Friendship is Escape Velocity

by Cardboard Box

All the Way Down

Twilight and her herdmates were taking a rest in, or rather on top of, an old gate situated in a cutting. The war had put paid to the original gate, and later wardens had added barricades of barbed wire and corrugated metal, bedrolls and supplies.

Their resting on top of the gate, rather than just beyond it, was simple pragmatism. Their elevated position let them see anypony who might be coming after them, either following tracks or fleeing the source of all the distance-dulled, muffled rattle and thump of gunfire.

Twilight absently gulped down a bottle of water and grimaced at the taste. For some reason she felt thirsty, and it wasn't going away.

Pinkie was balanced on her hind legs, almost absently rebuilding a pyramid of bottles that had been knocked over. Naturally, being Pinkie, she was building it upside down. Equally naturally, the architect being Pinkie, the pyramid was forgetting to collapse.

Fluttershy just gazed eastward, worried, while Rainbow Dash glared, wings twitching, as though daring the Mojave to spring a nasty surprise on them. "Twi'? We're close aren't we?"

Twilight just blinked at her friend, then channelled magic to her horn, before dispersing it almost immediately. "We're right on top of it!" she exclaimed, then swallowed. Now she was thirstier.

"Shouldn't we wait for Mister Joe?" Rarity spoke up. She was also feeling a little thirsty, but not as much as Twilight. "After all, he might be rescued, or..."

"I doubt it."

Five pairs of eyes turned to Fluttershy, who continued to look east sadly. "He stayed back to keep those Legion from capturing us. They... you saw what they were like..." Her eyes began to moisten, before hardening in a most un-Fluttershy way. "We made fools of them in... in Nipton."
Nopony spoke. Fluttershy had told the truth. This Legion were the sort who didn't take any challenge to their dominion kindly. For a moment, the image of Haversack Joe hanging lifeless from a cross crossed all their minds.

"All done!"

Five pairs of eyes turned to Pinkie's architectural triumph over the laws of physics: a four-level pyramid of bottles, shining in the morning sun.
Then the pink mare knocked it with a hoof, sending the bottles flying and smashing on the ground below.

"Uh..." Twilight finally spoke for them all, "Why'd you do that?"

"Because it was fun to do and I sorta felt bad for whoever'd made that pyramid before so I thought I'd make it again but I'd do it Pinkie Pie style! And then just now I thought waaaitaminute if somepony from the Legion comes this way and sees it then they'll know that we're down the road here and they are such Mean Meany McMeanypants they don't need to know so I knocked it down again!" Pinkie blinked happily, and the others in surprise. Pinkie made sense, after all.

"So what're we waiting for?" Rainbow was about to take wing, before realising that a certain orange mare was standing on her tail.

"Ah say we walk round the corner there before flyin' around where folks," she emphasised the word darkly, "might spot us."

Rainbow just gave Applejack a dirty look. She was getting tired of all this sneaking around, even if it was warranted. Then an idea came to her, and she turned westward, before lifting off and hugging the ground before a puff of dust and a rainbow trail disappeared behind the rock walls of the corner.

Applejack groaned, and Twilight shook her head. "Might as well start."

By the time the others had returned to the crumbled road, Rainbow was already waiting. "Pretty much what you see," she reported, "The road basically stops in front of that big building on the right." She indicated a partially crumbled building that, being the only one there, didn't really need indicating. "I dunno what that dome is, but I can't see any way in, and there's weirdoes wandering around."

"Weirdoes?"

"Yeah, remember that... that... that burned-looking human we met the day we left Goodsprings?"

"Oh!" Twilight smiled in understanding. "That ghoul."

"Yeah, 'cept these ones don't have a stitch on, and they're sort of creeping around. But there's ones in robes laying around dead.”

Twilight frowned, puzzled. “Maybe they can tell us what's going on,” she decided.

The further they travelled down the road, the stronger the magical signature became; even Rarity could feel it, and said so. “It's like some sort of... thrumming... ringing... tingle,” she'd tried to describe it.

“It's making me thirsty,” Twilight added.

“You too? I thought it was just all this dust and heat.” Rarity raised a hoof to her mane. “As if what it's done to my coiffure wasn't bad enough!”

“It's up there,” Twilight pointed her horn at a large dome, sitting inaccessible on a bluff.

Almost immediately Rainbow Dash took off to investigate again. A patter of distant taps indicated that a pegasus was attempting to kick in several tons of blast door. A few minutes later, she flew back, slightly lathered and looking annoyed.

“Still can't get in,” she announced with disgust.

“Maybe we should ask one of those ghoul people?” Pinkie eyed one of the figures, which was crouched at the bottom of the slope and looking in their direction.

“Maybe we should,” Twilight agreed half-heartedly. There was something about the biped that made her want to flee instead.

The herd slowly approached the ghoul, trying to look as unthreatening as possible.

“Um... hello?” Twilight began. This close, the ghoul looked positively revolting. What skin it had was translucent, and its frame was skeletal. Milky eyes suggested cataracts, but the way it turned its head their way meant its ears still worked.

It made an odd gurgling gasp that sounded inquisitive.

“My name is Twilight Sparkle,” the unicorn commenced, “and we would like to –”

The ghoul pointed at them, and let out a hoarse scream that could only be described as feral. Several other ghouls nearby rose to their feet, heads turned towards the “food here” cry.

“Uh oh,” Rainbow Dash looked around. There were about a dozen of the living (for a very loose definition of the term) skeletons, and they were closing fast. Including the ghoul that was in front of them. There were no gleams of intelligence in their eyes. Just hunger.

“Don't you dare!”

The ghoul froze, its (literal) half a brain frozen between feeding on warm meat and the paralysing force of Fluttershy's stare.
“How would you like it if I tried to eat you?”

The ghoul twitched at the word eat, and Fluttershy, not breaking eye contact, backed up slowly to collect as many of the others in her stare as she could.

“We're just poor lost little ponies, hardly a proper meal...” now three ghouls twitched in unison at the word meal. “We just want to go home!”

Twilight was looking around at the approaching horde and barely managed to avoid yelping when Rainbow landed next to her.

“Grab on Twi',” the pegasus said quickly, “I wanna show you something.”

“Huh?” was Twilight's understandable response before Rainbow clamped onto her barrel, and lifted the unicorn aloft.

“In here,” Rainbow gasped. She flew through the glassless window of a peculiar metal tunnel that protruded from the building and just seemed to stop in midair. “It's safe. You up for teleporting everypony?”

Twilight rose to her hind legs and peered over the sill. Below her, her four friends were colourful dots surrounded by... oh buck. There were a lot of ghouls.

Without a word, she vanished in a magenta flash, reappearing beside Rarity and a shaking Fluttershy. The gentle pegasus' face was a mixture of desperation and indignation – and the ghouls were closing in.

“Gather round girls!” Twilight yelled.

Fluttershy squeaked, startled. Her concentration broke.

The ghouls, released from her focus, sprang forward, their tiny minds filled with thoughts of fresh warm meat.

Several stumbled back from a well-timed blast of Pinkie's party cannon. The inclusion of cupcakes might have helped, since a small fight broke out over the sugary treats.

Inside the control tower of REPCONN, Rainbow Dash was amused to see a pile of ponies appear in another magenta flash.

“My mane!” Rarity had ended up near the bottom, and the primary problem with her manestyle was that Applejack currently had her hoof in it.

“OW! My horn!” Twilight had also ended up on the bottom, and somepony had kicked it.

“My hat!” Applejack scrabbled for her prized headgear, which not only had been trodden on, but had been melted on by –

“My ice cream bar!” Pinkie's face fell into the sort of exaggerated pout that only she was able to pull off.

“Where the hay did you get an ice cream bar from?” Twilight asked before she could stop herself.

“Oh wait a minute,” the pink mare started rummaging in her mane. It sounded like a small joke shop going over Neighagara Falls. “Yay! I knew had a spare!”

Twilight, along with everypony else, just stared at the blatantly still frozen treat in Pinkie's hoof, then slowly closed her eyes. “I don't need to know,” she began her mantra, “I don't need to know. I don't need to know.”

“There's a door down the end here,” Rainbow finally declared, “And you can thank me later for such a brilliant plan.”

“Um...” Fluttershy had simply taken wing and glided off the pile of mares who were still untangling themselves, no easy feat in a narrow walkway. “It's just that... well... we're up here, and those horrible ghouls are all down there, and... what's behind that door?”

Twilight blinked, torn between asking Pinkie if she had any water in there, and remembering that they had to either find a way out, or into that dome.

“Only one way to find out,” she said at last, and approached the door. One telekinetic twist later, and a pair of ghouls got the shock of their lives.

“Holy Jesus!” Unlike the monstrous ones roaming below, these two wore robes and were clearly more intelligent. “Where the hell did you come from? I mean, how'd you get up... I mean...”

“Um, hello,” Twilight licked dry lips, “I take it from your robes you're with the, um, Bright Brotherhood?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah... hey wait! Lemme think,” and the ghoul frowned, tapping his chin, “If you managed to get up here through all those fuckin' ferals, then... uh... Follow me, I'll lead you to Jason.”

“Jason?” Applejack asked curiously. Twilight could only shrug and follow the ghoul through a doorway and up a staircase in the middle of a large room. It seemed to be half laboratory, half kitchen judging by the contents.

Upstairs it looked like all laboratory, the walls mostly hidden by desks and great panels of lights and meters. Turning from a blackboard, it wasn't hard to determine who Jason was. His cadaverous flesh sported glowing patches, and there was an air of conviction about him that was somehow simultaneously assuring and worrisome.

“Hello, little wanderers,” he smiled liplessly at the herd, “Please forgive us of our humble surroundings. Our true home awaits us in the Far Beyond. Have you come to help us complete the Great Journey?”

All six of the mares just looked at each other, before Twilight opened her mouth to reply. However, Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, beat her to it.
“Look mister,” she declared, flying right into the ghoul's face, “Your great journey or whatever can wait, because until we find whatever's stuck us here, nopony's going anywhere, got – hey!”

Jason Bright, to his credit, managed to hide his smile as Applejack yanked the bolshy pegasus away by the tail. “In truth, we are stranded here as well,” he said after some thought, “we are in need and cannot yet escape into the Far Beyond.”
“What is the Far Beyond?” Twilight finally asked.

“I have glimpsed the Far Beyond only in visions,” Jason didn't so much say as recite, voice slipping into the cadence of preaching, “but what I have seen is truly miraculous. It is a place of light and healing, and I know in my soul that my flock will be safe there. We wish to escape the barbarity of the wasteland, especially the violence and bigotry of its human inhabitants. The creator has promised to my flock a new land: a place of safety and healing... a paradise in the Far Beyond, looked over by the creator's great castle on the holy mountain.”

Twilight suddenly felt strong earth pony forelegs yank her and her friends into a huddle. “He just described Canterlot!” Pinkie whispered excitedly, “Girls, I think this guy's our ticket out of here! Let's help them and then we can throw them the bestest Welcome to Equestria party you ever saw and –”

Twilight tuned her out and tried to think. The ghouls, or at least their leader, apparently had a way of reaching Equestria, but it apparently wasn't ready yet. Candour compels us to acknowledge that more than homesickness was skewing her thoughts. Whatever was in that dome, was tied to this building, and these ghouls...

“Got room for six more?” she extracted herself from the pony pile and addressed Jason again. “Because the place you mention sounds a lot like home.”

“Your home?” Jason blinked at her for a good thirty seconds. “The creator must have sent you! Truly we are blessed! Preparations for the Great Journey were nearly complete when the demons appeared.”

He immediately had six pairs of alarmed pony eyes goggling at him.

Author's Note:

I know, it's been too long. Actually this is a good break point. We all know what the "demons" are, and really we don't need to wade through Jason Bright's convo. Cue the Mare-sion Impossible theme.