=Prologue=
What we’re afraid of most, is the unknown.
“Get inside! The emergency siren’s been activated!” called the frantic voice of a mare.
Working for Stable-Tec, I always knew when there would be drills, and this wasn’t a drill.
Immediately my mind raced. I began to activate the startup sequence for the stasis pods of the Stable I was working in. Fortune would have it that Stable X-01, a secret shelter specifically designed for employees of Stable-Tec and their families would be completed today, and nearly everyone would be inside it already.
I passed Sweetie Belle, one of Stable-Tec’s founding members on my hurried checklist to get the stable closed. Sweetie Belle was Stable-Tec’s lead designer, in charge of designing the insides of each stable and the technology that would keep ponies alive for however long they were in their shelter.
I raced to the door controls, but Scootaloo, another one of Stable-Tec’s founding members had beaten me to it. “You keep runnin’ that slowly and we’re all gonna be dead, Ratchet.” Scootaloo was the CEO of Stable-Tec and managed everything big and small inside the company, and one hell of a bureaucrat, even though she hated every minute of it. She gave me a half-joking half-terrified look and continued on her own checklist.
That just left Applebloom, who was in Fillydelphia, in a manner of speaking. Applebloom was scary creative and brilliant, (almost as smart as me) and was the inventor of the famous Pip-Buck, a hoof-mounted computer, and the Crusader supercomputer systems. I looked down onto my own Pip-Buck, a hoofheld PDA rather than the usual model to see her worried face on the screen.
“How’s everything in Fillydelphia? How’s the Crusader holding up?” I asked. I already knew the answer about Fillydelphia, but the Crusader mainframe needed to hold up for the Stables to communicate.
“I just heard an impact that sounded downtown, but the shielding around the core should be holding up. Almost all of the stables are activated and in the process of closing or close to it. How’s everything there?” she of course knew the answer if she could see the status of each stable, but sealing yourself underground in a shelter for fifty years is always a traumatic experience.
“Good so far,” though I could hear the detonations of megaspells against the shield undoubtedly put up by the Royal Guard and the Princesses. “I’m just glad we actually built these things. Hopefully Equestria will live on, free of this damn bureaucratic nightmare of a government that led us to this.
There wasn’t a response to that, but I knew she agreed. She simply nodded and my Pip-Buck once again went back to its normal status screen.
I jogged back into the atrium of the stable, where there were 50 identical stasis pods lined in rows along the walls and floor. Most of the pods were already sealed, their occupants sleeping in bliss while the world ended.
Quite a few pods were still open, those not fortunate enough to have made it into the stable before it closed, but there was only one pony left milling about the pods: Scootaloo.
It would make sense that she would be the last one to be up and awake, being the founder and CEO of Stable-Tec and all.
“I still can’t believe it. It actually happened. Everything. Destroyed. I hate this fucking war so much. It took everything from everypony during the war, and now this. I still can’t believe it,” she said, sobbing softly. I walked over and held her in my hooves, but that only made the crying worse.
“You know that this isn’t the end. That’s why we built these Celestia damned things in the first place, right? Not that Luna didn’t try to stop us,” I stood up on my hind legs and crossed my hooves, and said in my best ‘Royal Decree’ voice, “I am Princess Luna! We will win this war! To think anything else is downright treasonous!” She laughed at that a little.
“Yeah, at least we won’t have to deal with that anymore,” she chuckled, still sniffling. We both began walking over to my stasis pod. Just before I began climbing in, I kissed her as hard as I could. She of course blushed furiously, despite the fact that we had been dating well over two years.
“For luck. See you in fifty years?” I asked, already knowing the answer. She kissed back in response.
With a soft hiss and a click, I began the longest nap in history.
** ** **
The door actually opened long before I woke up, bathing me in the flickering light of the atrium. Wait, the atrium lights don’t flicker. Shit.
I awoke to almost complete darkness, all but one of the overhead lights had failed, and the last one flickering periodically. The one thing I immediately noticed, however, was that every single pod was open and empty. Every. Single. One. Oh, this was bad. I felt like I had just overslept for school again, but about a hundred times worse.
I immediately reached for my Pip-Boy, PDA style Readius model and checked the date.
I thought I saw the date wrong it was so strange. 200 years. That took a full ten seconds to fully click before my brain officially flipped the buck out.
After about a minute of screaming an running around in circles like a foal, I gathered myself. Okay, the timer on the pods were all set for fifty years. I walked over and checked the display next to my pod.
‘Stasis Pod #42 malfunction. Power failure. Waking occupant.’
Well buck.
I took this chance to do a visual check of all the other systems of the stable. Just about everything had lost power, and keeping my pod online was the last straw. For some reason, the computer had decided that every other system was to be shut down to keep my pod online rather than initiate the wake up sequence. This included the door.
I opened the panel underneath the control console for the door and was greeted by a faint pink mist, which seemed to have fused the circuitry. Well, isn’t this one fine morning?
With no way to get power to any of the stable’s systems, I headed off to the armory for something to get this door open.
Even if this stable was only meant to harbor around fifty ponies, it still held a modest arsenal of weaponry. As the only stable equipped with accurate projections of the outside world, as opposed to the horribly over exaggerated predictions of aliens, zombie ponies, and deadly radiation, the only real threat was the radiation, which undoubtedly dissipated long ago thanks to the pegasi.
As I reached the formidable armory door, I pulled out my Pip-Buck, and got to work entering my lengthy access codes into the stable’s somehow still operational security system.
Unlike the standard Pip-Buck 3000, manufactured by Stable-Tec, which is mounted around the hoof, the Scorptech Pip-Buck Readius is a hoofheld pad which maintains a constant wireless interface with an implant in the brain. In short, it’s a wireless version of the famous Pip-Buck, with all its tricks, like EFS, a compass that could detect threats, and SATS, a magical targeting program, and a few more all its own. One of the many drawbacks is that it is easier to break, and is difficult to manage if one is not a unicorn, but I seem to have gotten past that particular problem.
After about five minutes of tinkering, the door hissed open. The stench hit me before I could see what was inside.
Blood... So much blood...
It covered literally every surface, littered with rotten bits of flesh splattered on the back wall.
In the center of the room, was the body of a mare, a combat shotgun in her hooves, and most of her head missing, scratch that, on the back wall.
What’s worse, I knew this mare, even if only by association. Between the massive amounts of dried blood covering her hide, I could see the green fur covering her body. Her name was Bluegrass, a logistical supervisor for Stable-Tec.
I threw up, violently. The stench, the sight, everything. Celestia, have mercy.
The scientist in me did notice that the gruesome scene was very old, a hundred and fifty years old, if i had to take a guess. That meant that the other stasis chambers did open.
Did someone stop me from waking up? Why would someone do that? Did my chamber malfunction? Why didn’t I wake up with the others?
Momentarily occupied, I grabbed a military issue battle saddle, a rocket launcher to (hopefully) punch through the stable door, and my own personal .50 caliber Desert Pheonix and galloped out of the armory as fast as I could, leaving the gruesome scene behind.
Unlike Stable 1, and all other stables, which had huge, meter thick steel doors, Stable X-01 was equipped with a much thinner door, but more resistant to explosions and radiation made of an experimental alloy to be used in future armor designs. They were not resistant, however, to whatever pink stuff had been eating at the stable for two hundred years, and was significantly weaker as a result. I just hoped that whatever that pink stuff was, it wasn’t harmful to ponies.
Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Wild Wasteland - This perk unleashes the wasteland’s silliest and strangest. Not for the faint of heart or serious of temperament.
Special Attributes:
Strength: 4
Perception: 2
Endurance: 6
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 9
Agility: 5
Luck: 3
Special thanks to Kkat for creating absolutely phantasmagorical universe that so many of us have enjoyed and added to. None of this would have been possible without your genius and creativity.
Chapter 1 - Echoes and Impact Craters
=Chapter 1 - Echoes and Impact Craters=
Put that down, you don't know where it's been.
I braced myself against the back wall and braced for the inevitable explosion as my rocket raced towards the stable door.
What I wasn't expecting was an explosive decompression. Apparently the stable had seen fit to pressurize itself in the face of the pink smog.
Naturally, I was hurled out the meter sized hole in the door my rocket had made, landing straight into the middle of downtown Canterlot.
The first thing I noticed was that my lungs had suddenly been replaced by roughly lung-shaped blobs of lava that threatened to burn through my ribs.
Well, one mystery solved: this pink smog was definitely toxic to ponies. And the idiot in me completely neglected to get any healing potions from the infirmary. For one of the brightest minds of his time and a damn good mechanic, I’m bucking retarded.
Once I stopped coughing, or stopped enough to take a proper look around, I nearly collapsed.
Everything was exactly as it was two hundred years ago. The buildings, the roads, the shops, hell, even the long dead plants hadn’t been touched in two hundred years.Everything but the people, which I took this time to notice were also there, melted into the ground like pony shaped piles of pudding. That might be amusing if they weren't actually ponies.
More throwing up! Yay!
Well fuck. That means this pink stuff melts ponies as well as circuitry. What a wonderful morning. That also throws a kink in my whole ‘the world got its shit blown to hell’ theory I had going. If the capital city of Equestria remained intact, the maybe the rest of the country was too!
Unless this pink smog was the megaspells the country was hit with. That meant that the zebras had developed magically augmented chemical weaponry, which could make this a hell of a lot worse than our ‘projections.’
Regardless, I had to get out of the city, and fast. I started making my way toward the city center, Canterlot Circle, and thus toward the road out of this nightmarish distortion of my former home.
On the way toward the Circle, I decided to make one detour to my apartment, which was only a quick jog away. After all, I needed to pick up what little ammunition I owned for my oversized sidearm.
I moved as quickly as I could down the streets of Canterlot, trying to ignore the corpses of ponies all around me, melted into the ground. There was an eerie silence that filled the air, and there was no breeze at all in the usually pleasantly windy city. I genuinely felt like I was in a museum, trapped inside a giant display case; nothing moved, nothing breathed. More than once I turned around, Pheonix drawn at the sound of my own hoofsteps echoing off the stone faces of the buildings surrounding me.
However, I could not stop myself from taking in the magnificent view of the Princesses' castle. It seemed to rise above the cloud, disallowing it to defile the regal Pony Sisters' home. I did notice several large creatures circling several of the towers like buzzards, but I couldn't make out what they were from this distance.
Once I reached the apartment complex I lived at, I made the grim realization that the cloud had seeped into everything, including the buildings themselves, no matter how well they were sealed, thought they did decompress, just like the stable, albeit less explosively. Doing my absolute best to avoid the sight of ponies curled up in corners, frozen in their final moments. I could even make out the expressions of horror on several of their half melted faces. Ooh look, there goes my breakfast too!
My apartment was exactly as I had left it, though any form of cloth was now in tatters. I grabbed the two sealed healing potions I kept in the bathroom for emergencies, the .50 caliber ammo for the Pheonix, and the ring I was going to give to my fiance. I needed a reminder of better days after this nightmare. Running down the stairs and back onto the street, I downed a bottle of healing potion, and immediately felt better. Now having a much easier time to breathe, I sprinted down the street back towards Canterlot Circle, and out of this horrible place
I didn’t notice it until I was almost on top of it, due to the increasingly thick smog, but I almost ran into a figure standing dead center in the street I was traveling, and a rather tall figure at that. It wasn’t until I was a good ten feet from it that I noticed it wasn’t melted into the stone, but rather alive, if the pink cloud swirling in front of its nostrils from its breath was any indication. It was also an alicorn. The size of Princess Celestia and midnight blue, I assumed it was a much older Princess Luna.
Reflex took over, and I immediately bowed, but keeping one eye on the massive pony. Only, she didn’t move. She didn’t even look like she was aware of my presence; her eyes just staring blankly forward. I took this time to notice that it was in fact not Princess Luna, as her flank was completely blank. She also just seemed different. I couldn’t quite put my hoof on it, but she definitely was not royalty. Whatever it was preoccupied with, however, abruptly ended, and she focused her eyes on me. What I saw were definitely not the eyes of Princess Luna; they weren’t even pony eyes. They were solid black when I first saw them, but the pupils had contracted, and those eyes were now filled with hatred. Something very smart inside me told me to haul ass, and haul ass I did.
Sprinting around the massive pony, the ground underneath me promptly turned to vaporized stone as lightning erupted from the horn of the alicorn. Running as fast as I could, I turned a corner to see the large fountain of Canterlot Circle, where the alicorn promptly teleported onto.
That was so not fair.
A large explosion overhead distracted us both, and we saw what looked like a sonic rainboom without the rainbow, and a meteorite hurtling towards us.
AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCE!
BOOM
The meteorite impacted directly on top of the alicorn, presumably killing whatever the hell it was.
As I approached the crater, I noticed the gore-spattered remains of the fountain the meteorite had crashed into scattered all around Canterlot Circle, ruining the otherwise pristine scene left by the horrid pink smog.
I did not, however, expect the meteorite to talk.
"Wanna go home. Wanna go home. Wanna go home." Its voice was vaguely metallic, and rather annoying. The meteorite was spherical in shape, and about two thirds of a meter in diameter, with a big, orange digital eye staring back at me intently.
I waved my hoof back and forth in front of the eye, watching its response. It at least seemed aware of my presence, and somewhat sentient. Intelligence was a different story though.
"Uh, hello? That was quite the fall you just had. Are you alright?" The sphere stared at me quizzically, and started babbling. About space.
“Let’s go to space. You want to go to space? I like space. Let’s go to space.” Scratch that. Very annoying.
Doing my absolute best to ignore the sphere, I picked it up and tried to locate its vocal processor; if it was anything like a sprite bot or any other magically powered robot, it had speech processor and vocalizer. My search however, was cut short by a fit of coughing, this time bringing up blood.
My curiosity and patience temporarily put on hold, I latched the sphere onto the left side of my battle saddle, the other side still holding the empty rocket launcher, and sprinted for the street out of the city. Upon reaching the gates, I noticed that they were open, half melted ponies surrounding it, as if still trying to escape the clutches of the pink.
With no further time in my schedule for emptying whatever meager contents my stomach still contained from two hundred years ago, I pushed past the bodies and onto the road out of the city.
---===--- ---===--- ---===---
The long walk down the mountainside was rather uneventful, though I did have the company of my newfound extraterrestrial acquaintance who wouldn’t shut the buck up about space, but that did little to pass the time.
“Atmosphere, b-black holes, Jupiter, the big dipper, th-THE BIG DIPPER!”
“What!? What is so important about the big dipper?”
“Big dipper? WE’RE GOING TO THE BIG DIPPER!? SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCE!”
Yeah, this thing was going to die by my hands.
“I’m the best at space. Space, space, oh! Oh! Oh! Let’s go to space.”
Sweet Celestia have mercy. Haven’t I had a rough enough day without having to commit mechanical murder? I had heard of the early Crusader computer core prototypes having personality malfunctions, but certainly nothing on this scale. This was specifically designed to make ponies want to kill themselves. But no matter how annoying this corrupted computer core was, it was extremely valuable, and I needed something to trade for food and shelter, provided anypony actually survived those horrible chemical attacks.
Once my primary needs had been met though, I needed to get to Stable-Tec headquarters in Fillydelphia. The mainframe in that facility undoubtedly had more information than Stable X-01 did, and I had to find out what had happened to everypony.
“I know what happened. They went to space. Everyone should go to space. Hey! Let’s go to space!”
This was going to be one long walk, but I thought I at least saw lights in the distance.
Level Up!
New Perk: Echoes of the Dead - You’re new experiences in Canterlot have hardened your spirit. Your endurance has been increased by 1.
A very special thanks to Kkat for writing the original. This is going to be fun to play around in.
P.S. - I still need an editor if you feel you’re up to the task of chewing up someone my work and crushing my hopes and dreams. PM or comment if you’re interested.
