Three days into her latest stay on Earth, Twilight Sparkle is enjoying learning about Europe in the company of her mentor while staying in the nation of Equios, a European microstate bordering Switzerland that functions as Equestria's outpost on Earth.

But when a solemn Celestia wakes her early one morning and asks Twilight to accompany her to a new place a thousand miles away, she will learn that not all is Friendship and Harmony when it comes to humans. That there are some very dark and dangerous events in humanity's past whose nature may rock her to her core. Can Twilight solve the mystery her mentor presents of what happened decades earlier near a town named Pripyat? And can anything be the same afterwards if she does...?

Inspired by the HBO series Chernobyl.

Thanks to user Eezee, there is now full text to speech version of the story available with pictures up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__0FF-VeXKg

Set during FiM season 2, the story takes place in the Phoenixverse of Turnabout Storm and The Lawyer and The Unicorn, but familiarity with those two stories is not required to read this one.

Author: Firesight
Prereaders: AJ_Aficionado, James CyberLink, Silentwoodfire, Denim_Blue

Picture Credit: James CyberLink

• Graded at 25/30 points by Nano Discussions of the My Little Reviews and Feedback Group.

Ten years ago, the Griffon Empire opened a portal to a strange new world and tried to annex it. In the peace settlement that followed they lost control of the province containing the portal. Since then, the Griffonian Democratic Republic had been completely isolated, surrounded on all sides by a hostile empire. Now, for the first time, a visitor had been allowed.