//------------------------------//
// Land of Darkness 
// Story: Rebirth of Magic: Law and Order 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

The structure down below was a large, long, concrete building, which seemed to stretch away from us for a great distance and then some. The structure itself was also sitting there, as if long since abandoned. Chunks of stuff were sitting all around it, as if they had been thrown about into the air like a child throws toys out of a pram.

Part of it also seemed to have masses of concrete slabs sitting over a portion of the structure, almost as if the place had been covered up for some reason.

As for why the place looked familiar to me, well... there's a place back in my old world where a nasty accident happened, and something very dangerous was released into the air. As a result, the building was covered over and the entire area evacuated to protect civilians. Nobody can live there anymore, and it's set to stay that way for thousands of years.

And that building down below closely resembled it in more ways than one.

Pipp suddenly spoke again, which was enough to shake me out of my thoughts. "Does that building not look familiar to you?"

Of course it looked familiar to me. I'd seen enough pictures of the building it reminded me of to fully understand what I was seeing. "I guess to a degree it does. But how can the Chernobyl nuclear plant be here in Equestria?"

Did they even have nuclear energy in Equestria? That was an interesting thought I will admit, but to actually consider whether it was a possibility is part of the puzzle of figuring out this place. This Equestria was similar to one I knew from the film and yet so different in other ways. Was this a parallel G5 where things went a bit different? Or was this always lurking in the background, waiting for the other characters to find it? Or rather, the people writing the show to reveal it to the viewers?

So far, this whole journey was giving me quite a serious existencial crisis. But I knew we had to keep pushing on. I had said earlier that we couldn't afford to constantly keep stopping, so I knew then and there we had to keep going no matter what. This land may be dark, but if we could bring a bit of light into the lives of those who lived here it would be worth the price it may cost us on the ground.

Pipp then spoke up again, and what she said was pretty wise. "Come on, Hitch. We need to stay focused and continue through here. We started, so we might as well finish." Not bad for an airhead, huh? Or, at least at the time I thought she was something of a vapid pony considering the tantrum she threw over her phone running out of battery.

I nodded. "Agreed. I'm guessing we'll be walking through pony Pripyat next."

So, we began our journey down the slope and towards this strange town. It was completely abandoned, as stated earlier, but the area still had this odd, lived in quality to it. The landscape was a mess, and the pathway down was filled with graveyards on the side of the road. These graves had clearly been filled a long time ago, occupied by bodies long since deceased and no longer able to tell their stories.

The fact there were so many of them was quite unsettling. What had happened here to produce such a high death toll?

After some more walking, we stopped at the bottom of the hill and came to a large sign. It, too, was also old and weather beaten with age, but unlike the earlier one was remarkably intact, and still perfectly legible as well.

WELCOME TO GOLDEN HILLS

HOME OF THE UFUR EXPERIMENTAL ENERGY PROGRAM

TO A BETTER FUTURE FOR ALL UNICORNS.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Sure seems that didn't end well for them," I said. "Come on. There's a street this way."

As we made our way deeper into the town, I still could not shake off the suspicion that, somehow, we were being watched despite their being nopony there. We were surrounded by crumbling buildings, some of which had trees and plants growing in them, precisely as they should not have been.

Eventually, we reached some sort of memorial in front of the large building we had seen.

THIS MEMORIAL STANDS TO THE HEROES OF GOLDEN VALLEY, WHO CONTAINED THE AFTERMATH OF THE MAYONNAISE BLAST OF 986.

THEIR NAMES LIVE FOREVER IN THE PAGES OF HISTORY.

Pipp glanced to me. "So this is why unicorns fear the word mayonnaise! It was the cause of a disaster!"

"That was not what I was expecting," I said. "Based on something Izzy said unicorns find mayo toxic, so there's probably a double meaning there." I glanced about, and then suddenly saw a pathway climbing out of the valley. That was probably the right way to go. "There's a path going that way."

Pipp didn't seem convinced, but the longer we stayed down here the greater the chance something would find us, and we began to head away. Unfortunately, the pathway was leading us directly toward the reactor building, which I had not anticipated.

The pathway became more cracked under our hooves as plants had pushed through some of the concrete as they reached out for the sun, trying to live in this increasingly desolate world around us. The landscape was pretty stark in contrast to all the cheerfulness we had seen earlier.

But then the ground seemed to shake, and all was suddenly very dark. I vaguely recall Pipp speaking, and some dark shapes moving about, but beyond that I can't recall very much.





When I did regain consciousness, I noticed Pipp was calling over to me. "I'm OK, Pipp!" I said, and quickly trotted over to ensure she herself was OK. "I'm getting a reading of 3.6. Not great, not terrible."

Another cookie if you spot the reference, by the way.

"Are we inside the plant?" Pipp asked. It was only then I began to particularly notice we were in some sort of strange room, with machines on the walls and on consoles bolted to the floor.

Suddenly, a machine flickered into life, and an image appeared on the screen of some human. "Of course you are, you vapid airhead," he said. "A demon in disguise wouldn't know that, would they?"

Oh, great. It's that guy, the one the internet likes laughing at. He's one to be calling Pipp an airhead given his own memory is foggy enough.

Pipp was annoyed. Not that I blame her. "You take that back! I am not vapid! And I'm not an airhead!"

He then turned his attention to me. "Just keep telling yourself that, Rarity clone. The same goes to the diet Fluttershy over there."

"Hitch and Fluttershy actually don't have particularly similar personalities," I said. "Both can talk to animals, but one is a confident local leader whilst the other can be, well, shy." Really? Using these arguments still? I appreciate the commitment to recycling but give us something new to work with!

It was then we learned where we were. This place was a power plant that had suffered a critical leak from mayo exposure, and this had resulted in chaos for the ponies who lived here. No wonder the unicorns had cut it off.

But it was something else this guy said that caught my attention. "The other one keeps meddling in the world and constantly revives the characters, no matter how many of them I seem to kill. Hopefully this time I can permanently finish them off before they can replace them yet again."

What? This was weird. Was that the origin of the female voice who had spoken to me in the car crash all those days ago? Was this part of a greater purpose?

I didn't have much more chance to think about it before the feed shut off, and Pipp pulled me back to my senses as we tried to escape this decaying building.

Luckily, we did escape, and once we were well out of the contamination zone we removed the suits and got on our way. But I couldn't help but feel something had profoundly changed. Pipp seemed to have lost the hostility she had towards us. Seems life or death situations are really good bonding exercises.

When we linked up with the others, an even bigger surprise awaited me. The others were there, for sure, but so was Sprout, who was with Misty! I hadn't seen him since my journey had begun all the way back in Maretime Bay, so what was he doing here now?

These questions would have to wait. Until then, we had the challenge of figuring out where to go from here. The obvious point to start was Izzy's house, which was within the forest.

Well, whatever was inside that forest couldn't be worse than radiation alley, right? There was only one way to find out as we entered the place, seeking whatever was inside.