Fallout Equestria: The Light Within

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 61: Back to the Start

Chapter Sixty-One: Back to the Start

“Ponies of Vanhoover, do not be alarmed by the newcomers to your city. We do not come to conquer, but to bring liberation! Liberation from tyranny, uncertainty, and strife! The Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad Expeditionary Force is here to help, to bring order to the Wasteland that has been sorely missing. The refuse of the Wasteland will be swept away, so that we good comrades will all rest safe and secure. Internal class conflict will be ended, as it has in the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad! In the old Equestria, ponies hoarded coins, believing gold made them superior to others. Even now, ponies hoard bottle caps, or—more importantly—food and water! That is ended in the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad! All ponies are equal and all receive what they need! Do not hide from the hammer and horseshoe, embrace it! Help us to build a better Equestria, a Ponies’ Republic of Equestria! Those who aid us in our quest will be rewarded, and those who seek to impede us will be crushed beneath the wheels of progress, not by our wish. Embrace equalism and the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad! When the soldiers of the PRSEF arrive at your door, do not attack them or turn them away, but welcome them in and hide nothing. They want only your betterment! Once more, we are not here to conquer, but to seek out fellow comrades to lead a revolution in Vanhoover and to create a sister Ponies’ Republic of Vanhoover as our sisters and brothers in the fight against inequality and the disorder of the Wasteland! Join us! Join us, who, unlike the Grand Pegasus Enclave, the Northern Lights Coalition, or the North Equestrian Alliance, are willing to reach out and help our fellow comrades, asking nothing in return but their support for the Cause, a cause that can only be to their own advantage! Join with the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad!”

The PRS’s propaganda played nonstop and seemed to pop up on more and more radio frequencies with every hour. Different voices spoke, but the message was always the same. The invading PRS army was not here to invade. The neighborhoods they’d forcefully taken over and set up outposts in hadn’t been conquered, they’d been liberated. When the PRS soldiers arrived to confiscate your possessions (weapons especially) and record your name and location for undisclosed purposes later, it was for your own good, and if you were shot by those soldiers, it was because you were impeding progress. Thankfully, few were falling for the lies.

Vanhoover was also a very different place than it had once been just a few months earlier. It certainly seemed, at least, that the majority of ponies in the city had either moved to one of the larger settlements (all members of the NEA) or were under the protection of one of them. The collapse of the Northern Lights Coalition had also eliminated many raiders and slavers, and defanged the ones that remained. Raider attacks were now at the lowest they’d been in a very long time, so it seemed to me that the PRS’s timing was a little off to come swooping in and save Vanhoover from disorder and fear. If they’d arrived a few months earlier, it was likely that some settlements and independent Wastelanders would have flocked to them and they might have succeeded, especially with a professional army that could stand up to the Northern Lights Coalition.

Honestly, though, I thought Chairmare Peach Cream probably understood this just as well as I did. The problem was that they had to rush this “liberation” now before it was too late. If the North Equestrian Alliance was successful, then raiders would no longer pose a threat and the settlements of Vanhoover and Stalliongrad could work together, protect each other, and build a new society from the ashes of the Wasteland. This threatened the PRS plans to do the exact same thing, but with them in charge instead. They had to strike now, before the NEA grew any stronger, even if it made them look like the bad guys. The alternative would be to wait until the NEA collapsed, opening the door for the PRS to sweep in and pick up the pieces and point to how the alliance had failed where the Ponies’ Republic would not. This would be a risky gamble, though, and evidently not one that Peach Cream was willing to make.

There would eventually be a face-off between the North Equestrian Alliance and the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad, but for the moment there was an uneasy peace in Vanhoover. While the NEA leaders deliberated on what to do about this new threat, my friends and I drove out to face the PRS head-on. In the Clinic, Rare, Zherana, Sage, and I rolled through the ruins of Vanhoover and past the northern suburb of Majikland. The camp around the old bus station here had grown since we’d set out for this place, but only a few ponies were visible—not a good sign.

Bullets dinged off the Clinic’s hull as we drove past; it seemed the tenuous peace I’d had with the PRS after escaping and then not bringing the Chairmare the anti-machine bullet molds she wanted had broken. Zherana and I got on the Clinic’s exterior guns and retaliated. From within the safety of our converted Equestrian Army trailer, we controlled the mounted turrets and fired bursts at the PRS defenders as we passed them. I took out one with a rocket launcher before she could line up her shot; the rocket landed near enough to rock the Clinic, but not close enough to do any damage to the reinforced wheels.

Sage pulled the Clinic to a halt a short distance from the camp, and she, Rare, and Zherana piled out. While I equipped my Steel Ranger armor, the three mares set up a defense around the Clinic to hold back any brave PRS soldiers. Once I was fully suited up, I joined them, and we advanced toward the camp.

Despite this being a temporary camp, the PRS had put some significant work into making it defensible. Four guard towers had been constructed at the corners of the camp, so similar they had to have been set up from prepackaged kits (put together by the ponies in the Stacks, no doubt). Barbed wire fences had been erected between the guard towers, bowing outwards slightly, with an overlap on one side providing entrance and egress. This way into the camp was on the north side, where the road that passed the bus station split off into lanes for the buses to take to the station’s platforms. According to EFS, there were quite a few enemies ahead, though I could only see five of them, the rest presumably either in the camp behind the bus station or underground breaking into Stable 85. Judging by what we’d seen on the drive in, the majority were in the latter location.

Two soldiers stood at the camp’s entrance, one finding cover behind some supply creates and levitating his hunting rifle over it and the other out in the open loading a mortar. Zherana gracefully rolled into a crouch while unslinging her sniper rifle and drilled the second pony through her forehead before she could get off a shot. As she fell, she knocked the mortar over as well. Two more soldiers that had fired at us on the way in galloped along the western fence to join their surviving comrade at the gate, and Rare hosed the area with her minigun, killing one and sending the other diving into the rows of gray and red tents. Meanwhile, I spotted an officer who’d been at the bus station’s entrance climbing a ladder to the canopy above. She ran to the minigun set up on top while I fired my magical energy rifle in bursts at her, singeing the combat armor she was wearing but failing to do any damage to her person.

The minigun on the roof turned out to not be of the mundane sort, and energy beams rained down around us. Sage deflected a few with her shield before taking shelter behind Rare’s powerarmored mass. The PRS had erected a kind of shield around the gun so that it would be difficult to shoot its gunner from this angle, though Zherana valiantly tried. I fired my missile launcher at it, but my near miss only served to make the officer take notice of me. Bullets also pinged off my armor from three more PRS soldiers who emerged from behind the bus station and the nearer soldier at the gate, though few actually managed to pierce it. As the soldier at the gate stood up to fire at me, I ran toward them so that the officer’s minigun shots followed and vaporized the nearest soldier.

Continuing on and swiftly turning, I plowed through the fence, knocking it down with the sound of wires snapping while their barbs scraped at my armor’s paint. Magical minigun beams singed me, but at least they weren’t aimed at my friends anymore, allowing them to enter the camp behind me and fire at the PRS soldiers who weren’t on a roof. I continued my dash, crashing through tents, as I tried to stay ahead of the minigun, and my head turned as I spotted Zherana galloping toward the bus station, heedless of the bullets flying around her or passing through her decaying flesh. Jumping from wall to pillar and back again, she quickly scaled her way to the top of the station’s canopy and ran up behind the officer on the minigun, snapping her neck in a rapid motion. The minigun fell silent for only a second before coming back to life, to torch the PRS soldier that was hiding among the tents near me.

Only one was left that we could see at this point, and she ran into the bus station to get backup. We followed after her, encountering nopony in the main room of the station. In the hallway beyond, I spotted her ochre tail disappearing into the room for the Ministry of Awesome and darted in close behind, shotgun at the ready. The PRS soldier was on the lift at the back of the room, desperately pressing the “DOWN” button. She’d dropped her primary weapon in her flight and levitated a revolver from her side. Before she could point it at me, I charged forward and fired my shotgun rapidly. Her face was unrecognizable after two blasts and she slumped down in the lift, her revolver clattering across the tiles of the room.

My charge had landed me in the lift with her corpse, which was now descending. Zherana jumped down into the lift with me, but it had dropped too far by the time Rare and Sage arrived, so they sought out another lift in a different Ministry’s room. Fearing that the commotion upstairs might not have gone entirely unnoticed downstairs, I cast SATS as soon as we cleared the ceiling of the cavern below. The first thing I noticed was that the center of the massive Stable door, the part bearing the number 85, had been completely removed and was sitting on the floor nearby, along with some truly massive cutting rigs that had to have been meant to be worn on top of power armor. The second thing I noticed was the three power armored ponies with their missile pods pointed at me. Even with SATS, there wasn’t much time for thinking in that situation. I emptied the missile pods on my own power armor, sending one missile at each of the PRS soldiers.

Unfortunately, two of them had been ready to fire before I’d appeared, and their missiles streaked toward me, passing mine in midair. It was still quite a drop from this height, but in my power armor I decided to risk it. The safety rail bent as I jumped over it, causing me to land more heavily than I’d hoped to. Alarm klaxons sounded in my ears, but I couldn’t feel any injuries. I realized after a moment that that was because my power armor had preemptively injected me with painkillers. Both my hindlegs were broken, and I could very vaguely feel the armor reset the bones and regenerate my legs with a healing potion.

Zherana landed nimbly nearby without breaking anything that I could see as the lift crashed down behind me in a burning wreck. Looking up, I spotted two power armored PRS soldiers dead and one who was missing his missile pod. The minigun at his side was still active, though; at least, it was until the grenade that Rare Sparks fired as she and Sage descended on a second lift struck it and tore it off. The power armored pony staggered, nearly crushing a non-power armored comrade. I threw a metal apple into the mix and the armor cracked at last, the leg tearing off as the torso split in a way that couldn’t leave the pony inside alive.

My primary worry after descending had been the soldiers with power armor, but they hadn’t been alone. Six other PRS soldiers had been with them, of which five were still alive (the last having perished in the blast from the metal apple that killed the last armored one). Sage took out another with a shot from her scoped energy pistol, and Rare fired her minigun to force the others to cover. One of them unwisely thought to blow past Zherana and get behind me, but the former zebra operative threw her against a wall, shattering her spine.

As Sage and Rare’s lift came to a halt, I tossed a metal apple over the pile of chests a soldier was hiding behind, flushing him out for Rare’s minigun to take care of. The other two soldiers fired magical energy pistols at us, until Zherana ran up behind them; they’d seen what she’d done to their comrade and took off running toward the entrance to Stable 85. I fired my magical energy rifle at the cutting rigs, which ignited as they passed them. The visor on my power armor polarized, but I still had to squint as the rigs went up in a blast that vaporized everything around them, much like a metal pear going off, only much more powerful. My radiation counter clicked ominously before settling down as the glow faded.

Stable 85 awaited, and I could hear sounds of fighting coming from within. The bodies of security ponies lay strewn about the Stable entrance, some of which I thought I recognized as having tried to kill me just eight months ago. They had killed Charity and Velvet, but I still carefully removed the body of the one that had fallen across the Stable’s door controls before hacking in. I managed to get control of the security camera feeds and scanned through, looking through the Stable. Things didn’t look good for the Stable-dwellers; they were still holding out, but in pockets throughout the Stable, and the PRS was sweeping through and securing everything they could. In the clinic, of all places, Overmare Fairy Floss was holding out with some other Pinks.

“What’s the plan?” Sage asked as I stared at the screen.

“We fight our way to the Overmare and help her lead a counterattack,” I said as I turned away from the video feed.

“Sounds good to me,” Rare Sparks said.

I led the way deeper into the Stable, down hallways that were no longer so familiar as they’d once been. Bullet holes and scorch marks riddled the walls, and there were patches of blood in places. It was strange, to return to this place I so despised, a place I’d revisited only once before in anger and denial, and yet feeling so sad to see it damaged this way. It brought back memories from that first memory orb of Lord Lamplight’s, when he—I—had seen my Stable in such a state. I’d lost my first birthplace to an attack by the Steel Rangers, and now my second birthplace was under attack by the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. I couldn’t remember my first birthplace, but this was the one I’d prefer to keep, even if the last memories I had of it were bad. In that first Stable, Lord Lamplight had been born; in Stable 85, Doc had been born, and I was now much more Doc than Lamplight.

Sage fired past my head at the PRS soldier I’d failed to notice down the hall during my internal reflection. I levitated my magical energy rifle up as more peeked around the corner at us and fired off a few bursts, at which they promptly retreated. Zherana sprinted forward around the corner, we heard the sound of something snapping followed by gunfire, and she reappeared, sprinting back at us.

“Six of them down there,” Zherana reported.

EFS was clogged with signals from the PRS throughout the facility, but I thought I could pick out the six nearest to us. Using SATS to help me get things right, I threw a metal apple at the wall and bounced it around the corner into the midst of our adversaries. Cries went up and the grouping of pips scattered, three disappearing when the explosion sounded. One came a little too close around the corner and was shot by Sage.

With Rare’s and my power armored hooves backing against the metal floor of the Stable, the four of us charged around the corner. Rare’s minigun chewed through one of the soldiers, but the other was wearing a flamethrower battle saddle, and our group split up, diving through doorways to either side, as he filled the hallway with flames. Sage and I were in a security office of some kind, next to dead Stable security behind a barricade of desks. The PRS soldier decided to go after us first. As flames filled the room, we climbed behind the desk barricade, which shielded us somewhat. The flames died down momentarily as the soldier set to work torching the other room, and I popped up with my combat shotgun. A couple blasts to that battle saddle and I was down behind the barricade again, trying to use my power armored body to protect Sage from the ball of flame that exploded outward as the flamethrower’s tank detonated.

We continued on like this, taking out every pony from the PRS we met until we reached the Atrium. The sound of ongoing fighting was close now, and as I peered over the railing, I could see the Stable-dwellers holding out in a café on the bottom floor. I was tempted to jump down there, but my recent leap from a lesser height discouraged me from attempting it. Instead, we’d have to descend via the stairs. That worked well, until we encountered some PRS soldiers on the second-to-last flight.

They quickly turned to fire at us, and I jumped behind a vending machine with broken glass from a previous firefight. Rare Sparks’s grenades thudded as she launched them at the PRS ponies, forcing them back down the stairs. Meanwhile, Zherana ran over to the ledge overlooking the Atrium floor and swung around to the level below. One of the PRS soldiers pursued Sage, forcing her back into a side room as she fired her shotgun behind her. I jumped out of cover and ran toward her attacker, my ripper roaring to life. Horror flashed in the PRS soldier’s eyes the moment that he realized there was no stopping the spinning blades from tearing through his neck.

The soldiers that had seen their comrade decapitated were stunned long enough that Rare Sparks could spool up her minigun and send them falling down the stairs full of lead. Shotguns were going off downstairs as the PRS tried to fight against Zherana. The rest of us hurried down the stairs after them, and Rare Sparks blasted a straggling PRS soldier with her auto-shotgun as we descended. Casting SATS, I lined up shots on three of the soldiers with my magical energy rifle and let off bursts into their backs. One of them turned to glowing dust, vaporized, one was burned and fell to Zherana’s next attack, and the third survived with only minor scorching on her armor until Sage ended her life with consecutive shotgun blasts.

“… something up there,” I heard somepony say from below us, followed by the movement of some of the red pips on EFS in the direction of the stairs.

Rare Sparks hurried toward the edge of the balcony while the rest of us made our way to the descending stairs. I fired my shotgun at the first startled PRS soldier that ran through the doorway. The shot embedded itself in his combat armor, as did Sage’s follow-up shot, which knocked him back and caused his pistol to fall from between his teeth. Zherana jumped in between us and kicked the previously fairly fortunate soldier against the opposite wall, snapping his neck.

I threw a metal apple through the doorway as the PRS soldiers trying to ascend cursed at the death of their comrade. The blast took out some of them and I ran in through the smoke, casting SATS as soon as I could see my opponents. There were two of them at the bottom of the stairs, both with magical energy rifles; one was levitating his, and the other was in a battle saddle. I fired my own magical weapon at the earth pony multiple times, the beams at first only scorching her armor, but eventually piercing it and cooking her flesh as well. Time returned to normal as her pip disappeared from EFS. At this point, I was barreling down the stairs at a fairly good clip and I just kept on, using my power armored leg to sweep out the legs of the other soldier. I miscalculated how strongly I was striking him, though, with the aid of the power armor, and I sent him tumbling end over end in the air to crash against the ceiling before falling ignominiously to the floor. Sage finished him off with her shotgun.

The other PRS soldiers down here were mostly preoccupied with Rare and the grenades she kept firing down at them from her convenient perch, but they did turn their attention to us as we took out the last of their comrades. I fired my magical energy rifle at them while trying to use support pillars as cover, and Zherana picked up the magical energy rifle that had been dropped to the ground and threw it in the face of one of the soldiers as she charged them. Together, we picked away at the PRS soldiers besieging the Stable-dwellers.

There was only a couple left when a PRS soldier in power armor emerged from a doorway on the other side of the room. She seemed shocked to see all her dead comrades, as she hesitated for a moment, which was all the time I needed. With no more missiles in my power armor and no way to resupply what had been custom-built for Shining Armor, I now had to rely on my rocket launcher. Unslinging it from my back, I loaded it and fired a rocket at the power armored pony. The blast knocked her back, but she shrugged off the hit and trotted forward, firing her minigun at Zherana, who had been in the process of stabbing one of her comrades to death with a piece of broken glass. Rare Sparks’s minigun fire swerved over to concentrate on her fellow armored pony, and it had some effect, the armor being damaged by my rocket strike. I loaded another rocket and fired it at the PRS soldier, but it went wide and destroyed a poster of Overmare Fairy Floss instead (which was really no great loss). The third rocket I fired did not miss its mark, and the PRS soldier’s head was blown clear of her body.

With that, the Stable-dwellers were saved, though it took a bit of cajoling to convince them to come out of the café. It didn’t help that the last time Rare, Zherana, and I had been here, we had threatened the Stable, but eventually we convinced them that we were here to save them. Given that we were claiming at the moment not to want to kill them while the PRS soldiers most certainly would, and that we’d just taken out every PRS soldier from the Stable entrance to the Atrium, they felt safer with us than alone.

We continued on as a larger group, though the Stable-dwellers kept to the back. That was all right, since many of them didn’t know much about handling weapons anyway. They were teachers and cooks and engineers, not security staff, the only ponies who’d been allowed to carry weapons in Stable 85. Some of them (in hushed tones) rebuked Overmare Fairy Floss for waiting to open the armory to anypony, as they felt it had cost them too many lives early on. Others rebuked her for refusing the PRS’s terms. Anything had to be preferable to wholesale slaughter, they thought. Of course, there were a few others that chastised them for even daring to question the leader of the Pinks, or others that less fanatically pointed out that everypony had agreed with the Overmare’s choice when she’d announced it, sure that the Stable door would protect them.

I kept all these discussions in mind as we continued deeper into Stable 85, picking up more groups of Stable-dwellers along the way. Everypony here was a Pink, of course, but were they all truly Pinks, or were some members of the other factions in hiding? Could there be the seeds of a revolution here? Whatever the case, Stable 85 would first need to be liberated from the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad. Then we could think about a change in leadership.

Eventually, we reached our destination: Stable 85’s clinic. The PRS soldiers were clustered in the hall, a couple of them firing through the clinic’s open door. I tossed a metal apple toward the group as they noticed us, and Rare Sparks opened up fire with her minigun. The PRS soldiers fled into the what had once been the Yellow living quarters, for those that had survived the onslaught.

I hurried forward, and a pony in power armor clanked out of the doorway, the two of us nearly colliding. Auto-shotgun blasts tore at my power armor, damaging the empty missile pods and piercing through some of the joints. I rammed my armored horn through the PRS soldier’s visor, but his eyes were far enough away that I didn’t injure him at all. He swung an armored foreleg at my neck, and the armor buckled slightly, nearly enough to pinch at me. I grappled him around the neck with my foreleg and pulled him to the ground, both our armors crashing noisily against the Stable floor.

A mare with an assault rifle fired at me from the Yellow living quarters while I was down until Sage arrived to shoot her and Zherana galloped into the living quarters, sowing confusion and terror among the PRS. I still had to deal with the power armored pony I was grappling and trying to hold to the ground. His auto-shotgun kept firing with a seemingly limitless amount of ammo, so I kicked at it with a hindleg, twisting the barrel off at nearly a right angle. As we struggled on the floor, glass crunched under our armor, the remains of bottles that the defenders in the clinic had thrown at their attackers. Not all of the bottles had shattered on impact, and I spied a cracked but intact bottle of cleaning alcohol nearby. Grabbing it in my magic, I poured the contents through the hole I’d opened in my opponent’s helmet. He sputtered and cursed and nearly broke free, but the worst was yet to come. Retrieving the lighter from my saddlebags, I lit a bandage on fire and dropped it into the helmet. My opponent threw me free as the alcohol ignited and he burned within his armor. He staggered around, crashing against the wall, before falling lifelessly to the ground.

Zherana emerged from the living quarters, leaving the Stable-dwellers to finish what she had started. Red marks were blinking out on EFS as they cleared away the PRS invaders with the help of Rare. Sage, Zherana, and I stepped up to the clinic entrance, and I was nearly shot right away.

“Hey, we’re the ones that saved you!” I yelled as I jumped back, “Check your Eyes-Forward Sparkle!”

“Sorry,” a voice that was not the Overmare’s replied.

I approached the doorway more cautiously this time and peeked in before stepping through. The clinic, like the rest of the Stable, looked like a warzone. Dead and injured ponies lay on blood-soaked blankets on the floor, the hospital beds assembled into a barricade for the defenders to hide behind, along with the doctor’s desk. I could see about twenty ponies in various defensive positions throughout the room, most of them wearing pink-dyed security barding. Judging by how thick the friendly pips were on EFS, there were forty or more hiding in the drug stores and the doctor’s living quarters. I hadn’t noticed on my first scan, but Overmare Fairy Floss was among those laid out for cremation later. A gray-coated mare with a red-and-white striped mane rose from behind the bed barricade to greet me as I trotted into the room.

“Hey, wait a minute!” she exclaimed as she raised her pistol to point at Zherana, “You’re the ones who forced your way into the Stable before!”

“Yes, we did,” I admitted, “I’m sorry about that; I wasn’t in my right mind then. Today we’re here to help you.”

The mare looked skeptical, but she lowered her pistol.

“I’m acting Overmare Peppermint Twist,” the mare introduced herself.

“Acting Overmare?” Rare Sparks asked as she joined us.

“Yes, Overmare Fairy Floss appointed me to take charge if she died and, well …” Peppermint Twist trailed off as she gestured to those they’d lost, “Are you really here to help us?”

“Yes, we are,” I said, “This was once my home too, for however brief a time. I cannot allow the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad to slaughter its inhabitants, no matter what my feelings toward the Pinks. You know, the Stalliongrad Equalist Party and the Pinks have a lot in common when it comes to how they operate, but I don’t imagine either of you would be willing to bow to the other, and at least you don’t try to spread your power to the rest of the Wasteland by force. I do think there needs to be some changes in Stable 85, but we can talk about that after the PRS soldiers have been cleared out.”

“What kind of changes?” Peppermint Twist asked suspiciously.

“Like I said, that can wait. There are pockets of resistance throughout the Stable, but every minute we spend here increases the chance that the PRS will snuff them out. Are you coming with us or not?” I asked.

Peppermint Twist agreed to come with us and bring the rest of the security forces with her along. We swept through the Stable methodically, clearing out any PRS soldiers we came across. With every pocket of resistance we saved, our numbers grew, but I was hesitant to split into multiple groups. Do that, and we could end up in the same position the Stable-dwellers were in when we’d arrived. The reactor, the orchards, the living areas, and the Atrium were all cleared out of PRS invaders until the cameras in the Overmare’s office displayed no unfriendly ponies throughout the Stable. Well, none that wanted to kill the inhabitants, anyway.

Overmare Peppermint Twist probably considered me to be unfriendly, despite my attempts to help the Stable. Once the fighting was over and before ponies were ready to begin the work of rebuilding, I presented her with a copy of the NEA charter. My friends and I explained to her what the North Equestrian Alliance was and why it would be in Stable 85’s interest to join it. Without allies, they’d be on their own, and with the destruction of the Stable door, there was no way they could remain sealed off from the Wasteland anymore. That part wasn’t what displeased Pepermint Twist, though; it was the conditions I imposed to allow them to join.

The NEA leadership had never explicitly given me permission to set conditions for inclusion in the alliance other than those set out in the charter, but I felt that the conditions I imposed upon the leader of the Pinks could only be for the good of Stable 85 and reasonable enough that the Overmare would agree to them. Stable 85 could no longer be ruled as a one-party dictatorship, with the Pinks forcing the other factions out by coercion or violence. Peppermint Twist begrudgingly agreed to my commands in order to gain admission into the NEA, allowing for the reconstitution of the Blues, Oranges, Whites, Yellows, and Purples, returning things to how they’d been when the Stable had first been sealed. All were Pinks when Peppermint Twist made her announcement, but ponies were able to move between factions and join whichever they chose, and the Overmare was shocked to see how many left the Pinks, either because they were sick of the faction’s actions or because they were really members of the other factions in hiding. There were even a few Yellows that had survived Fairy Floss’s purge by falsely defecting to the Pinks before it was too suspicious. Still, the Pinks maintained the majority in the Stable, with 60% of the population, and Peppermint Twist was easily chosen as the next Overmare. She would have to be a different kind of Overmare from her predecessor.

Stable 85 was where my journey had begun as Doc, and it was safe once again, hopefully from both external and internal threats. The North Equestrian Alliance would be able to help with the external now, and it would be up to the Stable-dwellers themselves to prevent internal conflicts from arising. The PRS camp was still abandoned when we emerged back into the Wasteland, and I prayed it would stay that way. I turned my eyes to the darkened heavens, looking skyward as if to seek out the Goddesses, though the sky and stars were obscured by the ever-present clouds. The North Equestrian Alliance continued to grow even after the NLC had been destroyed. The NEA’s work wasn’t over; far from it. As it expanded and grew, its next task was to keep the PRS from doing the same. So long as the Ponies’ Republic of Stalliongrad Expeditionary Force was camped in Vanhoover, the north Equestrian Wasteland wouldn’t be safe. That would have to change.

[Max Level Reached]
New Quest: Nopony Expects the Stalliongrad Expedition! – Find a way to drive the PRSEF out of Vanhoover.