//------------------------------//
// XVIII: Charge 
// Story: To Outlast 
// by Camolot the Creator 
//------------------------------//

I wasn't sulking. This was especially shown in how I definitely wasn't sullenly watching Luna eat my desert across the table, and was instead examining the fresh power core next to her plate. Which she, in turn, definitely hadn't planted there to mess with me.

I grumbled something unintelligable. She responded by giving me an infuriatingly smug grin. This is just as bad as I thought it was going to be.




"So, what, we just slot the core in and it's ready to go?"

Having decided that she'd tormented me long enough, Luna had finally finished the desert, and now we were making our way back to the garage. Luna had scrounged up saddlebags full of tools, which clicked and clanked at her sides, the power core held in her magic.

"Well... not quite. This power core might be whole and functional, but they aren't stored with a charge. That means that, to reactivate the crystal and allow it to accept a charge, I must trickle charge it like so- by holding it in my magic and allow the internal mechanisms to feed off of the magical energy and convert it to stored energy contained within the crystal latices."

"So that sorta... activates them?"

She nodded, spinning the core in her magic. On one side of the core, a small indicator made of ten different small crystal lights was placed, with the first light flashing.

"This indicates that the core is charging and holding that charge. If the core was damaged or incapable of holding a charge, as they are wont to do when they are stored for long periods of time with only dregs of power in them, then it would be blinking rapidly."

I nodded, inspecting the little display. "So they keep a lot of these on-hand?" She grinned, almost vampiric in its width.

"Whole racks of them. Which I found just around the corner in the storage locker- and only most of them were gone."

I shoved her lightly, frowning. "You jerk! You knew exactly where the spare parts were stored, you even told me that they probably weren't there!" I threw my hands into the air dramatically. "I was gypped! GYPPED, I tell you!" She just laughed at my misfortune, the monster.

The large doors that sealed the bunker's entrance slid open in front of us, then closed as we stepped out- we weren't taking chances with this. Luna stepped ahead of me, trotting through the door connecting the security booth to the garage, and I followed a few steps behind, making sure to give the black stain in front of the doors a wide berth. I was neither curious or suicidal enough to go anywhere near the film of black gunk that still clung to the concrete without pressure washing it for a few hours, and maybe abrading off the top layer of concrete.

When I walked into the garage itself, Luna was already in front of the vehicle, the hood popped and the core containment lid still popped wide open. Still holding the fresh core in her magic, she picked up the burnt core still inserted into the metal holder and held it out to me.

"Can you press the release button and slide the old core out? It's perfectly safe to handle, but we need the adapter. We don't have a spare on hand."

I took the thing in my hands, and as Luna's magic receeded, I found it... surprisingly light. Even with the shattered core in place, it wasn't what I'd describe as heavy. It wasn't precisely light, it still was a frame made of metal surrounding a large crystal, but I could comfortably hold the thing up with one hand and not be straining myself. It made me wonder if it was some inherent aspect of the thing itself, or some sort of magic- perhaps Luna had left an antigravity spell on it, or somesuch? I'd have to ask later if featherweight charms were a thing.

The release button itself wasn't hard to find: it was in a shallow indent on one side of the containment vessel, recessed into the surface itself, clearly labelled as CORE RELEASE and painted with yellow and black stripes. I pressed it in with my thumb, and the entire side released with a mechanical CHUNK, internal springs pushing the door out and popping the core part of the way out. I gripped the core by a handle attached to the top of the crystal, sliding it out and holding it up to Luna. She didn't give it more than a cursory glance.

"Normal protocol would be to have a special bin for it, but at this point... just drop it anywhere. Not as if it would matter."

"Alright" I said, shrugging and putting it to one side. Luna offered the fresh core to me by levitating it over, and I nodded my thanks, taking it and sliding it into position. A push on the door clicked it back into place, the release button returning to its default, ready to release the core again. "Okay, I think it's ready."

"Excellent. Here-" her magic picked it out of my hands, inserting it back into the engine block. "It should have at least a little charge from our magic. From here, we plug it into its charger, then leave it until, say... tomorrow."

I grimaced. "A full twenty four hours? Yeesh, that's a long charge time." She shrugged.

"It is charging from one percent, or thereabouts, and thus will take hours to reach full charge capacity. At that point it will most likely be too late to do what we wish to do, and thus we will most likely need to wait until tomorrow."

"Hm." I laced my fingers, staring into the engine compartment. "Well... we don't necessarily need it at full charge, right? We're just using the vehicle as a mobile weapons emplacement, so you can continue operating the gun even as we're retreating back into the garage. So... why not charge it to, say, ten to fifteen percent and just use that?"

Luna opened her mouth to reply, then paused and closed it again, considering. "That... is quite a good point. Should only take an hour or so for it to charge to that level, and we do not truly need it to be higher than that..." She nodded. "Yes, this is an excellent idea."

I crossed my arms and grinned. "Good that you think so. I think I've sufficiently proven that I'm not an idiot ALL the time."

Luna shot me a considering glance as she trotted around to the side, flipping up a small hatch in the concrete floor and pulling out what appeared to be a power cord. She drew a few feet from a reel set into the compartment, then opened a corresponding hatch on the vehicle itself and plugged the cord in. A green light on the dashboard lit up, clearly visible through the windshield, then turned yellow.

"Well... you will excuse us if we don't quite believe it just yet."

"Wha- hey!"





"So... what do you think we'll find in there?" I said, leaning against one of the doors. Luna glanced at me, then back to the charging meter, which was currently indicating 12%.

After plugging the vehicle in, we'd stepped into it, Luna settling into the driver's side bench while I reclined as best I could on a passenger's seat that wasn't built with bipeds in mind. Mostly we were just watching the charging meter slowly tick upwards, high enough that Luna would be satisfied that we had enough for this small task and then some. There were few really solid things I could say about Luna, this Luna, and one of them was that she stepped lightly and looked where she leaped.

"Hmm..." the sound was small, almost more escape of air than something actually said, and her eyes never strayed from the crystal screen set in the dashboard. "Documents. Records. No huge revelations, most likely, but enough that we may begin to piece a shard of the larger puzzle together. Even just logistics records would be enough to give us an inkling of what went on here before... well."

I tapped my fingers against the surface of the bench underneath me, frowning. There was... something else about this, that was bothering me. The facility that we were in, that I'd woken Luna up in, was sprawling and expansive as far as subterranean bunkers went. Large amounts of rooms with impressive square footage, completely self-sufficient systems, apparently entire hydroponics sections that we hadn't explored yet and a connection to what was apprently a superhighway that stretched across the width and breadth of Equestria, and put modern highways from my home to shame. And yet...

"Why did they have the administration above ground, outside the protective umbrella of the bunker?"

Luna raised her head, staring through the windshield and out towards the garage door, as if she could see the aforementioned building through it. "This troubles us as well. Such an important portion of the base's command structure, just left out in the open where the enemy could easily get to it. Making a vulnerable target of the high ranking organizers and officers that no doubt directed this base makes little to no sense to us, and we wonder why we did it- or, even if we did order it done."

"It just doesn't make sense." I flopped over onto the bench and groaned. "So much of this situation doesn't make sense. We know that it's been thirty years since whatever it is that happened, happened, yet there's apparently been no movement or response since then. Just the Tarwolves."

"Not just that. We were placed in a stasis pod, and yet there were no others, and nor were there any other survivors. The bunker could have sealed out the Tarwolves, perhaps for years, and the hydroponics section of the bunker is apperently both self-sufficient and perfectly operational... and yet, we did not find a single scrap of evidence of any creature living in the base. No signs of struggle, no empty food rations, not even any sort of trash."

"It's... not just that. Remember when we first stepped into the barracks room?" She nodded, looking contemplative. "Well, as far as I can remember... the space wasn't lived in at all. No knick-knacks, no equipment, not even a picture of a loved one or a little bit of graffiti scrawled on the concrete. As if..."

"As if it had been created, made up to exacting military standards, then abandoned for apparently no reason." she growled, her eyes narrowed. "It does not make sense. It was as if the facility was unused... the ammunition. The only spent ammunition that we have seen was the griffon in the guard booth." My mind flashed to the bodies I'd discovered in the freezer, but... it was best to keep quiet, for the moment at least. "Like you noted, it was as if there was no fighting in the facility at all, as if it had been sealed and entirely abandoned. And yet..."

"The defensive ring. The vehicles, the weapon emplacements... all facing outwards, the trench filled with bones. As if everyone defending the town died where they stood. No retreat until there wasn't anything left of them- the town itself is untouched, nothing but time wore it down. Why? Why not run...?"

She growled, frustrated. "A bunker to their back, full of weapons and built above the best escape route they could hope for... and instead they stand their ground. Why?"

I groaned, laying back completely on the bench. "Like always, we're seeing parts of the big picture, but we don't have the puzzle pieces to make it make sense. All we can see is the result of a chain of events thirty years ago, crap left behind in the wake of whatever happened... but no answers, no solid data..."

"Well..." Luna whispered. I glanced at her, then followed her gaze to the screen, which had ticked up to thirteen. What she'd wanted for the minimum charge for this. "We suppose that we are about to find out, Faust willing."