, a bad one. Like rotting eggs and vegetables, with some excrement thrown in there. Similar to that gut-wrenching station.

There was something in a corner covered up with a small blanket. The smell seemed to be coming from there, right under a wall-mounted terminal. I avoided that corner.

I walked away from the smell, the main terminal for the mainframe was at the back end of the room covering most of the wall. The thing was huge for a mainframe terminal, I've never seen a bigger one in my life, even the EEA one wasn't this gigantic.

When I was a few paces away from it the thing itself turned on, lights started flashing all around the room. 

"WELCOME, Astral Sky," a computer voice exclaimed, "PLEASE MIND YOUR SPELLS."





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v4.2.1
STRATUSBURG-CITY-HALL-TERMINAL/MAINFRAME/EMPLOYEE/ASTRAL_SKY
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT. 
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Astral Sky.

THE CONTENTS OF YOUR CELL HAVE BEEN ALTERED BY AN ADMIN. THERE IS A NOTE ATTACHED. Loading...

"There's no space left for this thing anywhere else, so I'm leaving it in your cell. Don't touch it, don't look at it, it's there until we can move it to a proper storage place."

OPEN CELL Yes/No





There was no other option available, so I typed in "yes", a couple of lights blinked here and there and I heard something pop open somewhere in the room.

"YOUR CELL HAS BEEN OPENED," the voice informed me.

Standing up from the terminal I went to check on what had opened. It was in one of those walls of technological stuff. A little metal cabinet was open right around the middle of that wall.

Inside were two things. A book with lots of little bookmarks and notes sticking out of it and a strange metal thing with some wires and crystals. I raised the book and quickly flipped through it. From the few things I understood it was the book, Astral Sky was writing, from first glance the topics seemed really complex. Nevertheless, the book went straight into my bag as reading material. 

The second thing was different, I couldn't place what it was. Looking at it didn't help. It was a small curved strip of gunmetal with lots of small wires running along one side and  some crystals at one end. The crystals were green and as soon as I picked it up they started to shimmer a little as though affected by my magic.

There was a small file still in the cabinet. It had "Authorized eyes only" written on it, but with no government, there are no authorized ponies, so I reasoned that I was as authorized as one could possibly be.

The file name was "M.A.I.F.O.S." or the "Magical Aid and Internal Focus Operating System" as the first few words in the file said. I spent some time carefully reading through the file. 

The file itself was a summary of what the thing did. So after reading it I had a relative understanding of what the M.A.I.F.O.S. did. It was an old prototype for a system similar to the one in the Pip-Buck, that Stable-Tec thingy that they use in the Stables. The thing was primarily supposed to be used by unicorns to help them manage their spells. It added a display and a cross to the user's vision. The original version was supposed to do a lot of other things, but with the Pip-Buck's bigger housing the M.A.I.F.O.S. was shut down. 

This prototype had a lot of functions. It could manage a unicorn's magic and catalog the spells the unicorn knows. It didn't have the inventory management of a Pip-Buck, probably just didn't have enough space to fit it in there. It could use the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system as well, although I don't know how it would do that. It could do a basic medical check, but nothing fancy, no auto-injectors either. And to add insult to injury, this thing was much more destructible than a Pip-Buck.

All in all, it was clear why the Pip-Buck was the thing used in Stables. I could still use this prototype, at least I'd be able to manage my spells better. I hoped it would help with casting under pressure.

With the decisions out of the way, I  took the night-vision device off and put the M.A.I.F.O.S. on my head. For a second nothing happened. Then I felt a slight ping on my head and everything went green for a moment. When my vision cleared there was a small cross right at the point I was looking at. Then the rest of it kicked in, there were a lot of small things happening all at once. Scans, little check-ups, I think I even saw the spell search running. 

I moved away from the cabinet and tried to walk around, it wasn't easy to get used to. All the things stayed right in the corners of my eyes and no matter how much I moved my head none of it would go away. Felt a little nauseous, to be honest, but it got a lot better after a minute or two.

Now I had taken everything I could from the mainframe room, at least for the moment. It seemed like every employee had their own storage cell in there. If I had to guess though the most interesting stuff was probably locked behind admin access. 

After exiting the room I flung a stun spell at a fire alarm on the ceiling, it went off and locked the mainframe again. The alarm blared for a moment or two, but I quickly found a way to turn it off. Ripping the alarm off seemed to work great.

With the room securely locked and having no plans for the moment, I went back up to Astral Sky's office to spend some time reading the book and letting the headpiece run its diagnostics. It was trying to figure out all the things about me and that would take some time.





I was in that room for at least two or three hours because that darn thing couldn't figure out if copy-pasting was a spell or not. Which it is, by the way. Took me quite some time to learn that one. Very useful spell for an office environment.

While waiting for the check-up to finish I even managed to get what Astral Sky was talking about in his book. The finer points were still out of my reach, but the basic theory was down, mostly.

In the end, I even managed to somewhat learn a spell from the book. One of the first spells Astral wrote for MoM was a simple unlocking spell. It's supposed to just take apart a lock from the inside. Astral Sky mentioned that it wouldn't work on electronic locks or magical ones and probably wouldn't do much to regular good quality locks. This one he just made for ponies to grasp the concept.

With the studying done, for the time being, I sat looking out the window and eating an apple. I couldn't see much, there was something on the windows making it all wobbly outside. It was peaceful outside, no movement, no nothing. Almost didn't want to leave. But sooner or later the food would run out and I would have to move

I didn't even know where to move next. As I saw it, there were two ways for me to go, back down in the metro tunnels or try to get to the streets. None of those sounded pleasant. The metro was probably teeming with crazy killers and the streets were probably teeming with Jackalopes. So, both my options were bad.

After getting all my things sorted I decided that it was time to get going. First I would try to go outside, the Tunnelers were a lot more likely to kill me outright.

I stood in front of the large door on the first floor. It was an old wooden work, with intricate etchings covering the entire thing. The door badly contrasted with the modern mechanisms used to keep it locked. The metal parts were simply cut into the old thing to fit. 

I tried the door, but it wouldn't budge. The thing was locked tight. Not thinking about the consequences I cast the unlocking spell. A bolt of small khaki lightning formed around my horn. It bounced right to the lock taking it apart piece by piece. After a second or two the locking mechanism simply fell off the door.

Right as I cast the spell a little message appeared in the upper left corner of my eye. 

"Open Lock Lvl. 1 has been added to spell list"

It even gave new spells names. Neat.

The door was in front of me, slowly drifting open with nothing holding it in place. Pushing it a little further I went into the street. There was a strange wall of wobbly air surrounding the building, it looked like some advanced magic, so I assumed that it was what protected the building. I simply walked out of it without a thought, closing the door behind me.

It was early morning. Or late evening. I couldn't tell, the clouds were covering the entire sky. 

Right before me was a little square that was supposed to have flowers and trees, but the trees were dead, some of them even uprooted by the blast, dead flowers littering the square.

I slowly left the city hall behind. The streets were empty, only trash rattling in the wind. It was weirdly tranquil, every little thing was at peace. There was a slow warm breeze washing over me. Even with the robe on, I could feel it going over my entire body. 

I wondered around the square looking at the trees, or what was left of them. The place was weirdly tranquil, almost peaceful. I enjoyed the quiet moment while it lasted. After a minute or two I had to keep moving. Remembering the rough map of the city from the metro I picked a random direction and headed down the street.

Passing near an overturned kiosk I noticed that it was completely empty, not even a small pack of cakes. It was absolutely clean. It felt odd.

The street ahead was the same, unnaturally clean. Every other bit of the city had something small, a small bit of paper, a rotten flower, but there was nothing on this one. The short rural street didn't have any trees or grass, there were only patches of ground that were supposed to have vegetation. 

A feeling of unease was starting to consume me. It wasn't normal. There just was this little something that was off.

A little message appeared at the edge of my vision. 

"A powerful magical anomaly is in the area. Device may overheat. Caution advised" The M.A.I.F.O.S. was beginning to heat up.

I felt my skin crawl like some... thing was watching me. I heard a buzzing sound coming from behind. It became louder with every second. The sound was overpowering, like a swarm of flies, millions of them. I froze in place. A huge shadow was hanging over me. The buzzing was only getting worse. The M.A.I.F.O.S. started to give off a lot of heat.

"Anomaly interference. Device overheat. Auto shut-down engaged"

My vision went blurry for a second and when it returned the M.A.I.F.O.S. was turned off.

I heard a heavy stomp right behind me. Then another. Then six more. I could smell it. Like a wet dog.

Gathering all the bravery I had I raised my head and ran. I ran right between the giant spidery legs and for a second it even seemed like I was going to get away. Then I felt something massive swipe me off my legs. Like a giant pipe flying right into my side. I was flung across the street right into a set of stairs. I couldn't even grunt in pain. I couldn't do anything.

The giant thing slowly started moving. It got to me in just a couple of steps. There aren't enough words that I know to describe the pain I felt when it picked me up. Its giant teeth were ripping into me. 

The monster started to move again. I still can't believe it, but it felt even worse. Every step it took, every slight movement of the head, I could feel it all. I couldn't think, breath, anything. Somewhere in the pain I lost consciousness. 





A ringing in my ear woke me up. It felt bad. Everything that could hurt, did. I was still bleeding.

I felt the cold pavement on my face, the cold felt good.

"Medical Examination Status: Complete. Results: Critical Radiation Poisoning. Bleeding. Crippled Limbs. Concussion. Broken Ribs. Medical Intervention Required."

That didn't look good. It didn't feel good.

I could hear the spider standing right over me. Its hot breath was hitting me in the back of the head like a wet brick. It was sniffing me, trying to figure something out. 

Suddenly it moved away raising its head. Something was clearly off. I could hear it trying to move silently, but with its size that wasn't an option. It was going around the room looking for something. There was something that the monster didn't like. The giant spider quickly spread its wings and took off. The buzzing split my head like a chisel.

Laying there bleeding, I thought that was it. That was how it would end. With me getting eaten by a giant flying spider or bleeding out. Not the death I hoped for, but there wasn't much I could do. I couldn't move anything, but everything still hurt like hell. I don't know how long I was lying there. Minutes? Maybe hours. Nothing but the gnawing pain.

Suddenly I heard a step and not the step of that monster. It was the sound of hoof to concrete. I knew the sound all too well. Then the steps got closer. I could feel a pony standing over me. They were huffing like they just ran a marathon.

"Let's get you out," she said simply, "The fly-der will be back soon."

With these words, she carefully placed me on her back. I could feel a wing brushing against my head. She slowly rose up and started to move out. Step by step she carried me out. 

We were out of there before the spider came back. Avoiding certain death we headed for what I hoped was safety. After some walking, we stopped somewhere and she carefully put me down. Raising my head with a hoof she poured a potion down my throat. The pain started to lessen immediately. I felt the bleeding slow down. She poured another one. The warmth of healing magic spread through my body again. The pain felt like nothing compared to what it was seconds before. The bleeding stopped.

"There you go, all better. Now you just need to rest," she informed me, "We'll get moving in a bit, so try to relax for now."

I mumbled something between a "thank you" and a "yeah" and tried to relax. Everything was fine for now. With my life secure in the hooves of a stranger I dozed off to unconsciousness. There was no pain. 





Getting back up was disgustingly difficult. My head rang like hell, every part of my body was aching and itching. 

I opened my eyes. It was dark, I couldn't see a thing. Trying to get up to my hooves I collapsed back on the floor, my legs feeling like twigs.

"If you ever wanna heal those bones of yours, I'd advise you lay down for now," came somewhere from the darkness, " The wolf fly-der got you good. Those things got aggressive after the Megaspell. Lost a friend to one of them." 

At the moment I wasn't even able to properly react to the term I heard. A wolf fly-der. A mix between a wolf, a spider and it flies. Sometimes I wonder how ponies survived long enough to build a country.

"T-thanks," I groaned, speaking wasn't easy, it felt like I had something stuck in my throat. She was lighting a small fire between us, every other second I could see the sparks from the flint. 

"I'm Ember Skies by the way. Don't stare at the wing and we'll get along fine," she said as the fire lit up the room. Ember was a dark orange pegasus, she was wearing some fatigues and some sort of a gun mounted at her side. She pulled something out of a bag she was sitting next to and walked to me with it hanging from her mouth. I didn't recognize what it was exactly, it was a small orange packet with some words written on it, but with almost no light in the room I couldn't make it out. 

"Now, it's been some time after the healing potions, I think it's time to deal with the rads. You really went out with no protection? I can't even imagine what you were running away from to go outside," Ember Skies quickly made me feel not only hurt but also extremely stupid, "Gulp it down in one shot. It tastes so bad you wouldn't want to drink again."

I did as I was told. The thing was orange and tasted like garbage mixed with dirty clothes, and the aftertaste was even worse.

"I didn't really consider it. Just wanted to get out of the metro. It's been a rough few days down there," I explained taking short pauses to catch my breath. It was hard to speak, but it seemed to take my mind off the pain.

"A rough few days, huh? You're telling me!" she responded jokingly, "It's been a rough month for me. Everything went to shit, a couple of ponies I knew died and I've been having the worst hair day for like a month in a row."

"Yeah, that does sound worse," I chuckled, "Crazy tunnel ponies don't seem all that scary now."

"Crazy tunnel ponies? Is that it? I've been surviving with a giant flying pony-eating spider right around the corner. Now that's hard," Ember responded with a smirk, "And now I have to do that and look after an injured idiot. Just my life I guess."

"Look after?" I tilted my head a little. I was already thankful for her saving me, but I didn't think that she'd help me any further.

"Well, I can't just save somepony and then just leave them to die here, can I? Plus it seems like you might have some useful skills," she explained, "You can do all that unicorny stuff with magic, right?"

"Depends on what you need, to be honest. If you need fireballs and infernos then I can't help you. But if you need other magical things, then I may be able to help," I answered plainly. Talking to another pony felt good.

"That's alright, there's always time to learn. Getting some firepower, pun intended, is important. There are lots of things that want to murder anything that they can get their hooves on nowadays," she wasn't taking pacifism as an answer. We talked for some time before she said that it was time for me to rest. Being in no state to argue I laid back down and closed my eyes to sleep. The fly-der got me hard, I needed the rest.





Note: S.P.E.C.I.A.L. determined.

S- 4

P- 7

E- 5

C- 6

I- 8

A- 4

L- 6

New Perks:





EEA worker – you spent some time working for the Equestria Education Association. You've become smarter as a result. +1 Intelligence.


Tunnel expert – the time you spent in the dark metro tunnels has changed you. You navigate tunnels with ease. The darkness of tunnels is now comforting to you.


Novice Mage – you just begun your journey into the ways of magic, but you are determined to learn. +5 Magic


Peaceful Nature – you prefer dealing with things the peaceful way, although you don't shy away from using force if needs be. +5 Speech




Effects:





Crippled Legs – you suffered a hard blow to your legs! Ouch! Your movement is cut in half and you cannot run!


Concussion – after that bonk over the head you can't really think or see straight. -4 Perception and -2 Intelligence.


Advanced Radiation Poisoning – standing in the sun isn't as pleasant as it used to be. -2 Endurance and -1 Agility



> Chapter 5. Glimmer Electronics
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was surrounded by the Cloud again. I ran, but it was always there, right behind me. The cloud was slowly creeping closer to me, touching my legs. The pain was familiar at this point. Like fire melting my legs away. 

Once again I was glued in place. The cloud filled my lungs, I couldn't breathe. Gasping I collapsed to the ground. Barely able to see through the cloud I raised my head. Once again there was a barrel aiming straight at me. The trigger was pulled and the bullet shot. 

With the flash of the muzzle I was outside, the cloud burned away leaving me alone on the streets. In seconds I could hear buzzing, it was getting closer. I tried escaping, my legs carried me as fast as they could, but the buzzing only got stronger. It was unbearable, the sound was crushing. Suddenly I was swooped off my hooves and flung into the air. It all ended when I came crashing down to the ground.





It was the same thing every night, nightmares. The cloud, the gun. It was getting worse. Every time I woke in the middle of the night. I was sweaty and scared. The only thing that kept me from screaming was that screaming was extremely painful. As was everything.

My eyes were open, but it was dark. I couldn't find my bag anywhere, the goggles were supposed to be in it. The only thing I was able to see was the green crosshair right in the middle. With no things to do and with no ability to go back to sleep I started trying out what M.A.I.F.O.S. could do. Just scrolling through menus and lists. The latest medical scan said that I was steadily getting better, but it would still take some time to get back to normal.

With the medical scan checked I had absolutely nothing to do. Sleep was still out of the question. Suddenly an idea came to mind, I could try the stun spell again to have some sort of light. 

It took a lot more time and effort than I'm willing to admit, but after some trying, I had the little ball flying calmly above my horn.

With the light, I could finally see where I was. It was a small room, I was on a bed, the window was boarded up. The door to this room was slightly open.

With a lot of grunting, I got to my hooves. My legs felt like twigs that were about to snap, so I took it slowly, step by step moving towards the door. 

With a shaking hoof, I opened the door and waddled my way into the hall. The light of the spell wasn't enough to light it completely. And through the darkness, I saw a little light further down the hall. It was coming from a small gap in a boarded-up window. I wanted to look outside.

Slowly I got myself to the gap and I stood there looking at the light. Somewhere along the way, I dispersed the spell, it was starting to get hard to keep it under control.

I stood there silently looking out. I could see the street outside, nothing special, all the streets in this city looked the same. Brick buildings, measured asphalt roads. It was somewhat hard to believe that towns like Ponyville were the norm some years ago. As far as I knew Stratusburg was just a village before the war, somewhere in the Equestrian West. I'm not sure if it was even marked on the maps. But when the war began Equestria needed cities and towns with industrial production, there wasn't really a place for the small villages. 

"Up so early?" Ember interrupted my thoughts, "I wouldn't stand too close to that hole, who knows what critter is out there."

Taking a step back I looked at Ember, she didn't have her saddle gun or her fatigues on. She was standing on my left with a packet of RadAway pocking from under her right wing.

"This should be enough for now," she handed the packet over. The taste was still as disgusting as I remembered. After drinking the last of the RadAway I spoke.

"Thanks. I think it's getting better," it was a lot easier to speak after the RadAway. The aftertaste left a lot to be desired though.

"Yeah, I noticed that taking care of you is costing me a lot. It's good to see you're getting better" Ember responded. I'd been with Ember for a couple of days at that point. Most of that time I spent in bed, my legs weren't broken per se, but something was wrong with them that much I knew for a fact. Neither I nor Ember were trained physicians, so it was anypony's guess at that point.

"Well, sorry about that, wasn't my idea to get half-eaten by a spider," I retorted. 

"I hope that wasn't your idea. Tell you what, I've got a few personal scores I have to settle with that spider and if you help me do that I'll call it even. How about that?" it hasn't been even a week and once again a pony was practically making me do stuff for them. It seemed that after the End of the World everything turned into one of those terminal RPGs. It made some sense, of course, it's not like I could just pay her off with bits. And even if I could, what use would bits be without anywhere to spend them?

"Yeah, sounds alright" I agreed with a sigh, "Let's get this over with as fast as possible. What's your plan?"

I could see fire light up in her eyes. She definitely had a plan.

"Follow me," she said with a smile. I followed her downstairs, Ember explained that she already had some things prepared and she just wanted to show and tell.

We got down to the first floor and then to the basement. It was even darker there than upstairs. After Ember flicked a switch the lights turned on and I immediately regretted getting involved. There were boxes with military markings on them and from what I could gather they were boxes of explosives. If a little ball with small lines coming out of it did mean explosives.

"So. Allow me to explain a few things before you start judging me. I know how this stuff works and I know where we can get some more," she said with a large grin, "The plan is simple. Set up a trap, lure the fly-der in it, blow the fucker up and that's about it. There's only one problem, I've never blown up a target this size and I don't think I've got enough stuff. I guess that makes two problems."

She stopped for a second.

"That's the problems I had before I saved you. Now we also need more supplies. And clothes. And guns. We need a lot more stuff is what I'm trying to say," Ember continued, "Seeing that you can walk now I think that we'll be going today. It should be safe and unlike you, I have a couple of RadSafes. Prepare yourself, we're going in two hours sharp."

I was shocked at the idea. Going out seemed really stupid, especially after Ember told me just that a few days back. But if she said that we were going out there wasn't much I could do to protest that. So I prepared as best I could.

Getting back to the room I stayed in I examined my robes along with what was left of my saddlebag. The robes had only a couple of holes, but the bag didn't fare the spider too well. The holes in the robes were in just two or three places where the biggest teeth went in. Guess the magic did protect them from tearing too much. Wish it protected me though. 

Going out in a damaged set of robes seemed wrong to me and I had some time before Ember was ready to go, so I decided to patch them up, along with the bag. I wasn't a tailor by any measure, but I knew how to thread a needle, that counted for something, right? As I later found out it did not count for much. 





Ember was standing in front of the exit. She was wearing her army fatigues and had the gun strapped to her side. She was ready. Right before leaving we both ate two RadSafe pills, she said that two of them can almost negate low radiation entirely. And the part of town we were going to was quite far from the crater. Or at least that's what Ember told me. 

We had three places to visit: two food stores and a hardware store. Skies thought that that place would have something she needed for the plan. The route was simple, go to the food store number one, then hardware, then the second food store on the way back. 

In my head, it looked like an hour's walk at most but was I ever wrong. The first store was at least a mile or two away. Which wouldn't have been too bad if my legs were fine. 

The town seemed calm, Ember explained that most critters come out closer to the middle of the day and the fly-der didn't hunt in that part of town, so the trip promised to be safe at least. 

After what felt like forever we got closer to the first store, "The Barn" or something like that, the sign outside was broken and almost unreadable. Already after a month the store looked run down. The windows were broken, the doors ripped off and from the looks of it most of the stuff there was already taken. But Ember insisted that the place was stocked.

We approached the building from its parking lot, abandoned sky wagons and carriages were strewn all over the place. The entrance was probably blown off by the initial wave. The doors were blown inside the shop, broken glass was covering the floor. The shelves didn't have much on them, only the odd rotten carrot or a crushed box of cakes. 

Ember went right past all the shelves and into the back of the shop. The back room was mostly empty too, the only thing there was a wall-mounted terminal right by a storage door. The door had some scratches like somepony tried to get in. Ember simply walked over to the terminal pressed a few buttons and the door popped open. 

She walked in first and I followed. There were boxes on top of boxes with magical seals on them. Just looking around I counted at least fifty boxes stacked to the walls and Celestia only knows how much of them were actually there.

Ember just walked to one of the boxes closer to the entrance and opened it. There was a silent pop of the magical seal being broken. She handed me a bag.

"There was a huge delivery a day or two before it all went to shit, all of this was supposed to go to bunkers or the local Stable, I think, but they never took them out of here. Fill the bag and try not to leave anything here, without the seal this is gonna be mush in a week," she said while going to the door, "I'm gonna be on the look-out, bang the door when you're done."

With these words, she left the room and closed the door behind her. I looked in the box. Carrots. So many of them. I haven't seen this much food in a long time. Grabbing one of the carrots I took in the room. If every one of those crates was as filled as this one and they were magically sealed, I was looking at years if not decades of stored food. The room itself wasn't anything impressive, a regular storage room. Although I never was in a regular storage room before, I just assumed that most of them looked similar to this one.

After I finished my carrot I began putting the rest of the carrots in the bag. While I was doing my work I looked the room over again. All boxes had some markings on them, little blotches of paint. The one I was emptying had a white triangle with a line through it. Some others had a white square with a triangle on top. I assumed that they meant what was inside or where the boxes were supposed to go. 

Before I knew it the bag was full and there was almost nothing left in the box. With another carrot in my mouth and the bag hanging softly in the air close to me I banged on the door. It quickly opened and Ember took the bag from me. I exited the storage room and she locked the door behind. 

Ember grabbed a carrot from the bag as we moved out of the shop. We went out the back door. There were broken delivery wagons there, but they were swiped clean. 

We cleared the first shop in less then ten minutes and it was time to move on to the next one.

The tech shop was next. It was two blocks away. It didn't take us long to get there. The shop itself was a part of a three-story building. The upper floors were flats, but the ground one was taken entirely by the shop. The name read "Glimmer Electronics".

It was a small company as far as I knew and it appeared on the Equestrian market some years after the war began. They were supplying cheap alternatives to Stable-Tec and Robronco. And when I say "cheap" I mean it. Some of their products wouldn't even survive shipping, but they were dirt cheap so that hardly mattered.

Ember just bucked down the front door and we were in. 

The shop was cramped, every nook and cranny was filled with all sorts of cheap parts. There was a narrow path to the counter, but even it was littered with some components. The sheer number of little computer parts that were there was blocking out the windows. In certain places, I couldn't even see the ceiling, because piles from two sides leaned on one another making an arch of sorts.

"Sit tight and don't touch anything, I'm sure I'll find that damn thing somewhere around here," Ember called to me from somewhere deeper in the shop. 

"You sure? It looks like you could use some help," there was too much volume for one pony to cover.

"If I need you, I'll call," Ember Skies' head appeared from under a pile of tech, "Just watch the door, don't want no animals getting in," and with that, she went back under. 

I set up near the door on one of the shorter piles. If there was time I would spend it on reading. And as it happened, Astral Sky's book mostly survived the fly-der attack. It lost a few pages and a page or two had a drop of blood here and there, but other than that it was all fine.

So, I just sat at my guard spot and got lost in the pages.





"Um... A helping hoof?" came from the back. Putting the book back into my saddlebag I traversed my way to Ember. After she checked most of the piles it became very hard to move around the shop, you couldn't even see the floor. I found the pegasus trying to open the door to the backroom. Apparently, she was already done with the room we were in.

"The sales terminal mentioned that they had a delivery right before the End and that delivery had the shit I need. It's supposed to be in storage. But this fucking door won't budge. Tried bucking, punching, even checked if it was on some sort of electrical lock, but nothing worked. You have a way in, Fitz?" she explained.

"It's Fritz," I corrected.

"Can you open the damn door or not?" Ember asked again. Not very politely mind you.

"I'll try my best," I walked to the closed door. Astral Sky went over some basics of locks in his book and I picked some things up while reading. The lock didn't look too complicated. Just from a look, I could tell that the core itself was wiggling after Ember struck the door. I focused. A ball of lightning arched from my horn and straight into the lock. It began to shake, I think I even saw a pin or two fly out. In seconds the entire lock body was out on the floor and the door was open.

"Here you go, I think it's a pull, not a push, by the way," I quipped.

"Oh, shut it," Ember pulled the door, "I knew tha-"

"geT oUt OF HERE You ZEbRa-loVinG, cOUNTRy-bEtrayiNg, dirTbAG!" a crazed robot flew right out of the opened door, "i wILL SLicE you uP AND cover MY chassiS wITh yOUr blOoD!"

The bot was some knockoff Mr. Handy. It had a lot of exposed wires and was throwing sparks all over the room. On the only functional arm that it had was a spinning buzz saw. The machine took a swing at Ember, but the pegasus was quick to react and took a step back. Mr. Handy didn't stop though, it went right for me, its saw still outstretched. 

I was in no shape to get sawed. My mind was racing, I didn't know what to do. Then it hit me, I could probably stun the thing, it'd just short circuit and blow up. The spell formed with lightning speed, it was more reflexes than actual will at that moment. The ball of energy left my horn when the saw was seconds away from my throat. And it hit. Directly on the saw arm. Immediately the Handy staggered, its saw hand bent backwards.

"wHAt's aLL ThIS theN?" it bleeped before it finally died. The saw slowly stopped spinning. That was a close call.

Ember simply skimmed over the dead bot and went into the back room. I took a second to breath before following.

It was even worse in the back room. The parts were covering the floor, hundreds of parts and components, unfinished robots and half-constructed terminals. Ember Skies immediately jumped into the pile. Parts went flying everywhere, but soon she spotted a working terminal in the sea of parts.

I returned to reading for the time being, but I didn't even get through a page before she called me again.

"That's weird. The terminal says that they had a giant batch of the explosive parts, but I can't find the thing anywhere," Ember said confused, "It says 'We got it in the back', but it's not here. Just doesn't make any sense."

"Well, this place doesn't look like a place with good inventory management," I answered.

"Every other thing they mentioned in the terminal was here. Even the shitty robot was in there, every fucking bolt. For how trashy this place is they kept a perfect record of stuff they had," she explained.

Putting my book back into the bag I got up and started looking. To be honest, I didn't know what we were looking for. Something to do with explosives that much was clear, but what kind of explosives parts would be in a hardware store? With that thought in my mind, I looked around the room. 

Traversing the ocean of metal parts and wires was a lot harder than Ember made it look. The sharp metal pieces cut into my legs whenever I would slip below the surface. It's like every step can end up in a hole filled with little knives. And that's not mentioning the wires, those things were everywhere, and I'm almost sure that some of them were still plugged in. The robes helped, but with no cover on the legs, they didn't help much. 

There were some shelves on the left side, but with how filled they were it was hard to call them shelves. It seemed weird that somepony would even place shelves in a room that's filled to this extent. I started to look through the shelves, the longer I thought about them the weirder it seemed.

After some digging, I found the bottom of a shelf, a simple sheet of metal. But behind it there wasn't a wall, it looked like a door. A hidden door.

"Hey, I think I found something," I called Ember, "There's a door behind this pile."

Ember jumped out of the pile she was checking and landed right next to me staring at the door.

"Aha! So they had so much stuff that it piled over a door. Get away, I'm opening this one!" she said while kicking at the part of the door that we could see. Hopefully, there wasn't a similar pile on the other side or it would take us a long time to get there.

After three or four kicks the door started to give way, the cheap wood just didn't have much of a chance against an angry pegasus. With the next kick, a part of the door broke off and flew into the next room. With that, I just had to squeeze my head through the hole and somehow open the locked door seeing as none of us could fit through that hole. We also hoped that the door was a push, not a pull because clearing the door from this side was not an option.

With some finagling, I got my head just enough into the hole to see the door from the other side. From there it didn't take long at all to pop the lock open. The door started to slowly open under the weight of the pile, Ember and I pushing it.

The door opened onto a stairway leading down. Strangely enough, the place behind the door was unlike the rest of the shop, everything was pristine, the walls were polished metal, not a spark or a single exposed wire anywhere. After we got ourselves out of the trash that slid into the corridor with us we went down the stairs. 

"This looks promising. Maybe they had a secret stash of goods in the basement," Ember said with hope, "Really hope it's not one of the mayor's stupid projects. The damn things are all over the town."

"Projects?" I asked, "What do you mean? From what I read the mayor wasn't really a 'project' kind of guy."

"Oh, he didn't do anything himself, just signed any paper that asked for some space in town for a 'secret' operation. Almost every fucking shop in this town has some sort of government project behind it," she explained, "See, when the war began this was a small-ish village, just like Ponyville, but without the Ministry mares. But after some time Gloomy Shade got hooked up on those projects, just couldn't get enough of them, think he just liked the secrecy and the funding. He was running this town into the fucking ground, all the money went to bullshit like the mainframe in the city center... But I'm getting a bit too emotional. What I'm trying to say is that I hope this isn't a stupid secret lab or some testing facility, I got enough of those back before the End and I'm not keen on doing anything with them now."

By the time she finished her thought we reached the end of the stairs. A large metal door with three letters etched into it. "TSR". The letters were familiar, the same letters that were on my bag. "Thestral Specialized Research", the project that I bumped into a few days back, had something to do with this place as well.

"I've got some bad news for you then. I've seen this logo already. It's some bat pony research, I think. Thestral Specialized Research or something like that. Don't know what the hell they were doing here though," I ruined Ember's mood or what was left of it. She visibly became a little more pissed off.

"And here I was hoping to have a decent day," Ember said sadly. She sighed and started trying to open the door. She bucked it, but the thing wouldn't budge. There was a small console near the door, but Ember clearly wasn't interested in it.

Calmly approaching the console I tried not to disturb whatever the pegasus was doing. I tried pressing the buttons on the keypad, but the screen kept saying "Authorized personnel only". Thinking of how to open the door I set down near the pad. I had an idea or two. I could use the stun spell again to short circuit it, but then the door could just remain locked, the open lock spell wouldn't even work here, what else, what el-

A loud creaking noise stopped my thoughts as Ember kicked her way into whatever was behind the door. The door itself was still locked, but a lower corner of it had been bent inwards just enough to crawl through. Ember pointed at the new entrance. 

Looking inside I couldn't see a thing. Just darkness, again. It looked like the stupid no lights policy spread to other facilities as well.

Skies immediately went into there without a second thought. And me being me, I followed right after her as soon as a ball of magical light was spinning right above my horn. The hole was a tight squeeze, but I managed.

Inside wasn't really any different from the other base, the same walls, the same floors. Everything was practically the same, except for the fact that it was a different place and none of the signs on the walls were the same.

With the only light source jumping over my head we started to explore the dark corridors. At first, the place looked empty, like there wasn't anything but the walls and the odd sign pointing towards the exit. But as we headed deeper doors started appearing at the sides, almost completely flush to the wall, the only thing that actually separated them were the signs. 

"That's a new one," called Ember as something caught her eye, "Look, this one is bent here and here," she pointed at the slight bends in an otherwise normal door.

"And that tells us what?" I inquired.

"Celestia damn it, don't they teach you anything? A door just doesn't bend on its own. That means somepony was trying to get in. And that could possibly mean that the room has something of value in there," she explained. To be honest, she was right, the door did look as though somepony had tried to break it, with little success. I couldn't even tell what they were using to break in. Some sort of sledgehammer probably.

Skies was determined now that we knew that the door led to something important and we simply HAD to open it. Kicking didn't work here, the door was not giving up as easily as the entrance. 

Suddenly, while we were trying to pry the thing open there was a loud noise somewhere down the hall, we immediately froze. Like metal scraping against metal. It continued for several seconds. Ember had her gun ready the second the sound echoed. The M.A.I.F.O.S. blinked a few times and a red dot appeared somewhere down the corridor.

"Threat located. Threat analysis in progress. Advice: flee," a blurb of text appeared on my screen. Since when can it locate threats?

But my question was left unanswered as the red dot started moving creating even more of that horrible noise. A few more readouts appeared in my sights.

"Target size: Monstrous. Target affiliation: ERROR."

All these new abilities would have been useful with the fly-der, but apparently, M.A.I.F.O.S. decided that it wanted to do scans now. Great.

"That thing is huge and we should run," I relayed the information as effectively as I could at the moment.

"What?" Ember proved my point still aiming down the corridor, "How'd you know?"

Another readout appeared.

"Threat analysis complete."

A giant block of text popped up blocking my vision. There were diagrams, temperature readouts, predicted firepower and a hundred more things that I couldn't even read. At the very bottom, there was a line of text that just read "Threat level: critical. Chances of survival: minimal."

This was not looking good. The sound was getting closer and closer. We needed a quick way out. Or at the very least a place to hide from whatever was making the sound. I needed to think again and think fast.

We don't have much firepower, so fighting is not an option, running back isn't a good idea either, my legs are still useless, and that leaves one option, the bent door right next to us. We need a way in and quickly.

The dot was still moving towards us, the sound of tearing metal getting louder and louder with every second. I started frantically pulling at the door with my magic. It screeched, but wouldn't give out. Ember was standing there looking at me in confusion, then at the long dark corridor from where the threat was coming, then back to me. She might have not understood how I knew anything about the threat at all, but she understood that whatever was making the noise was coming. 

The pegasus started bucking the door while I tried to get it open the normal way. Each time I pulled at the door I could feel a small metal thing on the left of the door stop it from moving. I tried moving it to one side, then another, pulling, pushing, but with that thing holding the door I couldn't do anything. It must've been the locking lug or the pin.

The sound of metal tearing metal was only about fifty feet away, I could already feel that gigantic thing getting closer. The floor was trembling with every movement that the thing did. 

Ember was still kicking desperately at the door hoping to break something important, but she was just hitting random spots... and then an idea hit me like a leg of a giant flying wolf spider hybrid.

"Here!" I pointed at the place where I felt the lug was. Ember turned for a second to see where I pointed and then without hesitation, she bucked the door. A faint clink sound spread through the underground complex. The lug had snapped. I pulled on the door and with a hiss and some whirring, it rolled open. Ember practically flew into the room checking it for anything useful. I shambled there as quick as I could before snapping the door shut. We were safe. For now.

"What in Tartarus was that?! It sounded like a tank trying to drive through a junkyard," she was dashing all over the room, "And how'd you know anything about it? And the door?! Explain yourself!"

She wasn't panicking, more annoyed that I didn't tell her something than anything else, but I was panicking. My vision was partially obscured by the readouts, my heart was pounding... or was it that thing outside? I couldn't tell. I was sitting with my back turned to the door trying to catch my breath when I felt the door shudder. More readouts filled my vision. The metal of the door was torn, the thing was here. Ember stood there aiming her gun at the door. I was trembling unable to move away I heard the thing slowly claw at the door, I could almost feel the claws through the thick layers of metal protecting me.

Then, as suddenly as the thing appeared it slowly moved away leaving me in a mess under that door. After a good minute of silence, I slowly crawled my way closer to Ember who was still on guard with her gun still aimed directly at the door. 

Getting to my hooves I tried to get rid of the green text clouding my vision, but with little success. I slowly turned around. The door was torn to shreds, in multiple places I could see the corridor on the other side. What kind of monstrosity were they keeping here? 

"Stay here, think up some plan to get us out of here, I'll watch the door," Ember was visibly distressed now, she was holding the trigger guard in her mouth and aiming at the door. She was tense, shaking a bit. 

I needed to think, again. It was becoming apparent that getting parts for Ember's revenge could wait. We needed to get out of that place and going back into the corridor wasn't an option, the red dot was still blinking in and out of view every so often. 

Looking over the room we found ourselves stuck in I noticed that we were in a small kitchen of sorts. Pots and pans were hanging from the ceiling, a stove and a fridge. Plates were shattered all over the room. It looked like somepony had a fight here, some pots had dents in them and the kitchen table was bent 0.3 degrees out of alignment, the light was shining at 12% power as thou... Why was I thinking so detailed all of the sudden? I heard something click in M.A.I.F.O.S., then I felt a surge of hot pain stub right into my brain.

"Finally, you answered. Please identify yourselves, intruders. And explain how a prototype M.A.I.F.O.S. came into your possession," said a robotic voice in my head.

Who are you and what, in the name of Celestia, are you doing in my head?!  I thought as calmly as I could.

"Please refrain from thinking so loud, the system can't handle high volumes," the voice instructed, "The M.A.I.F.O.S. is a delicate tool and uneducated users like you are the reason it never got to production."

I'm Fritz, an EEA a-

"The EEA? Finally somepony useful!" the voice exclaimed, loudly, "You must reach the mainframe at once. The defensive protocols are still engaged and the facility cannot function at peak efficiency while the defences are up."

After that the voice got silent, disappearing as though it didn't just ask me to do something. What was it with ponies asking me to do stuff? Did I really look that competent?

Suddenly the M.A.I.F.O.S. beeped again and I saw a distorted map of some sort. A green mess of walls and doors, the image wasn't as clear as I'd liked it to be, but I could probably still use it. I spent a few minutes sitting there, scanning the map for anything. I could see that we were on the first level out of three. We were in the Robotics Lab, below us was the Augmetics Lab and under it was the Research Center and the mainframe. I could see the lift on this level that would lead right to the brains of this place, but there was a problem. Lifts need electricity and looking around it didn't seem as though this place had any backup generators functioning. 

I briefly thought of just legging it to the exit and forgetting this place ever existed, but right on queue the threat from earlier started moving somewhere up the corridor we came from. It felt like the thing was guarding the exit.

This was getting nowhere, even if reaching the mainframe could solve the problem, we still couldn't get out of the room without alerting the monster waiting for us. That is if we could even open the door after it was torn to shreds. 

"I have taken the liberty of making your route, there is a small vent in the western wall, you should be able to crawl to the second level. From there I should be able to plan your further course," the voice said out of nowhere, "The defensive systems are malfunctioning, but you must've encountered them already. The second level should be safer, the systems there seems to be functioning at 30% per cent efficiency, which is far below the efficiency required for the successful deployment of the facility's defence systems."

Looking at the wall to my back there really was a small vent, barely big enough to fit through.

"Hey, Ember, I've got an idea, but I don't think you'll like it,"  I broke the silence, "There is a vent that could lead deeper into this place, but there's no knowing if it's any safer down there..."

"For fucks sake, if it's a vent that we can climb in can't we just climb up the damn thing to exist somewhere above?" she brought up a good point.

Umm... voice? What stops us from climbing up the ducts and out of this place? 

"It is sad knowing that a member of her majesty's EEA is willing to abandon a fellow scholar in such time of need. But there are bars in place to stop anypony from using the ducts as an entrance. Or in your case, an exit," the voice answered with a sadness I didn't believe was possible for the robotic monotone voice.

I relayed what the voice told me to Ember, and she became visibly angry that such an easy escape was denied to us.

"It can't ever be easy, can it? So, what's the plan then? We just go down there hoping the thing won't follow?" the pegasus was making good points, we couldn't just go down there without a plan.

"Well, I haven't exactly thought of that..." I answered not knowing what else to say.

"Then think, Celestia damn you! I didn't survive the War and the End of the World just to die in this hole, so would you please think your plans through?" she shouted losing her temper. 

So, I started thinking as ordered. No real reason to argue back, she was right. The ducts could kill us as likely as they were to save us. I needed to ask that mysterious voice to figure some things out.

Hey, could you help with a few things? My companion thinks it would be... unwise to use the vent without knowing what exactly is at this second level. 

"First of all, yes, I am able to help. Your companion is correct, committing to a task without sufficient knowledge is suboptimal and could lead to further complications. You will be descending down to level 2, the Augmetics Lab. I am however unable to figure out where exactly on the level you will be. There are no precise maps of the ducts. The level itself still has its emergency power generators in working condition," the voice was proving quite useful.

Any information about the level itself? Anything there we should avoid? I asked the voice again. The voice hesitated before answering again.

"The level is used for production and installation of high-end augments. As already stated the production is down, the entire facility is not meeting its quotas and the only place to be working at above standard rate is the mainframe. There are no places that are off-limits, but exploring the level will stunt the progress to the mainframe," it answered again, the robotic distortion somehow relaying sadness, it wanted us to reach that mainframe as quickly as possible.

And the last question, who exactly am I talking to? And why use the M.A.I.F.O.S. for communication and not the PA system? 

"Firstly, that is more than one question. Secondly, strictly speaking, you are not talking at all, but rather thinking. I am the production manager of the facility and it is my duty to return the facility to peak efficiency," he responded, "And the PA system is down, there is simply not enough power for it. Using the M.A.I.F.O.S. doesn't drain the generators as much. It mostly drains the internal battery of the device. If this answers all of your questions please proceed to the vent."

At least I knew that he was some sort of manager, an efficiency freak, but still a useful pony in the situation. I was still looking at the green map right in the middle of my view. The duct that we would enter was now marked red, the exit vents on the second level were marked as well, there were at least twenty of them. I had as much information as I could gather and I went back to convincing Ember with it.

"So, I thought about it. There are roughly twenty exits on the level below, we can't know exactly where we'll exit. The level is supposed to be safe, there isn't enough power in the facility to run every defensive measure at once. From there we should be able to find a way to the last level and turn the defenses off for good," I explained hoping that it'd be enough for her.

"Well, how'd you know any of this?" it wasn't enough for her. I tapped the arcane device on my head.

"I've got a map of this place," I tried to explain. 

"Fine, but you go first," Ember said giving up and moving away from aiming at the door and now looking at the vent. That was going to be tough. The vent was held on by two screws and it wasn't a problem for me to just take them out. Lighting my stun-fleshlight I entered the dark crawlspace ahead.





The next hour made me realize just how bad a state I was in. I don't think there was a part of me that hasn't been scratched, cut or stabbed by the interior of the ducts. The crawl was slow and painful. Every bit of the ducts was either cold or sharp. Moving in the confined space was a nightmare, there was nothing big enough for me to pull myself by, but there was enough stuff to cut up my front hooves. And the drop, oh the drop. There was this one part where the duct just went straight down and I was stuck there face first. My horn still hurts and I think I left a dent at the bottom of the drop. Ember added a little to the pain by sometimes poking me to make me go faster. All in all, the vents were not too bad, at least there were no murderous monsters in there. 

Knocking the grate out I crawled out still bleeding a little and shivering. Ember followed right after me getting out a lot more gracefully than I. She immediately scanned the room we emerged in for any threats, thankfully it was clear. We were in some strange small storage closet with crates lining every wall, the room was barely lit by a couple of dim emergency lamps. Noticing the crates Ember immediately went to check what was in them. With a buck, she tore a lid off of the first box. It was full of high-tech stuff that I couldn't even begin to identify, but Ember seemed to know what she was looking at.

"We've got ourselves some very fancy equipment right here," she pointed at one of the things in the crate, "Even got an army issue drug injector. But nothing to stick in it. Well, I'm taking it anyway," Ember shoved the little gray device into her pocket.

"Any signs of that explosive part?" I asked.

"What? No. These boxes are filled with a bunch of augments and stuff like that. Not what we came here for, but some of these things might be worth taking. Like this for example," she pulled another strange device out of the crate, "A Mk III Cerebral Implant, military-grade, these things can make a soldier out of anypony. To be honest, the targeting systems alone would be useful, but the whole package is a godsend," the device went the same way as the drug injector. 

While Ember was rummaging through the contents of the room I tried asking the manager that led us here for information.

"As already stated, the Augmetics Lab is offline, no security systems are activated, automatic maintenance is offline, the emergency generator is at 17%, power will run out in approximately seventeen days. Storage units three through seven are locked, one and two are breached. You are in storage unit two, please refrain from stealing the property of the Equestrian Government," he answered as soon as I thought of asking. I wasn't enjoying talking with my thoughts

"If the EEA agent does not wish to be conversed with the agent should refrain from thinking so loudly," the robotic voice retorted. I tried thinking quieter from then on, whatever that meant. 

A route to the elevator or a set of stairs would be very helpful right about now. 

"The floor map has already been provided to you. I took the initiative and marked your way through the floor. Please follow the instructions very precisely, diverging from the path may cause the route to become less efficient," the manager answered.

Looking at the map there was indeed a red line running through the level now. It led from the second storage unit across the floor and into elevator shaft 2B. It went through a couple of rooms but mostly stuck to the corridors. I carefully studied the route, while Ember was still stuffing her pockets with augments. She was taking her time with those. After I got a basic understanding of our route I turned to the pegasus.

"Ember, you ready?" I moved closer to the opened box.

"A few more minutes, I'm not leaving these babies here. Plus there's a chance to find something good," she knocked the lid off of another crate and almost threw herself in there. Having nothing to do I sat on one of the crates and resumed my reading. The book was getting more and more complicated by the page, still better than translating Old Ponish though. 





What seemed like hours passed by. Ember was opening crate after crate. She had already filled her pockets by that point. It looked like she was looking for something specific, but wasn't finding it. The reading was going good.

I heard another box break, Ember wasn't bothering with tearing off just the lid for the last dozen boxes. The contents of the box spilt on the floor and she started sifting through looking for something. It was quiet at first, until she picked something out of the pile, raised it over her head and cheered in excitement.

"Finally! Found it. Damn it! I almost thought it wouldn't be in here," Ember was throwing out other augments trying to free up space for whatever new thing she found. She was looking a bit happier.

I got up from my crate and put the book back into my saddle-bag. I checked the map of the floor one more time. Out the storage unit, across a short corridor, into an assembly room, then back into the corridors, into the medbay and out into the corridor that leads straight to the elevator. We could even grab some things from medbay, a bandage or two would be very useful. With Ember no longer rummaging through the augments we could head on out of the room.

The door hissed and slid open when we got close enough. The entire floor was lit by red emergency lights. We slowly walked out of the storage only for the door to automatically slam shut right behind us. Other than that the corridors were clear, no sounds of tearing metal, no red dots, no nothing. With a sigh of relief, I led the way.

With no monstrosity trying to reap us limb from limb it was a lot easier to find our way to the first room we were supposed to go through. The assembly room looked cluttered with tables and with a number of augmentations in different stages of construction, from just piles of wires and crystals to full-blown limbs. The red light was here too. We needed to get to the door across the room, but navigating between the tables was like walking in a maze. Ember simply jumped onto the tables and walked right next to me. I, sadly, couldn't get onto the tables, because my legs still felt like wet noodles. Suddenly Ember stopped and stopped me with her back leg.

"I heard something," she whispered, "Above", the pegasus pointed her hoof to the ceiling. I listened. The metal above us started to tear.





Level Up!

New Perks:





Skilled with the M.A.I.F.O.S. – through your intelligence (or sheer luck) you've become somewhat skilled with the M.A.I.F.O.S. Now you can use its combat features, such as target spotting and threat analyses. Or at the very least you know that it can do that. Sometimes.


Basic MOM Spells – you've gotten far enough into Astral Sky's book to know the basics. Simple locks and basic mechanisms are no match for you.




Effects:





Crippled Legs – you suffered a hard blow to your legs! Ouch! Your movement is cut in half and you cannot run!


Mild Concussion – Getting hit over the head never feels good. -2 Perception and -1 Intelligence.


Radiation Poisoning – standing in the sun isn't as pleasant as it used to be. -1 Endurance


Cuts and Bruises – your body is covered in small cuts, gashes, nicks and pricks. Your max health is lowered until you can fully heal.



> Chapter 6. Oh Celestia, why me
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My ears were ringing, I couldn't see through the layer of dust and smoke that filled the air. I felt the floor shift under my hooves as something monstrous moved underneath. 

The M.A.I.F.O.S. was screaming warnings at me. 

"Hostile target detected. Threat assessment: lethal. Recommend course of action: retreat." 

I was dazed, barely stumbling to my feet. My left hind leg was numb and there was blood in my eyes. I tried to rub my eyes to clear my vision, at least a little. 

The floor shifted again knocking me back to the floor. I heard a yelp of pain coming from somewhere. Who was that?

After a moment had passed and the movement below stopped I pulled myself back up trying to look around. The dust was begging to settle and I could see the outline of the room. 

There was a giant rent in the ceiling, like something crashed through it. The torn wiring around the edges was shooting sparks that lit the room. 

Looking down I saw a massive hole that took up most of the room. There was a huge pile of debris in the hole, tons and tons of metal. The movement below started again and I saw the entire pile shift as though there was something stuck under there. I heard the yelp again. It was coming from the pile. 

My mind was starting to clear, little pieces of what had happened moments prior coming back. 

We were going through a room on the second floor... Then there was a... sound? After that Ember... Ember!

With a sudden realization I looked down the hole again. She was somewhere down there. 

I squinted as hard as I could trying to find the pegasus through the cloud of smoke, but it was impossible to see any detail in there, it was all just a mess of grays down there. 

As my mind was racing to find a way to get Ember out the pile started to shift again, the thing clearly still trying to free itself. I could hear her again for a moment. Following the sound I saw what looked like a table somewhere in the middle of the pile. A kind of table that was in this room before it collapsed. Hopefully the same table she was on. 

I collected myself, focusing entirely on my telekinesis and started to lift the table. 

It was a huge gamble. If she wasn't under that table I would have wasted what little power I had on nothing. 

As the table was slowly covered with my magic grip it started to shift. I strained myself to keep the magic up, my eyes were watering and swear ran down my face. Painstakingly, inch after inch, the table moved out of the way. Ember yelped again, I could hear it clearer that time. 

The smoke  still made it practically impossible to see anything in there. I couldn't pick her out in the sea of metal and smoke. Suddenly there was a bright flash and a bang. The flash parted the smoke for a split second and I could see where she was. 

Focusing every last iota of what little power I had on her I started to levitate Ember out of there. My legs were trembling, I was on the verge of collapse, but I had to keep going. 

Suddenly the ground started shaking as the giant underneath us stirred. I saw a plate of metal go crashing down to the bottom of the pit, barely reacting in time, I moved Ember out of its way. The whole place was coming apart as the thing moved somewhere under piles of rubble. More debris started falling from above. It was falling with enough speed and force to cut a wagon in half, nevermind a single pony. 

Through sheer luck Ember glided unharmed through the hail of debris. Placing her body near the door out of the room I moved towards it. 

We shouldn't stay here.

Thank Celestia, the door wasn't locked. It slid up with a hiss. Biting into Ember's fatigues I started to pull her out of the room. The second we were out I punched the "close" button so hard I heard something break, but at that point I just couldn't feel anything but exhaustion. Trying to catch my breath I slumped to the cold floor. Getting up would be a problem, but at that point I didn't care. 



 

I woke up to green warnings flashing in my face. 

"Medical scan complete. Severe limb damage detected, caution is advised.  Severe head trauma is detected,  caution is advised.  Severe magical burnout – imminent, caution is advised. Severe..." the M.A.I.F.O.S. flashed blocks of text right in front of my eyes. There were so many things wrong: broken legs, shattered bones, pulled muscles, the list went on. 

I could still hear the rumbling behind the door, still there, just to remind us that we weren't safe. 

Ember was out cold lying next to me. Her bags were gone, the only gun we had – mangled beyond repair. 

I thought that was it. Stuck underground with no potions to cure our wounds, with some giant abomination out for our blood and to top it all off the emergency lights were starting to flicker promising to leave us in darkness. I didn't even have enough in me to break down in tears, I just sat there staring at the red lights. 

"It appears that your progress has been hampered," The manager's voice split my head with a headache. "Also reading your M.A.I.F.O.S. readouts you appear to be suffering from several injuries that prevent further progress. There appears to be only one solution to this predicament," there was a moment of silence, then a plan of the floor appeared before my eyes and the voice continued. "There is a medical bay a hundred feet to the south. Inside is an AutoDoc. Once you arrive I may be able to divert enough power to it to keep it operational long enough to do its job. Also, seeing as it is a medical bay, you may be able to find some medical supplies." 

With a sigh I got up leaning against the wall. I wasn't  going  to die there and neither was Ember. The floor rumbled again. It was a sign that we'd better got moving. I once again bit into her fatigues and began the slow move to the med bay. 

What felt like days past before I even saw the door to Medbay. Ember was barely breathing and I couldn't feel my left hind leg. More than once I'd stumbled over the rubble that was falling every time the monstrosity moved. 

The Medbay door slid away with a hiss as we approached. The lights inside flickered wildly as the generators struggled to keep up with the destruction. 

The bay was in disarray, shattered potion bottles lay on the floor, multiple medical cabinets were overturned, even an otherwise indestructible Stable-Tec terminal sat speared through by a metal beam that had fallen from the ceiling. I looked around the room searching for the promised AutoDoc. It stood in the far corner of the room barely illuminated by its cracked green screen. 

The AutoDoc itself was a spider-like machine with several tool-limbs spreading from the main chassis. At the top there was a cracked but still functioning screen with a keyboard that was missing most of its keys. 

Getting closer I noticed that the machine stood near a medical bed that had somehow not been overturned in all the chaos. 

"Please, carefully place the patient onto the operating table," the manager's voice thundered in my head, "the AutoDoc will deal with it from there." 

I tried to summon up any strength I had left to lift Ember onto the table,  but I didn't even manage a small sparkle of magic, instead a sharp pain stubbed through my head. Seeing me struggle the AutoDoc used one of its limbs to reach for Ember and picked her up by the fatigues. 

"The procedure should only take an hour. In the meantime, I would recommend you rest," chirped the robotic voice in my head. I didn't answer, instead choosing to lay down on the cold metal floor near the medical bed and closing my eyes. 



 

There were no nightmares, just me and the stars above. Me looking at them, them looking at me. 

The lights above did not stay still, they moved in perfect synchrony shifting from chaos to intricate designs. At first the shapes were just pretty designs without any particular forms: circles rotating within circles, lines crossing lines to transform into waves. The longer I looked the more concrete the images became. 

The first actual thing was a book, made from multiple rectangles melding into the silver cover, a score of circles uniting to form gems embedded into metal bindings, multitudes of smaller less pronounced forms slid to shape the engravings into the silver. After the stars finished their dance and the book was complete it all stopped for a moment and I admired the fine craftsmanship. Every little detail seemed so real, like I could almost touch it. 

As I looked at the book the stars started moving again flowing like water into a new pattern. It was like the book opened and the stars that weren't a part of it slid onto the pages forming words. 

The words were clear. An instruction. A spell. 



 

For the first time in what felt like forever I awoke peacefully. The AutoDoc was quietly whirring beside me. The room was mostly dark, the only light coming from the screen of the AutoDoc. 

My mind was clear and focused after the needed rest. Everything still hurt, but the pain seemed less noticeable. 

There were no voices vying for my attention, the M.A.I.F.O.S. was busy analyzing something and the manager didn't seem to notice that I woke up or didn't seem to care. 

The quite was welcome.  It was weirdly serene to be sitting Celestia knows how deep in a secret bunker-lab under a crappy electronic shop. 

The only thing that was still disturbing me was the thought of that spell I saw. It stuck out in my mind like a sore hoof. It was very similar to that spell from the book from Night Twister's study, "Custos ex Somnia". Even without having the book in front of me I could remember every line, every instruction. Like the first spell out of there, it made no sense, the flow of it was wrong, like a spell written by a foal that barely learned how to write. Yet, just like before, there was a thread of purpose and meaning to it and with every time I read it over in my head that thread grew larger until the gibberish of before started to make complete sense to me. 

It was the kind of spell I hoped I'd never need to learn, the kind that kills. It worked on the same principles that my stun spell worked on, it drew power and launched it at the target. There were two major differences to the new spell, the amount of energy drawn and the source of that energy. It drew the ambient energy from around the caster and poured it into the target. And with the ambient magical energies around after the End this spell would probably just melt the target if not vaporize them.

Of course, I had many doubts about this new spell. Why would I learn a spell out of nowhere? How reliable were my dreams at making coherent spells? Did my dreams make the spell or was it Princess Luna who gave it to me or something else entirely? The most prominent of the doubts and questions was the timing. Why now? 

"I see you have woken up", the robotic voice interrupted my morbid train of thought. "I advise that you prepare yourself, the procedure is almost complete." 

With a sigh I tried to rise to my feet, but the second I put pressure on my hind legs I buckled like a stack of wet papers. The pain made me yelp as I fell. For a second it almost seemed like I wasn't half dead, but then I had to ruin the illusion. The second attempt at getting up went better, I used the table of the AutoDoc as a crutch to stand. It was wet. The light from the machine's screen didn't carry far enough to see Ember on the table,  but the buzzing of the AutoDoc and the soft breathing reassured me that she was still there and still alive. 

I moved away from the operating table and finally stumbled on all fours. The tranquility of my sleep had fully disappeared by then. Looking around the dark room there were little shimmers in the dark, the glass of the cabinets and vials reflecting the only light source. I tried making my way to them hoping that at least one of those vials would have a healing potion or something similar at least. The floor met my muzzle at least two times, but I was making good progress to the cabinet. 

After a couple of painful minutes my hooves were stumbling to open the glass door separating me from the meds. The thing refused to open, but I couldn't really tell if it was because it was closed or because I kept missing the door handle. A couple of attempts later the glass was open and I was looking at the stacks upon stacks of bottles, me standing in front of the only light in the room complicated the already hard enough task. One bottle stood out, a small flask on the bottom shelf, it gave off a slight glimmer of purple. Nudging the flask with my hooves slightly closer I noticed the pink butterfly sticker on it, that had "Ministy of Peace Approves" printed in tiny letters around the butterfly. 

"At least it's approved", I squeezed out before downing the contents of the bottle down my throat. The second it went down I immediately felt most of the small cuts and bruises on my coat start to disappear. 

Now standing a little firmer on my fours, I looked over my shoulder at Ember still on the operating table and at the AutoDoc still seemingly active. Knowing that I still had some time to spend I set down trying to dig through what was left of my saddlebag. 

Weirdly enough the TSR bag was completely untouched and somehow even managed to stay on through the entire thing, the ducts, even the metal monstrosity falling on us. 

The M.A.I.F.O.S. started menacingly displaying charts into the corners of my view, but after looking at them it just turned out that the potion interrupted the scan that the piece of junk on my head was running. 

With M.A.I.F.O.S. slowly burning my head I returned to dig through my things and there wasn't really a lot to pick through: just Astral's book and some scraps. With nothing better to do to pass the time I pulled out the book. 

"Ding!" chimed the AutoDoc the second I turned to the page I stopped at. 

"The operation was a success. The patient will live," the manager explained the machine's sound. 

So, when will she get up? I tried asking using my thoughts. 

"Standard recovery periods for this procedure are two hours and seventeen minutes. The dire situation forces us to forgo the standard safety procedures. The AutoDoc will assist in a swifter recovery," the robotic voice explained. "It is advised that after the patient is once again fit to serve Equestria they and the EEA agent continue on the route." 

Hey, speaking about the route. It's just down the corridor to an elevator, but I don't recall any particular directions for the last floor, especially now that that thing is down there.

"Again, the M.A.I.F.O.S. does not support speech. There were no directions, because it was believed that the size of the floor would facilitate ease of locating the mainframe. However, the agent is correct in assuming that the presence of the rogue security measures may hamper efficient progress. As of this moment, I am unable to detect the exact location of the threat and therefore I cannot guide you safely to the mainframe. It is up to you now." 

"Nothing can be easy these days," I sighed as I got closer to the AutoDoc, which had just finished injecting something into Ember. With a gasp the pegasus almost flew to her hooves seconds after the injection. 

"Lemme at em' chief! I am going to tear out their guts!" she shouted at the top of her lungs jumping around on the operating table and looking around the room. The last time I focused on her I wasn't conscious enough to actually see what had happened to her. 

Her body was bruised and battered, but most cuts were already closing under the effects of whatever the AutoDoc injected. There were clumps of dry blood all around her head and mane. One of her eyes was bloodshot moving around frantically, the other one was... like a piece of plastic with a small reddish light in the middle slowly tracing the path of the first eye. My heart skipped a beat when the red dot stopped on me and the inside of the eye started moving, the plastic panels moving out of the way to allow the light to grow in size. Then Ember smiled, the light in her eye going back to its smaller size. 

"Fritz! Good to see ya!" the pegasus greeted me from the table,  "You got any idea what happened? Because I have no clue what's going on!" 

Ember then hopped off the table landing perfectly as though she wasn't almost dead some hours ago, some ponies just deal with injuries better than others. 

"The patient is fully capable of performing the task ahead. It is recommended that the mainframe is reached within twenty minutes, otherwise the invigorating injection currently keeping her conscious will lose its effect," the manager's voice cut into my head like a knife. 

What in the burning fires of Tartarus have you done to her?! Wasn't there a better way to heal her?! I thought as loud as I could. 

"The patient received an OWLOWISCIOUS Mk. II Optical Implant and a RAINBOOM Mk III Cerebral Implant," the manager droned in my ear. "Along with these augmentations the pation was administered a custom cocktail of stimulants and stored medical spells to return the patient to full function. Concerning a better healing process, according to "An inquiry of the limit of the healing potential of healing potions" published by the Ministry of Peace, other currently available healing methods would not suffice in healing this level of injury." 

I didn't know what to tell him. He did save her where just dumping healing potion would've failed. It still took away a part of her that made her a pony. I didn't have enough left in me to argue with the manager. Pushing the morality of sticking metal bits inside living creatures aside I moved closer to Ember. 

"Are you alright?" I hurried closer to her. 

"Feeling more than alright actually," the pegasus looked herself over,  "The AutoDoc probably put some potions or something in. Let's get moving before the buzz wears off," she deadpaned and started moving to the door. Her fatigues were almost nonexistent at the moment,  the only parts not ripped away by the operation were the cuffs and the neck piece along with a few pieces of fabric still trying to hold together. 

Not wanting to be left alone in there I followed right behind her. Keeping pace with Ember was proving to be a challenge, the orange mare just took one jump and was already half the corridor away from me.  

The entire floor was still barely lit by the half functioning emergency lights. The walls had a lot more tilt to them than I remembered, like somepony tried pushing them. Some of the cables running behind the wall panels had snapped and were throwing little bouts of sparks to the floor. 

On our way to the elevator we crossed what looked like a small makeshift guard post. A turned over folding table with some papers thrown all around it and a broken chair laying under it were in the way. Ember didn't stop for a second instead leaping over the table like it wasn't even there and landing almost fifteen feet behind it. I chose instead to move the table closer to the wall giving me enough space to trot through. 

I heard Ember calling out from somewhere ahead. 

"Hey! How are we supposed to... uh... use it?" Ember mumbled looking at the closed elevator door. "The thing's got no power," she hit the button a couple of times to no effect. 

Getting closer to the elevator, I looked around. A small vent on the wall to the left of the elevator immediately caught my eye. With a sigh and a grunt I got on my haunches and started unscrewing the thing from the wall. 

"Tartarus take me, looks like we're going vent-crawling again," I cursed while taking off the cover. The pegasus was almost shaking with anticipation. The second the cover was off Ember was already halfway into the vent. 

It wasn't as hard as the first time, maybe there were fewer bits to cut me up, maybe I just got better at crawling through the ducts. I didn't even see Ember until I was pulling myself out, it was like she didn't show down even inside a metal tube. 

The hole we crawled out of was almost at the ceiling. That presented a small problem which was in turn immediately solved by a nearby table being moved for me to land on. It didn't help as much as I'd hoped, something cracked and I was pretty sure it wasn't the table. 

The corridor we found ourselves in was filled with an ever-present home of arcane machinery. You could feel it with your hooves, you could see the air reverberating slightly. I could feel it in my bones, like a tingling all over my body. I'm pretty sure Ember felt it too. 

"Let's get it over with," she muttered. "This place is rubbing me the wrong way with all the juddering." 

I nodded, while looking around. The corridor was bathed in red emergency lights just like the rest of the structure at that point. There were some posters on the walls but after living in Canterlot for more than a day I've learned to ignore them, it was probably something about zebras being everywhere or something. About twenty feet from there the corridor split into two, there was a small sign with directions. The left one read "Mainframe", so I didn't really bother to read the right one. I pointed my hoof at the sign and called out to Ember, who was ripping off what was left of her fatigues.

"Almost there! We go left, turn off that accursed security thing and we can finally get out of here."

"Not so quickly. We came here for explosives and I'm not leaving until we get what we need," Ember was quick to remind me. Although, at that point I didn't really care about the explosives and just hoped to get out alive, maybe even alive and with all my limbs still attached. The explosives would definitely be useful, but I wasn't sure if they were worth our lives.

Turning the corner we were greeted by one of those slidy doors, but instead of a comfortable and convenient button there was a damn terminal. In that moment I cursed every single product ever made by Stable-Tec. Don't get me wrong, it made some sort of sense that the most important part of the facility would have some additional measure of security, but in that moment anything that prevented me getting out of there was the subject of my angry mumblings along with some insults. But that wasn't the problem, it'd make getting in a bit harder, maybe even make me ask the manager for the password, a solvable problem. The problem was the huge piece of metal stuck in the side of the terminal. Looking up I found the source of said piece of scrap, the ceiling had a big tear going all along it. I guessed that the terminal got screwed when whatever the thing that was chasing us was fell through the floor, although I had hoped that it had fallen a lot further away from the mainframe.

I had fixed terminals before of course, but most of them were just a cracked crystal or a detached wire, things that could be fixed with enough time and spare parts or garbage equivalents laying around. I had not, however, fixed or even attempted to fix a problem of this size. Instead of even attempting to dislodge the hunk of metal out of the terminal I decided to get the answer from the manager, it was his facility and his crazed security system messing it all up after all. 

Hey! We've got a problem here. The terminal to the door is wrecked, I quickly told the manager, in as much as you could tell with thoughts. Is there another way in or something? I got an answer almost immediately.

"For safety reasons the mainframe room has a single door outfitted with a top-of-the-line Stable-Tec terminal that is separated form the facility grid to prevent infiltration. To further protect the property of the Equestrian Government the ventilation shafts and ducts have been secured with multiple inbuilt explosives and pneumatic spikes. To reach the mainframe the door must be opened. In view of the current circumstances the destruction of the door would not be considered as destruction of government property. Attempting to mend the terminal would also be acceptable," the manager droned on. This was it for me, I reached my boiling point and could not just sigh and continue.

"This is why it all went to Tartarus," I grumbled as I realized that I would have to solve this myself. "Oh sweet Celestia, who installs a single door with a single terminal and no way of working around them in an emergency!" I yanked the metal chunk out. "What if there was a fire inside or... or a mainframe malfunction, or oh, I don't know, maybe the security went crazy and started ruining the place?!" I threw the offending ceiling piece behind my back with more force than I thought I had. "And now because somepony thought it would be a great idea to have a grand total of zero fail-saves I have to somehow get this piece of garbage back up and running!" I almost jammed my head into the opening in the side of said piece of garbage. "And what's more important is that it's wouldn't be that hard to just have a safety feature or something, like, 'If there is total societal collapse, than open the mainframe door' or another way to solve this would be to not have a fucking mainframe at all!" I pulled my head out, convinced that I knew what parts I would need, thankfully all the crystals were intact. "But of course not, that would be too easy now wouldn't it! Can't have it be easy, no it has to be stupid and dumb and inconvenient!" I ripped some cables and wires from the exposed ceiling and hovered them close to my face. "And I know for a Celestia-damn fact that it didn't have to be a terminal, it could've just been a thing with a keycard or some sort of scanner or something!" The wires went inside the terminal." If an intruder were to break through into this place, did they really think a single terminal would stall them for long?!" After some shoddy work on my part the screen flickered green once again. Seeing the slowly booting up terminal I fell silent for a moment.

"Are you done with your whining? We have things to do!" Ember shouted from somewhere behind me.

"Yeah-yeah, I'm working on it! Almost done!" I responded trying to match Ember's volume.

After another second or two the damned machine booted up. 





INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.1.3

STR-TSR-LAB-024/SEPERATE

THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT. 

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.

WELCOME BACK, GUEST.

Options:





Open mainframe door.


Exit.




TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN

THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY

STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.





Before all of this went down I was a relatively calm pony, but that terminal broke me. It didn't even have a password. There were no complicated systems in the terminal. Just a guest account and an "open" option. 

"Sweet, merciful Celestia, forgive me for what I am about to say," I took in a deep breath as the door slid open. "Who, for fucks sake, who does this?! This isn't even fucking incompetence or stupidity at this point! You have to be so unimaginably inadequate to do this that I just refuse to believe that somepony actually installed a terminal without a bloody password and called that a working security measure!" I stepped into the mainframe room and stopped my tirade, it was time to turn that monstrosity off, maybe have a good few days of rest afterwards.

The room was cold, enough for my breath to show. There was nothing in this room except for the huge mainframe taking up an entire wall opposite the door. It looked like the one in the city hall, but without all the storage units. The huge screen was giving off a darker shade of green than the standard, maybe trying on that thestral tech for once, although it didn't look that much darker than standard. I quickly moved to the keyboard and started hunting for a way to turn off the security.

Okay. We're at the mainframe. How do I turn the security off? I tried to reach the manager.

"It should be under the 'Sеcurity' tab, in the 'Activity' section there should be an option to 'Disable Vital Security'. There will be a small verification process, to ensure that the process is being done by a loyal Equestria-loving citizen and not a zebra spy," the manager blurted out. Before I could look on the screen I heard a rumble behind the wall to the right. "I suggest you hurry, it appears that the security system is on its way." Blurting out some incoherent curse I started to search.

Okay, I'm looking for "Security"... Oh for Celestia's sake, the terminal outside has one and a half options, but this hunk of junk has hundreds?! WHY?!

I started typing furiously, hoping that the search function would save me some time. The rumbling from the adjacent room grew even louder and the M.A.I.F.O.S. started its insistent scanning, making me miss the time when it couldn't do that.

"Hostile target detected. Threat assessment: lethal. Recommend course of action: retreat," the fancy piece of headwear made looking for the "Security" tab that much harder with all the readouts. I entered "Sec" into the search bar and got an immediate result... of absolutely nothing. Then I thought Maybe it needs an exact match, I've heard of some terminals working like that, so I went back to the search and entered the full word. Still nothing. And as though somehow feeling my failure to locate the necessary thing the security itself started furiously moving, the M.A.I.F.O.S. screaming warnings as it did so. The entire room was shaking now, one of the emergency lamps blew out as a support beam was bent out of the way. For a second I looked away from the mainframe and ran to close the door, just in case, at least that would hold it off for a second or two, at least the inside had a simple button on the door.

Getting back to the keyboard and continuing the search for the elusive "Security" tab I started to just scroll through the options, sorting them out in alphabetical order to at least shorten the task somewhat.

Scan? No. Search Engine? Nope, not that one. Server? Wrong. Spam Blaster? Sounds gun, but not what I ne... – there was a heavy crash and a sound almost like an explosion of metal flying all over the place, probably getting stuck in the terminal again – Fuck, moving on. Spyware? Interesting, but wrong time. SDK? Don't even know what that means. System? Nope. Sycurity?

"Celestia on a unicycle! It's fucking misspelt!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as I pressed the damned button. It was, a lot easier from there, at least. Only option after pressing "Sycurity" was "Activity". I think that in those moments the manager was trying to say something, but at that point I was seeing red with the amount of crap I had to endure and cared very little for what was said. Turning the thing off from there didn't seem like much of a problem, just "Disable" and a small verification. But, obviously, nothing could be easy in that Princesses forsaken place, just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Once I started going through the verification there was a blow at the door that shook the entire room, then another one, and another until the door bent inwards. 

The screen read "What is the capital of Equestria?" I quickly typed in the answer. There was another heavy slam at the door that blew out the remaining lights in the room, leaving it bathed in the darker green of the mainframe screen. The next question was "What is the number of Wonderbolts?" There were three options: 4, 10, 20+. I thought about it for a moment and picked the third option. Like clockwork another strike followed, this one blowing a huge piece out of the door and sending it straight into the floor right at my hooves. I yelped as I jumped up in shock and cried out as I landed, the potion helped me, but my legs were still like paper mache. The screen displayed "Who is the current leader of Equestria?", I assumed that "Nopony" wasn't the right answer and typed in "Luna". As though reacting to my inputs the security monster ripped what was left of the door and launched it missing me entirely, but hitting the casing of the mainframe and denting it heavily. The screen rippled and the top left quarter of it went black cutting off a part of the next question. " -tle in the Everfree forest?" was the question and I had no idea what the answer was. I looked back at the monstrosity, it was trying to squeeze through what was left in the doorframe ripping it to shreds in the process.

Finally I was able to take a better look at the thing that has been putting us through the wringer. It was a hulking mass of metal, like I thought before, but now I saw that metal wasn't the only component, there was a softer looking rubber-like substance in there uniting the huge chunks of what looked like one of those Sentinels ripped open. The plates covering the rubber moved up and down as the monstrosity moved, those very same plates cut into other plates, the rubber and the floor creating the one sound that I identified the thing by, it tore at the floor and at itself. Where the plates would shred the rubber-thing a black tar-like substance would flow out and cover the wound and the plate, quickly drying up and locking the plate in a new position, it would inevitably tear off again causing the thing to look more like a flowing tar blob and less like a security system gone rogue. What looked like one of the Sentinel's legs surfaced somewhere on the top and attempted to grab the wall to pull itself through. The leg struck the wall making a huge dent, the tar flowed out of it hardening into something akin to griffon talons that attempted to grab hold of the wall, but instead cut it to ribbons. What was left of the Sentinel's head was still turning around as though looking for targets, though it didn't take it too long to stop its sensors on me. The one big red "eye" in the middle of its head was cracked and blinked every other second, but remained firmly looking at me.

I stood looking back at it for a moment, before realizing that I was wasting potentially the last seconds of my life and turned back to the screen. 

Now, what in Tartarus even is IN the Everfree forest? Isn't it filled with nothing but monsters and deadly plants? Okay, screw that, what's the cut off word... "-tle" Ehm... Bottle? No. Throttle? Why? Castle?  Wasn't there a castle or something like that where the Princesses lived before Canterlot? It was the same place Celestia fought Nightmare Moon. What was it cal–

I had to duck as another metal fragment was sent my way by the tar monstrosity as it tore its way through the doorframe and the wall. This time it hit the ceiling making little bits of dust and rust fall from it. I could almost swear I could hear some faint mechanical clicks that sounded like some parody of laughter coming from the thing, but all the scraping metal made it impossible to be sure. Turning back once again, I started typing, I was sure that the name wasn't something complicated, if I remembered it correctly it wasn't even a pun. 

It definitely starts with "Castle of" that I'm sure on, but what was it the castle of? The Royalty? The Princesses? The god-like beings with the power to control the Sun and Moon? The Alicorn Sisters? Sisters... They were known as sisters before being known as the Princesses, right? So it could be "Castle of the Two Sisters"

Finally, having typed in my answer I submitted it. There was a short loading screen. And then what I presumed said "Sycurity: off". The very second the message half-appeared on the screen there was a loud screech coming from the Sentinel bits. The lights turned off and the thing ground to a halt having ripped half the wall and squeezed most of not all of itself into the room. Its many legs slowly stopped their movements, one of them still being stuck so far into the wall that it could probably scratch its own flank at that point. The grinding and tearing sound stopped as well, giving my ears a well deserved break. The black goop, however, didn't stop solidifying and the talon-like things at the ends of the robot legs also didn't stop squeezing at empty air, but I still felt safer now that the hunk of junk was off.

I breathed a sigh of relief and it felt fucking great. I stood there dripping with sweat, my legs shaking, finally paying attention to the cold of the room properly. I could feel that spark of anger that pushed me on leaving me. My horn hurt like crazy and I probably wasn't doing it any favors by using it. All of my limbs were in their usual places, even if very sore and most likely broken. My bag was still there hanging on my flank, the book still in it. For a moment I actually felt good, I'd managed it, navigated a secret government facility and survived against Celestia knows what. 

But as it went those days, things tended to get worse before they got any better. A lot worse.

Just as I was collecting myself to try to talk to the manager about the success two things hit me. The first was: Where is Ember? And the second was a small bit dislodged from the ceiling as the whole underground complex begun to shift. 

"Horseapples," was the only thing I could muster as I saw the pile of metal slowly jitter back into motion. The black tar enveloped most of the Sentinel like vines crawling over a fence. Almost like a wounded animal it struggled to stand up, or whatever equivalent to standing up exists for abominations like it. The lights were still out on the head, but the legs were moving again, bending and rotating, ripping at the walls around it in an attempt to close the distance between us. I could almost feel the predatory drive that thing had. Although, predators hunt for food, that felt more like an impulse for slaughter. It saw me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

As it crawled at me faster than the thing had any right to I realized that that would be the end of it. It moved faster than before, it had enough raw mass and power to rip through multiple feet of concrete and metal, it would have no problems doing the same to me.

It slowly raised its clawed limb and prepared to strike me, the claws were probably two maybe even three feet, it'd probably make me into a cold pony platter in one swipe. I saw the thing that was about to kill me, but after all the anger had left me I had nothing left in me. I wouldn't even describe it as shock, more like a cold realization, maybe even acceptance. I just closed my eyes waiting for it to end. I tried to calm my breathing, I was told one time, back when I was a foal, that you shouldn't die out of breath because you would not be able to explain what happened and stay a ghost. I know that it was a stupid foal's story, but I thought it better to be cautious, not like there were many other things I could've done at that moment.

I heard its limbs crack and scratch the ceiling. But instead of it all just ending, I heard another sound, one that made me come back to my senses.

"For fuck's sake! That's the piece of trash we've been running from?!" Ember shouted from somewhere behind the monster. I opened my eyes and saw that Ember had distracted the thing enough to slightly lower its raised leg and start turning to face her. Its other limbs also prepared to strike Ember and one after the other they did. The entire complex shook with each impact, there were huge chunks ripped out of the floor, but amid all that I saw a bright orange flash moving faster than I could track. After a second I heard a loud crash as the leg raised at me tumbled to the ground and in its place stood Ember wielding some sort of bladed pole.

"Hey, Fritz! The fuck are you standing there for?! Use that horn of yours! Throw a fireball or something!" she shouted at me while cutting off another leg as the tar attempted to reattach it. 

"Celestia damnit, Ember! I don't know..." I stopped myself from finishing that thought. Mostly, because I did know a "fireball or something" as Ember put it, "You know what? If we die here, let's do it in style. I do have something special."

Thankfully the spell didn't require any incantations or weird arcane gestures or symbols, the only things necessary were sheer will to pull ambient magical energies from around us and a bit of my own magic to kickstart the process.

"I need to concentrate! Distract it for a couple of seconds! When I say try to get as far away from it as you can!" I warned Ember before starting the spell. She made an approving "mhm" before spinning her polearm, jumping and vanishing behind the onslaught of the monster. It'd take me some time to cast it, after all it was a very complex and I was in the opposite of a good shape for casting. It took me a moment just to gather enough of my own power to siphon ambient magic with, but the second I had enough it all sort of fell into place. I could feel every little pocket of energy around me. Some were just little blobs flowing about like clouds, some were more concrete, locked into certain forms or crystals, the largest was obviously the mainframe, but it didn't matter. Wherever there was even a trace amount magic that could be funneled into the spell it simply flew out of its container and gathered around my horn, lighting the room at first with faint white and pink whispers, but growing in intensity very quickly until it was painful to look at my horn at all. I could feel the heat radiating all around me, it got so intense that I could swear it was evaporating the sweat off of my coat.

"Now!" I yelled to let Ember know to get out of the way. Then I let it loose.

The bolt of pure light flew straight into the abomination melting what was left of the Sentinel in mere moments. At first it tried to cover itself with the legs but they were gone before it even managed to raise them. The black goo was a lot more resilient, it held on for multiple seconds before flaking away like black snow and vanishing in the air. Before finally disappearing the tar attempted to reach out and grab parts of the shredded floor, but the pseudopods burned away faster than they appeared. Finally all of the tar was gone leaving only a small crystalline core wrapped in metal rings, with four spark batteries inserted into each ring. The flow of ambient magic was slowly dying down, but I was vaguely aware that it would probably be enough. The core resisted the magical onslaught with some sort of magic of its own, like a small barrier projected by a talisman. But a talisman can only stop so much energy before being overloaded and cracking.  When it did the last of my spell's effect quickly made it a small puddle of molten crystal at the bottom of the crater that used to be the mainframe room floor.

"Arcane Blaze has been added to spell list," the  M.A.I.F.O.S. chimed as the black smoke cleared. I breathed in deeply. Let's see you get back up from this one. I was pretty sure that I saw Ember jumping over the crater to me, although I wasn't sure why there were two of them. My legs were wobbling from all the stress and my horn was a bit more charred than I remembered from pushing all that power through it. My legs started to give out just as the pegasus reached me. She caught me in a hug and propped me up so that I would lean on her instead of the floor.

"What the fuck, Fritz?! Why are we even here if you know a spell like that? No need to blow up the flyder if we can just vaporize the bloody thing!" Ember said to me as she stored her new shiny spear under her wing. I wanted to give some snappy answer, but instead of words only unintelligible mumbles came out. I attempted to shift my weight to lean more on Ember, but something felt off, like my legs just weren't there. I tried to raise my head to look around, but it wouldn't listen. My eyes were slowly closing and no attempt on my part was enough to keep them open. It took a second for me to realize what was happening, but when I finally fell unconscious from the exhaustion and magical burnout it mattered very little whether I understood it or not.





Effects:





Crippled Legs – you suffered a hard blow to your legs! Ouch! Your movement is cut in half and you cannot run!


Mild Concussion – getting hit over the head never feels good. -2 Perception and -1 Intelligence.


Advanced Radiation Poisoning – standing in the sun isn't as pleasant as it used to be. -2 Endurance and -1 Agility.


Cuts and Bruises – your body is covered in small cuts, gashes, nicks and pricks. Your max health is lowered until you can fully heal.


Magical Burnout – didn't your parents ever tell you not to overdo it with the spells? -1 Perception and Spellcasting is disabled.



> Chapter 7. Taking it easy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My eyes opened to a more pleasant sight than I expected. It was the same darkness as in my previous dream. The same stars dancing above. This time it wasn't just me and the stars however. I felt a lot more conscious, a lot more present in the moment, not just lying there and watching.

I could feel cold water all around me, as though I was half submerged in it. I was naked. The few things I possessed weren't at my side, even the M.A.I.F.O.S. was gone. I felt that I wasn't alone there, I could sense somepony or something else. The feeling is hard to describe, like I could feel someone's gaze on my coat.

I raised my head and looked around for the source of that presence, but found very little. There was a small metal cafe table some distance away. It also had two chairs set at the opposite sides of the table. Both were made out of blackish metal that shimmered slightly under the stars. A small tea pot stood in the middle of the table with two small cups orbiting it like small moons.

I slowly stood up, the water sliding off of me, leaving me dry as though I wasn't just lying in it. I took a single step towards the table and was already at it closing the distance as though there was none. I sat down. I tried pouring myself a cup of tea, but my horn refused to do anything. No sparkles, no puffs of smoke, absolutely nothing.

"I did not expect to see you dreaming so soon after the last time," a feminine voice came from the opposite side of the table. The voice was very melodic, very soft. Raising my eyes from the pot I saw a small bird-like creature with purple plumage. She was almost my height counting the hair. Discounting it, she was around my shoulder. The hair was purple and gathered into braids. A pair of old glasses rested on her beak. When I looked at her she had already taken the tea pot into her wing-like hands and was pouring.

"Ehm... Sorry, who are you? I don't remember meeting you," I asked as calmly as I could. That was the most lucid I've ever been while dreaming and it was definitely the first time I had a conversation with somepo... I mean, someone else. 

"Oh my, I haven't introduced myself, have I? My name is Doran and I am a Nyx. And you are Fritz, a unicorn who worked for the EEA for a little bit and had the fortune or misfortune to pick up 'Custos ex Somnia' while you were there," Doran introduced herself. "I will explain everything in due time. As for now, would you like a cup of tea to start us off? It's very lovely," she suggested. I nodded. Doran carefully poured me a cup. 

I got closer to the cup to take a sip, because I couldn't pick it up and I wasn't an earth pony to know how to hold a small cup in my hooves. The tea had a very strong floral scent and, after I sipped it, a very pleasant tart flavor like a fresh green apple. I couldn't even remember the last time I had tea. With the war raging on I didn't really have time for a peacefull tea party.

"It is so good to finally be able to share a cup of tea with someone," Doran sighed. "I assume you have some questions. Feel free to ask them and I'll do my best to answer."

I took a moment to think.

"Well, the most obvious question would be: Why is my dream like this? The only other time was around an hour or so ago, when I learned the Arcane Blaze spell out of nowhere," I started asking. There were no reasons to distrust my own dreams just yet and answers were always welcome. Although it did feel very weird to be having a peacefull dream instead of nightmares after months of them nonstop.

"So that's what you decided to call it?" she chuckled. "To answer you question, we need to go back about a couple of days. At least I think it was days, time is a little harder to judge from where I am. Remember going into Night Twister's study?" – I nodded as the world around us blurred and not a second later we were back in that study room under EEA Head Quarters– "And the 'Classification of Dark Arts'?" – I nodded again, the book appearing on the table in front of me – "And last, but certainly the most important, 'Custos ex Somnia' itself. I assume a dark magical tome is somewhat hard to forget. To explain it as simple as I can, the Custos allowed me to find you in the roiling seas that the dreams of ponies are nowadays. Although there isn't much dreaming, mostly nightmares. From there I just did what we do best and now we can talk. We are limited by time with these talks, a little problem magical stability, a lot of wayward energy down there. And that spell was an old idea I got from Night Twister herself, she always was a talented pony, if a bit too serious."

"Why would anypony need a spell that powerful? That thing evaporated the moment it got hit!" I asked when Doran finished. She took a moment to think, even did that thing where creatures with fingers or talons weirdly rub their chin, or lower part of the beak in her case. 

"Well... To be honest, the answer here is quite simple. It's not a weapon, it's a tool in a researcher's kit. You, and I mean no offence by saying this, just do not know how to use it properly. At least not yet. It's a scalpel that you used like a bludgeon, the analogy not withstanding. And the strength of it might mostly be thanks to the Megaspells, I think that's what they're called, that have been blowing up across most of Equestria. There's just a lot more ambient magic than there used to be," she explained after taking a sip. After the topic of the spell died out the environment slowly melted back into the night sky, the stars still moving above.

"But why would you connect to me now and not right after I saw the book or something?" I continued asking questions. I had too few actual answers after I left, if that could be called 'leaving', the EEA HQ and I wasn't about to lose the opportunity to get some answers, even if they were just dream answers.

"Now, I know a lot about sleep, dreams and braids, but I'm no miracle worker. It would've been easier, but some other pony took the book, so I had to do a little jury rigging, spend a lot of time waiting for you to lower your mental guard and then you did. I was hoping for things to ease up and for you to relax, but you being too exhausted worked as well for it," Doran clarified as unintelligible script and formulae flew around her, probably showing what she did, but I was never much of a sleep-scientist, so my knowledge was quite limited.

"But that only raises another question. Why help me and not the pony with the book? If i recall correctly it should be with the Tunnelers now," I wanted more answers. It honestly felt good to ask something and get a relatively normal answer, even if dream communication isn't a thing I ever expected to use to get those answers.

"The current owner of the book is far less... How should I put it?" she took a second before continuing. "Well... He's a sinister kind of pony. Dark, cruel, manipulative. I tend to avoid this sort of pony, had my fair share of troubles with one. You'd be surprised, but they are rarely cooperative," once again Doran answered to my satisfaction. With each answer that dream became better and better, it almost felt like an actual dream, save for the being lucid enough to hold a conversation part.

"So, what I'm getting is that I am more cooperative. If my short time in Stratusburg had taught me anything it's that you want something from me, right?" I sighed before spilling what was on my mind right after her answer. "I guess that's just how things are nowadays."

"Oh, don't be such a downer," Doran replied before taking another sip of her tea. "It's not like I'm going to order you around or anything like that. I want to help you, but there are things that must be done. What I'm proposing is a compromise of sorts. I will help you, but you'll need to help me as well, isn't that how you make friends?"

"A friendship isn't really supposed to be based on us exchanging services, but I guess you already kind of saved my life, and Ember's for that matter, so I am sort of in your debt. What do you need me to do?" I was trying to be open and to the point, there was no reason in beating around the bush. If a fairy owl lady in my dreams wanted to be "friends" I couldn't really say no.

"The most pressing issue is that very same book. As much of a blessing as it is, it can also be a curse in the wrong hooves," Doran told as she finished her cup and went to refill it. "I'd like the book far away from him. Back in Canterlot, if at all possible," she clarified what she wanted. I immediately responded.

"I don't think that'll be possible. There's no way to get to Canterlot and I don't think I'd be willing to go there after seeing what the Cloud does to ponies. I don't even know how I got to Stratusburg. I mean, I cast a spell, but it was weird and I still dong get what actually happened," I replied while taking a sip myself. The tea was weirdly therapeutic, even if it wasn't real at the end of the day.

"Now that's an interesting question. How did you get to Stratusburg? I was only able to locate you after you made a connection with the book, presumably after you cast that spell. So, here your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it's fate, hah!" she chuckled a bit before continuing. "And while it would be best in Canterlot, I understand how it could be a little insensitive of me to press you on it. You'll have to forgive me, I've had very little contact in the past few centuries."

"Oh, no worries. It's just that Canterlot brings back a lot of memories that I'd prefer to forget. As bad as my life is right now, it's still better than there. At least there is food and medicine. Although, there were no fillynappers back in Canterlot and there are Tunnelers here. So i guess, nowhere is perfect right about now," I tried to move the conversation to a lighter note. Talking about the state of Equestria was unpleasant ever since the war began, but after the End it became that much harder. But a small amount of comedy, or at least an attempt at it, always makes the problems seem that little bit smaller.

"Truer words have not been spoken," she sipped her tea again. "But back to the topic at hand. As pessimistic as it is to say, the resting place for the book will only matter if you get it back in the first place. And I don't see that happening in your current condition. Plus the whole ordeal with the flyder. So, I'd say you have your work cut out for you for the moment," Doran said finishing her second cup in one big gulp.  "Anyway, it seems like this meeting of ours is coming to an end very soon. Can't keep your tired brain this active for a long time anyway. It probably wouldn't be too good for you. Now try to rest and heal up, and I'll try to gather some info. I'll be in touch!"

As Doran was saying her finishing words the whole world started to melt away. First the contents of the table vanished leaving only a distorted version of what was behind. Then the table was gone along with the chairs. A second after, most of the water and stars were gone leaving only Doran and me, until even Doran began to dissipate. Before she completely vanished I saw her smile and wave, but didn't have enough time to say bye myself. And just like that my pleasant tea party was over and I was alone in the darkness. It didn't take long for me to lose focus and drift into dreamless sleep.





The world suddenly came back to me as I woke up. The memories of the weird dream still with me, clear as though it happened seconds ago.

Should I trust Doran? Is she even real or just the effect of me developing some weird radiation-related illness? I mean, the Arcane Blaze was very real, so at least there's that. Although, that's not mentioning that she also talked about the pony who has the book. Even if Doran is just a piece of my slowly melting mind, the thought of leaving a powerful ancient book with the Tunnelers doesn't sit right with me. Especially not after Celestia Station.

For the first time, the one to stop my own thoughts was I. The realization of what actually happened there just didn't hit me before. Of course I understood what happened there. Ponies died. But only now did it hit me that it was entirely my fault. If I didn't shove my face where it doesn't belong they'd still be alive.

The Tunnelers can't be allowed to continue. I have to make them stop. If there are any more pockets of survivors the Tunnelers will do their best to kill or lock them up. They must pay.

Maybe the trip to Glimmer Electronics affected me a lot more than I realized at the moment. I had spent my life running away from things. Moved from my hometown to run from hard times. Tried to save the money to run from the War to a Stable. I ran when the Chancellor opened the seal. Did the same after the Tunnelers took me. For the first time in my entire life I felt like running was no longer an option.

Determined to actually do something to stop the Tunnelers and their lunacy I started paying attention to the world around me.

The first thing to greet me back into the real world was a medical read-out from the M.A.I.F.O.S., there were a lot less things there than the last time I saw it. Although the conclusion at the end wasn't very promising.

"Medical scan complete. Severe Magical Burnout detected. Seek urgent medical help," was the conclusion. My heart sunk to my hooves when I saw it. I was never really good with medicine, especially not with such rare things as Magical Burnout. I was familiar with the overall idea. Basically I just ran out of magic juice. There was probably way more nuance to it. Maybe it's not that I had no magic juice left, but that my horn was not conducting magic because of microfractures or that the alignment of the spirals on it was off. 

At the end of the day, whatever the reason was the result was me not being able to use any of my magic. Which would be a huge problem if I was still doing my regular EEA work, not being able to copy a document in a few seconds would destroy any semblance of productivity, but with the world gone the magnitude of the problem jumped about ten times. Before it'd just be a slap on the fetlock and a decrease in my paycheck, and after I'd just die out there or even worse. But thankfully, I was not "out there", I was in a soft bed back at Ember's place. For the moment at least, I could relax. 

After a few moments the M.A.I.F.O.S. sent me the next message:

"LOADING 'Burnout.DAT'... Due to technological limitations the M.A.I.F.O.S. prototype is not equipped with a potent internal battery and uses the wearer's own magical energies to power the circuitry. As it appears that you have suffered a severe case of Magical Burnout the M.A.I.F.O.S. will not be able to perform most of the standard functions. The functions will resume once sufficient magical power has been restored," the message hung in my view.

"Well, great. At least, it's gonna be quite for some time," I grumbled before dismissing the message and looking around.

The room was dark as always, my things were just piled up near the door. There was something in the room that caught my attention. There was a small piece of paper on the bedside table. I tried to pick it up the usual way, but the sharp pain that crawled like lightning from my horn reminded me to just use my mouth. Trying to get it into the tiny bit of light that seeped into the room was a bit of a challenge, but I managed. The note, while being a bit hard to decipher, read:

"Am out on the town. Trying to move the stuff from Glimmer Electronics. Had a talk with the manager. Says we can take the parts. The plan is moving.

P.S.

STAY IN BED!"

"As if!" I exclaimed. Resting was good, yes, but after that dream and after my morning realization I just could not sit still. There was an ocean of thoughts in my head. But the main thought at that particular moment was very simple. It was: FOOD!

With a course set for the kitchen I climbed out of bed. My legs felt a lot sturdier than last time. Slightly underused, so to speak, but at least it didn't feel like they were made out of glass. How long have I been out?

Slowly trotting to the door I was faced with one of the problems of not having magic. Closed pull doors. I'm sure an earth pony or a pegasus would have little trouble here, but I spent my entire life just opening it with magic and my mouth definitely wasn't as dexterous. So it took me a couple of tries to actually turn the door knob, in hindsight I should have used my hooves instead. But with the wooden obstacle out of my way I was in the corridor on the second floor and the kitchen was on the first. That meant that I had to brave the chilly corridor, then survive the creaky stairs and open another door to get at whatever Ember had left in the kitchen. I was hopping for one of those Fancy Buck cakes or even a Big Mac'n Cheese, although if it was the latter I'd have no way to cook it, so the hopes were mostly for snacks.

The corridor wouldn't be hard, the cold hit me the second I crawled out of bed, I was getting used to shivering and the corridor shouldn't have been much colder than the room. Oh, how wrong I was. A step outside the room proved that, as a wave of air hit me. That place was cold enough for the floor to sting me with every step I made. The stairs were on the opposite side of the corridor. That meant that I'd have to go near the boarded up window, which would not be a pleasant experience.

"If it's for the snacks," I sighed as I tiptoed across the cold floor. Despite the cold it felt kind of good to be able to move my legs with some amount of control again. I was actually feeling a little better carefully stepping around, until another gust hit me and I remembered why the Wendigos were the personification of everything bad. With that little reminder I hurried my way to the stairs and then down them. With the cold wind blowing up my flank it didn't take much time for me to get to the first floor. Form there the kitchen was just a step away. 

At last, food was within reach. I was starving, that whole Glimmer Electronics business made me feel like I hadn't eaten in multiple years. I made a mental note for the future to keep some food close at hoof. A good meal could've made some parts of the misadventure a tiny bit easier.

The kitchen itself wasn't very big, just a broken down fridge in the far right corner, a window boarded up opposite the door, a small counter with a couple of cupboards and an oven covering the right wall, there was a compact wooden table with one stool and another piece of paper on it. Apparently Ember expected that I wouldn't listen. It read:

"There's a hayburger in the fridge and an off-brand beetstake somewhere in the cupboards. 

P.S.

YOU REALLY SHOULD STAY IN BED!"

"Now, where's that hayburger," I mumbled while opening the fridge. The thing wasn't running, obviously. I think, the sparkle battery keeping it cool had run out or burned out from overheating or something. Ember still kept the food in it. I guessed that it was mostly just because it was a good place to store food, even if it's not much more than a glorified metal cabinet without the power. 

The hayburger was sitting there on a plate along with some other things in there. Mostly some weird cans and tubes of Celestia knows what. Ember probably hadn't returned the food we left at the entrance to Glimmer Electronics yet. Or she had better places to store it. Ignoring the somewhat depressing sight of an almost empty fridge I took the plate in my mouth and moved it to the table. Now, if only there were a method to heat it up, but alas, no magic meant no warm food, only room temperature burgers for me. I decided that the beetsteak would be a second course if the burger wasn't enough.

Sitting at the table I took the burger in my hooves and took a look at it. The bread was stale, yet somehow soaked in the sauce that just didn't smell quite right, the hay itself was slightly off color. With no other alternatives at the moment and with a tiny amount of hyping myself up I took a bite out of the hayburger and it was all the awful things I thought it would be and more. What I thought were the tomatoes were a little more crunchy than they should've been, the lower bun was closer to a tub of sauce with bread mush than it was to a bun and the lettuce felt slimy and weirdly colder than the rest of the burger. 

But it was food, after what felt like forever. Even though I could almost puke thinking about it, I couldn't stop myself from finishing. And I wasn't done, I needed more food. The beetsteak would be next, the only thing separating it from me was that it was hidden somewhere in the cupboards. With a rumble in my stomach, which might have come either from eating the burger or from still being hungry, I started opening drawers and looking inside. The first one flew open. There was some cutlery and a packet of those bendy straws, but not a beetsteak in sight. The second one. Some plates, not many, but enough for one or two ponies, still no steak. The final one must have had it, there was no other place for the food to be. I went to grab the little knob to pull the drawer out, but as I started pulling the only thing that went was the knob itself, leaving the food so close and yet so far.

I spit out the small piece of plastic on the counter. It was a small black cylinder with a bump and a hole drilled into it. Looking at it and then back at the cupboard a little more carefully I noticed a small metal screw protruding out of the drawer, probably what the knob was screwed onto. It was rusted and probably wouldn't be very pleasant to bite into, sadly screwing the knob back on wasn't really an option with my lack of non-magical dexterity. So I bit into it and pulled hard. I think it might've chipped a tooth, but otherwise I was pulling the drawer just fine if a bit slow, the thing seemed to be stuck at first. Until I pulled it through whatever was stopping it. At that point I was pulling real hard, and when the strength I was pulling against just vanished I was sent stumbling a good few feet back. There was something stuck in my mouth, so I spit it out. It looked like I had bitten the screw off. Probably wasn't that good for my teeth. Especially bad with no dentists around. 

After getting back to the drawer I looked inside. There it was. The "Peckish Stallion Beetsteak". It might have been slightly over its expiration date, but with the amounts of magic and preservatives in it it'd probably outlive me five times over, so a month or two over the date wouldn't hurt. Or it would hurt, very badly, but I wanted to eat and that was the only thing left. I took the box out and plopped it onto the counter. There were instructions on the back:

"Open the package. Mix all the ingredients. Fill with boiling water. Cover and wait 5 minutes."

"Seems easy enough. Except the boiling water. Where, Celestia dammit, could I get boiling water without electricity or magic?!" I paused as soon as I said that. "I mean... That's a stupid question. A fire would help, but fuck that! I am not starting a fire..." I was silent for a couple of seconds. "Guess I'm having it with regular water. Should still work, right?"

So, I had to find some water. IIt shouldn't have been that hard, right? But once again life had its way of becoming slightly harder and more unbearable with every small thing I tried to do. I started looking around the kitchen to no avail. The fridge only had weird colorful liquids, which I was not about to use. For all I knew it could've been bottles of acid or some other chemical. The cupboards failed to provide any water too, I don't really know why I even checked them. I looked around, maybe I was just being a little stupid and was missing something, but no, there was nothing. 

Under the table, some supplies, but no water, only some tools and a bucket. The window sill had some spices, salt and pepper, a couple of heads of old garlic and one of those first aid boxes the Ministry of Peace had hanging in almost every building. I'm pretty sure the EEA HQ back in Canterlot had more than a hundred of them in the main building and the upper floors. I heard of these things being filled with all sorts of medical stuff, not just the regular potions and bandages. The one on Ember's kitchen sill however was, predictably, empty of healing supplies or water. There were some metal apple-looking things, but I wasn't sure what they were. Never seen anything like them before. I, correctly mind you, chose to close the box. 

With no water to speak of and having no idea where water could be, I decided to just eat the beetsteak dry. I heard some ponies back in Canterlot say that it's even better dry, although those ponies were very, very douchey, so, no reasons to trust them on that. But with no water, I'd have to eat the thing whether I trusted the "connoisseurs"  or not. 

After the long wait and the long search for water I finally opened the package. It smelled a little off, but I guess all instant foods kind of smell like garbage before you cook them. Some do even after that. There were a few flavor packets, some dried onion bits, a little bit of sauce and, of course, the beet brick itself. I opened all of them and added one by one, adding only a half of the flavoring, it'd just ruin it without water. After my slightly larger than usual wafer was ready, I bit down.

"Oh, sweet and merciful Celestia," I started to gag immediately. The taste was like dry socks with a hint of rotting cabbage, maybe a little actual beet in there, but that was before the flavoring hit me. It changed from a complex, but disgusting taste to a simple taste. The new taste was red. Not even spicy, just red. Tears started welling up in my eyes, my nose began to run with speed rivaling the Wonderbolts. I'm not sure how or when, but at some point I dropped the beetstake and started to wander the room heaving heavily.

"Whose fucking idea was it to put this chemical weapon in an instant beetstake pack?!" I complained to nopony in particular as I stumbled my way out of the kitchen and slowly back to my room. "I think I've had enough food... I swear, the next thing I eat better be an actual meal."

The silver lining there was that I was no longer cold when going back to the room, I was sweating like an Orthros. The other good thing to come out of eating what amounted to pure spice was that I fully woke up. So I had to get dressed, maybe do some chores, maybe even get enough time for a small work-out or something. I'd have to get better if I wanted to have a chance at taking the book back. 

I was about to put my robes on when I noticed the damage done to them after my last outing. There were a lot of cuts and tears, even magic can't protect from that level of destruction. I mean... some stronger enchantments could probably ignore most damage entirely, but that's not the point. My robes didn't survive the tar-security thing without some scars to remember it by. And if I wanted to go out any time soon I'd have to sew it myself. Without magic. That did not sound promising.

"Whelp," I sighed as I sat down to fix up my stuff.  "If earth ponies can build tanks and robots without magic, then I can sew without it. Hopefully..." 

Weirdly enough, that wasn't the worst decision I made that day. The sewing kit I used to repair my robes before still sat where I left it, inside the bedside table. From what I understood about the enchantments on the robe, it was fine to just repair it with regular thread, the magic would just seep into it after some time. The colors would look awful with the patches I had, and my stitching was lousy at the best of times, but needs must, I suppose. Thankfully the kit Ember had at her house was the kind a pony without magic could use, there were lots of these little plastic bits that you could use to hold a needle in your mouth without dropping it or swallowing it. To be honest, I was a little surprised how easy it was to use, almost easier than magic. And I didn't even kill myself with it!

As I got into it I lost track of time. There weren't many big holes, thanks to the enchantments, so it didn't take as much time as I thought it would. Although, I couldn't really tell you how much time it actually took. Not like I could look at the sun to gauge time, it looked the same when I finished as when I began. The only actual reminder of the passage of time was the sound of an opening door and a lot of swearing. I mean, the M.A.I.F.O.S. could have had a clock if it worked , but I wasn't sure about any of its features other than the spell cataloging. There were reasons why the PipBuck was being used in actual Stables and the M.A.I.F.O.S. was gathering dust in some safe.

The swearing on the first floor picked up again, I think I even heard something heavy drop. At that point I was done with the stitching, so I quickly put on the robes and went down to meet Ember. I had a lot of questions, mostly about what happened after I passed out. It was also high time we talked about our plans for the foreseeable. The original plan, as she explained to me wasn't all that detailed. At least we made some progress.

"Hey, Mr. I-can't-cast-fireballs! You're up!" Ember called out as I went down the stairs. "I thought you'd be out of it for a couple more days. Almost got to a week there," she said while moving a huge sack of what sounded like metal parts to the basement door. "You eaten yet?"

"Yeah, I had the hayburger and tried the beetstake, but..." I stopped when Ember entered the kitchen and saw what I left there. "Yeah... that."

There was orange flavoring everywhere. On the table, on the counter, on the walls, even a few dots of it on the ceiling. I must've dropped the brick very hard, because it was shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces all over the kitchen. 

"I hope you know I'm not cleaning that," Ember made an awkward laugh. "There's a broom in the closet. Also grab a pair of cans while you're there, we have a lot to talk about."

Without too much grumbling I went to get the broom and the drinks Ember asked for. The closet was on the first floor near the entrance in a room that I hadn't gone into yet. Once in the closet I took the broom and started looking for the cans. After a second of searching I noticed a small makeshift metal box with a spark battery attached. Ember was running a small fridge on a spark battery! That's kind of clever. Opening the fridge there were a couple of bottles and cans there, mostly booze. I grabbed two cans, closed the door, and with the broom between my teeth headed back to the kitchen. Entering back into the kitchen I tossed one can to Ember and set my one on the counter while I was cleaning up.

"So, what was that about talking?" I continued the conversation.

"Welp," she cracked the can open and took a swig. "The first thing. Our little revenge plot is progressing nicely. The stuff from the electronics place is good and all, but it'll take me a day just to get the chemicals cooking and then a couple more days for the actual process to complete."

"That's good, right? The sooner we'll get the explosives the sooner we can blow up that flyder," I said while sweeping the bits of beetstake off of the floor.

"It'd be a good thing, yeah. But I've done a little scouting over the past few days. It's a lot easier to spy on someone when you can zoom in," she pointed at her artificial eye. That thing gave me the creeps, it was just a little faster than her real eye, just a little too focused when looking at things. "The bug's moved from its nest. That complicates things, but not by much. It couldn't have moved far," Ember paused to drink again.

"What you're saying is that the plan is basically on hold until we find where the thing flew off to?" I continued to sweep the floor, but it seemed that no matter how much I removed, there was always some left. I even had to get under the table for the last few bits before triumphantly placing the broom near the door and finally opening my can. 

Before the End and before going to Canterlot I wasn't really a drinker, maybe a glass here and there with friends, but when I opened that can it just felt like what I needed. The beer turned out to be some cheap stuff, a little too bitter and sour for my taste, but it fit the situation nicely.

"Pretty much, yeah. But there is also another thing, that I feel you need to know," Ember became very serious all of a sudden. "I remember you saying that you spent some time running around the subway from some 'crazy ponies', so I went to look. At first I went to the central station, around the city hall, there wasn't anypony there, but there was a resent fire pit and some signs of a struggle. Next I visited Celestia, if memory serves, that place was supposed to be stocked, something about it being deep enough underground that it would be a good shelter. I think you better sit for this one."

I sat down already half-knowing what she was about to tell me. I put the beer on the table and nodded for Ember to continue.

"There were a lot of ponies down there, digging. What ticked me off was the very strong smell of burning meat and blood. Those fuckers are doing something down there, and I'd be damned if it's anything good," she spat out. The Tunnelers were already awful beyond anything I ever expected from fellow ponies, but I didn't like what Ember was implying, not one bit. I shifted uncomfortably on the chair, before Ember continued. "Couldn't get in there, they have ponies constantly on watch. So I went to the next station down the line. There wasn't any major action there, except for a small outpost with just three ponies there: two Tunnelers, weird road signs and all, and one, couldn't really get a good look, in chains in their little camp."

I suppressed every urge in my body in order to stay as calm as I possibly could and spat through gritted teeth:

"Shit," I took a swig of my own beer finishing it. "What the fuck. This shit can't be allowed to continue," I repeated my earlier thoughts.

"Reading my thoughts, Fritz. I though that camp would be a decent place to start. Removed from the others, there are only two of them. That'd show them that their shit ain't welcome in Stratusburg," Ember proposed the first target. And, honestly, she was right. We couldn't just waltz up to their big base and expect to do anything other than die. The smaller outpost would be just the right place to begin, but there was one teeny tiny problem...

"That's a good idea, but without my magic I can't do shit," I flatly admitted. Wasn't any way of getting around it. Now that I had a power house of a spell with the Arcane Blaze, I could actually fight something bigger than rabid critters. But with no magic, that advantage also went away.

"Well, you don't have to rely on that mumbo-jumbo all the time, might as well trust good ol' pony gunsmithing for once. Speaking of witch, how about we grab another pair and move this conversation to my bedroom?" Ember suggested and the second she heard what she just said she got even redder than she already was and started stammering. "Th-that's not what I meant!"

"Yeah, uhhh, totally, uhh, that's what I thought," I stuttered out like a very cool and confident stallion. "You know what? I'll go get us that beer," I attempted to shift the topic to something less embarrassing. Getting up before Ember could respond I went for the beer closet. After an awkward pause Ember coughed a couple of times and continued:

"Anyway! What I was trying to say is that I have my workbench in my bedroom! And I have a gun that I wanted to show you! In my bedroom!" she blurted out while going past me to the second floor.

I entered the closet again, grabbing two more beers and leaving the broom there. Ember's room was the furthest door from the stairs, the door even had a separate lock on it. When I got to the second floor, Ember was standing in the doorway holding it open for me. As soon as I was in, she entered the room herself allowing the door to close, it clicked closed. While I looked back at the door Ember snatched her can from me and moved closer to the bench opposite the door.

Looking around, the room was slightly bigger than the one I was staying in, but a lot more lived in. There were all sorts of little odds and ends strewn around the dark carpeted floor, most I presumed were either gun or explosives parts. The walls had a blue hue to them. There was a queen sized bed jammed into the far right corner, with a big wardrobe next to it. The spear she found back in the TSR lab stood leaning onto the wardrobe. The workbench Ember was now sitting on was a heavy table with all sorts of tools and instruments, most of which I couldn't even name. There was a hammer there, I think, but that's about as far as my gun related knowledge went.

"Now, forgetting that little miscommunication. Here," the pegasus reached behind the bench and pulled out a small metal box and handed it to me. "A little something special I pulled from that Celestia-forsaken lab. C'mon, open it."

I nudged the box open revealing the item inside. It was a dark lavender-colored pistol with darker silver trims on all the edges and the words "Protect the Night" etched in cursive on both sides of the barrel. It was unlike any gun I've ever seen. The pistol had a small ovoid glass chamber with some liquid sloshing inside, the glass had three crystals embedded into it, they shimmered with magic. Probably an enchantment. The barrel had a few crystals as well,  one on both sides of the barrel, right under the engraving and a ring of smaller ones around the end of the muzzle. The entire thing looked like it was made for the Lunar Guard, it had the same colors and roughly the same style. Taking it and moving it around in my hooves to get a better look, it was also very lightweight, I could barely feel it. The mouth piece even had the little holes for bat ponies to stick their fangs into. I suspected this might've been one of those weapons I'd read about in the first TSR lab.

"Any, uhm... thanks? Anything I should know about it?" I inquired while still spinning the thing in my hooves.

"Of course. It's a modified Crystalline Sliver Pistol, that was intended for some high-ranking officer in the Lunar Guard, but I figured they won't be needing it, so you might as well use it. The regular version crystalizes a small part of the poison inside and then splits the crystals into hundreds of little slivers that are then sent flying at targets at high speeds. Since bats have better perception and awareness at night than most ponies have at day, they can easily track shots from these babies into gaps in enemy armor. Or so the theory goes. The target get's even as much as a scratch from these and it's over. The poison that's supposed to be inside paralyzes most equines in less than twenty seconds, a high enough dose can easily stop the heart. But that's just the regular version! Oh-oho, this one, it's something else! This one has some special shit magic-ing it up! The way I understand the technical stuff it pretty much turns any liquid inside into a deadly poison. I don't really get how it does it, but imagine the possibilities! It's silent, has a firing rate that some automatic rifles only dream of, the bullets dissolve into the target leaving very little trace, there are no casings! And, AND! It has pretty much infinite ammo! Seeing as it only needs some liquid to magic-ify," Ember was jumping around the bedroom telling all the things she knew about the little, honestly toy-looking, gun in my hooves. It's good that at least one of us was excited.

"So, a gun that shoots tiny crystals made from whatever liquid is inside?" 

"Well, the regular one does, this one magics it up! Didn't you listen?"

"I was just wondering, couldn't we use it to fire healing potions or something like that?" 

"Not really, the potions are for internal use only, so to say. It'd be just a waste. Plus I have no idea how the enchantment on it would react to a healing potion," Ember buried my ingenious idea.

"So does this one chemically change the liquid inside to a poison or just enchants the water to have something like a curse on it?" I followed with the more magic-related questions. It still wasn't my area of expertise, but at least I knew more about it than about guns.

"No idea. As my wing-mates would say 'Makes it dead-killy and that's nuf' fer me'," Ember lowered her voice for the quote. 

I put the gun on the table, then grabbed it properly and tried to aim it at a wall.

"Not in here! I'd never fined new wallpaper!"

I turned towards Ember to ask where to go and try it out.

"Don't point that thing at me! Do you even know what gun safety is?!" Ember shouted as she jumped away from the muzzle of the gun. 

Come to think of it, she was right, pointing a loaded, as much as a glorified super-soaker can be loaded, gun at somepony you don't want to kill is probably a bad idea. I put the pistol onto the table.

"Ahm, yeah, about that. I'm a paper pusher with a couple of fancy spells, not a trained soldier. Why would I ever know how to properly use a gun?" I retorted instead of admitting that I was wrong to point the gun at her. I mean, I was hoping to never have to use a gun, but desperate times.

"Oh. That... makes sense. I just kind of assumed you'd know how to use it. Yeah, that's on me," she sat down on her bed, thinking for a bit while tapping her head. "Got it! Let's finish the drinks and we'll have like four targets to practice on. I do remember somepony telling me not to handle firearms while drunk, but I'm not drunk yet and the thing doesn't technically classify as a firearm."

"Cheers to technicalities," I opened my own future target.

"Heh, I'll drink to that," Ember jumped back to the table where she left the can. "And while we have the time, I don't think you actually told me much about yourself. Care to fix that?"

"Alright, but afraid there isn't that much to tell really," I took a little sip before I started recalling my life so far. "Was born in a small village up north. Don't think it actually exists anymore, some incident with local wildlife."

"Oh, that's tragic, hope nopony got hurt."

"I wouldn't know, my family moved a long time ago before that happened. Lived in Foaledo for a while, went to school there. Went to university there as well. Had a good thing going there for a while afterwards. Even bought a house, believe it or not," I looked at the can of beer and took a swig. 

"So, if life was fine in Foaledo, why move? I had a buddy from there and he always said that it was a beautiful little place with serene views," Ember asked before wiping her mouth with her wing.

"Oh, believe me, that city was a dream for me. I spent most of my life there, bought my dream house overlooking the river. And all of that only for the war to start, and for me to be practically forced to sell it and move" I said gloomily. 

Ember listened intently, so I continued after another sip.

"It was fine for a while, yes, but after the whole war-thing got out of control I moved to Canterlot to work for the EEA, because my previous job didn't pay well enough to afford a Stable ticket. Heard the EEA needed smart ponies and the pay was great, so it was a no-brainer."

"Huh, wanted to get into those death-boxes that bad?"

"Well, if you put them like that, then no. But when you put it with a nice jingle, it doesn't sound that bad, does it?"

"I have to admit, the jingle was sorta good," she hummed the melody form the Stable-Tec ads for a second before mimicking the repeating part of the song, "Dying in a Stable underground!" which go a laugh out of me.

"Call me pessimistic, but I didn't really think that I would survive the end of the world outside a Stable. So, that ticket was my goal," I continued once Ember stopped her parody. "In the end it turned out that working at the EEA was what saved me. Spent almost a month under there."

"Actually, about that," Ember became a little more serious. "How did it save you? I may not be the smartest tool in the cupboard, but you being in Stratusburg doesn't really add up with you being in Canterlot, right?"

"Ehm... I wouldn't know the first thing about it, to be honest. There was some sort of ancient spell that got me out of there. Just before the rampaging creatures, that our Chancellor let in, broke down the door. That spell got me from there to here. I wouldn't know the first thing about spells on that scale. Copying documents is more my level of spell complexity. It might've been a teleport of some sort or a displacement spell, maybe even a dreamwalking one, although I doubt that."

"Okay, that's a lot. Is dreamwalking even a thing? I mean, I know the old fairy tale that Princess Luna guards our dreams and travels in them. But isn't that just a myth? How'd she even get the time, the country's huge!"

"I don't know how true that story is, but I have been having a lot more nightmares ever since getting locked under the EEA building."

"Hm... Okay. Seems like that is a thing you might want to look into. Another thing. Why would this Chancellor let monsters in? And what monsters?" Ember took another sip, moved back to the bed and sat down near the spear, even leaning on it a bit.

"The food was running low, ponies were getting desperate. I suspect he just had to do something to prevent an uprising. Not the best option if you ask me, but, hey, what do I know? As for what they were... Ponies, cursed by some zebra magic, if I were to guess." 

"So, some sorta zombie then?"

"I guess you could call them that. Although they weren't really picky, brains or no brains. Bit the Chancellor in the neck the moment the seal was down."

"His decision came to bite him? Oh, the irony."

I sat down on the workbench chair and savored the beer. It'd probably be one of the few precious moments of peace for some time, so I wanted to enjoy it. Ember waited for me to ge comfortable, I gave a nod and she continued.

"I get that he was trying to remain in control and all. But letting some dangerous creatures into your secure little haven? That's just stupid. Why not use you're fancy unicorn magic to magic you up some food?"

"Pft, you know that's not how it works. I mean, the higher-ups and the older scholars probably could do something, but there was this whole rhetoric about not using magic as much anymore. In hindsight it was probably a bad idea, but very few of us could actually think straight then."

"It was the same here right after the big fucker blew a good ten or twenty miles from town. Most folk who weren't dead after the heatwave hit weren't all that calm and collected either," Ember got a little quieter talking about the dead.

"Well, the fact that he let the pony-eating monsters in is the exact reason I am here in the first place. So, at least for me, the reason I haven't died of starvation is that the Chancellor opened the seal."

"Huh, that's an interesting way of putting it. But what happened after you bullshit-magicked yourself out of there? And any chance I can expect the same magic trick from you again?"

"Not really, not without the book the Tunnelers took from me. I hadn't memorized the spell, just read it out basically," I took another sip and tried to get comfortable in the chair again, but the thing was just bare wood, so I just wiggled about until it was good enough and continued my tale. "After I got teleported here I was captured by the Tunnelers. They weren't all that bad when they did. More comically incompetent than actually evil, you know?"

"Don't seem like that to me, from what I saw."

"They didn't know how to make cages, had some stallion with a thick accent teaching them how to. The lock on their cage came apart without any sort of spell, it just kinda, fell off. No chains at that point either. They only got worse when they tried to chase me after I escaped, even tried to shoot me. Like somepony flipped a switch in them," I took a second to think. "Although, that might have been because I knocked one of them out cold-"

"You? Knocked somepony? Out cold? Are we talking about the same Fritz here?" Ember was quick to jump onto my phrasing.

"Well... More like 'I tripped him into falling face first onto the floor', but 'knocked out' sounds better. But that's not important. What is important is that through sheer luck I managed to escape them. Fell through a couple of floors into one of those TSR labs. The place was better than the one we visited, no giant writhing mounds of tar. Just went in, took some meds, a bag and a pair of night-vision googles. Traveled the metro after that, went through a station that smelled so awful I couldn't even describe it to you, don't even know what happened there," I shuddered a little remembering what was next. "After that I was at the Celestia station. Was actually there when the Tunnelers took it. Haven't ever seen that much blood or heard that much screaming. They must've gone completely nuts after I left."

"So, that's why you went out with no rad protection? Yeah, that makes sense from what I've seen. Getting a little toasty on the streets ain't half bad compared to what they got there," Ember took the last sip of her beer, before tossing the empty can at me. I, of course, couldn't catch it on account of not having my magic. So the can just hit me in the face splattering what was left on my face. I made a loud exaggerated sigh while picking up the can and gave Ember a kind of disappointed look.

"Really?"

"I thought you'd catch it," she just brushed me off.

"Anyway. I didn't exactly run out while escaping the massacre, but in broader terms, yes. Also visited the city hall, even got a souvenir," I tapped the M.A.I.F.O.S. on my head.

"Wait! Wait-wait-wait. You got into the city hall? How? That place is locked up with some sort of crazy protection, I couldn't even budge the field the last time I tried," Ember flew off of the bed and stood less than a hoof's reach from me, clearly interested in the development. I could see the fire in her eyes... err... eye. The artificial one looked more like she was examining me than being excited.

"I got in through the elevator from the subway. Got the robe from Astral Sky's office and this piece of headwear from the mainframe room. Then just left through the door," I explained showing off the robes.

"Luna's grace, Fritz! You little genius! Why didn't I think of that! We'll definitely need to visit my office there! Got a few things there I'd love to have with me again," Ember's mood had really improved the moment she heard that there was a way into the city hall. "If you're finished with your drink we can go try this baby out, maybe teach you a thing or two about a thing or two," she pointed at the box on the table.

I finished my drink, grabbed both our cans along with the gun in its box and followed Ember out of the room. She led me back to a door on the first floor. It was a door to the garage, I really should've guessed that. Inside there were even more little things: tools, parts, I'm pretty sure I saw a tank hatch just laying in the corner. Ember moved an old table in front of a wall and carefully placed the four cans there.

"Now, there are only a few things you need to know about using a gun. First, keep the muzzle pointed either in a safe direction or on your target," Ember started as though remembering points on a list. "Second, don't keep it loaded when not in use... I don't think this one applies to your new gun though," she was definitely remembering a list. "Third, don't treat the 'safety' as though it's a hundred percent reliable, mechanisms can fail. Fourth, know what you are shooting at. There will be no blind firing while I'm around. Fifth, use the correct ammunition, but that scarcely applies to a gun that makes any liquid into lethal poison. Sixth, if something goes wrong with the gun, remember rule one, but also take it out of your mouth. Seventh, don't dabble with the gun if you don't know what you are doing," Ember scratched her head as though trying to remember the rest of the list. "Ah, that'll be enough. Just remember rule number one and you'll be fine. Most likely."

I listened intently to what Ember said. I carefully took the gun out of its box and aimed it at the cans about ten to fifteen paces away. I focused, slowed down my breathing and lightly pushed the trigger. 

There was very little kickback, which I wasn't expecting. I was ready to have my neck broken, but I barely felt it. There were no sounds other than the shards hitting the wall behind the cans. The trigger was pushed for less than a second, in that time around ten little purple shards flew silently out of the barrel and scattered all over. Only one shot actually hit the cans, it was very off-center, closer to the rim of it. But one hit was more than no hits, so I was somewhat content.

"Not bad, for your first shot. This thing has some fire rate, doesn't it? And the sound, I couldn't even hear when you fired. I think this baby is right up your alley," Ember cheered.

"Heh, maybe you're right."

I spent some more time practicing my shooting. Eventually I could hit three out of four cans in one spray. Ember stayed and watched giving some pointers on shooting. But after all the cans were more holes than cans we decided to call it a night. Or a close approximation, I still refused to check if the M.A.I.F.O.S. could track time. 

"Alright, good drinking with you. Get some sleep in, tomorrow we're going out again. Hopefully this time without getting almost killed in some underground lab. We can discuss the finer details at breakfast," Ember and I chatted on the way back to our rooms. The idea of going out didn't really sound good to me, but I'd guess that that was because of the burnout more than anything else. But with the flyder gone for the time, a gun in my bag and Ember at my side I couldn't really ask for a better time to go out. Waiting to heal would be just wasting a perfect opportunity.

"G'night, Fritz," Ember lazily closed her door.

"Goodnight," I closed mine.

I quickly nestled into bed and closed my eyes. There were some clanking and whirring mechanical sounds coming from Ember's room, but I didn't pay them much attention. For the first time after I 'arrived' to Stratusburg I closed my eyes and dozed off not because I was half dead or exhausted to the point of collapse, but because I damned wanted to.





New Perks:





Gun Training – you've taken your first baby steps upon the road of gunslinging! Or at least you've listened to the basics. +5 Small Guns


Protected Sleep – because of your connections upstairs you no longer experience the terrifying nightmares that most ponies have to live with. Lucky you!




Effects:





Radiation Poisoning – standing in the sun isn't as pleasant as it used to be. -1 Endurance.


Magical Burnout – didn't your parents ever tell you not to overdo it with the spells? -1 Perception and Spellcasting is disabled.