//------------------------------//
// Lost in the dark 
// Story: Hello? 
// by Prince Polaris 
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"Uh, guys?  Where are all of you?  These pranks are getting out of hoof!" Barked a stallion's voice.   The sounds of his steadily increasing panic were echoing throughout Centria, but there wasn't ever a response.  A twinkle of light began to shine in one of the station's old archways, as the voice neared the exit.

"Come on, just...   pop out and scare me already" Said a quiet voice, followed by a whimper as his soft light shone out into the cavern.  Silverwing was a ThreeTown guard, and he slowly walked out of Centria with a troubled frown on his face.   He'd been looking for goodies to take back home when the others left, and his small everflame orb lantern was struggling against the darkness as it shone in front of him.  It was so quiet...   so disturbingly quiet.   He couldn't hear the voices of the other stallions, or the hiss of the steam engine.  All he could hear was the dripping of water, the distant hiss of DarkRock's flooding problems, and loud, dull thuds from time to time as things collapsed in now-abandoned cities.  

Silver crept out of the station, onto a small bridge.   The bridge led to what was once Equestria's tiny little slice of the Underworld- an Embassy, where they also used to sell things that couldn't be gotten underground.   Silverwing looked at it for a while, and he decided that it would be as good as any other place to hide out while he waited for the others to come back.   They would come back, right?   So, over the bridge he went, up to the double wooden doors. Click.  The door opened.   Silverwing walked inside, then shut the door behind himself.  As he turned to look in the shop, he noticed a lightswitch near the doors...   and he smiled a bit.   Silverwing had been to the topside a few times, and he found it interesting that ponies, in a lot of homes, had fancy lights that required all sorts of systems to run.  

All controlled by one switch!   He flicked it, and let out a pained yelp as the main room of the Embassy suddenly bloomed with bright, flickering lights.   He closed his eyes tight, hissing with pain as he covered his snout with his hooves.   His Everflame orb went to a dull, weak glow, in response to the bright light it was also exposed to.  All Silver could think was "Owww..." as he slowly stood up again, cracking his eyes into a squint.    As he slowly began to adjust to the light, looking at the shop...   he became confused.   Didn't these lights require "Power" as they called it?   How did they still have any?  The heart was dead, and he couldn't hear one of their odd generators...  

Silverwing didn't exactly have much else to do, so he decided to investigate.   First, he began to snoop around the store.  There wasn't too much there, since ponies had emptied a lot of the items inside when they left it.   There was a piano at one end, and Silver grinned as he sat down at it.  He took a look around, because maybe the others were hiding in here....  but he didn't see anyone.   After a while of plinking around on the piano, testing it, he decided to sing...   before long, he was belting out the chorus of one of his favorite songs-   "I've been thiiiiinking about you all day~...   And the thoughts, they just won't go away~...  I'll see you tonight, we'll embrace all night, and tomooorow we'll make love byyy the fiiiireee~!" sang the stallion, as both his hooves and wings flew across the piano, sending warm, happy music through the Embassy and even leaking out into Centria.  

The Embassy was uncomfortably quiet after Silver had finished singing...   and he looked troubled as he closed the protective cover for the polished keys of the Piano.   He also felt somewhat of a self-conscious rush of embarassment, at the idea of his fellow guardsponies hearing the cheesy song he had been singing, but that just reminded him of how painfully alone he was.  Hell, wouldn't the shame be worth rescue?  The pegasus sighed, his ears going down as he got up from the seat.   He wasn't sure if they'd be coming back...  and it worried him, but he didn't want to try to make the journey back to ThreeTown alone.  It wasn't safe- parts of the caverns and caves could collapse at any moment, the journey was very long on hoof, and he didn't trust the darkness around him.  He didn't know what sorts of things were out there after the collapse of the underworld...  and he didn't like it.

In fact, one collapsed part of the tunnel had a bridge across it- a hastily built bridge that could only hold the train itself, with no walkway for a pony...   and it was slippery, thanks to water pouring down from above.   As he thought of the bridge, Silverwing shivered, and he got up from the piano with a whirl of emotions.    Fear, even Terror, combined with sadness and worry, mixed all in with Anger- How could they leave him here!?  He let out a shaky sigh as he remembered that dwelling on the thoughts wouldn't help, and he grumbled softly to himself as he took a few more deep breaths.   

Okay, back to the Embassy.   All he could do was muck about as he waited for the others...  so he went to the back of the store.  Silverwing was pretty sure that shops generally had backrooms, where the most stubborn of ponies often insisted workers to look for things they had run out of.  He smiled a bit as a memory surfaced- of his time at a small shop in ThreeTown, before he was hired to the guard.   A mare had demanded to see the backroom,  instead of just asking him to check it.   So he took her into the room, which held nothing but a single pair of boots.   Ahh, the embarassed look on her face as she left...   he'd never forget it.   

So where was the back room in the Embassy?  There didn't seem to be one!  The back wall was just solid.   Silver sighed, and he leaned against the solid rock wall.  Which then collapsed under him, sending him rumbling into what sounded like a big open space. Silverwing picked himself up with a frown on his snout, then he looked up with a confused expression.   "What in...." he murmured softly, as he brought out his everflame lamp and shone it around.   The Embassy had a false front to it!   And behind it...  was a hollowed out room of rock, with a large metal wall at one end.  There were some flickering lights on the ceiling, but they had given up most of their light long ago, they could barely reach the floor.  Turning to see what he had fallen through, Silver realized he had leaned onto a door, and the hinges on it had rotted to the point where his weight managed to rip them straight out of the wood.  

His worries temporarily forgotten, Silver crept forwards, walking up to the heavy metal doors embedded in the strange wall.   He gently touched one of them, and to nopony's surprise- nothing happened.   He sighed, then mumbled a soft "What is this...?" to himself as he turned around, looking back to the Embassy.  Snooping around here wouldn't help his chances of rescue, but...  he wanted to find out what it was.  Turning back to the doors in front of him, Silver noticed that there was a crack between them.   Perhaps....?

With a creaking protest, Silver managed to push the doors apart with the tip of his armored hoof!   They were heavy, and their motors were long dead, but the locking mechanisms seemed to be left undone, and therefore Silver was able to move the doors.   With much effort, of course.   It took him a while to get a hoof between the doors, but once Silver did, he put his weight into shoving one of them aside.   Whenever he ran out of strength, he rested against the door, panting heavily in the quiet cavern.   Eventually, Silver got himself between the slabs of metal, and he was able to look out into what the doors were hiding.   

And it was impressive.  There was an entire research station behind here!   Buildings sat along the squarish, artificial cavern in the distance, and there was another set of big doors at the far wall of the cavern, looking as if they led into a new place.   The buildings were old and faded, their painted signs hard to read and crumbling.   With no sun to bleed things, it took a very long time for things to fade in the Underworld, so Silver could tell that this place hadn't seen a pony in a long, long time.  And yet...   the cavern was illuminated.  Flickering, weak, yet stubborn lights lined the ceiling and ground along the makeshift town, and while they made it look strange, they were enough for him to see everything.   Nearby, Silver could see a huge machine with red warning lights on it, and thanks to the giant text that read "BATTERY ARRAY" on it, it seemed that SIlver had his answer to why the lights worked.

So, Silverwing shoved his way through the door with a grunt.   He turned around as he heard a metallic grumbling, and he yelped in fear as he looked just in time to see the doors SLAM shut inches from his snout.   The old doors were spring loaded, and while the weight of Silver had been enough to hold them open, they got enough momentum to slam shut when he finally let go.    And the rock that had been jammed between them, holding them open...   well, it was nothing but dust now.   As he looked at the closed gap, Silver frowned worriedly as he noticed that he doubted he could even fit a sword between there...  but befoe he allowed the foreboding thoughts of "I'm trapped!" to overtake him, he turned to look at the strange place he'd walked into.