Fallout Equestria: Old World Dreams

by KDarkwater

Chapter 6

6

One…

Inhale. Slowly.

Two…

Exhale, steady.

One…

Inhale, again. Calmer this time.

Two…

Exhale, like a sleeping foal.

The tremors finally stopped.

Sling finally allowed her eyes to open, and the dim lighting for once proved to be a blessing as it failed to sting her eyeballs like an angry hornet. Had she not been shooting .357 rounds in the Stable corridor a minute ago, her vision would have been able to make out the lettering on the heat exhaustion advisory poster ten feet off to her left. But at least she could see well enough to not knock her head against a wall, and quickly saw herself away from the ER room where Tender Mane and Dr. Straight Jacket were furiously at work trying to save Ballast’s life—

—the screeches of a thousand bugs wailed at her ears, the lightweight revolver emptying the fifth and final round in the cylinder as her left hoof tried to find purchase atop his ragged neck—

Her legs stopped six feet short of the door to the reception lobby, her lungs once again repeating its previous calming ritual of inhale, exhale in four second metered intervals. After the third exhale the events stopped flashing before her, and her limbs no longer felt like giving out beneath her.

And she hadn’t even gotten to her daughter. How was that poor thing faring after what she’d just seen? What she’d done, and felt, as her little hooves pushed against his pulsing, flowing wounds, as her ears were assailed with all those horrible screams and gunfire? How long was she going to have to keep both bedroom doors open so she could hear whether or not her nightmares were getting too intense? Six months? A year?

Forever?

Once, Celestia, she prayed silently, her legs once more moving forward and into the lobby. Just once, I’d like a week where something doesn’t go wrong.

Her eyes began searching the lobby in quick fashion, ignoring the twenty-odd ponies in various states of dishevel and injury when she was certain they weren’t going to die in the next few minutes. She spotted at least one of her neighbors from her quarter of L8 huddled near the wall, nursing a bandaged foreleg with an ice pack, and by sheer luck the corner of her vision caught sight of Cloud Wind’s grayscale tail—

—spotted her night light walking right alongside the pegasus, quickly making way towards an empty lounge sofa on the other side of the room, and felt her heart flutter as she studied her face. Damp with moisture, a partially-slicked mane and forelegs, but otherwise unchanged from the last couple of minutes. Downcast, sullen….but alive.

It was Windy’s face that told her the tale. Even in such dim, red-hued lighting, it was hard to miss the glint of tears in her eyes, and her snout looked like it was never more than just two seconds away from crying, and she knew then that her suspicions about her El-Tee were right.

She was anything but fine.

It was a simple affair to separate the two. El-Tee seemed happy enough just to get the lounge sofa to herself and let the two mares walk away without a word, and Sling dragged her friend off to a corner with about six feet of empty space around them where she could despair quietly in somewhat more private circumstances.

“….how hard did she take it?” she asked softly. It wasn’t even a question of “if”, and at such a time as this it seemed a little silly to say “Is she okay?”.

“….not as hard as I would have at her age,” the pegasus mumbled, her voice broken and quiet. “Still….just a kid, she kept wondering if Ballast was going to die, hyperventilating most of the time. Amazing how well a hug and a soothing voice works on you two. Just wished I’d dried her off first, my stable suit’s half soaked now.”

Sling was almost ashamed to acknowledge that her little girl seemed to be handling her first radroach outbreak better than her mother had. “….wished I was that strong, the first time….you think she’ll need—“

“Counseling? Definitely,” Windy answered the question quickly. “You can try talking to her if you want, but I think she’s better off with Doc Heart Tone or Doorbell.”

The indigo-maned unicorn almost allowed herself to leave the conversation there, but Windy’s voice hung up at the mention of Heart Tone very briefly, enough to catch her attention to it and notice that the pegasus seemingly had to force herself to sound calm and sensible.

And she knew why almost immediately. “So what about you?”

There was the briefest of whimpers from Cloud Wind’s throat as she choked up, eventually tearing her gaze away from the filly on the lounge sofa. “…..I never want to see her like that again…just a kid, it’s not fair….”

Despite the fact that she was altogether grateful that somepony had been there for her squirt, she never expected Windy to let herself get this beat up over it. Cared too much, some might say. “….you were there when she needed somepony. And I feel better knowing somepony will take care of her if anything ever happened to me. She calls you “aunt” for a genuine reason, not because she thinks it sounds cool.”

Windy’s wings shook in place, one of them eventually unfolding from her side to stretch itself out in a desperate effort to wring her despair out of her psyche. “I know. That’s what makes it so hard to see her like this. Oh Luna does it hurt…”

In the blink of an eye she found herself hugging the pegasus with one foreleg, faintly recalling the mare’s ironic statement of how well they seemed to work for the unicorn and the squirt. “You see you and yours hurting, and you care so much it hurts you too. That’s not stress or psyche issues, it’s family. And who’d want family that’d let you carry it all alone?”

For once in their long, storied friendship, the pegasus couldn’t come up with anything to say to her, and simply laid there and allowed the emotionally unbalanced unicorn to be the one to give a comforting shoulder to shudder and sniffle into.

It wasn’t to last, fortunately. In short order Windy managed to pull herself back together, and while she wasn’t quite the collected and sensible pony she knew her to be, she was at least done moping around and despairing in vain. Her thundercloud grey eyes showed only trace amounts of tears behind them as she forced herself out of her friend’s reach and back to work. “O-okay now, get back to the squirt before she starts wondering about the birds and bees, wouldja? Don’t want that talk muddled with confusion about how mares might do it and I gotta talk to the Overmare anyway.”

Of course you’d brush it off with a joke like that, Sling snorted to herself. “One of these days you’re going to find yourself that special somepony and finally have a reason to stop pestering me.”

“And miss that delightful shriek of horror that amuses me so? I can only hope you’ll put up with my “pestering you” to the end of your days.”

She answered the pegasus with a telekinetic slap across the back of her head, though she knew it would ultimately do nothing but encourage further teasing. “Maybe if you didn’t pester me so much everypony wouldn’t be whispering about us “closet lovers” when they think we aren’t listening.”

Windy’s left foreleg began to rub tenderly at her abused skull as she pondered the wisdom imparted to her, and her subdued whisper caught the unicorn off-guard. “…..you may be onto something, there….”

“….somepony said something like that to your face this morning, didn’t they?”

The pegasus shrugged her withers, deciding that now was a good opportunity to move on with her duties before she got dragged into a talk she wasn’t ready to have. “…we’ll talk later, when this is all over.”

“Yeah,” Sling whispered back quietly, though she was certain she wasn’t quite loud enough to be heard by the departing pegasus. “….later….”

A quick glance around her alleviated minor fears about unwanted eavesdropping ponies lingering about, as everypony was too caught up in their own affairs to bother paying attention to hers. With a sigh of relief she wandered her way back to her lounging child, who was now tapping the front of the lounge sofa with a forehoof and an apprehensive taint on her face—

“Is he…is he gonna make it?” Light Tail blurted, stumbling over her words as though she were still struggling with the concept that she might have just witnessed a pony’s last painful moments of life.

“He’s with Doc Straight Jacket now,” she answered with a solemn touch. “We’ve given him the best chance we could.”

Light Tail’s eyes were glued to the wall across from her, unwilling to tear themselves away from whatever mental images she was forcing herself through at that moment. “…I should’ve done something. Something other than—“

Sling was beginning to get this ugly, gut feeling that her daughter had already gone through this with Cloud Wind, and despite whatever “Aunt C” had told her she was clearly still struggling with it. If this was a conversation the squirt had had before, well, it looked like she was going to have to go through it again, this time with her mother. “Honey, you did more than I asked of you. I was yelling at you to find me somepony to help me with him, and you jumped right in to do it yourself.”

The filly flinched in place slightly as a distant stattaco of rifle fire echoed through the walls, but she was too despondent with herself to bother caring about it. “I should have gotten help—“

“You helped,” she cut in, not willing—or able—to hear her night light degrade herself like this. Even now, looking back at the horrible notion of her little girl plugging Ballast’s shredded neck with her own hooves to stem the bleeding, she felt a rush of pride, of unrepentant love, for the little filly she’d labored to give birth to for the five most incredibly painful and exhausting hours of her life. “There were two dozen of the blasted things in front of me. If you had taken off to find help like I’d told you, there wouldn’t have been anypony left to save by the time you came back. I know you were scared to death, but you still did something. You did what another pony would’ve done, and gave me the time I needed to get that gun reloaded and a levitation spell on Ballast. You dragged him out of harm’s way until Windy could give us a hoof. You are the reason he has any chance at all in that operating room. I know Windy’s been through this with you already, so don’t tell me you don’t believe it.”

“That’s just it,” El-Tee mumbled darkly, still staring at that wall and tapping at the sofa. “I don’t. I keep thinking I should’ve gotten somepony smarter, or taken that first aid kit outta my bag and used it—“

“Do you know what to do with any of that stuff in there?” she asked next. If El-Tee was going to be all analytical of herself, she might as well make sure her daughter didn’t miss anything in the process. “How to apply the antiseptics or how to use the hemostatic clamp when you need to control the bleeding while you tie off severed arteries? How or when to use the collagen agent to induce blood clotting, or the suture kit to stitch a wound? How to set a broken bone and secure it with a splint?”

Light Tail’s eyes finally tore themselves away from the wall to look her mother in the eye, wide with confusion and surprise at just how much work was actually involved in simple first aid. “….w…well….no. Not really, now that you’ve gone and told me how much work it is….”

“Do you think anypony you could have found outside of medical could have done any of that?” she asked next, her mind already anticipating El-Tee’s rebuttal—

“Aunt C?” the filly quipped immediately…and just as Sling predicted, though she grew more concerned when a series of pistol shots rang out somewhere in the halls outside medical without getting even a startled jump or a flick of the ear out of the kid. “I mean, if you know all that stuff, then most of you security ponies probably do too.”

“They do,” she answered. “But in a situation like this, their job is to secure the stable and keep ponies safe. And if you think about it just a little harder, you’ll realize how incredibly unsafe it would have been to have even tried to do anything but what you did. Staying there was suicide, he needed help, and the best place to get him help was right here. So when Windy and I tell you that you did everything you could, we really mean it, because it’s exactly what we would’ve done if we could have. Windy took my place in shooting those bugs so I could take over for you, but until then you were absolutely needed where you were and what you were doing. I was too terrified to concentrate on shooting and putting pressure on his neck at the same time. You understand now? You did what you should have, when you should’ve, and nothing else you could’ve done would have made any more of a difference no matter what you tell yourself.”

El-Tee’s eyes gradually lost their bewildered glint, and her face grew sullen once more as she went back to staring at that damned wall, as if she were almost ashamed of herself. And it was infuriating. “….that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I can’t stop seeing all that blood and…and how my stomach folds in on itself whenever I see how his neck looked when I saw it—“

—Sling’s heart tugged in place, her left eye tearing up and her tail flicking at the sound of a shotgun blast, maybe forty feet from the front door—

“—or how it felt under my hooves when I tried to slow down the bleeding. And I can’t stop wondering how it musta felt ta him. To feel that kind of pain, not able to tell anypony what hurts, or talk to ‘em….or….or say any kind of a good-bye…just…choke on his own blood and air...”

Another tear dropped, and a third began forming in her right eye but held itself back. Her entire ordeal was beginning to sound exceptionally familiar to her. Oh dear Luna, my poor baby…. “….I know it hurts,” she croaked, her voice slightly hoarse as she forced away a brief flash of Hoofprint’s eviscerated remains and the unholy splatter of blood that had turned the walls to a slick crimson. “It hurts you in the stomach, like your heart’s going to get sucked into it, and you keep going back to that moment. You’ll look at it, at what you’ve done, and keep asking yourself…why? Why me, why him? Why did it have to happen, why couldn’t it have turned out better…”

El-Tee’s eyes shifted away from the wall again, glimmering with tears and….and something else. Something in her eyes that tried to speak to her without words, and that did not even register or acknowledge the three short bursts of automatic rifle fire down the corridor at that instant. “…why’d you have to be the one to find him. To see what you saw….and not be able to do anything to change it….”

A sputter of a gasp gurgled through her tightening throat, frozen in shock at the subtle—but unmistakable—allusion to Hoofprint aired to her ears. How….how did this child even know that she’d been the one to find him?! How….

“….I think, more than anything, we wish we could’ve been there sooner so that nothing would’ve happened at all,” Light Tail continued with those glittering orbs of tears and pity. “You were locked in the security armory. You couldn’t even get yourself out. And that’s what hurts. That you were cooped up like that and safe, while he was cornered. You think you could’ve done something, that you could’ve saved him and instead you were stuck behind a locked door while he…while he died alone, and scared. I think I could’ve done something if we’d gotten up the stairs a few seconds earlier instead of messing with Torchlight’s head...”

Yes. No mistake now. Intricately, exceptionally familiar to her. “….I….I think we oughta talk about this later,” was all the mare could muster in response. “When all this is over and things go back to normal. We both need it.”

Light Tail’s body heaved heavily, a sigh of exhaustion bellowing from her small lungs. “….tell me that story again, from after we woke up. About those wheat fields and the moonlight….take me out of here…."

Gladly, the mother agreed silently, thankful to have something other than bloody corpses or a gravely-wounded pony to focus her mind’s eye on. She titled her gaze up to the wall behind her night light, clearing every wandering thought process out of her head as quickly as she could manage—

A second shotgun blast outside disrupted her attempts to initiate her daydreaming, and a slight growl of frustration slipped through her throat as her eyes snapped back open out of reflex—

—a splinter of light curled out into the air out of the corner of her eye, and her gaze darted off to the side to track it to its source—

—tendrils of blue energy peeled out through the cracks between two wall panels a few feet away, extending their reach with every passing moment and beginning to crackle ominously as they drew near. Several other ponies that had been right in front of this wall had somehow vanished entirely without her noticing or hearing them (and she noted with disdain that none of them had thought to warn her or her daughter either). Many of the injured and wailing in the lobby had by now begun to take notice of the energy build-up beginning to take place at other sections of the room, and took steps to expedite themselves away from the danger and piling into the center in one large concentrated mass.

Sling only had enough time to grab Light Tail and yank her off the lounge sofa, and had barely thrown herself over the filly before the room exploded in a roar of thunder. There was the briefest flinch of an impact to her back….

….and then nothing.

--------------------------------------

She couldn’t recall if she’d been dreaming, or sleeping. She only remembered talking to her daughter, trying to soothe her injured psyche, and….

….and that was it. Her mind was too addled with pain and….

….and the sharp crackle of fire.

Her eyes snapped open, her senses revitalized by the sharp fear and terror of a fiery death, and wished that she’d been having a nightmare.

Most of the floor of the lobby was slick with water, pockmarked with small puddles in a seemingly random pattern throughout the room. Her head, forelegs, and much of the forward half of her body were all soaked, though the heat of the nearby fire consuming the lounge sofa on the other side of the room had already begun to dry her. She felt something heavy—but cushioned and comfortable—pressing down upon her body, pinning her to the cold floor of what looked like the reception lobby of the medical wing. Several sections of the walls were shorn and ragged, with outward-pointing shears of scorched and warped metal suggesting an explosion had occurred somewhere within the power conduits behind them. The ceiling above the fire was slowly being obscured by a growing cloud of black smoke, but so far she could still breathe without getting any of it in her lungs. The red lights that once pulsed and waned in a predictable cycle now remained bright and constant—a final fail-safe built into the tertiary lighting system in the event that main power failed completely, to ensure ponies could see well enough to get out.

And not one single soul was in sight. Nor could she hear anypony out beyond the broken, half-open doorway. She couldn’t even see any sign that they’d been there at all. The only thing she could find that didn’t belong was a pair of shattered flasks a few feet in front of her, with several shards held together only by the adhesive label identifying the flasks as….

….healing potions?

She slapped her tongue about inside her mouth, probing along the roof and the insides of her cheeks, and quickly tasted a lingering sensation of strawberry, one of the most common flavors of healing potions she knew of. Now she was beginning to understand why she couldn’t remember how she wound up on the floor—whatever had injured her had likely knocked her out on impact, and somepony had been kind enough to force a couple of potions down her unconscious throat. It was a miracle she hadn’t choked on it. An injection stim potion would have made better sense, but it was entirely possible the pony in question had no idea where to find them.

That still left her pinned to the floor by a couch. Damn thing might have even been the reason she needed the potions in the first place. Had she come to on her own, without the aid of restorative potions, she wouldn’t have dared to risk aggravating a potential head injury with even the simplest of spells. But with only the weight of the couch giving her any degree of pain and given her current situation, she felt quite a bit more comfortable with the idea. And she didn’t really have much of a choice.

Damn Stable ponies had turned their back on her. As usual.

A surge of magic began to flow through her horn, bringing a pleasant tingling to her head, and with a few simple mental alterations to the pattern flow a telekinesis spell took shape and enveloped the couch. With the couch in her grasp, she willed it to be flung across the room, out of her way, and felt its weight tug hard on her hold as it flew away from her and crashed onto the floor to her left. Momentarily disoriented by the effort, she released the spell and allowed the mana flow to settle down back into her horn, shaking her head as a bout of nausea began to sneak its way into her. Heavier than it looks….can’t let that wind me out, gotta focus, gotta find my baby oh gods El-Tee where did you get to—

A frantic set of hooves broke up her tearful thoughts, clomping against the floor in the depths of the medical wing, and their rapidity and lack of weight gave her a shock of hope—

And for the second time this week, her prayers were answered in the way she wanted them answered—by the sight of her little girl, healthy and moving on her own, as the poor thing came dashing into the lobby, slipping on the water as she went and clutching a small leather pouch in her mouth. The instant she spotted her mother upright and staring back at her, she skidded to a stop, splashing thin wakes of water across her legs and belly as she gently set the pouch and its fragile cargo of fresh healing potions onto the floor.

“Holy L….Mom, you’re okay?! You—“

Sling couldn’t remember re-activating her horn’s magic, or conjuring her telekinesis spell once more. All she would remember was that she was so ecstatic to see her little girl that she literally willed her to be drawn into the tightest, most secure embrace she could give, and it was so. El-Tee didn’t even notice the spell herself until she was being flung towards her mother in a seemingly uncontrollable flight into her waiting forelegs.

“—oooooawwwoooah wait wait too fast—“

The spell field around her tiny body dissipated, leaving her helpless to avert her fate, but Sling didn’t care. She just wanted some physical assurance that she wasn’t hallucinating, that this was Light Tail and that yes, she was going to be okay—

“Oh gods oh gods honey so happy you’re not hurt!” she sobbed into her daughter’s mane, her forelegs wrapping around her tightly and hugging her close to her chest. “You’re not hurt, right I—“

She shouldn’t have said anything. The mere mention of the possibility of injury brought a warm, slick wetness to the attention of her chin, and she pulled her head away just in time to see the gauze padding and bandage wrapped around her little baby’s head stained red with fresh blood, and a trail of red creeping down the side of her face.

Her shriek of terror, while soft, was unmistakable, and that cold, hard panic began to creep back inside her. “O-o-oh Luna not again—“

Light Tail’s legs began to push against her in an effort to twist herself out of yet another death hug. “M-mom, quit it, I’m okay—“

But Sling barely heard her. All she could think about was Thursday morning, when she’d found her lying in a daze and covered in crimson, barely capable of speaking, and all the fears and night terrors she’d suffered at the thought of her daughter never coming back to her. “Where are those stupid potions?!” she shrieked in a huff, frantically grabbing at the pouch left behind on the floor and pulling it to her with a mindless fling of magic. “Just stay s-still, t-these’ll fix you right up—“

“Mom, stop, calm down I’m fine—“

“You’re not fine! You’re bleeding, just hold still—“

--------------------------------------

This. Was. Getting. RIDICOULOUS.

Every hour she was getting sucked up into a super hug of love and tolerance and death and it was ridiculous! She wasn’t that cute!

….well, okay, maybe she was, but it was still crazy! And now Mom was having a panic attack after just seeing the cut on her head she’d wound up re-opening when she banged it on the cabinet door where she’d found those extra healing potions. This had to stop!

And what better way to snap a stupid adult pony to their senses than to slap it into them? So that’s what she did. She reached up with her left foreleg and smacked her mom across the snout with a light-hearted but firm swipe, and all of a sudden Mom’s blabbering and crying came to a sudden and abrupt halt….

…..as did the pouch she’d stuffed full of potions. Mom’s spell died out the instant the shock of the hoofslap hit her, and now that pouch was falling to the floor and it was going to break every single flask if she didn’t catch it! Ponies needed that stuff!

The jingle of glass was close, and on a whim she squirmed her way out of Mom’s forelegs, twisting herself back around as she fell—

—was shocked at just how close that flying leather pouch really was—it was barely three feet away from them when she’d broken free, and closing fast. She barely had time to process it, but she had to catch it before it could get by her—

—on a whim she jabbed her head out, snapped at it with her teeth—

—caught it by its closure string just as her hooves touched down on the floor and her horn inadvertently flaring to life with a telekinesis spell to try and cushion the pouch’s flight so that it wouldn’t tear free and keep going. It worked, barely, and though the string tugged at her front teeth it remained in place, and she gently shifted the pouch down until it was dangling from her mouth of its own weight before releasing her spell.

The look on Mom’s face when she turned back around was priceless, and she couldn’t help but giggle and laugh at it despite the surreal and terrifying things that had been going on for the last four minutes. Mom was just sitting there on her haunches, her eyes wide open like she’d just been shocked, her forelegs now holding onto the empty space that had once contained a little filly, and her jaw just…hung there, wide enough to catch bugs if she stayed that way for much longer. But at least she wasn’t hyperventilating anymore.

“Hey, Equestria to Mom!” she squealed with a snicker, waving a hoof in front of her mother’s eyes, though she had to rear up on her hind legs a bit to do it. “I’m down here now!”

Mom’s eyes finally blinked. Once, at first, and then again, and then began resuming their natural involuntary blinking rhythm as her forelegs settled down onto the floor, her neck craning down to stare back at her with a slightly bewildered stare.

Oh crud, she’s gonna ground me if I don’t do somethin’ quick—

“I’m fine,” she said, putting extra emphasis on ‘fine’ in case Mom needed a little extra clarif….extra assurances! Stupid brain, you know the word you were gonna say, work! “I just banged my head a little running around back there! I got these for you.”

The front of Mom’s mane began to slide down across her head, soaked and flattened down into three large separate bangs, one of which began to fall over her left eye. “….wha….”

….oh Luna, maybe I shouldn’t have smacked her—

“I-I’m sorry!” she stammered quickly in apology, quickly setting the pouch down and plucking one of the potions out with another telekinesis spell. “I just…you got hurt. Somethin’ exploded right behind us, knocked the couch right into you and put you out. I didn’t get hurt ‘cause you practically shoved me under you. I tried to get somepony to help me get you out but they all ran off when the red lights went solid. Tender Mane and Straight Jacket barely got any help movin’ Ballast, I didn’t wanna get in their way but…but nopony else even listened! I couldn’t find Aunt C anywhere so I just started shovin’ these things down your throat! And when the second one didn’t wake ya up I went and found more, but I guess it was enough and—“

Trap. Mistake, whatever you wanted to call it, she’d made it, because she was back in that death hug before she knew it, and it was getting OLD. She wished everypony would quit hugging her so much! So emotional! So—

“No, no, don’t apologize,” Mom’s voice cried quietly into her mane. “You did good back there, okay? Very good. Just…just where did everypony go to?”

This time, getting out of Mom’s grasp wasn’t that much of a fight, she let her go willingly. She set the potion back into the pouch and flung her mane back out of her face when it began to flop around in front of her. Still wet and all. “I dunno,” she croaked back. Now that Mom was okay, and she was okay, the harsh reality around her began to come back to haunt her, and she was suddenly aware of how dangerously close to…no, no don’t think about that think good stuff—

“Everypony just left. Down the hall, back towards the library, but when I went down there it was locked. I think they might’ve tried to get to the agri levels. Thing is—“

The PA system—which somehow, someway, despite the lack of power, was still working—fizzled to life, and it did an excellent job of explaining things for her. Complete with a really loud klaxon alarm and everything.

“ATTENTION,” the robotic, disembodied female voice bellowed out. “EMERGENCY. SPARK GENERATOR FAILURE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. YOU NOW HAVE TEN MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE. REPEAT: EMERGENCY. SPARK GENERATOR FAILURE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY—“

Mom’s eyes shrank into pin-prick sized pupils with a sharp gasp of terror. She even started to tremble a little. Her tail tried to flick itself around, but only managed a pitiful jerk here and there, and shook a little itself.

Which was fine, because that wasn’t what the stupid thing was saying five minutes ago. Five minutes ago it was telling everypony to evacuate level seven. “…..that’s….new….”

Mom’s body began to lay down, her head collapsing into her forelegs, and only when she started crying and sniffling did it finally strike the little one just how serious things were now.

She’d never seen Mom cry like this before. And it was scaring her.

“….m-mom, what’s wrong?” she dared to ask, though she couldn’t muster much of a confident or cheery tone. She sounded as scared as she felt, and that couldn’t have been doing Mom any favors at all. “….mommy? Talk to me, please? What’s going on?”

Mom’s body heaved, her lungs sucking in a hard breath of air, and she did this twice before she could bring herself to come out of her little impromptu hidey hole. Her eyes were….what did they call it? Bloodshot? All those red veins that crept up around the edges?

….o….oh, Celestia, NO—

“I’m….I’m sorry, honey,” Mom gasped tearfully, barely able to bring herself to say what she was saying. “….but….we have to leave.”

No no NO we can’t leave we CAN’T—

“….w-whaddya mean, leave?!” she tried to stall. They couldn’t leave! Not without Aunt C, or Tender Mane, or Paint Splotch or Spiner or….or everypony. “We can’t just up and leave everypony!! It says everypony evacuate—“

“Honey, listen to me!!” Mom’s voice boomed over her, somehow finding strength and sternness to speak to her like the mother she was supposed to be, and it stung enough to make the filly shut up and listen. “In ten minutes the blast door to the surface won’t have enough power to work. If we don’t get out of the stable by then, we never will!”

Light Tail felt her heart go cold and still at the unspoken prospects of how that was going to turn out. “What?! That’ll trap everypony inside with these stupid bugs!!”

“I know!” Mom screamed back, struggling to fight back her tears and failing miserably. “And we can’t stop it! With the power gone we can’t stop it!! We’ll….we can’t stay here anymore. We have to go. Now!”

She felt her legs begin to tremble, worse than Mom’s, and suddenly the world was getting a little blurry and wet as her eyes welled up with fresh tears. “….but….we can’t just leave everypony here….not Aunt C, not Jam or Emmy, or Spiner or….we can’t leave them here….”

For the third time in two minutes she was wrapped in another one of Mom’s hugs. But this time she didn’t care. She wanted Mom to hug her and tell her that everything would be fine, that everypony would find a way out in time even though she knew otherwise, she wanted Mom’s closeness and body heat to chase away the growing cold in her gut, she wanted to know that unmistakable feeling of unconditional love and security she’d taken for granted her whole little life.

She got some of her wishes, at least. “I’m sorry,” Mom’s voice tried to soothe her. “I’m sorry I can’t make any of this better, or that we can’t find Windy in time. But I want us to make it through this. I don’t know what’s waiting on the surface, or if it’s any better than things are down here. But if we don’t leave, we….we may very well die down here. I want you to live.”

There. She said it. Said the last thing she wanted to hear. That if they didn’t leave they’d….they’d die. They’d die, and Aunt C would too, and Jam and Emmy and Miss Amethyst and everypony else she knew and cared about….all gone. Just like that.

And no matter how much she felt like bawling her eyes out into her mother’s wet chest, howling and crying at how terribly unfair life was all of a sudden….

….she couldn’t.

Because she suddenly refused to believe that Aunt C would just roll over like that, or let anypony on her watch go so easily without a fight. Mom might’ve believed otherwise, and she had a good reason to, she was her mother. The only thing she ever wanted in her life was to see her happy and safe. If that meant leaving the stable….then it was probably the safer thing to do, in the off chance that she was wrong and things didn’t turn out for the better. But if anypony could save the stable and keep them alive….

It was Aunt C. She was that awesome. Daring Do-level awesome.

“ATTENTION. EMERGENCY. YOU NOW HAVE NINE MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY—“

….nine minutes to leave. Nine minutes to fight their way through a horde of disgusting bugs, crack open the stable door that opened only once every thirty years, and get out.

They could do that.

She fought back a sniffle, withdrew a foreleg she’d not even known she was hugging back with, and nuzzled her mother’s neck in a gentle caress before drawing back. “….ya don’t have to be sorry,” she mewled through a tight throat. “It’s not your fault.”

Mom’s face was as close to breaking down as hers, but she was strong enough to fight it off and steel herself for the biggest decision she’d made in her life. “….we’ll need to run the whole way,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with sorrow. “Stay close, don’t fall behind. Any bugs you see, push them aside and plow through. We don’t have time to fight our way out. Understand?”

“….let’s just get this over with,” she squeaked back, wiping a tear from her eye as she took the pouch of healing potions and floated it back over onto the receptionist’s desk. With all that was going on around her right then, she didn’t even notice the weight of the things.

With one last, confidence-killing sigh of despair, Mom stood up on all fours and began to gallop out of the lobby, her horn flaring to life with a ball of light and flinging it out ahead of her as she banked around the door and darted into the hall on her right.

She kept pace with her as best she could manage, and to her surprise she found it rather therapeutic to have such a simple act as running take her mind off of the enormity of what she was doing. When she was running at break-neck speed, trying to keep up with her mom and putting every ounce of mental effort into it, she wasn’t thinking so much of the fact that she was leaving behind the only home she’d known her whole life, her friends, her favorite after-school nesting grounds. Before long, the task took up the majority of her attention, and her sorrow and tears were rapidly fading to a sharp pang of sadness that she could manage well enough without hugs and kisses and soft voices.

And that stupid, loud klaxon wouldn’t stop blaring into the halls, which helped take her attention off of their faces.

Mom wasn’t the fastest pony in the stable, but she could still book it along at a pretty hard pace with enough motivation. Within thirty seconds they’d already begun dashing up the stairway at the back end of L7, skipping the door to L6 and L5 altogether in a straight shot for L4. It was taking all of her energy just to keep from falling behind more than a few feet at a time, but as they emerged from the stairway and into the administration level she found her mother beginning to pull away from her as she broke into a hard run. This hallway was a straight shot all the way to the other end of the level, and the Overmare’s office was tucked away into a little corner on the right side. Before she knew it, she couldn’t make out the bands that made up Mom’s braided ponytail anymore, and she was getting further away with every step.

“Mom, wait!” she shouted at the shrinking mare’s backside. “I can’t—“

—a vent grating popped off and clattered onto the floor between them, and an insanely large and hideous cockroach the size of Miss Teakettle’s cat skittered out from the vent, chirping wildly at the sight of a fresh pony galloping towards it.

Light Tail’s natural and totally lady-like response was an incredibly high-pitched shriek, her eyes locked onto its massive mandibles as they clicked together in anticipation of its meal, and without conscious thought her horn fired off a telekinesis spell, wrapping around the vent grating and slamming it into the bug as hard as she could. The adrenaline boost helped a great deal, squashing it against the wall with a disgusting wet crunch…

….and suddenly Mom wasn’t that far away anymore. In fact, she could reach out and touch her flank if she wanted.

Too bad that bug wasn’t alone. Not even two seconds later she heard more chirping and screeching behind her as she passed by the vent, and the adrenaline began to boost her running speed at a much stronger rate. Now it was Mom who couldn’t keep up—

“Oh shi—RUN!!” Mom howled in terror, her hoofsteps beginning to match those of the filly in pace and speed. “I think you made them mad!!”

“They can eat poison and DIE!!!” she shrieked back, not even thinking about where she was going anymore. Just wanted to get AWAY—

“Turn right at the end of the hall!!” Mom shouted after her, just as she leapt over what looked like a discarded gun belt and a thin, tall object next to it.

Right! Right! I can do right!

The bug chirps grew more numerous and closer, from other places on L5, which only furthered her desire to beeline it to the Overmare’s office before they could find her and feast on her delicious hind legs an—

Oh gross, I’m not delicious! she admonished herself in horror as she slowed herself down at the end of the hall so as not to run right into the wall. Why would I even think of myself like that oh Luna that was just sick—

She’d barely pulled away from the wall and started running again when she heard—or felt, rather—Mom’s cool hearing protection spell wash over her ears, dampening every imaginable sound around her—

—three rapid gunshots rang out behind her, accompanied by a pair of grotesquely satisfying screeches that sounded like a radroach’s dying screams—

“—YOU NOW HAVE SEVEN MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“

Her mounting frustration at the stupid alarms and the stupid voice finally got the better of her. “I know, I know, you won’t shut up about it!! You’re not helping!!”

“Quit fighting with the stupid computer and watch yourself!!” Mom’s voice yelled back at her, quickly growing closer as the Overmare’s open office grew larger and more inviting. No bugs in there, at least!

“I am watching!”

“No, honey slow down—“

“I’m fine Mo—“

Her hooves bumped into each other as she slipped through the doorway, sending her tumbling through rump over hoof and straight towards the Overmare’s desk face first—

—Mom’s magic encased her body and caught her just before impact. She felt the entire back half of her sling up and overhead for a couple of seconds as her momentum shifted it forward, and allowed her body to slump back down onto the floor with no resistance or attempt to soften the landing as Mom began slamming the door to the office shut.

“…..w-w-whoa,” she murmured in a broken voice, her brain momentarily scrambled by the near-miss with the desk. It was sorting itself out pretty quick—in short order she remembered where she was, what she was doing, how she got here, and how much it would’ve freakin’ HURT to slam into a two-hundred year old wooden oval desk like that—

—the door clanged shut, and Mom’s magic left her body, allowing her to stand up under her own power once more. “That’s what I meant!” Mom hissed sharply as she trotted past her, her horn flaring to life and tapping away at a console behind the desk. “You gotta be careful running like that, you nearly tripped yourself right into the desk!”

She felt the flesh beneath her coat begin to burn in shame, and her ears instinctively dipped down as she hunched away from the desk. She didn’t mean to blow Mom off like that, she was just…. “….s-sorry….I didn’t know…”

—felt her body leap backwards as the desk shuddered free of the floor in a sudden jolt, then began rising up on several gear-driven pistons, revealing a hidden staircase beneath it.

“—OW HAVE SIX MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“

Her heart climbed out of her stomach and back into her chest where it belonged, and she allowed herself a brief snit fit at her mother to calm her startled nerves. “Jeez, would a little warning have killed ya?!”

Mom’s subdued laughter as she stepped back from behind the rising desk wasn’t quite as comforting as she’d wished it could have been—not when she was busy looking over the gun she’d picked up in the hall as if she were preparing for imminent combat. “Call it payback for getting the jump on me Monday evening.”

--------------------------------------

Light Tail mumbled something, but between the hearing protection spell, the motorized desk lifting up, and the hidden floor panel sliding out of the way to reveal the stairwell underneath, she couldn’t make much sense of it. Much of her remaining attention was centered solely on the 10mm pistol she’d picked up off the floor in their rush to the office (she absently remembered it as #28 in the inventory list), inspecting its slide and hammer, its safety and magazine release, its finish and the brightness of its orange, diamond-tube encased arcane crystal inserts embedded in the iron sights, the condition and exterior feel of the four magazines that had been stuffed inside the gun belt’s two mag pouches.

Because if she stopped thinking about it, she wasn’t sure she could go any further. Her heart was shattered, her resolve to vacate the only home she’d ever known faltering with every step upward. She’d personally never been any further up than L4 her entire life. With every movement forward (and up), she’d be going further away from her home than she’d ever been. It was more immensely terrifying than she could have imagined, and she didn’t want to contemplate it or she’d lose her nerve and stop moving.

Even the thought of losing Windy couldn’t compare to that. How terrible a pony was she to consider the life of her only friend less of a tragedy than the idea that she was about to leave her life behind her, even as she cried inside at how the pegasus’s would end up? That she valued her comfort zone and her daughter so much that she didn’t care what happened to anything else around her, so long as at least one of those things could survive? Would Windy understand? Would she be mad at her as her lungs ran out of oxygen? Would she cry as she lay suffocating, thinking her “niece” and friend were suffering the same fate and had no way to comfort them in their last seconds of life? Would she cry for somepony to hold her just so she wouldn’t die alone?

Was she ever going to live this down if she made it out of here? Did she want to?

She slapped a fresh magazine into the pistol’s grip and ripped the slide back into battery before her thoughts could stray any further down such dark paths. She put them out of her mind, wiping away the tears they’d inflicted, put every future thought and action into doing anything but standing here and thinking about what she was leaving behind. She still had her daughter to look after, and El-Tee would not survive up on the surface without her. Anything she did now, would have to be for her.

She damn well didn’t feel like doing anything for herself.

She pulled the ball of light from her illumination spell towards her, whispering a silent enchantment upon the recessed accessory rail on the pistol’s dustcover and then embedded the light ball into it. She watched it seemingly melt into the metal and coalesce the majority of the mana at the front of the frame, just below the barrel, projecting a tight, white beam of light outward like a flashlight, allowing her to search the darkness without having to drain battery power from her flashlight. When the beam showed no dangers lurking about in the dark, tight corridor beneath the Overmare’s office, she picked up the partially-expended magazine off of the floor and stuffed it into a mag pouch mounted ahead of her right saddlebag. Where she was going, she wasn’t sure she’d find any more of these, and she would need every piece of equipment.

“T-this hall goes to a set of stairs a hundred feet up,” she heaved in a single breath. “They go all the way up to the surface level.”

“And the door to the stable?” El-Tee asked as the mare began the short trek down the stairs. Only a dozen steps down.

“What about it?” Four steps down already, and the filly was right on her tail. Literally, the thing’s face was actually touching it.

“How are you gonna get it open when we get there?” she pressed gently, her snout batting the mother’s tail aside, only to have it return to her face.

“….when the spark generator’s about to go out, the control systems send a signal to the door to wipe out the access code and unlock itself,” Sling answered after a moment’s contemplation. No harm in telling her any security secrets now. “The PA is telling us how long we have before we run out of power to work the controls and get the door open. The door was specifically designed to withstand a direct, point-blank detonation of a megaspell, and our particular stable door has enchantments in place to keep a unicorn’s magic from interacting with it. No power, no way out.”

Bottom of the stairs. The embedded light spell in the pistol began to fizzle, and she injected a burst of mana into it to keep it going another few minutes. Still no threats in the hall, and she could even make out the door at the end that would lead them to the surface level.

She hoped the door had been serviced recently.

“….is…is there gonna be anypony up there?”

“Only one way to find out,” she answered, not willing to extrapolate aloud on why they hadn’t seen anypony else since they’d left medical. Either they’d already piled up in the “Gate Room”, as she liked to call the stable door chamber, or everypony up past L7 had evacuated down to the agri levels when the power started to fail and had yet to make their way up. Or were trapped.

Either way, she couldn’t help them.

Thankfully, Light Tail chose not to pester her with question after question, allowing them to traverse the hall in relative peace. It took her half a minute to fight the door open, unfortunately, and she might have cursed the maintenance crew for their lack of oversight had she not been aware of how hard they’d been pressed just to keep anything running for the last two months. Paperwork SNAFUs, or requisition forms getting lost somewhere in the system between the work terminal and the mainframe. Or just plain not having enough ponies to see to all the repairs and upkeep all the time.

She did, however, curse the designers who thought five flights of uninterrupted stairs didn’t need a set of lights to illuminate the path upward. And for an escape route built for the Overmare in the event of a violent rebellion, something like a working light bulb might’ve been an awfully good idea to invest in. Her only solace was that the idiots who designed the place had long since passed from this mortal realm, and that she had an illumination spell she could use to light their way up. A second ball of light formed at the tip of her horn, tethered to it and shining its light in every direction except directly into her eyes, giving mother and daughter all the light they needed to make the ascent a quick one. Within three minutes they reached the top of the stairs, the exit door ominously lacking any lettering or indication that they were about to depart onto the surface level. A twist on the circular hatch handle rankled her ears with its bone-shuddering screech, but otherwise gave her no trouble or resistance as she swung the door open—

—her EFS blipped three red hash marks at the bottom of her field of vision, offset to the left but barely moving, indicating either unaware or distant threats, and she wanted to keep them that way. The sounds of the evacuation klaxon were back in full force, but there was no guarantee that it would be enough to mask any sounds they made.

“Move quietly,” she whispered back behind her, her body lowering down as she began to creep through the door. Her horn drew the light spell in the pistol back into itself, killing the light beam to ensure that it didn’t prematurely announce her position. There was enough tertiary lighting that she didn’t need it anyway. “Talk quietly if you have to talk, otherwise stay silent. Stable door’s close.“

A tug on her tail—with teeth, no less—was as good an “okay” answer as she could ask for, and she began to slink through the living-room sized transfer block, her eyes settling on two separate doors, one to her left and one immediately ahead. The mental map in her head wasn’t quite as clear about the layout of the surface level as it was about the hidden path that got her up here, but with the red marks on her left she could at least rule out that general direction for the moment, and she went straight for the door ahead of her. This one didn’t screech or complain nearly as much, its hatch-operated locking bars creaking softly as she tugged it open and pushed the door aside with her head. A simple peek through, however, set her hopes back.

The room beyond was a dead-end. Littered with empty, rusted storage bins and a few rotted wooden crates, there was nothing else to indicate that this room had seen a pony’s visit in decades. With a silent curse she tucked her head back through and went for the other door, ignoring the red hash marks as they slid over to the center bottom—

“—GENCY. YOU NOW HAVE FOUR MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“

Her race-track heart began to beat harder, though it was already working itself half to death with all the fear and adrenaline coursing through her. Four minutes was not that much time if one wasn’t paying attention to it. She let her telekinesis pull down on the hatch, twisting it open and cringing at much louder the locking bars were—

—the three hash marks began to shift about, one sliding away from the other two at a slightly faster rate. What it meant, she couldn’t say. She hoped it was just milling about and not actually trying to search out the noise she’d just made.

This door, thankfully, led to a short hall, forty feet in length, with no obstructions or damage that might slow their progress. She let herself trot forward a little, momentarily surprised when she heard only her own soft hoofsteps and jerked her gaze back behind her—

—Light Tail was right where she expected her, no less than two feet away from the tip of her tail, and her little hooves barely made a sound as they tip-toed forward on slightly shaking legs. Good girl, easy does it—

—eyes forward again, and that faster hash mark began to grow further away from its two friends….and with much more noticeable shifts in its position. Very close. Possibly even in the next room.

Please let this be the door to the Gate Room, please please please pretty please—

End of the hall. A subtle, soft pull of the hatch—she didn’t want to alarm that moving threat any more than she already had. Happily, the door was as soft as the first one she’d tried, barely squeaking, and she stuffed her snout into the opening crack and pushed the door off to the side—

—her ears felt a lessening of air pressure as her body slinked through into the much larger and cavernous room beyond. Bathed in bright red from a row of overhead crimson light bulbs, there was little mistaking the room’s identity.

Gate Room.

Coming in from a hidden side path rather than the main stairway, the view wasn’t quite as…majestic as it might have been. She emerged into the room on a raised platform, a short set of stairs in the middle leading to the grated floor four feet below. Ahead, she could see a small security station at the other end of the platform, its glass window long broken and the ravages of time eroding at the metal walls within.

To her right, embedded into the solid steel wall, was the “Gateway” to the surface. A massive, mechanical arm hanging from the ceiling stood ready to press itself into the open port at the top of the gear-shaped stable door and pull the door inward and off to the slide along a set of recessed rails spanning the length of the wall. Inset in the center of the stable door, in faded but legible black lettering were pony-sized numbers:

“115”

“—AVE THREE MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE. ALL RESIDENTS MUST EVACUATE—“

Light Tail’s body bumped into her hind legs, distracted by her first sight of a world beyond level six, and somehow, despite the trauma and horror of losing everything she’d ever known, she still had the capacity to be awed and floored by things she’d never seen before. “…..oooooh, wooow….it’s huge….”

The overwhelming sense of wonder in her voice made Sling wonder whether she even wanted to tell her little girl the gravity of what they were about to do. “It’s our only way out,” she said in return, creeping forward once more and scanning the room with her attention focused specifically on where those red hash marks could come from once she entered the command to open the stable door. “And when it opens, any bugs on this level will know it and come looking for a meal. Be ready to run through the second you have room.”

“How long will that take?” El-Tee pondered, going so far as to inch past her mother to a place where she could get a better look at the door. “It’s….huge. And only opens once every generation. Not like it gets used a lot.”

How eternally grateful I am that you continue to use that brilliant mind of yours to completely derail my nice fantasies with a dose of pesky reality! “….good question. Like I said before, only one way to find out. See that console off to your left?”

Light Tail’s red-hued body shifted slightly as her head twisted around to the podium-mounted console right next to the stairs. Though its monochrome green monitor was dusty and well-worn, she could still hear its internal components buzzing with energy and the computer systems humming in anticipation of commands to carry out.

“The one I can’t reach ‘cause I’m too short?” the filly mumbled derisively.

“Oops,” she squeaked sheepishly. “My bad. Watch the doors.”

Light Tail reluctantly pulled her gaze away from the sight in front of her and did as she was told, moving out of her mother’s way as the mare quickly stepped up to the console and huffed at the controls, blowing ungodly clouds of dust off that swirled away into oblivion. Dirty as hell up here, she noted with slight concern. Like nopony ever comes up here unless they’re Selected. No reason to…

“….wow,” Light Tail’s voice whispered again, but this time there was no hint of wonder or amusement to her words. Rather, a tone of sadness. “….I guess, we’re the only ones that made it up….”

Her lit, flared horn paused just short of pressing the telekinesis spell field into the pull-out keyboard, her mind suddenly rushing back to—

—Windy’s face, beaming back at her in mid-laughter as she walked ahead of her—

“—OU NOW HAVE TWO MINUTES TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“

—a tear dripped through her right eye, rolled down her cheek as she resumed poking at the keyboard, no longer willing to look at the keys as she punched in the commands that would suck up the last vestiges of power in the stable. Hesitated just before the “ENTER” key, a slight resistance to her escape plan still compelling her to…

….oh gods, I’m really….

Her spell field slapped the key before the thought could finish, and allowed the consequences to quell her hesitation. With a loud, brain-rattling groan, the massive arm began to crunch forward, its torturous movements echoing through the metals with such agony that she almost felt sorry for it. It was like listening to an aged, decrepit pony trying to walk without the assistance of others or a walker and hearing their brittle, old bones crinkle and crack under the effort.

She lost all sympathy for old metal constructs when her EFS began adding more red hash marks than she could count, quickly. She began to wonder if the things were nesting up here instead of at the generator, and they would not be happy with the silly little pony that had just woken them up.

“Oh snap,” she huffed loudly, whipping around to scan through the doorway leading towards the main elevator in the room behind her. “El-Tee, get behind me!”

She needn’t have said anything—the disjointed chorus of shrieking radroaches was enough to send the filly dashing behind her mother. Between the mechanical piston above them slamming into the door and the evacuation klaxon it was impossible to tell how close the bugs were now. Didn’t matter in the end, she didn’t have enough ammo to kill them all if this door didn’t open fast.

Mother and daughter inched down the platform stairs to the floor, Sling swinging the pistol about at every conceivable point of entry for the bugs—an air vent, the room with the main elevator, the security office that was now up and to her right if it had a vent anywhere in there. She didn’t even bother watching the hash marks, they were flooding her vision. She eventually shut the EFS off entirely just to keep from getting sick.

Just as the door controls began pulling the stable out with an agonizing screech of unlubed metal grinding against each other, the first of the bugs emerged into view in the main elevator room.

And it brought TWENTY friends to the party.

“Sh—“

Her magic squeezed the trigger, cutting off her swearing with an intense—but sound-muffled—boom and a flash of orange flame, then squeezed again, and again each time the sights came back down into alignment from the recoil—

—the muzzle flash obscured much of the gruesome effects of her shots, though the dying shrieks and shrill cries were enough to signify her success—

“—YOU NOW HAVE ONE MINUTE TO EVACUATE THE STABLE—“

—two more shots, another shriek that somehow brought a sick grin to the side of her mouth. Cathartic to hear them scream like that, after all the damage they’d done. The massive door began to roll along the rails, whether aided by the mechanical arm above them or another mechanism she didn’t know about—

“Mom, it’s opening!!!” Light Tail screamed as high as her voice could manage, her words growing more distant with each passing moment. “Hurry up!!!”

She ceased shooting, turned and bolted like a rabbit—

—shrieked in surprise as the door, barely pulled off of the entrance, was already beginning to tumble back over the exposed hole—

—her tail was the last thing to come through the entrance. Barely a moment later, the gear-shaped door slid back into place, shaking ages of dust and—

—and rock….

Sling skidded to a stop in the excavated tunnel, barely acknowledging the noise the door made as it shuddered into place and rumbled the walls of rock around them. Actual, solid, rock. With stalagmites hanging from the ceiling and jutting up from the ground. Her nose, tickled by the falling dust, instigated an instinctive sneeze to blow it away, allowing her to take her first, unobstructed breath of fresh air in her life. And it was like nothing else she’d ever inhaled. She’d never realized how…stuffy, how stale the air in the stable was, because she’d never known anything else. Now she did.

And when the last vestiges of ancient metal finished their echo through the caverns, she was introduced to an entire new sensation, one even an unpowered stable had not provided.

Natural silence. Save for the crumble of bits of rock as they clanked down the wall and the sound of her own steady breathing, she couldn’t hear a damn thing.

It took her less than ten seconds to forget all of these new sensations, once she began to realize she was now standing outside the stable door. With the giant “115” numbers facing outward now….

….and everything she’d ever known now locked behind it. No longer able to take the way out.

Her throat clamped down on her wind pipe at the thought of Cloud Wind, choking her of its own volition as she began to wonder what was happening to her right now. Maybe surrounded, maybe stuck in the agri level with the rest of the stable, suddenly aware of the dying power and the oxygen recycling systems with it….

A gentle, tentative poke in her side brought her gaze downward, and she remembered again why she’d just abandoned her home. Light Tail’s electric blue irises gleamed with wetness and understanding as she nuzzled her mother’s foreleg, as if hoping the contact might physically ease the heartache she was being hit with right then.

“Aunt C’ll be fine,” the little one said, full of quiet confidence that the mother didn’t feel. “She’s too awesome to let a little thing like lack of power keep her down.”

Sling’s eyes, though beginning to fill with tears, refused to allow them to bubble forth, instead bringing back to her a distant memory—

—Windy’s hoof poked at her hindquarters, at the mark of a shooting star streaking across the front cover of a closed spell book, and she couldn’t help but start to squeal like the nine-year old filly she was at the sight of her totally awesome cutie mark—

—the memory faded, and somehow Sling’s eyes had fallen upon the cutie mark emblazoned on her left hind leg, and now the tears began to trickle free. “….h-honey, it’s not—“

“It’s okay, Mom,” the filly insisted, nuzzling her leg again. “Aunt C won’t croak like that, she’s too awesome. She’ll be okay. But if we’re gonna help anypony now, we gotta find us a new place to live. I don’t know how much longer the stable can stay in there after all that, but it can’t be long.”

Her breath hung up inside her lungs, unable to break the hard truth. And hearing how much…calmer, and steadier Light Tail seemed to feel when she said that…it was almost as if she believed it, and that the thought was what gave her the strength and courage to even contemplate walking out of this tunnel of rock. How could she bring herself to do something so cruel as to shatter that hope with the cold reality going on behind that door? That without the spark generator to keep the stable going, there was no air either?

—a bout of laughter bounced off the walls as Windy’s latest prank came together in a single, spectacular blast of ice cold water sprang forth from the shower head, her spell field around the hot water faucet winking out from the sheer shock to her nerves—

Her tears were blinked away out of necessity rather than heartlessness. If believing that Cloud Wind would save the stable from asphyxiation in a matter of seconds gave her night light the fuel to keep burning, then she would let her believe it until her mane and tail lost their colorful luster. She didn’t have it in her to break her heart. Even if it would have been the wiser thing to do.

And they would need to find somewhere else to live now.

“…t-then I guess we’d better get moving,” she somehow managed to say. Even in this dead, natural silence, her voice was a mere whisper, her light-hearted nuzzle across the filly’s crest being her best signal that she was ready to start moving once more.

Light Tail took the hint and started walking down the tunnel, her indigo tail flashing about and turning that dazzling streak of electric blue in the middle into a light show that had inspired her name. And Sling Shot still lingered, her weary, wet eyes looking back at the steel door and its faded “115”, looking at it now as a tomb, rather than a guard against the unknown, wishing now that she were still on the other side, letting that door be her shield against everything beyond her world and keeping what she knew as close to her as she could manage.

She never thought she would have been so devastated to leave it all behind.

“I’m sorry, Windy,” she cried to the tomb. “I wish I could’ve done better by you….good-bye…”

Sling Shot tore herself away from the door, and her world….

….and into her new one.

Comments

[Deathpony]

Really looking towards the next, good chapter

[DreadTheDarkness]

[The Amateur]

Well... that was devastating.