Fallout Shelter Fourteen

by ReachNetwork

Rating: mature
Tags: Crossover, Alternate Universe, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark
Length: 45515

When diplomacy fails and we're capable of our own self-destruction, we seal what we can away... but nothing stays sealed forever.

Welcome to Fallout Shelter Fourteen, after a year and six months in development, hopefully it will have been worth the wait.

NOT FALLOUT: EQUESTRIA, NOT FALLOUT: EQUESTRIA, NOT FALLOUT: EQUESTRIA
NOT KKAT'S UNIVERSE, NOT KKAT'S UNIVERSE, NOT KKAT'S UNIVERSE

Fallout Shelter Fourteen uses similar terminology and ideas, I.E - they're ponies in a vault... stable, as Fallout: Equestria. Fallout Shelter Fourteen takes place entirely within a Vault of the same name. Any hate comments will be hidden. If you don't like my story, give it a thumbs down and leave me alone. I'm not gonna sit here and be flamed because god-forbid someone write a Fallout fiction that isn't the Fallout: Equestria universe. Keep your unsupportive thoughts to yourself.

For the longest time peace and prosperity was taken for granted. We had no reason to believe that it would ever end. But the others that we share our world with weren't used to such luxuries. War had been waged for centuries on and off... just not by us. For a time we remained on the sidelines, content to watch and push for negotiations, cease fires, and compromises. That time did not last. When we were eventually forced into the conflict... if only we had known it was the beginning of the end.

When the end came it was quick, in under two hours everything that was, ceased to be. Cities were leveled and those unfortunate enough to be caught within the fires that swept across the landscape were spared the worst of what was to come. Those that survived had to pick up the charred, fragmented, annihilated remains of civilization... except those that took shelter in Fallout Shelters. For a time the Fallout Shelters were spared the worst of the surface world until unethical experiments and research was committed upon the unsuspecting dwellers.

For over 200 hundred years Fallout Shelter Fourteen has remained sealed. Its inhabitants safe from whatever might lay above...

Coverimage: http://img09.deviantart.net/b12c/i/2015/074/d/e/fallout__shelter_fourteen_cover_art_by_bluerainipony-d8lvzo1.png

FSF contains allusions to sex, mild violence, abominable actions, etc. Not hyper sexualized to the point of which I'm tagging sex. It's not what it's about. Violence is in depth, but not gore-y, so I'm not tagging that either.

Art by:
BlueRainiPony
ApplesSunshine

Published 2015-03-16 06:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-03-16 06:00:02 UTC

Chapter 1: Enter Fourteen

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 1 - Enter Fourteen

---***---

Sometime in 2277

“Count to one hundred and then go.”

“Got it! One, two, three, four, five...”

Everypony scurred off to find a place to hide on level 3 of our Vault. The Overseer didn’t always appreciate where we went to hide, but they had never told us that we couldn’t play. I myself ran down corridor C outside of the Hub. At least this time I wasn’t picked as the finder, like I normally was.

Down a set of stairs I found myself on the first floor of the Hub of this level. I could see a few others trying to find places to hide.

The rule was we couldn’t leave the level we were on. So after years of playing, everypony used the same hiding spots. The only thing that kept the seeker from always winning was you had to tag the hiders. And because there was the occasional unicorn or pegasus pony, the tip of the horn, or a brush with feathers didn’t count.

I went down the corridor and took a right. I ran into the restricted sign that was placed in the middle of the hallway. I looked around, nopony was around to stop me. So I didn’t see the harm in trotting past. Besides, I can’t have been the only pony in the years that I’d lived here to go past it.

Down the restricted hallway I went, why it was restricted I didn’t know until I came to a sign that said Structurally Unstable Area. I thought that the place was made of metal, how was it not stable?

The hallway took a right and I kept a slow pace until I had heard.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

I picked up the pace, the hallway took a right down some stairs. I followed them, I kept going, they went down three full flights before coming to a door with a sign on it.

Collapsed Area, Do NOT ENTER.

Well darn. Anyways, I did have a pretty fresh hiding spot. At least I had never used it before. I couldn’t say the same about everypony else though. I did feel like I was cheating. But technically by rules, I hadn’t left level 3. I was on the fence.

And I sat there, and I waited.

And I waited.

And waited.

It must have been at least half an hour before I got bored. Scratch that, I was bored twenty minutes ago. At least the hiding spot was good, right?

I was about to go back up when I heard the clat clat clat of somepony coming down the stairs.

I was so busted.

There was no where to go. My impending doom was upon me. That was until I heard the vents come on.

The vent down here was abnormally large, industrial sized like the ones on level 4, which I had only seen a few times. The fortunate thing was is that they didn’t lock, as they had to be cleaned on occasion as this was part of the Vault’s central vacuum system. I opened the hatch.

I crawled in backwards because I needed to see what was going on, and so I could pull the grate shut. The lower level light helped hide me, and having a black coat helped too. The only real problem would be my mane. A very true metallic silver that reflected light quite well. The clat clop clat clump got louder while I waited. (It looked like I had the hair of an elderly pony, something I had been teased for on more than one occasion.)

The pony who came down the stairs wasn’t any of the ones I had been playing with, it had been a security guard fully dressed with the helmet, the baton stick and the body armour that covered the vast upper portion of their torso.

The guard, I couldn’t tell if it was a stallion or a mare, was at the bottom of the stairs. They waited a few moments and then turned around and went back up.

Well that was weird. But more importantly I had been able to fit in the vent, I guess being tiny for my age wasn’t so bad afterall.

I opened the hatch again and crawled out, I was covered in dust. I shook really hard to get it out before I went back up the stairs, slower than I normally would have incase that guard took their sweet time going back up as well.

When I got back to the top I had made it to the Hub where somepony shouted.

“Hey! There she is!!”

I felt somepony touch my sides, I turned around.

“Gotcha.” they said, it was the seeker.

“Where’d you hide? We’ve been looking for you for ages.”

“Well that would take the fun out of it then, wouldn’t it?” I said.

“Oh come on! Tell us... please??”

“It’s a secret.” I quipped.

The crowd groaned. I laughed a bit inside.

***

I used that spot for months, and I had almost given it away a few times...

“I’m sticking with you Silver.” Shade said, “I’m tired of getting caught first.”

“No, go away. And it’s Dakota. Call me Dakota”

That didn’t dissuade him.

“Well fine.” I said, “But... you’ll have to keep up.”

I took off at a gallop, giving it everything I had. I left the lounge and entered the second floor of the Hub.I didn’t even bother using the stairs I went right up over the railing and down two meters. It wasn’t that far down.

When I hit the ground, one of the guards who was on the second floor yelled at me.

“Hey! Silver don’t do that.” He said my actual name, the only time my parents called me that was if I was in trouble.

It was Officer Olivetree, he was alright.

“Sorry!” I said asI ran off down the hallway that lead to the restricted sign.

After that I stopped playing Hide and Seek. I didn’t want to give away the little secret space that was mine.

I explored the vent a bit this time going in head first, I found it forked off maybe five feet in, it went left and right. The path that went left dropped off lower into the vent system. The path that went right went to another grate. It was pitch black beyond it, but that was expected right? The whole area had collapsed. That’s what I thought until I pushed the grate down and crawled out of it. I couldn’t see anything but this wasn’t a collapsed area that was for sure.

My enthusiasm dropped off quickly as it was getting late and I would have to leave soon. But I swore to come back but this time with a flashlight so I could see what was up. I crawled back out, then realizing I would have to find a way of closing the grate that I entered through because I couldn’t if I went through head first. My magic didn’t work. No pony’s did.

It was just something we had all heard about in Pony Tales and stories.

***

The following day I came back, this time with a roll of string and a flashlight powered by MF cells. Magic Fusion I think is what my dad told me. He wasn’t sure why I wanted it either, but I had asked for weirder stuff in the past. (Onions and Scissors)

I attached the string to the top side of the vent because it fell forward on it’s hinges, hitting the ground, instead of opening upwards. I crawled through, yanking the string hard and pulling the grate back up, I heard it chink as the clips caught it and held it in place.

When I got through to the other end, I flicked on the flashlight and picked up the end in my mouth.

I was rewarded with shelves.

Lots of them.

And they just seemed to go on and on.

Shelves full of books. This was a library. A few feet to my right I found a door, it was powered down and locked from the outside. This must have been the door at the bottom of the staircase.

Unlike my filly and colt counterparts, I actually liked reading. And I had since extinguished all the book in our library upstairs a year ago. So much stuff, where to start? I started by simply looking around.

I trotted around, it was odd that we didn’t have access to this. Like the hiding spot, this was on level 3, technically.

I think I was about half way around, and that took me a good 10 minutes to skirt the outside of the walls when I found there was a light on the floor in the middle of one of the double wide aisles, this must have lead straight back to the door.

The light was a circle on the floor. I looked up, a few stories above the floor there was a single circular window. There was only one place that I had seen circular windows before in the Vault. The only window that was round was the one that allowed you to see into the Overseer’s office from the mane hub on level 3.

The Overseer knew this was here. And she knew quite well. She saw it every time she went into her office.

I realized I was pointing my flashlight back at her window and I saw movement in the office. Snapping to action, I shut off the flashlight and froze. The only giveaway I was here would be my reflective metallic silver mane.

I saw a figure appear at the window, before I saw a blue glow and the blinds drop. I sighed in relief.

Wait. Blue glow?

Our Overseer was a Unicorn, why could she use her horn while no other unicorn, including myself, could!? I had tried to concentrate before to summon a spark or something, anything to be able to use it. The harder I tried the more I felt tired. Well, to be honest this was the only time I had ever seen her use magic. Maybe it was only in her office. That didn’t explain why nopony but her knew about the library. Or that she could use magic... somehow?

I continued on, the light now gone from the floor. I found a bunch of desks with terminals that were powered down.

After pushing the red button to turn on the power accomplished nothing I decided to get a book instead. They were in alphabetical order by author’s last name. So that didn’t help me find anything I particularly wanted to read. I supposed one of the terminals might have been able to tell me books by genre if they had been working. I left and decided to come back another day. When I had more time to actually sit down and read something.

Chapter 2: Kicking The B.U.C.K.E.T.

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 2 - Kicking The B.U.C.K.E.T.

2276

My Cutie Mark! I got it, I finally got it. At the age of nine, I wasn’t last place, but I was pretty far back in the pack. It didn’t show anything special, it was just a circle with a line that swirled towards the centre. I myself wasn’t entirely sure what I meant. But it was time to finally get my own PipBuck.

When I couldn’t even tell the Overseer what it meant, and my parents couldn’t figure it out either, after I had taken a series of tests to determine what I’d be doing here in the Vault. I scored better in math, as I happened to find a book that taught some advanced techniques in the secret library, and I had been studying the computer terminals so I was fairly sure how they worked, I just hadn’t been able to access a working one. I wasn’t too great in the endurance run, but over short distances I could run like the wind. I got the wonderful job of working maintenance after a few lessons in computer terminals. I didn’t know how to fix anything, but they said that’d come as the job went on.

I wouldn’t even be typing this out if I hadn’t been put in maintenance, because I wouldn’t have known how to use a computer otherwise. And that was thanks to my mentor, Engi.

He was pretty nice. I was one of the few ponies that were allowed to access other parts of the Vault. I was finally able to see level 4 (I had seen part of it, ONCE before), where most of the pumping systems and de-radiators were, in addition to the Vault’s magical reactor core. I had been on level 2 a few times to fix some terminals what weren’t working properly either.

One day I decided to work on a project, when I was Eleven (2278), I started throwing parts together. After a few weeks I had finished making a portable power source. Using a bunch of MF (Magical Fusion) cells in series I was able to deliver a large amount of magical current to anything I hooked up the jumper cables too. It was pretty heavy, but compact so I could carry one around in a saddlebag without anypony getting suspicious, what made them so heavy is that they also had single lamp built into it. I had taken most of the MF cells from flashlights we had been given that were broken. I did the repair, but told them it also needed new cells in it as well. It lit up like it was new, I had more cells to work with, and the customer was happy. (I couldn’t be caught dead stealing Vault supplies, so I took ‘dead’ ones instead.) Flashlights, why did we still use them if we had a PipBuck? I wasn’t complaining but still. Curiously, I turned on my PipBuck light. It was formidable, but not splendid. I was starting to understand why we still used flashlights whenever the generator decided to stop working.

Did I not mention that? Our main power generator, a Magical Reactor had been on the fritz for awhile now. Since I was 5, we’ve kept it working this long. Blackouts were becoming more common; however It surviving this long was impressive in itself, but I had a feeling it would one day, shut off and never turn back on again. The Vault had the minimum amount of power consumption so, that should maximize the time we got out of it.

Anyways, with my new source of light. I would stay in the library whenever I didn’t need to do anything. The jumper cables successfully allowed me to power up one of the terminals. It was in the back left of library and separate from every other one, so I thought it might be the master terminal. When I turned it on, I found it was password encrypted. So I prompted the computer to use the backdoor instead. I looked at the screen; the password was eight characters in length. I had remembered what Engi had told me about these terminals, the backdoor password would reset every time you shut it off, but this could be used to your advantage.

I found one I thought would be suiting.

Outflank [1/8 Correct]

Well, that’s a great start.

Plushier [2/8 Correct]

That didn’t help much either.

Overcast [4/8 Correct] [Warning, Lockout Imminent]

Okay, that could be of some use.

Strangely, when I went over some bracketed text, I got an input option.

<*,;%-> [Allowance Replenished]

Hot damn! I assumed from Overcast that the password had ‘Over’ in it. That would explain the ‘O’ from Outflank. My list of O words wasn’t that expansive.

Overland
Overlaid
Overpaid
Overseer

Well that wasn’t obvious.

Overseer [8/8 Correct] [Password Accepted]

I typed the password in again and surprisingly got access to the Vault’s manifest. I skimmed through some of the logs but found one that was oddly interesting.

A Message From Stable-Tec

Stable-Tec? Wait what? This place was built by Vault-Tec. The whole point was to keep ponies safe, as if we were in a vault, until we could return to the surface... oh, it’s a pun. I get it. Continuing on...

A Message From Stable-Tec

Stable 14, we regret to inform you, that your Stable will not be supplied with a B.U.C.K.E.T, we hope this does not cause any inconvenience. In the event you do need to find one, please collaborate with Stable 8 or 21. Both have been issued one (1) B.U.C.K.E.T for their Stable’s projected needs.

-Overwatch

The message had also been time stamped when it was sent. May, 7th, 2074 @ 21:00. That was old, over 200 years old! I looked at my PipBuck, it had the date on it in a different format, 07/12/2278 22:51

I saved the password on the terminal and shut it off, I went to go power up another terminal, I passed by the Overseer’s office window light. I shook my head. I would get in so much trouble if I ever got caught.

Powering on this terminal gave me the Library’s records. At least it didn’t have a stupid password like the last one did.

Curiously, I typed a search into the prompt line...

Search>B.U.C.K.E.T

2 Item(s) Found: NEW-3780 (CAB), TWI-0210 (SLF)

Right, in Alphabetical Order by author’s name. I wasn’t sure why it meant by SLF in brackets though. I typed that into the prompt instead of putting Search before..

>(SLF)

Item found on shelf, for more terms type in (LST)

>(LST)

(CAB) - Item found in cabinet
(SLF) - Item found on shelf
(ARC) - Item archived
(IDX) - Item indexed but not sorted
(CLS) - Classified

That wasn’t important right now, but it was helpful. The item was in T section on a shelf. That’s what I cared about. Leaving the terminal powered up, I used my PipBuck light instead because I didn’t bring the generator with me.

Tee, tee. Where are you? I passed by Aitch, and then Gee... I was going the wrong way.

I scampered down to the other end. There was Que, Are, Ess, Tee. There it was. T section. At least I was on the end that started in TZZ, so I wasn’t that far away from TWI. When I finally found it, it was a tiny book, no, a pamphlet. I took it out and brought it back to the desk where my generator was. I made sure that I wasn’t in direct sight of the Overseer’s window. Then I flicked the lamp I installed into the generator on, and turned the dial down to make it dim. I started to read the pamphlet.

Beautiful Uncanny Craftors Kit for Environmental Terraforming

B.U.C.K.E.T

Use it to bring life to the dead earth. We’ve tried it! It works! (Just don’t be close to it when it turns on)
The standard issue B.U.C.K.E.T will be given to select Vaults/Stables that are set to open.

Always remember, look out for your fellow Stabledwellers, if your Stable doesn’t have one, the others will share!
If your Stable/Vault does, spread it around!
Results may vary

This message brought to you by Overwatch and the Administrator of the O.F.E

They swapped between the terms Stable and Vault a few times, so I was starting to see that either term could be used. I was betting the term Stable was just a code-name or joke. I had seen in the things I had about the ideas for the Stable, and the Vault.. erm, Stable Door. It looked like a Bank Vault door to me. Or at least the one I had seen on the cover for the book, Midnight Heist in Manehattan.

That raised a few questions with me. They said IF your Vault was set to open. Well, to be honest, now that I had hope for the outside world I wanted to see if we could get out there and find a B.U.C.K.E.T I bet that would make everypony happy. But our Vault, dammit Stable. I mean, you know what? Screw it.

Our Stable, Stable 14, didn’t have a B.U.C.K.E.T, that could have meant one of two things. We were set to open but didn’t get one, or we were never meant to open ever. That was depressing. I wanted to see what it was like outside, I bet all the other Stables with B.U.C.K.E.T’s had returned Equestria back to a flourishing state by now. I mean, it had been 200 years since the war.

I sighed, it was getting late again. I turned off the generator and left it there. That night I had some questions for my dad.

***

“Hey, um dad. Can I ask a question?” I said.

“You just did.” He smirked, he could be so irritating.

I huffed, “I mean, another question.”

He smiled, “Ask away.”

“Will we ever leave the Vault?” I asked.

Until that moment, I had no idea that such a simple question could cause such a displacement among my family.

The first pony to speak was my older brother. White Night

“Yeah! I’ve been wondering that for awhile now.” He said that with a bunch of food in his mouth.

For some reason, the question or the idea horrified my mother, she didn’t say anything but I had seen her scared before.

My dad sighed, then took in a large breath.

“What gave you the idea of leaving?”

Telling the truth would require me to admit the library, so... I lied.

“It’s just something I’ve always wondered about. Why can’t we leave?” I lied, well it was kinda the truth.

“I occasionally run tests to see if the radiation has finally passed topside.” My father replied.

“And it hasn’t yet?”

“No, it’s still very much lethal. Within a couple minutes you’d have taken enough radiation that you accumulate over a lifetime, does that answer your question?”

“Yes. Yes it does.” I felt like dying.

After dinner I did my duties in maintenance and returned to the library for a few more hours. At least I wouldn’t be bored ever in my lifetime in the Stable.

***

2279

One day I had decided to go back to the manifest terminal, I booted it back up. There was a question I was dying to have answered and it had been bugging me for awhile. I had since made two more generators, so I could have multiple terminals turned on at once. I found that with multiple jumper cables or alligator clips I could run several terminals off of one generator. I had also done some restructuring. I had moved most of computer terminals, the ones that weren’t bolted to a desk, to a room or section I had found at the back of the library. The room I had found lead to another floor up that had all the cabinets, these were just in Alphabetical Order. I had read so much stuff in the last year. I was almost 13 now.

After booting up the manifest terminal, the password after a year was still ‘Overseer’ I browsed it again. After doing some searching and narrowing down the list of stuff I had access to I found something that was supposed to be for the Overseer. Not what I was looking for, but I read it anyway.

To: Stable 14 Overseer
Re: Lockdown

Stable 14, this is a remote message from Stable-Tec’s automated systems. One of our control groups (Stable 33) has gone dark, all linkages to the orbital network have since been severed and any attempts to recontact or otherwise confirm their status have failed. We can only assume the worst. From this point on you are their replacement. Enter Lockdown mode immediately. If you haven’t left already. Otherwise, ignore this message or confirm lockdown status.

Never open the door.

-Overwatch automated message
February, 21st, 2278 @ 16:38
Message Confirmed by Overseer, 02/21/2278 @ 16:57

Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. I didn’t wanna get locked up in here for the rest of my life. What was that supposed to mean? That was recent too, sure I was like 11 but still, but still that was just over a year ago. It made me wonder if this terminal had more access than I originally believed. Why would the manifest terminal get a message like this?

I scrolled down the list some more. I found another message.

Bird Is Ready To Fly

This is an automated message from Stable-Tec, it has been exactly 200 years since your Stable was closed. Please run a topside RAD test via the Radiation Tracking Spreadsheet, if everything checks out with the predictions spreadsheet included with the program, you are now allowed to leave the Vault. Please use extreme caution.

-Overwatch Automated Message System
May, 9th, 2277 @ 00:00

WHAT?!! We got this message a year sooner than the lockdown message and we’re not out? What is this? I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. We could have been outside helping the world rebuild with what we had here. But instead we’re cooped up in here because some computer says not to open a door. That didn’t explain why the Overseer hadn’t let us out in 2277. I vaguely recalled the old Overseer dying and replaced with the current one, his daughter.

No, no no. The topside radiation must have still be high. Yeah, that explains it. If it’s too high then we couldn’t leave. The logical thought crushed me.

But I did type in the search prompt.

Search>”Radiation Tracking Spreadsheet”

I got numerous citations to whatever it was. But I did find what I was looking for, and it was the answer to both of my questions. What’s the Radiation Track Spreadsheet and if it’s for what I think it’s for, can that tell me what I was wondering. I found it after some scrolling.

>Radiation Tracking Spreadsheet (Executable Program) “RTS.exe”

Radiation Tracking Spreadsheet “RTS”

I pressed enter on the keyboard. I got a single line of text. Something was telling me I wouldn’t like the results, no matter how they turned out.

Topside Radiation Probe... Online.
Run test, Y/N?
>Y
Measurement: “RADx10” (Yearly Dosage)
+10 000 = Immediately Lethal
+5 000 = Severe Radiation Sickness
+1 000 = Minor Radiation Poisoning

Please wait...
Projected estimates:

Assumed - Measurement
Actual - Measurement
* - Lethal
~ - Prolonged Exposure Is Not Advised

Record Logs,
Displayed statistics are average by mean across all tests ran in a single year.
2077 - 20 000 RAD* 2080 - 5000 RAD* 2090 - 700 RAD~ 2100 - 100 RAD~
2077 - 38 000 RAD* 2080 - 6800 RAD* 2090 - 400 RAD~ 2100 - 20 RAD

2150 - 7 RAD 2250 - 2 RAD 2277 - 1 RAD 2278 - 1 RAD
2150 - 3 RAD 2250 - 1 RAD 2277 - 1 RAD 2278 - 1 RAD

Radiation scan finished...
Displaying results...

Year: 2279
Estimated Topside RAD: 1 + Yearly Solar Exposure
Actual Topside RAD: 1 + Yearly Solar Exposure
Conclusion: Safe
-Note- No change from previous test performed on November, 8, 2279.

Adding scan to record logs...

The computer continued to spit out information that I couldn’t even begin to grasp. But I could understand what was being displayed here extremely well. Within 20 years of the End, the levels of radiation were well within habitable means. I can understand wanting to wait, but we had no reason to be staying here. More so with the reactor becoming more shoddily fixed every day. Engi could work miracles but the reactor was on its last legs.

That also made me wonder. Who ran the previous scans?

“I occasionally run tests to see if the radiation has finally passed topside.”

He... he knew! He had to know! Unless he was wrong. Or I was wrong. But the logs said... I... I don’t know. It didn’t matter right now though.

I wondered who I could trust with this? Who could I tell that it was fine on the surface? I didn’t know, but I did know something. I wasn’t staying here any longer than I had too. I made a print off to a dry ink printer that I found and put the paper in a pile that would grow in size over the next year.

Chapter 3: Complexity Is My Speciality

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 3 - Complexity Is My Speciality

2280

I was 13 now, six months ago I told Engi, my mentor for Stable Maintenance about the information I had found, not all of it, but most of it. He didn’t believe me until I pulled a bunch of papers out of my saddlebag and told him to read them all.

At first I was scared that he would go to the Overseer, but I knew he had no love for her. I once heard him say she was a Colossal Bitch, he immediately told me never to say that word to anypony ever.

“Dakota, I believe you. And in fact, I believe some of my friends will believe me. But we can’t just waltz up to the Overseer’s office and demand the door opened. She doesn’t care, because as long as the head of security is in her pocket. We can’t do anything without permission.” Engi explained.

“Yeah, I know.” I said, “That’s why we’re not going to have permission. But still don’t tell anypony, this needs to stay quiet.”

“And how do you intend to get away with that Dakota?” Engi was struggling to keep up with all the information I had just thrown at him. “If she, the Overseer even so much as gets a whiff...”

“I’ve been in a humongous library, that apparently has been collapsed and doesn’t exist, with a window to her office for nearly the last four years. I haven’t been spotted once. If we’re careful we can get out without so much as being noticed.”

“Look, even if we could get to the mane door, we still have a few problems.”

“I know, I found a full technical readout of the Stable awhile ago. The Vault’s door is locked, the terminal to use it is passworded, and doesn’t have a backdoor. We’ll need the actual password. On top of that, the locking mechanism works from the inside, and needs a 9 symbol code to prime the explosive bolts that cut the titanium deadbolts free from the Vault door so the arm can open it. I’ve done my homework.” I explained, I could tell Engi was mildly impressed and equally worried.

Engi continued, “As I was saying, the power to level 1 is permanently off. The main switch breaker is on level 4b. If we flick that on, everypony and their dog will know what we’re trying to do.”

I wondered if that part about everypony and their dog was a crack at me. But as usual, I said nothing on the topic.

“Well, that’s a simple work around!” I chirped. I pushed open a cupboard door and pulled out one of my generators. It was a project I had kept secret from a lot of ponies in the Stable. “And there’s another thing, I know why we can’t use magic here.”

Engi looked at the generator, “Of course we know. Magic was stripped from us after the war, Celestia had no longer deemed us worthy of wielding it, and that one day it would return when we we had redeemed ourselves.”

“No, level 5. There’s a magical suppression device preventing Unicorns from igniting their horns. It’s part of the Stable. It’s also the reason why none of the Pegasi can fly. We’re restricted to Earth Pony capability only. If you’re wondering why the reactor’s having such a tough time with the Stable’s power. That would be why. And for some reason, the Overseer can use her magic while in her office.”

Culture shock. Either Engi was dealing with what I was telling him really, really, well or he was shocked beyond all means.

“To be honest.” He started.

I grinded my teeth, everything was a hinging on this moment...

“I’m not surprised. Intrigued, confused. But not surprised.” He started shaking his head, “We’re breaking out. Not that the ‘suppression’ device means anything to me..Earth Pony here. There ain’t nothing that can suppress me.”

That was Engi. He took a problem and beat the crap out of it so it would know who was boss.

“We begin the groundwork today.” Engi declared.

We both set off to work.

***

2281

It had been another year, I was fourteen now. We had since made 10 more of my generators, it took forever to get enough MF cells for them. We even had to deal with a few inquiries to why we had so many MF cells. Engi covered for us, he was in too deep to back out now. Two weeks earlier I had raided some medical supplies, one of the younger colts “fell” over the edge in the mane hub, I took him to the infirmary and while the Doc wasn’t looking I borrowed some Stimpotions, Med-X, and RadAway. If it wasn’t paradise up there, quote Engi, “We damn well better be prepared for it.”

Engi had me hide it all in the Library, last place anypony, including the Overseer would have looked. Engi also asked me to get several books for him, he said he’d make sure they NEVER saw the light of day, well light of the compact fluorescents that were used in the Stable.

Anyways, we had everything we needed, save two things. What we had was a thing whipped up by Engi himself, they were used on the reactor level to keep ponies away from it, and to contain and rogue gamma rays. Portable particle field emitters. Since the power was down on level 1, we’d need a way to prevent anypony getting in our way when we tried to get out. We also had enough food and supplies to last a week for both of us. Stolen food items from the cafe, and a few boxes of pre-war food I found in the Library. We had medical supplies. What we needed was the password to the terminal on the Vault Door, and the 9 symboles to prime the explosive bolts.

Both were useless if we didn’t have the other.

“I might be able to find one in the Library archives. I think that’s kinda a stretch though. The only sure fire thing would be from the Overseer herself.” I noted.

Engi replied, “I agree, ‘Kota. If we can find one, then we’ll have enough reason to go after the Overseer’s office.”

The next two days I spent in the Library, well the vast majority of those two days. I didn’t live in there for two days, but I had certainly considered it. I went through every search I could on the manifest computer, they only brought me back to the blueprint of the Stable, specifically the Stable door.

I sighed. Maybe there was something I was missing. I turned on a generator light, it flickered then died. I finally had exhausted one of my generators. I put a hoof on the desk I had moved the computers to. I swapped out the generator then it dawned on me.

We didn’t need the password to the door terminal. I could access every function from this computer. I hadn’t dared touch much but the manifest terminal hadn’t denied me access to anything that wasn’t related to the Overseer’s office in the four years I had been using it. We would still need the 9 symbols, but at least we didn’t need the password anymore. We would still need to know the command prompt if we swapped out this computer with the one in the door room on level 1.

I skimmed the technical readouts on the door, it only referred to the door itself, not the computer controlling it. Dead end, we would need the password afterall.

A few more weeks past, one day we got a Stable wide announcement, we very rarely got any of these. It was the Overseer. But I knew what this was, it was May 9th. The anniversary of us, I mean our ancestors, entering the Stable. Same generic announcement every year.

She coughed and then spoke. “May I have your attention please. Today marks the two hundredth and fifth year of this Stable’s service to us. Please give yourself a round of applause. May Overwatch guide our actions and its Administrators smile upon us.”

Overwatch and its Administrators, doesn’t she mean Stable-Tec? I had missed some of the speech in my thought.

“... And remember the ponies at Stable-Tec, because of them we are here now. Alive. Thank you.”

The power wasn’t actually out to the Library. It had taken me awhile to figure that out. The wall outlets were just on a different breaker. And it must have been shut off. The lights on the other hoof, which I hadn’t dared try, may or may not work. But if the intercom does, I didn’t see any reason why the lights, which I had never turned on, wouldn’t. Unless their breaker was off as well.

Overwatch and the Administrators. Where had I seen that before? I vaguely recalled something about Overwatch, but I couldn’t place a hoof on it. I strained as hard as I could to remember.

This message brought to you by Overwatch and the Administrator of the O.F.E

Right, the B.U.C.K.E.T, and what ever the OFE stood for. Curiously I punched it into the library archive terminal. It gave me a cabinet search, so I went after it. I found the sheet related to it filed.

OFE - Office of Future Endeavours.
The Office of Future Endeavours, one of eight wartime offices. The OFE was in charge of securing the future of Equine species given the possibility of a global magical disaster (GMD). The OFE and OTA are the mastermind behind the stables/vaults. Stable-Tec is a front for both of the administrations, so that both could work together under a single banner.

Now I wondered what the OTA stood for, doing another search, at the end of the document there was an emblem representing the OFE. It was in the same cabinet as I had found the OFE’s sheet in.

OTA - Office of Technological Advancement
The Office of Technological Advancement, one of eight wartime offices. The OTA were responsible for the development of many technologies, including but not limited to the Single Trooper Mechanized Defense Suit, the Cleansweep Class Magical Warhead, and *Information Redacted*. . Often worked alongside several other offices at once, especially the OFE.

Damn you redacted text! This was the third time I had ever ran into the stuff. The only thing you ever cause is irritation. What alarmed me was that weapon that could knock out a city was listed, but whatever after that wasn’t. What could POSSIBLY be worse than being able to turn a town to dust in a fraction of a second. Yet again at the end of the document there was another office emblem, different from the OFE’s. I assumed it was the OTA’s emblem.

I put the papers down. I decided to return to Engi, get his advice. We had two things in our way and we couldn’t knock them down. When I had got back, I found Engi, he was working on a contraption of some sort.

“Ah, Windy, just in time.” He mused, I held back the urge to correct what he said. I only let my brother call me that, not even my parents.

To be honest, I hated my name. Silver Wind. It was like they had thrown the two things together and left it at that. The very week I was born, our authorized stable pet, a dog, died. My older brother, who was only 3 years old at the time, started calling me Dakota, the name of our now deceased dog. The name stuck, because I didn’t understand at the time.

He had told me a year ago, that when Dakota had died, a door slammed shut on him. But because I showed up, another one opened, and he went through and didn’t go back. The last year had been brutal not to tell him about the plan, but truth be told, he related to our father a lot more than I did. I didn’t even think I was remotely related to any of my family. It was like I was adopted. But my misgivings about my family hadn’t stopped me from wanting to tell White Knight. His name both rhymed and was a pun, it’s was incredibly awesome.

I wondered if I would ever change my name, I couldn’t bring myself to do it yet though.

“I have something for you to try out!” Engi had whipped up another ‘invention’ again. Oh Celestia, the last one left my face numb for a day. (Super Stimpotions) Engi’s weird contraptions and concoctions always seemed to almost work. Like he was missing just one thing every time. I wasn’t sure why.

Engi showed me the object. An attachment applied to the hoof. Engi was using it hold a dart.

“Whaddya think?” He asked me.

I had no idea what it was, or what to think.

“Uhh... it’s....” By the goddess think of something, “Something.”

Are you FREAKIN’ kidding me brain?

I have a very bad habit of making myself look like an idiot. Thankfully, Engi wasn’t paying attention.

“Here, try it.” He offered.

It appeared to be some sort of extension that was used for better handling of items.

He threw the dart at the wall. He had put up a dartboard and got a bullseye.

I clapped, “Nice throw.”

“Not actually a throw. I’ve managed to tie this throwing device into our PipBucks, it knows exactly when to release any throw. It does use some of the power from the Stable-Tec Assisted Targeting System. S.T.A.T.S for short.”

I wasn’t even aware we had that. Really smooth, I spent four years using a library and never bothered to look up anything related to PipBucks.

This failed to motivate me any further on that subject though. I had more important things to do.

“Here, you can have it.” Engi took it off and tossed it over to me, “It also works well for holding items that are difficult to handle.”

I took the device, Engi stepped over to me.

“Here, let me help you.” He offered, he helped lock it onto my right hoof, the one I wore my PipBuck on, “I think that’s it. Try it.”

Engi gave me a dart, I looked at the dartboard, right at the Bull. I was always so bad at this whenever I had tried playing darts previously. Standing back, I took aim at the dartboard, Engi standing on the side, he nodded in approval.

I thrust my hoof forwards and the dart flew through the air right into the board, another Bull.

“That was just lucky.” I looked at Engi.

“Wanna try again then?” Engi rushed to the defense of his invention, offering me a hoof full of more darts.

Another got launched through the air, another bull. So I decided to aim somewhere else, I aimed for the twenty-triple; the next dart sailed towards the board, and stuck exactly where I had wanted.

“Wow.” I was in disbelief, after all of Engi’s other attempts, he finally got something that was genuinely useful, working.

“I plan to use it at the cafe to get some free food.” Engi explaining his master scheme.

Using the four darts I had left, I threw two more at the board, both landed where I had wanted them to. I got to my second last dart and threw it, it missed and almost gave Engi a pierced ear.

“Whoa! Easy there!” Engi pulled his head back.

“Huh?” I asked puzzled, I looked at my PipBuck. There was an alert on screen.

STATS - Stable-Tec Assisted Targeting System

[08(-26)/86 Action Points]

Engi also came over and looked, “Oh! You can’t use it indefinitely, it takes time to recharge. It’s faster when it’s not being used; give it a couple minutes. That number there, the first one is how much charge you have left, the next number is the charge used by the last use, and the final number is the number you have in total. You have more than I do, by the way.”

“How many do you have?” I asked.

Engi brought his PipBuck up to his face, “Let’s see... umm, uh, eighty exactly. Why do you get more?”

I wasn’t paying attention to Engi, I was watching my PipBuck. The second the charge counter passed 26 I threw my final dart. It went right where I wanted it to. Another Bullseye.

“This is cool!” I exclaimed, “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Distance, and the weight of the object affect how many points are used. Also, the greater the distance, the less accurate it is, it’s not perfect. At this distance you’re pretty much guaranteed 100% accuracy though. Also familiarity with what’s being thrown and experience with it would also reduce how many points are used. That’s because the system has to compensate less for user error. ”

“So...?”

“Practice makes perfect, Dakota.”

“Oh! Okay!”

Chapter 4: Part Of The Problem

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 4 - Part Of The Problem

June 2281

We continued with our normal duties. Just because we were planning on breaking out of here, at some point, didn’t mean we just dropped everything and stopped working. The Reactor went down again after another week and we went down to repair it.

“The main coupler between the first and second core is almost literally held together by bailing wire and duct tape.” Engi’s expression for a shitty repair job, “This thing rattles like crazy and we’re not expecting it to break once a month?” Engi talked to himself while he repaired it, I was there mostly to carry tools.

“Why don’t we just weld it?” I recommended.

“Plasma from the torch could bridge the gap between myself and ground, which would cause energy from the reactor to jump to ground, shocking, and maybe disintegrating whatever’s in between.”

“Isn’t the reactor off?”

“No, just whenever it picks up a mechanical fault, coupler going in this case, it flips the breakers on the main board, shutting down power to the rest of the Stable. That reduces load on the system. I’ve been tempted to bypass the main board altogether but the Overseer... she didn’t wanna hear it.”

“Well, why don’t we shut the reactor off?”

“Because itwould never restart... probably. I’m sure we’re gonna have to shut it off to repair it at some point. But the less downtime this thing has the better.”

“... Ohhhhh. I always though when something broke shutting it off and turning it back on was the first thing on the list of stuff to do to fix it.”

“Only with computers, Silver.” Engi smiled, “You’re gonna be learning about them pretty soon. I wasn’t going to try to teach a nine year old how to fix a computer, whether it be hardware or software. But you’re more than old enough now, and you don’t need foal sitting anymore.”

“I don’t consider myself very smart.” I sighed, “Not compared to you.”

“Knowledge and intelligence isn’t the same thing. You’re very sharp.” Engi complimented, I felt embarrassed, “You’ve got it where it counts. Also, you’re patient, something I’m not. So that’s why I’ve been letting you learn the computers, because I personally like repair better than computer science. So I’m going to have you doing most of the computer work. You seem to enjoy it. That being said, got any ideas for this one, Sharpy?”

I was alright learning how to fix computers, I was already familiar with them, and the worst case scenario was I got dusty; Engi replacing and working on stuff here on level 4b generally got him dirty and greasy. And that generally meant I was the one who got to handle all the fine bits because I had smaller, and more importantly, clean hooves. I was getting used to getting my hooves dirty though, although it took a long time, I had been doing this for years, but lately Engi was really starting to let me do things by myself without constantly having an eye on me.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“The coupler’s held together by two metal rods on the inside and metal expands when it gets hot, so we need to figure out a way to keep the two halves together without ruining the rods on the inside, because those are what allow power to flow.”

I continued, “What if... we insulate the coupler and then weld it?”

“I don’t think we have an insulator material that can handle the heat of the coupler, it’s about 300 degrees right now.”

“Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

“Kolten.”

“What? ... Oh, haha. Nice try. You forget I’ve been reading books for the last four years. That would be 26 Celsius by the way. So you’re lying.” I smirked.

“You know, you’re getting way too emerged into books. They’re not everything you know. Oh, and it was in Celsius.”

“No, but there’s not much down here. And that library has damn near everything listed in it.” I continued, “What if we... I got nothing.”

“Believe me, I’ve been trying to find ways to permanently fix the coupler problem. This has been plaguing me for ages. Before you even were assigned to me, but in the last couple years, it’s been getting worse.”

“Can we replace it?”

“With what parts?”

“Didn’t Stable-Tec give us spares?”

“Oh hell no, these were supposed to be able to run for 400 years before needing replacement. But look at us now, we’re working on it every other weekend, and it’s never the same problem twice in a row.”

Engi was getting annoyed these reactor problems were driving him up the wall.

He kept going, “Hey do you have the swing wrench?”

That was an unusual request, that was for lights not a power core. It was one of the few tools I hadn’t added to my equipment belt.

“No, I didn’t think we’d need it.” I explained.

“Could you go back,” He asked, “And get it for me?”

I nodded and trotted off, I took the stairs upto the third floor, the lights were out, I had my PipBuck though. I was at the turn to the maintenance office when I heard talking, so I stopped at the corner and killed the light on my PipBuck.

“These two are up to something, BV. I wanna know what.”

BV, BlueVisor Chief Head of Security in Stable 14.

“Of course ma’am. But I seriously doubt a mechanic and an apprentice could be up to that much, they’re always busy. I’ve seen them both working like mad. The five times in the last year I’ve searched the office, I haven’t come up with anything.”

Wait fives times they’ve searched the office? We’d had only been searched thrice to my knowledge.

“Well then you’re not searching hard enough. Do another check it won’t be long before Engi and his little follower get the reactor working again.”

As if right on cue, the lights came back on, and after a few seconds they shut off again. I got some bad vibes out of that and turned around going back the way I came. I forgot about the swing wrench.

Little follower? A nuisance? Another everyday problem to deal with?

Dammit, NOT right now brain!

***

When I got to the reactor room, I found Engi on the other side of the room, he had been thrown up against the wall, and he was singed, and it looked like his entire body had been smoking just a little bit. I rushed over to him, he coughed. I couldn’t carry him out myself. He was too heavy.

“Engi are you alright?”

He coughed again, “Do I look like I’m alright?”

The secondary generators had turned on from the mane power being off for so long, I hoped that the panic buttons would work. I scampered over to the wall where the red button was. I was too short to reach it, even planting a forehoof on the wall and reaching, I was too short.

Getting desperate, I took off my equipment belt and threw it at the button.

Thankfully that worked.

A few minutes later help showed up, our Stable’s doctor. Redcross, one of the colt assistances he had taken under, and too my surprise the Overseer as well.

“By Celestia! He’s practically cooked!” Cross went and pulled him off the wall, “Hey, Engi! Can you hear me? Come on, I know you’re in there.”

“What happened here?” The Overseer asked.

Oh crap. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had just found him like this, I didn’t see it happen. I had been eavesdropping on the Overseer and the Security Head before I got here. What did I say?

Nothing. I said nothing. I just sat there and said nothing.

“Excuse me, I’m talking to you.” The Overseer sounded agitated

I continued to be a mute.

“He suffered serious electrical burns. As for her.” Cross beckoned a hoof towards me, “I’d say she’s in shock.”

What a terrible pun.

Dammit, this was not the time or place to be making light of the situation brain. Cut it out.

A few minutes later I found myself back in the medical lab, Engi on a medical bed. Engi had woke up, he was groaning in serious pain.

“Get me some Med-X!” Cross ordered. The little colt who was with him went over to the cabinet.

“We’re all out!” He pipped.

Shit, that would be my fault. This was the first major accident the Stable had in nearly a year.

“Then get it from storage!” Cross snapped. He was not in a good mood. Within thirty seconds the colt, I couldn’t remember his name, had returned with three needles of the stuff. Cross was less than nice when he punctured one of Engi’s veins and emptied the syringe. He didn’t hesitate with the second one either. I phased out.

***

“His condition’s stabilized. But he’s gonna be out of it for awhile Ma’am.” Cross explained.

The Overseer replied, “I see.” She turned and looked at me, I looked back. Our eyes met. Something told me this was off, “What of the girl?”

“Physically? She’s fine. Mentally?” Cross shook his head, “I don’t think she’s up for talking to anypony. She hasn’t left the bedside since we got here, that was yesterday.”

“She hasn’t been bothering you at all has she? I know friends have a habit of doing that.”

“Nope, she’s been completely quiet since the incident.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I asked her some questions. She didn’t say anything. I’m not surprised. I did however find the arcing point. He must of accidently touched something he wasn’t supposed too. What he did, I couldn’t say.”

“Look, I hate to do this to you Doctor, but manepower is still out. We need it back immediately.”

“Engi is in NO condition to do anything right now. And probably won’t be for the next week or so. And I don’t see why you need manepower back so bad. The secondaries seem to be able to handle it.”

“That’s not your domain Cross.” The Overseer snapped back.

“‘Not your domain’. Yes, and you’re a Mechanical Engineer as well I assume?” Cross tilted his head slightly and answered with complete sarcasm.

I just sat there listening. The glass to Cross’ office was not soundproof. I wasn’t to sure why the Overseer wanted the manes back up on such a short schedule.

“Ma’am, I will not allow you to remove Engi from my care, for the at least the next two weeks at least, that could change depending on how well he recovers. But he’s lucky he’s even alive. He’s covered in second degree electrical burns, and has third degree burns at the arcing point and where he was grounded at. You are not taking him ANYWHERE until I say so.”

The Overseer looked furious.

“Fine, then she has to do it.” She ordered.

Doctor Cross looked puzzled, my ears shot straight up.

“She as in, Silver Wind?”

“Yes, she as in Silver Wind”

“Ma’am with all due respect...” Cross started.

The Overseer cut him off, “Why is it whenever I hear ‘With all due respect’ from you, it really means kiss my ass, because I’m wrong?”

“Because you are wrong!” Cross raised his voice, at the Overseer of all ponies.

The Overseer, she looked about ready to blow it, “I.”

Get out of my medbay.” Cross opened the door to his office. The Overseer reluctantly left, she cast a glance to me on the way out.

Cross shook his head in disgust.

“Um Doctor?” The little colt said.

“What!” Cross snapped, the colt recoiled. “Sorry. What is it Evo?” Cross’ voice changed from hostile to empathetic in an instant.

Evo? Evodi, right that was his name.

“He’s woke up.” Evo jumped off the stool he had been using while caring for Engi.

Engi tried to move, but Cross pushed him back down on the bed.

“Easy, don’t try to move too quickly, you’ve suffered severe third degree electrical burns around your front left and back right hooves.” Cross soothed, “Now, can you tell me what happened?”

“I accidently grounded the connection coupler between the first and second core while trying to repair it, I didn’t feel a thing until I hit the back wall.”

That sent some seriously bad and disturbing images into my head.

NOPE, not gonna think about it.

Engi accidently having a tool slip and hit the coupl....

I SAID NO!!!

Getting jolted by about 70 thousand volts. Flying the five or so meters to the back...

WHAT DID I JUST SAY?! You had ONE job brain.

Getting back on topic, the Overseer would eventually ask me to try and repair the reactor myself. I still wasn’t sure why she wanted it back so badly.

I left Engi’s bedside and scampered up to the Doctor, “She’s not actually going to make me fix it?” I croaked with tears in my eyes, Engi, if only I was there, this wouldn’t have happened.

“You’re the one that found Engi, right?” Doctor Cross asked.

“Yes.” I nodded my head, I relived the moments of walking down the staircase and immediately noticing Engi leaning up against the far wall in the reactor room.

“I am officially taking you off of major duty, reason: because of mental shock, until Engi is recovered. I’ll write you a slip and you shove it in the Overseer’s face if she approaches you.” Cross ran a hoof through my mane, I didn’t normally allow ponies, other than my mom, to touch it, but I found it oddly comforting so I didn’t object or recoil, “I want you to know, you did the right thing, which was, hitting the panic button. I wish they were more abundant. They have more of them upstairs than they do down here.”

Reason: because of mental shock.

Again with the horrible puns! Shut up brain!

I was incredibly tired, so I left the infirmary with the note Cross had written up for me. I trotted back to my family’s room. I found nopony there waiting for me, they were all inside and already having dinner. The Secondaries had long since come on to fill in the gap.

My mother said something about not expecting me back. What was that supposed to mean? I ate my dinner washed up and went to bed.

I slept in the following morning. Way later then I usually would have. I was the Stable’s maintenance head for the time being.

***

The following day, I wasn’t sure why I was so tired. Had I always been this worn out? I went back up to the infirmary, after I had visited the secret library for a bit to clear my head. Engi was still there, but he had been moved to a cot that was pulled out from the wall, the burns around his hooves had been bandaged up. Third degree burns were nasty, I had only gotten a second degree burn from a soldering iron, and only a tiny one. Engi told me he had gotten third degree burns before, a light bulb exploded in his face.

Evodi was attending to him at the time, giving him some water and washing the fur around his burns, some of his orange fur had been shaved off entirely, the ends had been fried and turned black, were as some had melted their ends together with other hairs. The image of originally finding Engi came back and haunted me again... Cross kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, but I should have been there. I wouldn’t have needed to leave if I had brought a full kit, instead of my streamlined one. I wouldn’t be making that mistake again. This was my fault.

“Excuse me, I’d like to talk to ‘Kota in private.” He asked.

“I’m almost done here.” Evo responded.

“That wasn’t a request.” Engi was getting impatient, Engi began driving Evo away with a hoof.

“Okay! Okay, you have 5 minutes. Then I need to finish cleaning your fur out. You took a pretty nasty jolt.”

Evo got up and left.

“‘Kota... Silver, come here.” Engi used my actual name, so I knew this was serious. I had a million and one things rushing through my head.

I bounded up to him, I was so worried about what the Overseer was going to do. Before he even started I cut him off.

“The Overseer wants me to fix the reactor.” I blurted out.

Engi stopped. Then he sighed. He tried to sit up again, and got respectfully close before he just fell back onto the cot with a thud.

Engi made some conversation to distract me, “You know,” Engi tossed and turned on the cot, “These are pretty comfortable.”

I shook my head, he was just trying to distract me, with the best intentions of course, “How did it actually happen?” I asked.

“I thought I had isolated the coupler enough to deter any current from going through... I guess I was wrong.”

I suddenly got a flash, almost vivid. It was Engi working on the core, he had pulled the coupler off the second core entirely. How he managed that I had no idea. It was still a few hundred degrees. When he went pull it out of the primary core, using that holding device he made, using his left hoof. (Engi is left hooved) He put his right hoof on the second core, then went to pull the other half of the coupler out of the first core. He got jolted by the core, and that sent him flying.

I shook my head and came back to reality.

“And that’s what happened.... are you okay?”

I shook my head violently, “I’m fine. I’m more concerned about you.”

Engi cocked an eyebrow, “Shaking your head like this,” Engi shook his head left and right, “Is fine huh?”

“I’m okay, you’re not. But the Overseer is going to ask my to fix the reactor, soon.”

“You’re going to have a hard time doing that. I suspect the coupler in the first core got welded after that arc jumped.”

“Then I’ll pull it off without touching it.”

“Kota, I’m trying to give you legitimate reasons not to do the repair yourself. Something to tell the Overseer”

“Tell me what?” Another voice in the room said.

Umm, what’s the expression Engi would have used. Ah yes, I believe “Oh fuck” would be the one. In that case.

Oh fuck.

There she was, the Overseer, standing in the Infirmary doorway.

Engi had to wing it, “I was telling Dakota that fixing the Reactor would be impossible until I recovered. She expressed that she wanted to fix it herself.”

Wow, nice lying Engi. Not that Applejack would have been too pleased.

The Overseer put on that fake smile that made me want to scream, she trotted over to me. “How... thoughtful of you Dakota to step forward like that. I see you’re as eager as anypony to get the manes back online. But, Engi please explain to me why she can’t do the repair herself.”

Engi looked at me, “To be honest. It’s not just the dangers of trying to work on the core... She’s incompetent.”

The words hit me harder than a metal pipe would have.

“She would have to shut the reactor down fully, which in itself is extremely complicated and well beyond her own skills and understanding.”

I wanted to cry.

“Then she’d have to be able to pull the coupler that’s stuck in the primary core out, repair it. Get it back in place, restart the 7 cores in the correct order, flick the manes back on, and then after all that is done. Monitor the reactor’s energy output for a prolonged period of time, while making sure it doesn’t overheat. And that, that is not a job I would leave for a filly that can barely put a lightbulb back into its socket.”

I sniffed. The Overseer was less than impressed. Didn’t Engi say shutting the reactor off would be extremely dangerous as it might not restart?

“Is that a sufficient explanation? Or would you like me to get into the intricate details of all the jobs I’ve had to parent her on?” Engi concluded.

“I see, Engi. I will take that under advisement.” The Overseer turned to me, I was staring at the floor. Head below my shoulders.

The Overseer turned her head across the room, she quickly turned around and trotted for the door. I looked to where she had looked, Cross was standing in his office with a death stare pointing in her direction.

“Really? Did you have to drive it home that badly?” I asked, I had a tear in my eye. “Am I really that terrible?”

“Well, the Overseer bought it right?”

Wait what? ... Of course, have that moment of realization after your mentor says you’re a terrible trainee.

“Yeah, but now she’s going to think I’m an idiot.”

I think that ship has already set sail.

“You know, I didn’t mean any of that. Had to put that act on for the Overseer.”

“It hurt though.” I sighed.

“Of course it did, ‘cause you know it’s not true.” Engi managed to sit up.

“So, did she buy it?”

I spun around, it was Cross.

“I wanna say yes.” Engi nodded his head once. He was talking to Cross.

Engi told Cross. Didn’t he know how risky that was?

“Evo doesn’t know does he?” I asked.

Cross simply answered, “Knows what?”

“Red, she’s the whole reason we’re doing this.” Engi replied.

“He left that part out did he?” I smiled.

“Engi says you’re one of the sharper tools in the shed.” Cross commented.

“She’s got carbide teeth, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s exaggerating.” I ever so slightly blushed, “Why did you tell the doctor?”

Engi sighed. From the looks of it he hadn’t by choice.

“He tracked down where his missing supplies went.”

Yet again, my fault.

“So he gave me two options. Tell him what was going on or I could deal with the Overseer. He thought I was an addict.”

“So, what did you tell him?” I asked.

“That the Overseer has been lying to the entire Stable.”

I hoped Engi hadn’t told Cross about the plan to escape. The more ponies that knew about it, the more likely we would spring a leak.

“So, under my advisement. We’ll keep you in here for the next week. After that, I want you back every day for another 2 weeks so I can check up on you.” Cross ordered, “Am I clear?”

“Yes, Doctor.” Engi didn’t seem entirely pleased.

“Dakota...” Engi began. “Cross, I would like to speak to her alone.”

“Hmm. Alright.” Cross said blankly, returning to his office.

“Dakota...” Engi started again.

I cut him off. “That office isn’t soundproof.”

“Dakota, I electrocuted myself on purpose.” Engi deadpanned.

Uhhh.... What?

This was bringing up more questions than answers.

“With the mane core not powering the Stable. It’s reverted to minimum mode on the secondary reactor. That means security is offline, no cameras. You can bust into the Overseer’s office and poke around a bit.” Engi continued, “As for Cross’ missing medical supplies. I popped a syringe of Med-X before bridging the cores.”

“I didn’t feel a thing until I hit the back wall.”

Engi didn’t directly say the password to the Stable door control terminal on level 1. Speaking of which.

“That glass isn’t soundproof, Engi.” I noted again.

“I’m aware. I heard him and the Overseer arguing as well.”

“I thought you were out.”

“I am a very good actor.”

“Evo’s not gonna walk in unexpected is he?”

“He should be back soon, anything else you want to add? He’s gonna clean me up. Nice kid, young, head in the clouds, well lights. No clouds down here.” Engi shook his head, “Anything else?”

“I found another technical readout of the door, but specifically the locking device.” Oh, I hope Cross couldn’t hear us.

“Go on...” Engi encouraged me to continue.

“To prime the explosive bolts, we have to ‘dial’ the correct code. There is a ring of 60 symbols that runs along the outside of the door. What I found didn’t give us the code, but the ring spins and then the explosive bolt ‘primes’ when given a correct symbol. The same symbol can’t be used twice and it does matter which order we input them into the system.” I explained.

Engi nodded his head, he was still partially out of it, so I’d probably end up reexplaining this to him later.

“It takes time to ‘dial out’ as it was explained on the blueprint I found. I was hoping it would be as simple as punching in a password but it’s not.” I took a deep breath, “What this does mean, is that given the 9 correct symbols, there is only three hundred and sixty two thousand, eight hundred and eighty possible combinations. Nine Factorial; however, I’m pretty sure we only have to try each explosive bolt at most, 9 times before it primes. So worst case scenario we’re looking at 45 attempts across every bolt put together. Because we remove a symbol from the pool every time we get it right, so nine plus eight, plus seven, plus six... so on. With every additional symbol that primes.”

Engi smiled, I had a feeling he was just trying to understand the jarble I had just thrown at him.

“That also means, that for every symbol we get right, our chances of guessing the correct symbol for the next bolt goes up, meaning, if we get lucky, we shouldn’t have to guess down to the wire every time. However, this is assuming we can find the correct set of symbols to start with.”

“Well done, Dakota.” Engi was visibly impressed, and that was a rare sight.

“The point of all that. We’ll be better off chasing the password rather than the code. If we get the password without knowing the symbols, we have 60 factorial, divided by 51 factorial, which leaves us with 5 or so quadrillion combinations that can be entered, but yet again not really, because it’ll prime when given the correct symbol and not any other symbol, so in reality, 60 plus 59 plus 58 and so on... which leaves us with 504 possible combinations.”

When I scored slightly better in math on my CAT, they gave me a bunch of prewar textbooks on mathematics. I didn’t even know we had access to these in the public library, until the Overseer had the librarian give them to me.

“Yet again, that’s assuming the same symbol can’t be used twice...” I thought aloud, “That would mean... oh 60 to the power of 9?” I’d have to check that on a calculator later.

Engi looked more than just impressed. He was outright prideful.

“You’ve... that’s awesome.” Engi smiled. He had the most outrageous smile. “Very well done Silver.”

“Now, lets just hope Doctor Cross didn’t hear a peep of that.” I had been pretty quiet explaining that.

Looking at the Doctor’s office he was still sitting there working away. That didn’t mean anything though.

“Dakota.” Engi jerked his head to get me to come closer, “You need to get into the Overseer’s office. You have a week before I’m up and about, and I can guarantee you, the second Cross clears me for duty, the Overseer is going to make me fix the Mane Reactor.”

“I still don’t get why she wants it fixed so badly. For all intents and purposes, this Stable is running normally.”

“It’s most likely security, the hallways have cameras, the rooms don’t. Now ponies are free to move as they please without the Overseer watching their every move in the halls.”

Hm. A gear clicked in my head. “That would be why she had BlueVisor search the Maintenance office by hoof, while we weren’t there. There’s no security cameras. There must not be any in line of sight to the library of the library either...”

Engi’s face contorted. “She what?! When were you planning on telling me this Dakota? When did this happen?!?”

Besides my recoil from Engi’s less than happy questions, I heard Cross moving around in his office. I turned around and he was looking right at me. I waved a hoof. He went back to work.

“Listen to everything before you fly off again at me.” I told Engi, “After you sent me back to get the swing wrench, I was nearly back to the Maintenance office when I stopped at the corner because I heard the Overseer and Bee-Vee talking. She’s had it searched at least twice without us knowing, and the Chief said he hadn’t found anything of interest.”

Engi’s expression lessened a bit. He still wasn’t too pleased.

“This complicates things.” Engi said. “We need to be careful what we leave in there.” Engi’s thinking face appeared, as he looked at the cot it was laying on. Not sure what he was thinking, I didn’t ask.

“Then it’s a good thing we’ve kept almost everything in the library.” I reassured, “Which is, yet again. The last place anypony, including the Overseer, would look. A room that apparently doesn’t exist.”

“Almost everything?” Engi asked.

“Portable generators. Though I do have some in the library. And whatever medical supplies you kept in there, I thought you gave me it all after I stole it.”

“Ahh, right.” Engi’s eyes rolled, “Good thing I hid the medical stuff well then.”

Cross opened the door to his office, and trotted out, past us both, and to the door.

“Cross, where ya goin’?” Engi asked.

“I’m not telling the guards anything, if that’s what you mean. And I didn’t hear most of that. You talk way too quietly, Dakota.”

***

Two days had passed, and I hadn’t been arrested yet, so the doctor, Cross, mustn’t have told any of the guards yet. He and Engi were pretty good friends. I went out of the way to check that ‘worst case scenario the same symbol could be used multiple times’ problem. That came to 10 quadrillion with change in terms of possible combinations.

So, I needed to get into the Overseer’s office. It was locked whenever she wasn’t in there. So I needed to catch her leaving it unlocked, or something. I wasn’t entirely sure. I was hoping to recover the password to the Stable Door Terminal or the 9 symbols required to unlock the vault door. Preferably the latter rather than the former. But both would have been just fine by me.

The Overseer’s office was on the second floor of the Manehub, up and to the left of the hallway I used to head to the library. Fortunately, the office connected to the lounge on the second floor on the hub. Where everypony went when they had extra time and weren’t doing their job in the Stable. So, I started there. I had noticed over the years, that whenever the Overseer left her office, the entire room would go quiet while she passed by. She never bothered to say hi, or take a seat. The occasional pony would greet the Overseer...

Only to get the cold shoulder. Engi was right, she was a colossal bitch.

A few minutes later she returned. The door hissed shut and then made the clink click noises all doors in the Stable made when they locked. I had been trying to think of a way to get in without being caught for two days and it was just becoming more frustrating the longer I thought about it.

I decided to try and clear my head, so I left the lounge. I was by Officer Oliver.

He had his hooves up on the railing overlooking the lower floor of the hub. I decided to join him. I trotted over to the railing and did the same thing. I was, being generous, maybe two thirds his height. He was watching all the foals playing hide and seek.

He didn’t even look at me, “Why don’t-cha play with them anymore?”

I lied, “Got too old for it I guess?” Personally I had better things to do... like read the wealth of knowledge I had singular access to.

“Lies!” Oliver turned and looked at me, “Nopony’s ever too old for Hide and Seek.”

I thought about it for a moment, “Okay, how about, ohhhh... Everypony knows the hiding spots? And any new ones don’t stay new for that long.”

“I don’t know about that. You had one that was good for awhile there.” Officer Oliver reminisced, “But I guess they found it didn’t they? Still can’t believe all the effort you went into keeping it hidden. I mean, right up over the railing? That’s dedication. Where did ya hide anyway?”

Uhh, shit. He remembered that? The one time I made my self standout. Better refrain from that in the future. Stakes were high enough as is right now.

I didn’t answer. I simply hoped that he’d continue talking. To my relief he did.

“The Overseer didn’t appreciate it too much. But the fellas got a laugh out of it when I told them. She even opened her window there to ask me what the hay was going on. She was less than impressed when I told her what you did. She must have caught a glimpse or something.”

“Oh well. Whoops.” I said, trying to suppress a smile.

And then it clicked. The words ran through my head.

“Opened her window.”

I would have to bust in through the window. The door was impossible. The only problem would be getting out to it, and of course getting it opened. Fortunately, there was an edge I could shimmy along to get to the window. Thank you Stable-Tec.

“She can open her window?” I asked in disbelief.

“Oh yeah, she does that whenever it gets too hot in her office. There’s no vents in there, but like 7 computers. And they’re all on 24/7 so they constantly pump hot air into the room.”

SEVEN Computers. That could complicate things, but I would have to cross that bridge when I came to it. I supposed that could be a gift and a curse in itself, there was bound to be something helpful in all that data.

“I can’t image how hot it gets in there. How often does she have to open the window?” I asked pressing the subject on.

“Well, see, out here the air is conditioned. Her desk is right by the window. So she just opens it up and lets the air get to her. She doesn’t actually need to cool the entire room. Just her desk.”

I looked into the window, her back was to the window she was on a computer doing... something. I wasn’t sure what. I watched her reach for a glass of water, she downed the entire thing. It must have been pretty hot.

She looked around, and out the window. She locked eye contact with me, and then switched to Oliver. A moment later she got up and yanked on a cord to the side of the window. The blinds fell and neither of us could see her anymore.

Oliver made a ‘chhh’ sound before he said, “Jeez, I wonder what her problem is?” Before he got off the railing and went to do his rounds. I stayed in the hub and continued to watch her window.

And I did just that, watch her window for the next three days.

***

I had two days before Engi would be put back into active service, maybe three if he could convince Cross; that also depended on Cross being able to convince the Overseer.

But I had learned a few things over the last three days.

There was no screen behind the window. The blinds shut out all light from the room That she opened the window around 4:30 every day, and she left it open for about an hour before closing it. That was my window, figuratively, and literally. 60 precious minutes of opportunity to find what I needed when I broke in. I’d have to get her out of the office though, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. I considered simply edging across while she wasn’t there, but if I wasn’t caught getting in, I’d double my chances of being seen, not just by the Overseer, if I didn’t plan this out properly. The door to the lounge drew the attention of everypony in the room, so that was a bust. I not only needed to get her out of the office, but also away from it.

I was on the second floor, it was about 2:00, Oliver was doing his rounds, so he wasn’t in the hub, else I would have been talking to him. A bunch of the foals, and even the slightly more older ponies were regrouping in the hub’s lower floor.

I stopped watching the window and listened to their conversation.

“Alright guys, I gotta go. But I won’t be able to play again tomorrow until around three O’clock.”

It was Shade talking, he had been assigned to security. He always walked around with his signature baton. He called it ‘The Vault Guardener’ (pun intended) although he had never needed to use it. It was the same as a normal Stable baton, but he had painted it green. He also said it was lighter, and that allowed him to swing it faster. His witty line of choice was “I use this to remove weeds, are you a weed?” He never let anypony touch it either.

The crowd went “Awwwww.” before they disbanded. So Shade was the group’s glue, interesting... I was forming a plan in my head. But the timing would have to be flawless. There was a couple things I needed to do first though. Zero margin for error.

Chapter 5: The Margin Of Error

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 5 - The Margin Of Error

The following day I was waiting in the hub, it was 14:00. I was there talking with Officer Oliver. He was the only Officer that monitored the hub, there was simply too much ground to cover on this floor. And fortunately, he was the only pony there that I particularly wanted to talk to. I would have left this plan for dead had it been any other guards that scanned the Hub.

Sure enough, when 15:00 rolled around, Shade had shown up. And a group of ponies started to form around him, from half of my age, to a few years older than I was.

“Dakota, you should go join them!” Oliver insisted, “I haven’t seen you play in ages. I mean, I gotta do my rounds soon.”

“You know, I think I will.” I said, I continued watching Shade. He normally organized Hide and Seek. We used to play Cops and Robbers, but the Overseer had a few things to say about it.

“Alright,” Shade said, “We’re doing another round of Hide and Seek, standard rules. I’m sure you all know them.”

I suddenly blurted in, “One, two, three! Not it!!”

The group of ponies all looked up at me (A sight I wasn’t use to). And in near perfect unison.

“Not it!” They all said.

Shade was quick enough not to be last. I didn’t care who was, only that Shade wasn’t the seeker. They had already disembarked from the group and went to count.

I would have to make this game go on for an hour and a half. And I knew just the perfect way how.

“Count to one hundred and then go.” I said aloud. I was still on the second floor.

I heard the counting start, and then ran off, to the maintenance office. Fortunately nopony followed me. I grabbed Engi’s throwing arm thing and put it on. Engi was left hoofed, I was right hoofed, fortunately he designed it for both.

Then I ran off to my awesome hiding spot of awesome. And waited.

And I waited.

And waited.

For one hour and twenty five minutes.

I returned to the hub, surely enough...

“There she is!”

And the seeker caught me. Before anypony could say anything.

I shouted, “One, two, three. Not it!”

The group of younger fillies and colts all did the same. The former seeker even managed to not be it. And to my luck (for once) neither was Shade.

The seeker went off to count. Shade stuck with me, as I predicted.

“Please, please, please, please, please, please, please? Dakota! Please?”

“What the hay is that supposed to mean?” I asked, I knew very well what he wanted. I just wanted him to beg.

“Please show me, please. Come on!” He begged.

“Well, alright then. But I wanna try out your baton”

Everypony dispersed, with Oliver gone on his rounds, the hub was completely empty.

Shade was taken aback by such an odd request. I smiled at him.

“Okay, but only for a minute.”

Perfect.

I went up to the second floor, across from the Overseer’s window. I held my hoof out.

“You wanna see it now?” He asked.

“Yes, I do. Time’s ticking away.”

In the distance, I could hear whoever was counting. ‘45, 46, 47, 48...’ And apparently he could hear it too.

“You’re wasting time.” He said.

“No, you’re wasting time. I know where to hide. You don’t.” I wasn’t the most charismatic individual, but confrontational speech was my speciality.

Reluctantly, he withdrew his baton and gave it to me.

“Thanks.” I said. Then I threw it has hard as I could at the Overseer’s window, Engi’s thrower thing device doing it’s job perfectly.

*CLATTER* The noise that the baton made smacking the window. Maybe I threw it a little too hard? Hmm... Nah.

Damn near instantly afterwards I jumped off the railing and started running.

It looked like she was just turning around to open it as well. She opened the window and looked down, seeing the green baton, that EVERYPONY in the Stable knew who it belonged to, and surely enough right across from the window was Shade, standing there in staring blankly at the Overseer. I think he was in shock.

I couldn’t have asked for things to go any better. I heard her running across the upper deck of the hub, she was furious. I was looking at my watch on my PipBuck.

4:29:57

Wait for it.

4:29:58

Wait for it......

4:29:59

Waiiiitttt for itttttt.....

4:30:00

Right on cue, Oliver walked back into the hub from the upper floor to see the Overseer tearing Shade a new one. Since nopony was around in the hub to see, and everypony that was in the lounge was busy. Oliver didn’t have a choice but to abide by what the Overseer was saying and brought Shade with him down to the Security Office, and to what little luck I had, the Overseer went with.

I returned to the hub, but heard “99, 100. Ready or not, here I come!”

Oh shit. Shit, shit, oh shit.

I ran as hard as I could up the stairs to the second floor. One of the ponies in the lounge closed the door while the Overseer was yelling at Shade.

Sorry Shade. Actually who was I kidding? I thought that was HILARIOUS. I hopped the railing and edged over to the window before clammering inside. I closed the blinds behind me. That should block out all the light. I thought about it for a second, I had just found the second best spot to hide for hide and seek.

I immediately scrubbed that thought from my head. I was wasting time. The Overseer had left her computer logged in, and boy, Oliver was right, it was hot in here.

I immediately started downloading the contents of her terminal to my PipBuck, I couldn’t read them on my PipBuck, but I knew a terminal that could. It took about 30 seconds to transfer everything onto my PipBuck. And I had to do that with all the remaining terminals. That was something Olver was wrong about though. There was only 4 other terminals, but they were maneframes I’d have to access, and to my fortune, again, they were all unlocked.

The amount of data I was downloading was enormous and straining my time. I wasn’t sure how long I had. Depending on how bad a mood the Overseer was in, would dictate how much time I had; I’m not going to joke around here, she was always in a bad mood.

Engi had done a soft-patch on the the PipBuck 3000 we were all given, he just hadn’t openly distributed it. He called it the 3.30.09 patch. I guess he had more spare time then he let on, if he was able to access the base code of our PipBuck’s and update it. But he did give me a list of changes to read through. One included better compression, meaning I could store more data. He also told me about the slot at the top, which allowed me to hook up my PipBuck to terminals and download the contents, it was done through a SATA cable, and they were supposed to be faster? Everything I knew used PATA.

I was making quick work of the maneframes, I had two left to go. I could feel my heart racing, but I couldn’t even pace around trying to calm my nerves, the length of the cable was limiting my ability to let out my nervousness. I kept an ear out for sounds of the Overseer returning through the window. Come on, come on. This wasn’t copying fast enough.

I had moved onto the last maneframe, this was was a doozy, estimated 3 minutes to copy all files. They were mostly text documents anyway, the odd audio file, and an assortment of images. I could tell by the file marker at the end of each copied file; doc, mp3, or jpg.

2 minutes to go. Oh please, please, please hurry up. I needed to get out of here. I was feeling hot, and it wasn’t just the all the air being pumped out by the computers that was making me sweat.

1 minute to go. Almost there, come on. It was just downloading txt’s now anyway. I might need to cut this short. No, I couldn’t, it would pick up that it hadn’t finished transferring. I’d have to stay for the duration.

“Look, ma’am, I’ll deal with him. But I need you to calm down and let me do my job. He’ll be disciplined. I just need to find out what actually happened first.”

Oh fuck, not now! I could hear them crossing the the metal platforms on the second floor. You had to learn to listen to it though, years of living down here deafens you out to those sounds. The clatter of hooves on metal, the background hum of the mane reactor, which had been absent as of recently, or the slight clicking the flickering lights became ambient and ignored. All of these you eventually tuned out and had to actively force yourself to listen for them.

20 seconds. I was cutting it pretty close!

10 seconds, I heard the door to the lounge open, they would be opening that door any moment.

4! 3!! 2!!! 1!!!!

I unhooked the SATA wire from the maneframe, not bothering to disconnect it from my PipBuck. I bolted across the room, raised the blinds and hopped out the window. I prayed she hadn’t noticed they were down. I fell the 8 feet to the floor, I wasn’t sure if I had hurt anything, but I ran as hard as I could for the library anyways. My heart thumping in my chest. I thought I was going to pass out.

Past the restricted sign, down the stairs, through the vent. Into the library. I looked up at the window to the Overseer’s office. The blinds were shut. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I trotted around the library to the back room, and used the SATA cable to download everything to the manifest terminal.. Looking at my PipBuck’s watch, it was 16:41. In less than fifteen minutes I had busted into the Overseer’s office and downloaded the entire contents of every computer she had in there. Over a year of planning, lead down to an operation that lasted less than half an hour for the part that mattered.

Time efficiency: 0%.

SHUT UP BRAIN.

I would have to wait and see what the fallout of my actions would be over the next few days. I was so nervous that I was getting chivers. I was hyped on adrenaline, and kept taking deep breaths. I didn’t even wanna leave the library incase anypony of interest came looking for me. The only loose end would be Shade, and it would be my word against his. All the evidence lead to him throwing the baton. Not me. But what would really matter is if the Overseer found anything out of place in her office. I hadn’t really had time to take in the ‘lovely’ view of her office. I just jumped to each computer and started downloading the contents, under that much pressure I wasn’t really processing anything else in the room.

For all I knew, I might have left a mess, in one form or another.

Once the transfer was complete from my PipBuck to the computer manifest terminal, I wiped my PipBuck clean, left the SATA cable in the library, and Engi’s thrower thing as well. I’d have to think of a name for it later.

I relaxed, closed my eyes, I wasn’t out of this yet. I got a chill again, and shook my head, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I became aware of another sensation throughout my body, not a chill though, it was my head. My eyes jolted open, there was light emitting from my horn!

The realization hit me harder than the Overseer could have. Well, I’d imagine she could hit pretty hard. I wasn’t sure.

The mane magical reactor powered the suppression device on level 5. It wasn’t just security that was out, it was the device as well.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to do here, I didn’t know how to use magic. Hadn’t my entire life, but here I was, horn a-glowing. I stared blankly at a chair in front of me, it was enveloped with my magical aura. It was light metallic blue. It shimmered, I didn’t know what to do. I just looked away, the chair stopped being coated in an instant.

It was too bad Engi would have the reactor working again soon, he’d be released from the clinic tomorrow, the day after at the latest. But I wasn’t sure I could live with this, even for a short time. From what I had read, untrained unicorns can’t control their magic. And it comes with practice, not age. Now that I was aware I could use it, I wasn’t sure I could safely ignore it.

I couldn’t believe I was saying this, but I hoped Engi would get the mane reactor working again, quickly. Before my horn painted a bullseye all over me.

Dammit, how do you shut this thing off? Did I just ask nicely? What do I do? My initial confusion was turning into an alarm. I shook my head violently. Nothing.

Well, this is great. Now what? I sat down, and thought about it.

My horn turned on when I had finally relaxed. Did I unintentionally think about it? I thought to my self ‘off’. That didn’t do anything. Maybe I really have to want it to go away? Sure this was making me nervous, but it was equally exciting.

Did I know the entire time my horn would work while the manes were down? Just to realize it consciously now? Maybe.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was everywhere. I didn’t like maybe’s. They weren’t a definitive answer.

What was bothering me was, I couldn’t do anything. Referring to both, shutting my horn off, and do anything with it. I couldn’t so much as lift an object. That’s what happens when you’re deprived of something for your entire life.

I thought about some of the books I had read. Magic was a conscious thing. But it could also be a reflex. I had definitely done something to ignite it. Unfortunately, I hadn’t read much on the subject because of the obvious: I couldn’t use it even if I knew how.

It was around this time I remembered we were still playing Hide and Seek. I had to go, or somepony would get suspicious. Then I remembered I still had to deal with what happened with Shade, pray that the Overseer or Oliver didn’t believe him, and hope the Overseer didn’t find anything out of place in her office. All these thoughts hit me at once.

And like a light, my horn went out... Good.

I left the SATA cable in the manifest computer where had long since finished downloading my PipBuck’s contents, as well as Engi’s launcher thing on the same table. Shutting the terminal off, I left the library.

I purposely allowed myself to get caught by the seeker after I left the library and put some distance between myself and the stairs and hub. I went down the to Maintenance office to do some work (partially to make myself seem legit), before I went back to my family’s room and went to sleep. It was 20:00 on the dot when I went to bed. Tomorrow I would work on finding the door terminal password in that pile of data I downloaded.

Author's Note

This is just the first five chapters. The rest of the story will be released over the next few weeks, however, the story isn't completely finished yet, and with school and what not, I can't say for sure this'll be finished before I'm finished the story in actuality.
-ReachNetwork out.

Chapter 6: Restoration

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 6 - Restoration

Surely enough the following day, Engi was cleared for active duty by Cross. Much to the Overseer’s pleasure. Her first job for him was, predictably: repair the mane reactor.

We were down in the reactor room within 20 minutes of her ‘request’, I was still managing to keep my horn under control. Engi hadn’t asked about whether I had been able to break into the Overseer’s office yet, which was odd. It was probably because the Overseer was checking on us literally once every 10 minutes.

After the third time the Overseer came back, Engi approached her.

“Ma’am, to repair the damage, I am going to need to shut the reactor off fully and wait for it to cool so I can pull the damaged coupler out of the first core.” Engi explained.

“Look Engi, this reactor needs to be up and running A-sap. So do what you need to do, but if it doesn’t work. Your head, silver platter. Am I clear?”

Engi looked uncomfortable with that notion.

“*erhem* Yes ma’am.”

“Excellent, I will be back...”

“If you come back in ten minutes it’s gonna be in the exact same condition. So can you stop interrupting me and let me work? This is going to take, at least, bar minimum a three hours to fix. Longer if you keep interrupting, so tell me, how badly do you want the reactor fixed?” Engi was oddly confrontational, “I don’t want to see you back here for two hours. I’ll have a report for you then.”

Unwillingly, the Overseer left the reactor room. I think she was nervous about something. Not sure what, we already knew this reactor’s big secret, it was powering that suppression device on level 5. Not that she needed to know that we knew that... yet.

“Alright what’s first?” I asked.

Engi was pulling off a control panel plate off the other side of the reactor, “You know, I heard that Shade was suspended from active duty. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that huh?”

I lowered my head a bit, I wasn’t proud of what I did. But it was necessary! I did what I had to!

“Well, what the hell did you do that for?” Engi looked at me with the how could you do that? expression.

“... So I could break into the Overseer’s office.” I mumbled.

Engi stopped what he was doing. He took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. I didn’t think he’d be too impressed.

“Did you make it count?”

I shook my head up and down, “I made it count. I got everything in her office. It’s bound to be in there somewhere.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then I bust in again and find it. It could be on a slip of paper somewhere for all I know.”

“So how did breaking into her office end up in Shade’s suspension?”

“I threw his baton at her window just before she went to open it, using your throwing thingy. Then while she hauled him down to the Security Office, I jumped in through the window. Downloaded the entire contents of her five computers and escaped just before she got back.” In retrospect, I could have probably found a better way break in, but time was of the essence. Then that part of my brain that normally I screamed at popped up.

You’ll learn to live with yourself.

Yeah probably. It’s not like anypony died. But I don’t think I could look Shade in the eye again after what I did, not for awhile. I’d say sorry, eventually. Or not.

“You find the weirdest ways to do things.” Engi casually said.

Oddly he wasn’t upset.

“Have you sifted through any of it yet?” Engi inquired.

I shook my head, “No, I just got it all yesterday. I haven’t even had time to look at it.”

“Hmmm... Okay.” Engi said.

I was pretty sure he wasn’t even paying attention anymore, he had started powering down each core.

“Alright, last core. Please don’t break.” He sounded worried, he flicked the switch to the last core, core 7. The background whine of the reactor running faded to nothingness. It was strangely quiet.

Engi came around to me, his brow was tilted inwards. He was in Engineer mode.

“Now we need to wait until the coupler cools off.” He stated.

I interjected, “Or we could use a CO2 fire extinguisher on it?”

Engi turned to me, he smiled.

“I can’t believe I was in charge of this job when you weren’t around.”

I blushed.

“Not a word to the Overseer.” He said, pulling a fire extinguisher off the wall. Engi pulled the pin out and aimed at the open end of the reactor. Pulling the trigger was accompanied by that PTSCHHHHH, the ‘smoke’ dissipated into the room quickly. Engi used a piece of plastic from his kit to touch the end of the coupler, it didn’t melt or warp. He pressed the plastic to his face, he took it away after a few moments.

“Okay, I think we’re good.” He said, examining the coupler. “Yeah, it’s welded into the core. We’re going to have to break the weld pull it out, and put it back together with the other half in the second core.”

I approached the second core, I tapped the other half of the coupler, it was still warm, but not hot. (Engi had aimed that the first core) I pulled it out with my teeth.

“Murt doze de choupler do aniwegh?” I asked

Engi had the most puzzled expression on his face, “... What?”

I spat the coupler half out of my mouth, landing on the floor with a clatter. “What does the coupler do anyway?”

“Oh,” Engi smiled, “A number of things, it’s primary purpose is to stop the cores from vibrating too much, but also as a link to send energy through to the connected core, which sends energy to the next, and so on. If one breaks, the cores can fall out of sync during an output cycle and that flips the main breaker. Which is why a coupler failure is classed as a mechanical fault.”

I had no idea what Engi had just said, I simply nodded.

“Okay, I need a few things. Probably a saw to start a fault on this makeshift weld , and a hammer to break it afterwards.”

I pulled a Hoof-Saw out of a toolbox we brought with us, and gave it to Engi. He started extremely carefully, I wasn’t sure why we didn’t just bust the weld with a hammer right off the bat.

“So, what are we not just ripping it out of the socket by force?” I asked.

“Because it’s welded to the first core’s shielding, if that breaks then we’ve got a Mag-Rad leak, this Stable wouldn’t last long.” Engi bit his tongue a bit while he was sawing. Some sparks were coming off and hitting the floor. He didn’t saw for long, there was a fine line, maybe 5 millimetres deep engraved into the weld.

“And that’s gonna be enough?” I asked.

“Yes, and no.” Engi replied, “I need the mallet and two millimetre flathead screwdriver.”

I retrieved the screwdriver from his belt, and the mallet from the toolbox. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t want a chisel until I looked how large it was compared to the 2mm screwdriver.

“Thanks, Dakota.” Engi went back to work. His slight taps of the mallet getting progressively more pronounced until I heard a small metal *chink*.

“Perfect. Okay, now to remove the coupler.” He said, I took the tools off his hooves and returned them to the toolbox and his belt.

Engi started to pull the coupler half out of the first core, and came out about three quarters of the way before it got stuck, he gave a good yank and it popped out.

“Flashlight.” He ordered. I complied.

Engi switched on the tiny AAA ME-cell powered flashlight and held it in his mouth while he examined the port where the coupler was.

After a few moments of looking at it, he spat the flash light out.

“Okay, looks clean.” he said, “But we won’t know until after the cores are back on.”

I looked at the halves of the coupler, they went together pretty well. I couldn’t tell if there was any missing material on either half.

“How do we get these back together?” I asked.

“I was thinking an arc welder, but we don’t have any sticks for it anymore. Acetylene torch will have to do.”

I looked at my PipBuck’s time display. It was 11:30, almost right on cue the Overseer had returned exactly 2 hours later like Engi asked.

“Engi, report.” She ordered.

“Ma’am, I’m pleased to say we’ve successfully removed the coupler with no signs of visible damage to either of the cores.” Engi had the biggest grin on his face.

“Excellent, what’s next?” She demanded.

“We need to repair the coupler, it was broken prior to the repairs. Welding would be the best option.”

“I can take care of that.” She bossed, before walking over to me and saying, “The parts?”

What a bitch.

I picked both up and gave them to her.

“The connection is here?” She asked, making a gesture towards the snapped area between both.

“Turn it.” I said.

She glowered at me, flipping the half around rotationally around the long end. Then walked over to Engi.

“Like this?” She asked.

“Yes, she was right.” Engi responded.

She trotted up the stairs and out of the reactor room.

We both looked at each other. I can only imagine what Engi was thinking about her. Maybe something along the lines of, oh? What a stupid, arrogant, self-absorbed, stuck up...

Okay enough of that.

“... Now what?” We both said at the same time.

She returned a little over an hour later, with a perfectly welded coupler. I wanted to ask how she did it, but I was pretty sure I already knew: magic.

Engi and I had the coupler in within a few minutes.

“Okay, now we have to restart the cores individually.” He said.

This was the moment of truth. The reactor had never been FULLY shut down since before the war. Engi was at the control panel, he flicked the switch to prime the first core.

“Here goes nothing.” He said.

I replied, “Once more into the breach.”

He looked at me.

“Exactly.”

Engi pushed the button to ignite the core.

*click*

... ... ...

*vzzzzzrommm* That low pitch hum was music to my ears.

“Good start.” Engi repeated the process, surprisingly all 7 cores were still in the mood for restarting.

I looked at my PipBuck afterwards, my geiger counter remained unmoved.

“Zero rad detection.” I chirped.

“Nice!” Engi reactivated the particle fields keeping the reactor protected.

***

With manepower restored, I tried igniting my horn again. When I couldn’t, I was both relieved and disappointed at the same time. That was another reason why the Overseer wanted it back so badly. The suppression device wasn’t hooked into the secondaries for some reason. Probably because it was too taxing on the system.

Engi told me to get lost, as in, go work on finding the password. So, I did.

Booting up the manifest terminal gave me an odd screen.

Select Boot System

Pon. Co Industries QDOS 5.0 (Default)
VT Inc. Stable 14 OS GUI Enabled #2

I wasn’t sure what to pick. By Celestia, I didn’t even know what the hell those meant. I supposed QDOS 5.0 was just our run of the mill OS on every computer that I had ever accessed. But VT Inc. Hmm. And GUI Enabled. What was that?

I booted up the Library Archive Terminal and searched for GUI.

1 Item(s) found: SCP-0173 (SLF)

I trotted down to the Ess aisle; heading to the far end I found the small book with the identification number ‘SCP-0173’.

The Future of Computer Systems

Written by: Scarlett Crown Pranceton

Published: 2045

I skimmed the table of contents, there was an entire chapter on ‘GUI’s’. Among other things, I noted that she said eventually we would be able to keep an entire record of our life in text. But she said it would take at least another 100 years before we could do that. And here I am, writing this out. Curiously, I checked the publication data of the QDOS 5.0, along with the computer’s manufacture date. Both were released in 2073, and the amount of storage it contained almost 100 gigabytes. I think she was off a bit.

I checked the systems remaining storage capacity, 6 gigs left. That would be my fault. Whoops.

A GUI, or Graphical User Interface, is the most likely candidate to succeed current prompt command systems. Instead using a simplified system that doesn’t use commands so it doesn’t continuously spit ‘invalid syntax’ errors at you.

Theoretically, it should be so easy a foal can use it.

That was old... 2045? Looks like we have moved past Command Prompt, sort of. I mean, from the pictures that were included, they looked similar to what the vault computers ran by default. But from the other photos, it looked like command prompt was incredibly difficult to use. Crown said it would be as easy as selecting an item in the list and pressing enter.

So, a GUI was a graphical user interface. She was right. They were so easy that a foal could use it. I had used a computer in here when I was nine when I first broke into the manifest terminal.

I left the archive terminal powered up and returned to the manifest terminal, I selected the default operating system. So, this was 5.0? I wonder what the older versions were like. I searched for the new files. It identified them under a container that I had made to put everything in prior to downloading the contents of my PipBuck to the manifest terminal.

Then I checked how much storage my PipBuck had. Nearly the same amount as a the standard computers. Interesting.

I did a file search for anything within the container that had the word ‘password’ in it. I got over 100 matches. I refined the search to include ‘Vault’ or ‘Stable’. That reduced it to a little over twenty. I could read all of it.

After an hour and a half of reading, I finally found it. In the 17th file I read through I had finally found the password to the Vault’s door terminal.

To: Overseer in charge of Stable 14

In the event you need to leave the Stable, you will require a password to access the door terminal. The Terminal has three passwords required to unlock it. In numerical order.

1) - Administrators
2) - Overwatch
3) - Offices

These passwords are not subject to change. They remain the passwords permanently, to ensure security, the QDOS 5.0 OS the door terminal runs has had the Backdoor Security Guards removed from it’s base code. This will prevent unauthorized access to the terminal. Keep these passwords secret.

Note: These merely give access to the terminal, not the command chain code to unlock the door itself. A preventive measure to stop anypony from leaving without permission. You can find those in the *Information Redacted* .

Are you shitting me? More omitted text. It was right there! Come on!!! In case you haven’t noticed, I am not very lucky. I have to plan in advance to have things work out. I get by on witts and planning. Not winging it and hoping for the best.

I ran a search for ‘Command Chain Code’ and got nothing. I returned to Engi in the maintenance office.

“I got good news and bad news.” I said.

Engi stopped, “Hmmm, what’s the bad... no good, no bad! What’s that bad news?”

“I ran a file search for the code to open the Vault door. I got nothing.”

“What’s the good news?”

“I’ve found the passwords we need to access the door terminal.”

“It’s a start.” He said, “See, we have the symbols to the door. There just on here somewhere.” Engi gestured to the door schematic I had recovered. I should probably hide that in the library before we get searched without knowing again.

Engi pushed the blueprint roll apart. The Vault’s door was huge. The ring running around it had each symbol engraved on it.

“60 factorial divided by 51 factorial” I said, “5 Quadrillion, 364 Trillion, 506 Billion, 808 Million, 460 Thousand, 8 Hundred possible combinations.”

“Is that for sure the way it works?” Engi asked.

“I have no idea at this point.” I said, I was depressed.

Yet again, if you have to enter all nine before it checks whether they’re right or not that’s how many tries we were looking at before it worked, and that was assuming you couldn’t use the same symbol multiple times. The Blueprint said it would only prime if given the correct symbol, but yet again that left some room for interpretation. If you had to put the symbols in the correct order, but if it didn’t give any hints towards whether you were right or not, we’d best just shoot ourselves now. We’d be guessing forever otherwise. I prayed to Celestia we would get some sort of Yes or No from the system when we went to use it, whenever that would be.

“I need to go monitor the reactor’s output and heat levels. You can take leave.” Engi said.

I smiled, “Thanks.” I trotted off.

I choose to call it an early night and go to bed at 20:00.

My brain couldn’t handle it all. All this was becoming a pain. Was it any surprise I was this worn out? I brushed my teeth and while I was looking in the mirror, it shimmered. Just for a moment. It caught my eye but when I inspected the mirror nothing changed. There was something else in it, just for a moment. Those things you see out of the corner of your eye, but disappear when you turn to look. I’m not entirely sure that’s it’s always me seeing things.

Have you ever gotten that feeling you’re being watched? Because I had no idea. Climbing into my bed, I tossed and turned trying to get comfortable. My early bed time didn’t help though, I couldn’t get to sleep until 2:30. And when I finally did, I really wished I hadn’t.

Chapter 7: Reality Falls

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 7 - Reality Falls

<~~~~~~~~+++=====/////|||||\\=====+++~~~~~~~~>

I woke up, it was dark. Very dark. I couldn’t hear the hum of the reactor in the background, the sounds of the lights in the hallway, or any of the other ambient noise that accompanied the Stable. It was deafening to listen to, the silence. I needed noise, something it’s too quiet! I thought maybe I hadn’t opened my eyes, or that I couldn’t move. Sleep paralysis was one of the many things to torment me.

I could have sworn I had my eyes open. It was... like there was just an absence of stuff to see. I turned around, yes, okay, I was definitely up. But then I realized I wasn’t walking, but I was. Walking towards shapes that I could just barely make out across the blackness. Just at the edge of sight.

I saw 10 doors, each of them shut. They looked all alike. I went to open the first door. It was locked. After trying several other doors, I found they were all locked. I waited for sometime, in my head I was aware I was dreaming, but I wasn’t able to control my actions. The empty black space around me wasn’t helping my nerves, I couldn’t just run off into the darkness.

What to do?

Knock

Knock...? Knock! Knock on which door though.

I knocked on the first door. After it opened, I found a postcard on the ‘floor’. I looked around, more black, I trotted back out the door and looked around the doorframe, more black endlessly. I finally had control of what I was doing, looking at the postcard, it was a beautiful sight, from where ever it was. Mountain peaks and glaciers. On the back was a number in red Ink.

6

Door six? I picked up the postcard in my mouth and trotted down to door six. I knocked on the door, it had worked once right?

Nothing. I looked around the door for a mail slot. Not even that. After sitting for awhile, I shoved the postcard under the door. A moment later it was shoved back out, it had been changed, there was a red line on top of the 6. I knew what that meant though.

9

Nine, not six. I flipped the card around, the image had been corrected, rotated 180 degrees. Trotting down to the ninth door, there was a mailslot, I opened it and put the postcard through it. The door opened. A coffee table a few feet in front of me. On it was a note.

3 @ 2:00

Door 3 at 2 am? I looked at my PipBuck, it was 1:50. I guess I had to wait.

After ten minutes, I approached the third door.

I knocked on door 3, it was exactly 2:00 when I did. The door opened. I heard a noise, something scraping across the floor. I only saw it for a second, but something (a leg?) decloaked from the blackness and kicked something across the floor over to the door. I picked it up.

A key, a brass key. I wasn’t sure which lock it was for. I said thanks, (I think) and shut the door. I was tempted to go to every door I hadn’t gone to yet and try the key. But I found the only door of the ten that had a brass lock. Door 7. I slotted the key into the lock and turned it with my mouth. The lock clicked.

I found a picture frame, there were three doors. Seven was the middle one. It had a brass lock. I thought about it.

Alright, if that’s 7, and these are in the right order. That means the one on the left is six, and I’ve already been there. So 8! Eight is next.

I closed the door to number 7, and went to 8. I knocked on it with a hoof. I got nothing. I looked at the door. There was a knocker about two thirds the way up. I planted my hooves on the door. Whoever made these doors wasn’t thinking about me. I managed to get the knocker slightly, I couldn’t grab it, but I could flick it back and then it would hit the door. I flicked it. It hit the door and made the quietest of sounds when it hit the door.

The door opened abruptly, I fell in. I shook my head and got back up. I found two sheets of paper. A full sheet of letter paper, and a half sheet of letter paper. Okay, unlike the other doors, this wasn’t obvious. I flipped the full sheet over. On the back in blue ink, there was a number.

8

That wasn’t very helpful. All the others told me where to go. I flipped over the other sheet, it was blank. This made no sense. I just sat there looking at the half sheet. I picked up the half sheet and put it over the full sheet, grabbed both in my mouth, walked out and closed the door. I wasn’t sure how long I sat looking at both sheets.

Think, think, think think. THINK dammit.

I took a deep breath.

So this isn’t as obvious. 7 wasn’t as obvious either. 8 is on the full sheet of paper, what is on the half sheet of paper? Half sheet.

I placed a hoof to my chin.

The second sheet is a half of the first. Then the second number is HALF of the first.

4!!

I galloped down to number 4. I knocked, no answer. I looked around at the door. There was a doorbell button. I pressed it. This door opened outwards and pushed me aside before closing almost immediately as it opened.

Oh, so you’re gonna play that way huh?

I stepped off to the right side of the door, and pressed the doorbell again. The door opened and I zipped inside, it shut behind me. I turned around looking at it. I was surprised when I was greeted with 9 other doors, not including number 4. They had been reversed, as there 3 other doors to the right of 4, instead of to the left like they should have been.

Suddenly, they started shifting around, changing positions with each other. It turned into a blur. When it finally stopped, all the doors were out of order. But this time, each had a number on the front about half way up. The numbers were all out of order. Okay, simple. Fix the numbers.

I didn’t have much to go on, but I did know: 7 had a brass lock, 4 had a doorbell, 9 had a mailslot. Those were all easy enough to identify.

I swapped the numbers accordingly. When I tried to pull the number back off 7, it wouldn’t budge.

Alright what else did I know. Hmmm, the photo. 6 was to the left of 7 and eight was to the right. I placed 6 to the left and 8 to the right of 7. Both 6 and 8 fell off.

What the hell.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Oh wait, everything was backwards. I placed 6 to the right and 8 to the left, they both stuck. That only left 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10. I had visited 1 and 3, but they didn’t look any different. That left 2, 5, and 10, and I hadn’t taken a close look at any of them.

Trial and error it was. I pulled all the remaining numbers off their respective doors. If they could be removed, then it wasn’t their proper door. The one I had started with had the number 1 on it before I had taken it off.

I tried 2. Didn’t work.

Then 3, that didn’t work either.

5 or 10, 5 or 10. Maybe I’d get lucky?

I put 5 up....

It fell off.

No of course not. Never get lucky.

I put 10 up, and it fell off.

Are you kidding me?

I put 1 back on. It stuck.

Oh, screw you.

Next door. I repeated the process, 2 was removed from the bag. The door following that took 10 away from me, then 3, and finally 5. The moment I placed 5 back onto it’s proper door, the doors started changing again. They were in their reverse order proper this time. 10 on the left, 1 on the right. I made the choice of leaving the same way I got in. Through number 4.

When I exited, I tripped on a doormat that was placed on the otherside. I got up.

Well, that wasn’t there before.

I looked at the mat, it was just a run of the mill, rubber doormat. I kicked it aside, I found a key under it. This one was aluminum. The number 2 lock was a dull grey, so I assumed it was for that.

The key didn’t fit the lock, figures.

I moved down to number 5, the key fit into the lock. When I turned it, the key snapped. I facehoofed, before letting out a gahhhh. I knocked at the door, nothing. Now what?

I heard a creaking sound, number 2 had opened. What choice did I have?

I scampered down to number 2, I saw a small light in the distance. When I entered the door, it slammed shut.

Not again!

Trying to open the door rewarded me with nothing, it wasn’t going to open. I cantered over to the light in the distance. I picked up the pace, but it didn’t seem to come any closer. I broke into a gallop pushing my self as far as I could. Despite this being lucid, I was apparently still governed by the real life circumstances that I had been ‘lucky’ enough to had been given. I couldn’t fly, or break into superspeed. Come to think of it, this was the first time I had ever lucid dreamt. All I had was my horn.

Okay, there is no way this dream was that accurate.

I concentrated, suddenly I sparked a light at the end of my horn.

Okay, that was a start.

I willed myself to be closer to the light, or for the light to come to me. Teleporting? Was it even possible? I was about to find out.

I pictured myself right next to the light.

Come on!

I blinked, suddenly everything flashed I was right beside the light. I looked around, it was another door. Didn’t see that one coming. I twisted the knob, it opened surprisingly. I walked out. The door slammed shut behind me. That was getting kind of old.

When I turned around to look at the door again, I found there was a bit of a key on the ground in front of it. Examining the lock, I found there was a broken key in it. This was door 5. That left door 10.

I trotted down to door 10. There was a key pad on it. I wanted to see how many numbers were in the code. I punched 1 in 10 times, it stopped at 10. Before resetting. I didn’t know the code, but the number pad was from 1 - 9. 10 spaces, 9 numbers, repeats could work... that means.... 9 times itself 10 times, 9^10... uhhhh a really freakin’ huge number? Well over a Billion.

Of course my brain made me see the worst way of looking at this situation. I was tempted to say screw it and try and wake up. But I liked a challenge. I tried to clear my head, get a fresh look at the problem, I took a step back from door 10.

The answer is right in front of you.

Okay, that wasn’t me. If that was the case, why wasn’t there a note on the door saying the password? The only thing in front of me was 10 damn doors. I blinked, their respective numbers appeared where I had put them, in the right order, from left to right.

I entered the combination: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... wait what? It was a 10 combination password, I hit 1 again. Doing that didn’t work, unsurprisingly.

After taking another step back from door 10, I looked at all the doors. I thought what I had been told, or whatever that was.

The answer is right in front of you.

The combination had something to do with door numbers. While thinking about it, 1 reopened. I trotted over to it, surely enough there was the postcard, with the big red 6 on the back of it. I went to go through the door, and it slammed shut on me. I huffed a bit. I heard a wavy sound, I looked to my right, 6 had spat the postcard out. I picked it up, there was the corrected postcard, with the red 9 on the back. 9 opened, with the note on the coffee table that said 3 @ 2:00. The door slammed shut, 3 opened, there was the brass key, 3 slammed shut. 7 opened, the photo was there, 7 slammed shut. 8 opened, the two pieces of paper were there then slammed shut. 4 opened inwards, before it came back and opened outwards, then slammed shut, 2 opened and then closed, then 5 opened outwards and closed.

Something in my head clicked, I galloped down to door 10, looking at the keypad, I entered the code: 1, 6, 9, 3, 7, 8, 4, 4, 2, 5

The order I had used the doors in. I had used 4 twice. I waited a moment, then I heard the door click!

...

I opened the tenth door, I trotted in, I was cautious, the door slammed shut. I turned my head and shook it a few times. I was expecting that. But I was not expecting this!

When I looked back in front of me, I found three... me’s?!!

“ARRHHH!” I screamed.

“You’re to be commended for making it this far.” The Middle Dakota said, she looked just like me. She was wearing a set of metal plated armour, it was grey.

“Indeed, a clear test of resolve and determination.” The Dakota on the left said, she was wearing some sort of rag-tag armour, thrown together. Was that blood on it? She also had a scar across her right eye. She looked like she had gone to Tartarus and back, twice!

A test? That is what this was? Their... my... their idea of a test. Was dragging me here, wherever here was?

The Dakota on the right, she was wearing a light white metal armour. I turned to her... me, I mean her!

She said to me, “The right pony in the WRONG place can make all the difference in the world.”

The Dakota on the right continued, “Whether the difference is for better...”

“Or for worse...” The Dakota on the right said.

“Or somewhere in between.” The Dakota in the middle said.

“Unfortunately,” The middle Dakota said, “Not a lot of ponies are capable of making any of those choices. Dealt an unfortunate play of cards.” A quick flash, showed me an image of myself.

The Dakota on the left continued, “And then there’s some that enjoy watching others get a bad set of cards.” She smiled, it scared me a bit. I got another quick flash, I saw the Overseer.

“Finally, there are those that get a bit lucky. They get a nice set of cards. Four aces, a bullseye, hole in one, a strike, if you will. And they spread it around.” The Dakota on the right explained. I didn’t know anypony that had gotten lucky in life.

The middle Dakota picked up where she left off, “That’s not the case though. There’s not a lot of contrast in the world anymore.”

Both the Left and Right Dakota’s spoke, “The world isn’t black and white.” They faded from existence.

“It’s mostly grey.” The remaining Dakota finished, “But that’s just an overall view. Average by mean, if it pleases you.”

The Left and Right Dakota’s reappeared.

The Right Dakota addressed the left Dakota, “You are a savage! Praying on the weak!”

The left Dakota retorted, “And you’re a goodie-four-horseshoes fighting an unwinnable battle. Get with the program, or get the FUCK out.”

The Right Dakota addressed the middle Dakota, “Surely you agree what she’s done is unforgivable!”

“How many have slavers have you killed to set a slave free? Comparing apples to apples, you’ve still killed.” The middle Dakota observed.

“And you haven’t?” The Right Dakota confronted.

“I don’t act like I’m a righteous, above the rest, self absorbed, disciple of whatever cause you’ve committed to.” The middle Dakota said calmly, she shook her head, “And she does have a point, you’re fighting a war you can’t win.”

“Aww, not so high on your pedestal now are we princess?” The left Dakota snapped at the Right Dakota.

“At least I can sleep at night.” The Right Dakota held her head high.

“I can sleep at night too! It’s on whatever’s in my wake that cushions me.” The left Dakota grinned madly.

“You know, I could sleep at night too if you hadn’t dragged me in here.” I expressed my mild frustrations.

“We haven’t dragged YOU anywhere.” The middle Dakota snapped, “You could have stopped using the doors at any time. But you didn’t.”

“So why am I here then?!” I snapped back, “Answer me!”

“Looks like you’ve made a new friend huh?” The left Dakota leered.

The middle Dakota gave the left Dakota a very good smack, the right Dakota laughed at her. Then the left Dakota made a lunge at the middle one, only to have her sidestep it and run into the right Dakota instead. A fight broke out, while the middle Dakota watched.

I stood there watching. The fight was getting pretty horrid. I didn’t think I was capable of this kind of violence. But apparently, whoever these ponies were, were capable of reigning hell.

“You stand in the way of rule and order!” The Right Dakota screamed!

“The only sensible way to live in this world is WITHOUT rules!!!” The left Dakota screamed back.

The middle Dakota simply watched while the left and right Dakota’s beat the living shit out of each other.

“Do something!” I shouted at her.

“I can’t.” She said, “This isn’t my fight. I cannot intervene without having to take a side”

“You don’t have to take a side! Just stop the fighting. Call a truce, cease fire, treaty, something!”

She looked at the fight, then to me and shook her head. “I can’t.”

I walked up to her, face to face, “And what are you gonna do when one of them wins huh? You’re gonna be next on the list. And you know something else, you caused this fight. You are responsible for the outcome. For better or for worse...”

“Or somewhere in between...” She said.

We both spoke at the same time, “We restrain them.”

“I’ll take right Dakota, she might be more willing to listen to reason.” I said, that was just a hunch, but I wasn’t in any mood for stepping in the way of the left Dakota. She looked meaner.

“I’ll take left me..., I mean you, I mean us, I mean Dakota! I doubt you’d be able to hold her back.” She nodded.

The right Dakota had left Dakota pinned, but that wasn’t stopping left Dakota from getting a few good hits on right Dakota’s face. Then right Dakota start throwing punches, and she didn’t stop or let up.

“On the count of 3.” I said, “One. Two. Three!”

We both dived in at the same time, I pulled right Dakota off of left Dakota. Middle Dakota dragged left Dakota away, and sat on her.

“Let me go!” Right Dakota yelled, “I’m not finished with her yet.”

As fierce as she was, she was also worn out. I was able to hold her back.

“Are you done?” I asked.

“Let go of me!” She yelled again.

“Are you done?” I asked again.

She relaxed a bit, “Fine...” I released her, and she stood next to me.

“I should refrain from such impulses, quite frankly, I thought they were beneath me... I guess not.” She fixed her mane.

“War brings out of the best and worst in us.” The middle Dakota declared. She was still sitting on left Dakota.

“Okay, now that everything’s calmed down... now what?” I asked.

“Well that depends...” Middle Dakota said, still sitting on left Dakota.

I was getting irritated, “Look, I am sick of these games. No more tests, no more trials, no more freakin’ observations. And what is with that impartial mediation Bee-Ess? How do you expect to get anything done without choosing a side. Why are you wearing armour if you don’t fight other ponies? At least the other two have explaination. You don’t.”

“There’s only one more test. And it’s a no-brainer. Trust me.” She encouraged, she also didn’t answer my question.

“Why should I trust you. I don’t know anything about you!” I was astonished she’d even ask that.

“Well, deny it as much as you want. Of the four of us here, we’re most alike.” She said that with the most expressionless face I could imagine,

“I didn’t stand around watching these two rip each other a new one. I actually did something.” I retorted.

“And so did I, or did you forget it took both of us to end the fight.” She was starting to act just a tad condescending.

“You... you... You! Didn’t join right away! We could have stopped it a lot sooner” I defended my words.

“You know there’s a saying. ‘Better late than never.’” She had her own defence

I facehoofed. She stopped sitting on left Dakota. She was still out like a light. I should have expected myself to be as smart as I was. Okay, that was just weird.

“Did you have to be so... rough on her?” I asked right Dakota.

“She showed me no restraints, why should I have given her that privilege?” She asked me.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the better pony?” I answered her question with a question.

The middle Dakota laughed, “Ha, better pony. You’re no better than she is!”

Right Dakota glared at middle Dakota, was she expecting her to recoil or something? Middle Dakota remained unphased.

Middle Dakota turned to me, “Your final task is to open this door.” She stomped a hoof, and a new door appeared.

“Seriously? When you said no-brainer, I didn’t believe you.” I flatlined.

“Well, you have a few options.” Middle Dakota said.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Smash it down!” Left Dakota was finally up and about.

“Why don’t you just knock?” Right Dakota recommended.

“Or, take this key.” Middle Dakota offered, “The answer is right in front of you, whaddya pick?”

I took a breath, “I’m not smashing it down.”

Left Dakota was disappointed.

“I can only choose one?” I asked.

“Yes.” Middle and Right Dakota said.

“I’m thinking the key.” I said aloud.

“You know, that’s not a sure fire thing. The key might not work.” Right Dakota said.

“And knocking might not either.” Middle Dakota shot back.

I thought about it for awhile. Then I got up and walked over to middle Dakota. I took the key from her, walked over to the door and pushed the key into the lock. I turned it, the lock clicked and opened. I pushed the door forward. There was nothing behind it.

“What was the point in that?” I shook my head, I was confused.

“Sometimes it’s not the destination that matters, just the journey to get there.” Middle Dakota smiled to me.

“The reality is that all options would have worked.” Right Dakota mused, “But you accomplished the task we gave you. The way you did it is what matters.”

Middle Dakota stepped forwards, “We each gave you an answer. You chose mine. The way I would have done it. Knocking was the nice thing to do wasn’t it? Smashing it down would have been rude. But a key? Well, who’s to say that whatever behind the door was yours to start with? Wouldn’t that have been theft?”

“But there was nothing behind the door.” I said, I was so confused.

“That doesn’t justify breaking and entering, even if it was through the front door.” She said, “I think we’re more alike than you want to admit.”

I didn’t argue, she was right.

“So what was the point of all this?” I asked.

“She doesn’t see it.” Right Dakota said.

Left Dakota laughed, “Are you blind kid?”

“The answer is right in front of you.” Middle Dakota said, specifically to me.

“Well, what’s in front of me?” I asked.

The Left and Right Dakota’s disappeared.

“Just me.” Middle Dakota said, “The answer is right in front of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re in front of me. You’re not an answer, not the answer I’m looking for!”

She grabbed me and shook me hard, “Dakota, the ANSWER is right in FRONT of you.”

“I don’t understand! What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“You just can’t see it yet, the answer is right in front of you. The answer is right in front of you!!!” She screamed at me... I screamed at me.

<<~~~~~~~~+++=====\\|||||/////=====+++~~~~~~~~>

Chapter 8: Latchkey

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 8 - Latchkey

I woke up, well, more accurately I bolted up. Holy shit, I mean I had nightmares before. But that was something else. What the hell just happened? What’s going on? I felt like screaming, but my voice wouldn’t work. I only could think about what I had seen, and what she told me. My logical part of my brain set off to work, trying to contemplate what the hell just happened. It took a real imagination to have that jump at you, but never had I had a dream of talking to myself.

What they had told me was itching at me.

The answer is right in front of you.

The answer to what? I took a deep breath, I looked at my PipBuck. It was 5:30-ish. As good of a time to get up as any. I sat up a bit, turning on my PipBuck light. But still, there was no way she (?) was referring to that subject at all.

The answer is right in front of you.

“Okay” I said aloud, my voice finally working again “Right in front of me.”

I think it was better that I didn’t scream, I didn’t want to have anypony bugging me right now. I wanted to be alone.

I looked across my bed to the opposite wall. There was a poster advertising stables from Stable-Tec. I kicked the remaining covers I had off of me. I must have been thrashing around quite a bit. Using my already lit PipBuck light I got out of my bed and trotted over to the post. Just a mountain with a Vault Door opened and ponies walking into it.

At the very bottom of the post there was the catchphrase for it.

Think about your future, reserve a spot today!
This message brought to you by Overwatch and the Administrators of the OFE and the OTA.

There was that damn ‘brought to you by’ message again. I started thinking about it a lot. Then the pieces started falling into place.

The B.U.C.K.E.T’s message: “This message brought to you by Overwatch and the Administrators of the OFE.”

The explanations to both offices I had found. “OFE - The Office of Future Endeavours, one of eight wartime offices. OTA - The Office of Technological Advancement, one of eight wartime offices.”

What I had told Engi about the door. “The locking mechanism works from the inside, and needs a 9 symbol code to prime the explosive bolts.”

The constant references to Overwatch and it’s Administrators that ran the 8 wartime offices. “May Overwatch guide our actions and its Administrators smile upon us.”

“In the event you need to leave the Stable, you will require a password to access the door terminal. The Terminal has three passwords required to unlock it. In numerical order. 1) - Administrators, 2) - Overwatch, 3) - Offices”

And finally, the emblems I had seen at the bottom of each file I had pulled out when I searched for the OFE and the OTA. “Now I wondered what the OTA stood for, doing another search, at the end of the document there was an emblem representing the OFE.”

“Yet again at the end of the document there was another office emblem, different from the OFE’s. I assumed it was the OTA’s emblem.”

It was everywhere, the constant references to Overwatch, and its Eight Wartime offices, and the Administrators. All of it, right in front of me, this entire time. Could it really be that simple? There was no way in hell it could be that simple.

I took off; it took skill leaving silently by quickly from my room and out of our living quarters to the Maintenance office. I didn’t think my family heard me, I could run pretty silently. When I got to the Maintenance office I started shoving papers aside. I found the blueprints to the Stable door, unrolled it. After examining the ring around outside of the door. I found the OFE’s emblem and the OTA’s emblem on the ring.

It was that simple. The answer had been right in front of me the entire time. The 9 symboles I needed: The eight wartime offices, and Overwatch. Engi was right about it.

“See, we have the symbols to the door. There just on here somewhere.”

To the library!! Okay, maybe Engi was right, I was getting a bit too attached to the library...

***

I booted up the library terminal. I limited the search to just cabinet entries only.

Search>Wartime Office (CAB)

9 item(s) found:
OFE-0109 (CAB)OIR-0171 (CAB)OMD-0280 (CAB)OND-0286 (CAB)ONS-0299 (CAB)OOM-0340 (CAB)ORS-0372 (CAB)OTA-0400 (CAB)OVR-0570 (CAB)

That was it, the OFE and the OTA were on that list. Cabinet indexes worked alphabetically outright then by author’s name. I transferred the list to my PipBuck. Finally this thing was starting to come in handy.

I went up to the second floor of the library, found the cabinet. I had used this one previously to find the OFE and the OTA, now it was just finding the rest of them. I searched through the 0100 series, pulling 0109 out and putting the folder on the top of the cabinet. I looked back to my PipBuck, 0171 was next, so this was the OIR’s folder, it was thinner then I expected. I removed that folder from the drawer as well, placing it on top of the cabinet with 0109. The 0200 series was next, That included the OMD, OND, and the ONS. 0280, 0286, and 0299 respectively.

After removing those folders from the cabinet, I realized I was at the end of that particular drawer. The 0300 series was in the drawer below, I closed the 0000 - 0299 drawer and opened the 0300 - 0599 series drawer. The next folders I was looking for were 0340, 0372, 0400, and 0570.

Wait, wait. Hold on, that was nine folders. Hmm, one of them must be the Overwatch folder. I looked at the numbers, it was probably 0570, that would explain why there was a big jump from the next closest folder I needed.

I retrieved 0340, 0372, and 0400 with ease. I moved down the line of folders in the drawer.

0567, 0568, 0569, 0571.

What.

WHAT?

WHERE WAS 0570? I searched again, checking to see if it had fallen flat in the drawer or not. It wasn’t there. I slammed the cabinet shut, and that made a big *CLANNNGGGG* I brought a hoof up to my head.

My facehoof lead to tears. I was so close. Running down both sides of my face. My logical part of my brain sped off like a speeding bullet. I went over to the balcony railing.

You got 8 of the 9, that’s pretty damn good. That just means you have to guess the final emblem, 52 times at most.

Not helpful. It would take long enough to guess them in order as is. I wiped my face into my left shoulder. Where could the folder have gone? I wiped the other side of my face with my right hoof. I sniffed. Banging my head into the railing that overlooked the lower floor of the library.

*Skitsssss*

My ears perked up. What was that?

Then, I saw it, there was a light stretching down the main aisle of the lower floor. The library door had opened. I didn’t even need to guess who that was. I killed my PipBuck light immediately.

You left the computers on!!!

Shit!!! The door closed with another *skitsssss* and the light down the main aisle was replaced with the glow of a PipBuck light. I trotted back to the room as fast as I could without making any noise. I didn’t even have time to log out, I cut power altogether by unclamping any alligator clips or jumper cables I had used to connect power to the terminals, I moved the generators below the tables in hopes she wouldn’t see them. She must have been here before, at least once. When I had finished I saw the faint glow appear on the far wall! Oh Celestia help me! Actually, no... Luna help me! You’re the princess of the night, some help would be nice!

She must have taken 0570. What could she have possibly wanted with it? Oh, and you left the folders on top of the cabinet!

Shit!!! I didn’t have anywhere else to go but back up to the second floor, I could blend pretty well because of my black coat, but my mane, my metallic silver mane probably couldn’t have done a better job at giving me away if I had attacked lights to my head and flanks.

Back up the stairs to the second floor, quickly and quietly. I opened the cabinet, I didn’t have time to put them all back in their proper spots. I realized I didn’t need to return the folders that were below 0299 back to their drawer, just anything over 0300. With that in mind, I did have time to return the three folders over 0300 back to their spots. I had unusually good eyesight, but the pitchblack wasn’t helping me see any better. I looked towards the staircase, that glow was getting brighter by the moment. I took the other folders with me, in my mouth.

I closed the cabinet and put some distance between myself and the staircase, skirting around to the far side of the platform, just below the window to her office. I looked at my PipBuck, the glow in the dark meters on the side indicated effective light level and it was just barely above zero, I flicked the backlight to it’s lowest possible setting. Along the bottom of the screen was my compass, which had a built in Forward Facing Motion Tracking Identify Friend or Foe System FFMTIFFS. But Engi just called it the Motion Tracking System or MTS, that happened to double as an IFF. Unlike STATS which had been a recent discovery for me, I was well aware of what the MTS could do. MTS was the main reason Hide and Seek was still fun. Once you found your hiding spot, you’d start watching the Motion Tracking System.

MTS had been the saviour of my hiding spots before the vent, on several occasions. You’d go and hide and MTS would do the rest. All you had to do was keep an eye on it, and turn the brightness down. I had noticed that it was better if you could see who you were trying to avoid, and I had long since figured out, slow movement isn’t picked up by MTS, being close to the ground as possible also helped. Additionally, open rooms, like this section of the library seemed to limit it the least, because I had been able to track her since she opened the door to the library.

I was facing south, while I tracked a green tick and did my best to keep it in front of me, it got close to the side, I couldn’t move. She was too close.

Other indicators could track movement behaviour, whether any ‘ticks’ were unaware of my presence, suspicious, or actively looking for me or not. Engi said the proper term was ‘Effective User Stealth Indicator’ or EUSI, which told me I was currently hidden. EUSI also worked in conjunction with MTS to identify whether or not the target was hostile. Hostile ticks would turn red. And MTS and EUSI were the only supported system of a bichromial colour scheme of anything on my PipBuck. MTS was always on and located at the bottom, just below the screen, on a compass that was alway running. EUSI was displayed just above the top of the screen on a tiny little part that would show my stealth status. Hidden + Safe [Hidden], Hidden + Unsafe [Caution], and Unhidden + Unsafe [Danger!].

My eyes kept darting between EUSI and MTS. My heart dropped when EUSI changed from that nice green ‘hidden’ to an orange ‘caution’. She had found something out of place. I heard the clatter of hooves on metal, then I looked up and saw that she was on the edge of the railing and had turned her PipBuck light up to full power, she had started on the far end of the library with it.

I immediately turned my PipBuck’s backlight off again. She was scanning the library, I didn’t have anywhere to go. If I moved she’d hear me. But that light was getting closer and my mane would reflect all that light back at her. Thinking quickly, I flicked my mane over my head and looked away from the light, trying to keep as much as my mane hidden as well, I tucked my tail in as well. I continued to look away but I kept an eye open the light was getting closer.

Don’t forget about your Cutie-Mark!

I covered that with a hoof. I wasn’t sure if it was reflective or not, but I honestly didn’t want to find out, I laid down over top of the folders and got as close to the floor as I could. Keeping just one of my eyes open, the light was right on top of me, I closed my eye. Then I realized I hadn’t been breathing either. She kept the light over top of me for a moment. I didn’t hear any movement. I remained as still as I possibly could.

I reopened my right eye so I could look. She had simply lowered her hoof, in an instant she popped it back up again. I closed my eye. She was trying psyche me out. She was anything if not clever. I wasn’t sure what she found out of place, or if she just passively knew I was there. But so long as I didn’t move or make too much noise, or the lights turned on, I wouldn’t show up on her own MTS.

With no where to go, I just waited. If the situation had been different, I probably could have gone to sleep. It was at this point I realized I hadn’t been breathing at all, holding my breath. That was probably agasin’t some rule of stealth or something. I let it out through my mouth and then back in through my nose. The light finally went away, I remained still for as long as I felt it necessary. I heard the cabinet drawer open, then close. Opening a single eye, I saw the light at the stairs, descending. After a minute I heard the door open and close again.

I got up, I was still laying on the folders. I picked them up in my mouth and back over to the cabinet, after I turned my PipBuck light back on. Opening the bottom drawer I tracked down my folders again, she had put them back in the right order, I removed them.

My suspicions had also been correct, she had taken 0570, for whatever reason. I opened the folder. There were multiple files missing, but not the ones I cared about. The definition card, it had Overwatch’s emblem on it. I took the explanation cards out of all nine folders and put the files back in the correct order. If she came back she’d only find a single item missing, if she kept track of what was even in the folders to begin with.

When I went to leave the library, through the vent (by this point I was getting just a little bit big for it) I found a guard posted at the bottom of the staircase.

That clever piece of good for nothing, waste of Equine life, slimey, two-bit, toolbag!

Okay, that was one of my more creative insults. Though the term toolbag was something I had picked up from Engi.

“Dakota, it’s the combination of ‘you’re a tool’, plus ‘you’re a douchebag’. So, a toolbag.”

Yeah, after five years of knowing each other. Engi had finally got passed all that “You’re too young to be hearing this.” The reality was I was the only pony he’d ever vent too.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to do here. I mean, I was already in the vent, I had just looked around the corner. I doubted my ability to be stealthy going backwards in a vent I could barely fit into anymore.

So I waited.

And to be honest, I was getting a bit tired of having to always wait for the right time. I wanted out now. I had all nine explanation cards, although in reality, I only needed the 7 I didn’t know. I figured if I was going to go to all the trouble of getting them I might as well keep them. Holding them in my mouth, while I was in the vent, waiting for this damn guard to screw off.

That’s when I dawned upon me that I was holding 200 year old paper (at least) in my mouth.

I spat the papers out. Rubbing my tongue along my front teeth I peaked around the corner again, that guard was still there. I couldn’t tell who it was. Now I had to play the waiting game.

So I waited.

And I waited.

And waited.

When the guard finally took off up the stairs, I scrambled through the vent, only to have another guard come done. The Overseer was being persistent, I’d give her that. Fortunately, it was Oliver! If he caught me, I could probably lie my way out of it. This was my hiding spot after all. I kept the explanation cards under me. They were rubbing against my chest, it was getting irritating.

She was determined to catch me, and to spit out whatever punishment she damn well pleased. Come on Oliver, leave already! I checked the time. It was 9:07, rotating shifts once every 30 minutes. Some of the guards must have known what they were looking for. In the 5 years I had been using the library, all I ever had to do was avoid the single guard that would walk all the way down the stairs and check once every 30 minutes. It was only a matter of time before one of the newer security recruits got bored and ditched their post to go do something else more fun. Oliver was dedicated though.

When 9:30 rolled around, I was surprised to see Oliver replaced with Shade! I took a deep breath. Would I wait for an opening or would I confront Shade? I wasn’t sorry for what I did. Though I’d never be able to convince him of anything if I didn’t say I was sorry. This was not part of the plan.

What to do, what to do? I was letting my personal feelings get in the way of my insight. I’d admit, I found Shade to be charming, intriguing, I didn’t think he had a violent bone in his entire body. If I stepped out now, I might be able to use that to my advantage. But the less ponies that knew even a fraction of what I knew the better.

10:00 O’clock came, Shade stayed at the bottom of the staircase, which was odd. I was getting impatient, mostly because I was hungry and hadn’t ate anything since yesterday.

“Come on, Lake, where are you?” He said.

He talked to himself, aloud?! I shook my head, I found it odd and just a tiny bit cute.

“Shade, I’ll be down in a few minutes!” Somepony from up the stairs yelled down, “I just gotta go grab something first!” I wasn’t sure if LakeFront had heard him and replied or had just yelled down at the right time. Still it was good to know Shade was back on active duty.

There was my opening, if Shade left.

“Okay!” Shade yelled back up the stairs.

Come on Shade, leave. Go, go go. March up those stairs. I willed him to leave.

He tilted his head side to side, his neck cracked. I heard it. When he trotted up the staircase I acted as quickly as I could, pushing the explanation cards out from under myself, I put them (unwillingly) back in my mouth. Pushed the grate down, crawled out, closed it and took off up the stairs. When I got to the top, I heard talking. I looked around the corner. It was two security guards, at the end of the hallway, looking at the restricted sign that was still in place.

The Overseer was really starting to piss me off. Not only had I just barely managed to make it up here, all our stuff for the breakout was stored in the library, and I still had things in Engi’s office that I wanted to get out of there before we got searched again, whether we knew about it or not. I was hoping once nothing turned up that patrols would go back to normal. The Overseer was getting more suspicious by the day. I peaked around the corner again. They were still talking, every so often casting a glance towards the restricted sign. I didn’t have much time left, LakeFront would be here any moment.

I took a few deep breaths, then casually walked out from around the corner, past the sign and down the hallway back to the hub.

Did that actually just work?

I backtracked to the corner just to see, I peaked around again, both guards were still talking.

“Hey, Dakota. What’s up?”

Oh Celestia, that was Shade’s voice. I bolted around. I was face to face with him My ears drooped. Okay, maybe I was sorry. I did my best to avoid looking him in the eye. I spat out my papers (again) and turned to the restricted sign. Time to lie... again. (Was it bad this was getting just a bit too easy to do?)

“What’s with all the security in this area?” I asked, cards in my mouth.

Shade trotted around to look me in the face, “What, are you not even the least bit sorry?!”

I didn’t think it was possible for my ears to go that flat.

“You are sorry.” He said, “What in the name of the Overseer did you do that for?! Do you know what this is going to do to my record?”

“I wish I could tell you.” I stared at the floor. The more I told him, the more loose ends I’d have to deal with later. “There’s more at work here then you can know.”

I mean, I couldn’t even tell my own brother. I told Engi because I needed his help and because I knew he didn’t like the Overseer at all. But my brother? He was way too much like my dad. And my dad is the one who aided the current Overseer become the new one when her father died.

Shade was an earth pony. Would it really matter if I told him? About the suppression device I mean. I finally made eye contact.

“Ever wonder why I, or any of the other unicorns can’t use magic? Or why any of the pegasus ponies can’t fly?” I asked him. He was puzzled.

“What does that have to do with anything? You’re not answering my question.”

“That’s what you should be asking yourself.”

That was another pony who knew something they shouldn’t have. Doctor Cross knew the Overseer was lying. But lets be honest, who was anypony kidding? Of course the Overseer was lying about something, she was the Overseer afterall; I wasn’t entirely sure how much Engi had told Cross though. But now I was telling Shade that there was more at work here then he knew.

We could spring a leak, and I wasn’t that trusting of Shade. Not after I got him suspended. He didn’t have any reason to NOT turn me in for suspicious activity. I picked up my cards and started walking, LakeFront walked passed me (he finally showed up) Shade just stood there. I suspected I made some gears turn in his head. Whether that was a good or bad thing, I wasn’t sure yet.

I returned to the maintenance office. Engi was there, it was going on 10:30.

“I see you’ve been up here already. Given the mess you made.” He said.

“Heh, sorry.” I put the cards down on his desk.

“What are these?” He asked.

“Our way out.”

Engi skimmed over the cards.

“Lets see... Office of Future Endeavours, Office of International Relations? How is this supposed to help us?” When even Engi didn’t see where I was going with something. I assumed it was a huge jump of logic on my part.

“Look at the bottom of the cards.” I said.

Engi looked at the bottom of the Office of Future Endeavours’ card. I brought the blueprint of the Vault Door over. Engi noticed that I had already circled two of the symbols, and by the looks of it, he noticed the emblem was the same as one of the symbols I circled.

“Ahhh, I see it now. But it says here, ‘One of eight wartime offices.’ Where’s the ninth symbol?”

“There’s nine cards there.” I was curious, I picked up the last of the stack to just see what I had actually pulled out of the cabinet. Engi had the other card, ‘the Office of International Relations’ I could guess what that office did during the war. I picked up the remaining 7 cards. They were in Alphabetical order, as I had pulled them out that way. Engi handed me two other cards.

OFE - Office of Future Endeavours.
The Office of Future Endeavours, one of eight wartime offices. The OFE was in charge of securing the future of Equine species given the possibility of a global magical disaster (GMD). The OFE and OTA are the mastermind behind the stables/vaults. Stable-Tec is a front for both of the administrations, so that both could work together under a single banner.

There was it’s emblem. Unchanged, at the bottom.

OIR - Office of International Relations
The Office of International Relations, one of eight wartime offices. The OIR was the very first office to be created (not counting the Overwatch administration) The OIR’s primary objective was to try and prevent a GMD. And although the administration was seen as a money pit in the later years of the war, the OIR was responsible for preventing at least 2 GMD’s before 2075.

Our next emblem. Finally, some progress. It occurred to me that this office had prevented 2 Global Magical Disasters. That also told me, these cards were made some time between 2075 and 2077.

OMD - Office of Magical Development
The Office of Magical Development, one of eight wartime offices. The main purpose of this office was to advance the standing of magical spells during the war. This office also worked along side the OTA to create the mk. 1 CCWM, in 2072.

At the bottom, surely enough, was another emblem. Different from the OTA’s or the OFE’s. We didn’t have WMD’s until 5 years before the end of the war? Fascinating.

OND - Office of National Defense
The Office of National Defence, one of eight wartime offices. The OND’s primary objective was to manage fronts that were present on Equestrian soil during the war. This office could also give the order to launch WMD’s if it was deemed necessary. The OND would often work alongside the OOM.

Deemed necessary? Interesting. That could mean a few things. As always, there was it’s representative emblem.

ONS - Office of National Security
The Office of National Security, one of eight wartime offices. The ONS often called ‘Internal Security’ was designed to prevent any threats taking place from within the Equestrian domain. This office had gone under scrutiny for several highly controversial cases in it’s running time during the war.

Another emblem at the end of the document. This information was highly appetizing. In a weird sort of way (And I wasn’t saying that because I had carried this around in my mouth!)

OOM - Office of Offensive Measures
The Office of Offensive Measures, one of eight wartime offices. OOM often worked alongside the OND. Both working to defend Equestria and attack its enemies during the war. ‘The best defense is a good offense’ being the slogan. The OND would handle military matters within Equestria while the OOM would handle military matters outside of it’s borders.

Another emblem. Very interesting, it was like getting a sneak peak into the past. As sad as it was.

ORS - Office of Robotic Science
The Office of Robotic Science, one of eight wartime offices. The ORS is the newest and final addition to the wartime offices. Created by a sect of the OTA and the OMD, and splitting off with permission. The ORS did heavy research into the specific field of robotics. Pon. Co Industries was eventually bought out, and used as banner it ran under during the war. PCI was responsible for the current level of robotics and some of the current computer technology available to us today.

Yet another emblem. This was so fascinating. Yet, so sad at the same time. I wondered if I would be around if the war had never happened.

OTA - Office of Technological Advancement
The Office of Technological Advancement, one of eight wartime offices. The OTA were responsible for the development of many technologies, including but not limited to the Single Trooper Mechanized Defense Suit, the Cleansweep Class Magical Warhead, and *Information Redacted*. . Often worked alongside several other offices at once, including the OFE.

How familiar. The blacked out text itched at me a bit. And this was an emblem I already had.

OVR - Overwatch
Overwatch was the organization created by the Equestrian Government to oversee the efforts put into finishing the war. It eventually expanded into eight additional offices, with Overwatch itself supervising everything that was being conducted by its offices. Overwatch was based out of the Hexagon.

There it was, the final emblem. As happy as I was, finally finding all the emblems. I couldn’t help but cry on the inside. It was just so sad. All these offices created with a purpose of ultimately ending the war, through brute force or through diplomacy. Specifically talking about the OIR, to say that had failed was an understatement

I tossed the cards to Engi. He started reading through them. I had each emblem burned into my brain. Pulling the door schematics I started circling the emblems madly. All nine were on the ring, as I suspected. But it still occurred to me that it was odd that the Overseer had been using the 0570 folder, for something.

“Engi’s not your first name is it?” I asked.

Did I really just blurt that out? I mean, I wanted to ask for awhile. But well... priorities

“Too smart for your own good. You know that?” Engi asked, “So what gave you that idea?”

“Cross stuttered your name a few too many times.” I replied, “Like he wanted to say something else.”

“Well, my full name is Copper Ingot. As a colt, ponies called me Ingi, when I got promoted to Stable Engineer, well, Engi stuck.”

Copper Ingot? That would explain why he was orange. Or why they named him Copper. I never would have guessed. We complimented each other on Nightmare Night, for the record.

“So what do I call you?” I asked, Ingot, Engi, or Copper? I think Cross was trying to say Ingi. They must have been friends when they were younger.

“Dakota, I believe you. And in fact, I believe some of my friends will believe me. But we can’t just waltz up to the Overseer’s office and demand the door opened. She doesn’t care, because as long as the head of security is in her pocket. We can’t do anything without permission.”

He was talking about Cross. Of course! Who do you trust more than your childhood friend?

And then there was me, ‘childhood friend’. What did that mean? These words beside each other make no sense!

“I only ever let my family call me Ingi.”

I could understand that, I only ever let my family call my Windy, specifically just my brother. I wasn’t sure what happened but Engi (Ingi?) stopped talking after that. Must have brought back some pretty painful memories to shut him up. I was going to ask what happened, but I didn’t. It was probably for the better. He kept reading through the cards; I shoved the blueprints to the door over to him. I had already circled all the symbols. He looked at the blueprint, then to me, then back to the blueprint.

“You realize, if we go through with this. Being optimistic, 30% chance of success? And that we’ll probably never be able to get back in. Right?”

“I’m aware. But I haven’t... WE haven’t spent the last 5 years nearly getting arrested to walk away now.” I stood by my own words.

“Any second thoughts?” Engi asked.

“Not a one.” I grinned, “We’re going to have to wait until the Overseer stops going overkill on the Library security though.”

“Whaddya mean?” Engi asked.

“I fished the Overwatch definition card out of a cabinet in the library. Folder 0570, when I originally went to find it, it wasn’t there. Not five minutes later the Overseer walks through the door and nearly catches me. She had the folder, for some reason.” I explained. “She didn’t find me, but I knew well enough she knew somepony else was in there. So she stationed a guard at the bottom of the stairs, permanently and they change at 30 minute intervals. Which is why I didn’t get here until 10:30.”

“So no library for awhile eh? Well, that puts a damper on things. All our supplies, for the most part is in the library.” Engi was thinking about something.

“Of course, it figures. The second we get everything we need, we can’t just spring into action. I don’t l know about you, but I’m getting a bit tired of playing the waiting game.” It was getting pretty frustrating. “Oh, and hide the cards and blueprints. Incase we get unexpected visitors.”

“Yeah.” Engi got up and took all the cards, the blueprints, and our two spare power generators. (Crafted by yours truly) I planted a hoof to my face, thinking.

When the day came, whenever that was; we’d have to get all our supplies from level 3 to level 1. Any of the generators would take up a single saddlebag side. Being generous, I might be able to carry 2 saddlebags, 3 maybe. But we had built over a dozen of the damn things. I had no idea how we could get them all up there without being noticed. The next problem would be getting to level 1. Yet again, using the blueprints of the Stable, we had a pretty good idea what to expect. The problem was accessing level 1, it could be done by a single elevator that most guards used to get around, or by stairwell, which there were two sets of. One in the east wing on all the levels and one of the west wing, yet again, all levels had access to it.

The stairwells were our best bet, but the library was in the south wing, and we’d have to cross through the south wing, and the east or west both to get to a staircase. Throw in the security cameras in the hallways, and I suspect the Overseer would figure out what was going on pretty quick. My stupor in the Overseer’s office left me with a single processed thought: there was a wall of TV’s that I suspect would have been receiving security footage from every camera on the second, third and fourth floors. Had the mane reactor been on at the time. I wasn’t sure why security had gone out. You would have thought that would be the last thing to go during a black-out.

It wasn’t even that security on the first floor would be a problem. Last time I checked, power to level one was shut off (the whole reason why we had made these portable generators.) Getting there would be the issue. Whether it was still patrolled by Stable 14 Security I didn’t know. But that former thought spiked my interest.

“Why did security go out when the manes went down?” I asked Engi, he had pulled back a loose wall plate

“It’s considered a subsystem. Ventilation, lighting, and water pumps, including de-radifiers, recycle systems, and auto-locks are primary and get priority on the secondaries. That suppression device may or may not be considered a subsystem. I couldn’t tell you on that. Earth pony here, nothing special.”

“What’s an auto-lock?”

“Some of the doors in the Stable automatically seal while powered. They can be opened when power goes out for safety reasons. Otherwise they have to be opened by keycard.”

That made sense.

“It is.” I replied, Engi’s ears spiked up.

“What? Oh! ‘It is’ as in it’s a priority, or ‘It is’ as in it’s a subsystem.?” Engi asked.

“It’s a subsystem.” I confirmed.

“Really?” He asked.

“I was able to... I accidentally ignited my horn in the library after busting into the Overseer’s office.”

“Could... you do anything with it?”

“Hell if I know. I don’t know any magic.” I stuck my tongue out.

“So you mean to tell me, in the 5 years you’ve been in that damn library, which I’ve never seen for the record. You never bothered to look up a book on basic magic.”

“There were more interesting things to read. And what was I going to do with it? It’s not gonna help me now that the manes are back up.”

“Point taken.”

Engi finished hiding the blueprints and cards. There was nothing he could do about the generators other than say it was a project of his if we did get searched again. That couldn’t fit behind a wall plate. I climbed up onto one of our spinny chairs. Leaned back, closed my eyes. I thought about how we were going to get all that stuff from level 3 to level 1 when the time came around.

Engi went back to work, trying to repair a broken security helmet one of the guards had turned in. One too many drops and *crack* the top of it split open.

I spun around in the chair a few times. If only we had enough chairs to organize a game of office chair hockey.

“Engi.” I said aloud.

“What’s up?” He asked.

“Once security stops watching the library like a guard dog would, the next time the mane reactor breaks, we gotta move the supplies upstairs. No security cameras until it’s repaired, and no lights for 20 minutes.” 20 minutes until the secondaries came online.

“That’s... that’s genus.” Engi stared at me with a slightly agape mouth. I was still spinning around in the chair, I had opened a single eye. “Why didn’t I think of that.”

“I’m sure you would have. And then again, it was your crazy idea to electrocute yourself so the Overseer couldn’t make you repair the mane reactor, giving me the time I needed to break into her office.”

“Ehhen, yeah. I’m still wondering why I thought that would be a good idea.”

“I’ve been wondering why you thought it would be a great idea. I mean, what if you had died?”

“High voltage, low amps.” Yeah, that was Engi.

“Look, I know the amps are what kill you, but do you really want the volts?”

“Another thing, I don’t deal with What-Ifs.”

“So what are we going to do IF we get caught?” I asked.

“The answer’s simple.” Engi turned to me, I stopped spinning on the chair, it was making me dizzy.

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” I was curious to find out what Engi’s solution would be if we ever got caught. And we had nearly been found out, Oh, I’ve lost track at this point.

“Don’t get caught.” Engi had this huge grin on his face.

My hoof made contact with my face, for the millionth time.

Chapter 9: Three Feet of Steel... Sixty Feet Under

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 9 - Three Feet Of Steel; Sixty Feet Under

Finally, dammit. After a week of non-stop patrols in the area around the library, they were discontinued. I wanted to start working as quickly as I could. But we had to wait for a reactor break down once more; Engi also advised me to steer clear of that section around the library altogether for at least two weeks.

“Dakota, the Overseer probably has every camera log of you stored somewhere. Best to stick to your duties for the time being. And NOTHING else.”

So, during that time I had to wait before I could go back to the joys of reading. (There wasn’t much to do in the Stable on a daily basis outside of your duties. The lounge had grown quite stale.) I had been working on the best route to take our supplies to level 1. The library was in the south wing, the east wing would be a shorter trip, but that was security central. My observations showed at least 6 different patrol routes through the east wing. The trip to the west wing staircase was further, and took me through the hub, but at best I could tell there was only 2 patrol routes. Time was of the essence, but not getting caught was more important.

I asked Engi, he said the best bet would be playing it safe. Evading two patrols would be easier than six. Accessing the staircase wasn’t difficult. I had clearance for it. Being put in Maintenance had been both the worst (Right after my CAT) and best thing to happen to me (meeting quite possibly my best friend and the most awe inspiring pony I had ever met).

The thing was, if it came right down to it, if worse came to worse. We could just wait for another reactor breakdown. It was bound to happen again.

Under Engi’s advice, I started trying to figure out any gaps in the two patrol routes. Another thing I had to watch out for was Oliver. Everyday he had to do a systematic sweep of the Stable. I tracked his route a few times. He went different ways each time, but left the Hub from the same exit. That would be a wild card I had to keep an eye out for at all times. But from what I could tell, I only had to worry if the reactor went down at the same time he was patrolling the east wing.

But then again, I wasn’t sure what he did during power-outages.

Something else crossed my mind, so I stopped following Oliver around. (I was pretty sure he had noticed by now) and went and talked to Engi.

I trotted into the Maintenance office.

“Hey Windy. Just in time. I could use your help with something.” He said, leaving his desk and going over to the workbench across the room.

Once more, I refrained from telling him not to call me that. Friends put up with friends? I internally shrugged, I guess.

“I found a hole in our plan.” I flatlined.

Engi stopped about three quarters over to the bench.

“You what?” He asked.

“We’ve got a problem. And it’s fortunate I caught it now.” I said.

Engi sat down on the floor, he brought a hoof up to his chin.

“Impress me.” He said.

I spoke, “How am I supposed to know if power is still out or not if I’m on level 1? Power is off permanently.”

Engi let out a loud ‘Hmmmmm’.

“Good question. But I think the answer is two-fold.” He said, I sat there listening.

After a few moments he started talking again.

“The best way to avoid you being missing when the power comes back on is that you need to minimize the amount of time you spend on level 1. As to the second, letting you know power is back on. I got nothing. Just don’t screw around, get in and get out.”

I nodded, that was probably as good as it was getting.

“Okay, now I need your help...” He finished his trot to the workbench.

Oh Celestia, not again.

***

We waited for the reactor to break, it had been nearly three weeks since we had last worked on it. It was due to go any day now. I was finally able to get back into the library. I checked around to make sure nothing was changed in the two weeks I had been absent from it. Mostly that and security cameras I didn’t know about. Power was off, but not vacant. I was just smart enough to never go flip the light switches on, and I knew where they were. During my first weeks within the library, I checked to find any security cameras. When my search came up with nothing. I continued as I pleased.

I was pretty thorough in my search. I didn’t find anything. Maybe the Overseer thought she was being a bit too paranoid for even her standards? I hoped so. The only thing that seemed to be powered was the intercom, which had been only used a few times since my first days within the library.

Following a bit of Engi’s advice, I started reading some books on magic. The thought was fascinating. That I could theoretically lift something twenty times my size with mental will and practice? Freeze things? Operate something without even touching it. I even found some entries about teleportation. TELEPORTATION of all things. I thought about the concept. One of the books argued that teleportation would simply make a perfect copy of yourself, killing the original by transferring them to energy and then reassembling them somewhere else, and that contained all your memories.

NO thanks! Note to self: NEVER teleport.

Okay, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t even out of the Stable and I was thinking about all the things I wanted to learn. And another book I read said your magic would be limited to whatever your talent was.

I stared at my flank. Stupid swirly thing. What the hell do you mean? You just kinda showed up one day.

Yo, ‘sup? I’m here. I’m just gonna chill out on your flanks if that’s alright.

SHUT UP BRAIN! You’re the last pony I’d ever want to have a conversation with.

I couldn’t imagine what I would be like talking to my own brain. We’d probably argue... nonstop.

Yeah, you’re probably right.

SHUT. UP. BRAIN.

I continued reading, it was very enlightening. But Pegasi couldn’t just fly. They could move clouds! Control weather? Everything I knew was out of textbooks. I was reading about the water cycle awhile back. The sun, which I had never seen. A huge ball of plasma with such a huge amount of mass and pressure at the core it could push hydrogen atoms together to create energy through fusion. Spewing photons out that would give enough energy to evaporate water from oceans and lakes, the pegasi would then move the clouds over areas that needed it. As the practice continued they eventually started making their own clouds!

I wondered how a cloud that had a weight around 20 thousand kilograms could float around on air. Then I learned about density, how the mass of an object divided by volume would give you the amount of mass per x volume. An object's density dictated it’s buoyancy. How mass and weight weren’t one in the same, and how light was a particle and a wave, that what we could see was a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. I learned so much in the last 5 years. The speed of light was something I found to be a bit of a shock, three hundred million meters per second, C. That was astronomical. Literally.

And I was trying to get away from here? That thought ran through my head. It was a fair argument.

But what good is knowledge, if you have nopony to share it with?

Exactly. What they had taught me in school was the basics. How to learn, how to learn. If everypony else had access to the library, we’d all be better for it. Maybe one day, one day. I’d make my own library. When I got out of this place. Right now I still had priorities. Getting out and finding a B.U.C.K.E.T if I needed to. If not, then the library plan was the next best thing I could think of.

And if you don’t need to make a library?

What nonsense was that, you can NEVER have too many libraries. The list of songs on my PipBuck defended my words. I kept reading, and after a solid day of doing so I reported back to Engi. He dismissed me, and I went back to my family’s suite. I went to bed at 23:00 like I normally would.

...

...

...

I was enjoying a quite nice dream. Not sure what spawned it. I honestly didn’t care. Wasn’t lucid though. And I think I prefered it that way, not wanting to have another repeat episode of the first and last time I had a lucid dream. Just to be sure, I removed the Stable-Tec poster from the wall across from my bed. Safety first!

What I remember from the dream was just bits and pieces after the fact. The following morning when I woke up, I went to brush my mane. I got seriously bad bed-head. I didn’t actually brush my mane, my mom did. So while I sat there looking in the mirror while she did that, I got a single flash. Middle Dakota in the mirror instead of myself, only for a second. I would have shook my head to clear the thought, but not while she was running the brush through my mane over and over again.

“Brushie, brushie, brushie.” She said, “Don’t forget to brush your teeth either.”

Prewar toothpaste, that’s all we had down here. There was a picture of a pony, a unicorn to be precise, with an electric blue and white mane on the tube. The toothpaste itself was two colours, one blue and one white. I wasn’t sure what the actual name of the unicorn was, so I just called her the Colgate Pony as that was the name of the brand of toothpaste.

Mom trotted away after she was finished brushing my mane. I picked up the toothpaste. It said mint flavoured. I argued otherwise, or maybe it was just age? But I swear it tasted like, well to be quite honest, it didn’t taste like anything. Just foamy and messy and slightly tingley. What was worse was drinking water right after brushing your teeth. It would feel like the back of your throat was being doused with liquid nitrogen.

So, like mom said. I brushed my teeth. After I was finished I looked up into the mirror again. Middle Dakota reappeared.

“Go away.” I said. I wasn’t in any particular mood to be having a conversation with her. She rolled her eyes.

“What did you miss me?” She asked.

“Not really.” I deadpanned.

“I don’t get why you don’t like me.” She looked to both the left and right, “Maybe it’s because you don’t like yourself?”

“No, it’s just I don’t like you. At least Right Dakota was genuine, and left Dakota had a no BS policy. You’re... neither.”

“Well, I guess you need to accept your own faults. Even if they’re staring you right in the face. Because I am you afterall. We’re kind of all over the place aren’t we?”

I was confused, “Whaddya mean?”

“Think about it. You have thus far, concealed the existence of the library keeping it to yourself, save your boss. And he can’t fit through the vent. You have shoved somepony over a balcony so you could steal medical supplies. You’ve framed and then lied about framing somepony so you could break into the Overseer’s office. You haven’t even told your family, not even your own brother. How can you be proud of yourself for any of that?” She flatlined.

“I did what was necessary!” This is why I didn’t like middle Dakota, despite me being her.

“You’ll learn soon enough. What is necessary isn’t always right.” She growled at me.

“You know what? I’m not going to stand here and take this. I can’t believe I’m being lectured by MY SELF.” I put the toothpaste back and trotted away, ears down and in a bad mood.

I left and closed slammed the bathroom door shut. Well, as hard as I could push the button to close the door. The last glimpse I got of the mirror was her shaking her head. What an asshat.

Asshat? Seriously?

SHUT. UP. BRAIN.

It was 8:30, I didn’t even bother getting anything to eat. I’d stop by the cafe later if I wanted anything. Instead I went right to the library and started reading like mad, again. I found a very nice book.

The Rather Large Book of Science Indexes:

Written by: Ash Tree Willows and Cold Front

Published: 2073

Well, that was fairly recent. Technically. Seeing as there probably wasn’t any publishing of anything that went on for at least the three decades following the war. The title wasn’t kidding, it was just a directory on every single science I could image; specific fields, studies, and where to go learn all these possible types of science was included. Ash Tree Willows apparently graduated from the University of Western Manehattan. Sounded fancy.

I found a few entries within the book saying there were complete courses you could learn simply out of a book. It was dependant on how well you could learn from just reading, but I highly doubted they were just books of text explain a field from it’s most basic foundations to the most complicated arcs and finite differences. I found an entry where it cited one of such books. The book was called Firearms and Ammunition. I would have done a library search for it, but I was a bit preoccupied. It was a complete guide to how guns worked. The only guns I was aware of was the 9mm that the security could, if all else failed, arm themselves with. That was only after trying all non-lethal measures first. I’m sure what I had done over the last half-decade was enough to get me tazed twenty times over, but shot? I had no idea.

I didn’t even know how a gun worked for that matter. I knew what it did. Just not sure how to use it. Our security force used a magnetized attachments on their dominant hoof to wield their baton sticks, similar to Engi’s throwing device. But the pistols? I wasn’t sure how they made those work.

I was in the middle of the library directory when I became aware that distant background hum had died out. Could it be? We got a Stable wide announcement. Of course it was the Overseer.

“Would Copper Ingot and Silver Wind please report to level 4 immediately.”

Yes! The reactor finally gave out again. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be that happy.

Yes, the reactor finally gave out again. There that’s better.

I snapped the book shut, and left the library. I had left my saddlebags in the library, so if I could start running out stuff upto level 1, it was there to help. I wasn’t able to get my hooves on another saddlebag set unfortunately.

At the top of the staircase I shut my PipBuck light off, but then realized I needed it and flipped it back on again. I had also started a 20 minute timer. 20 minutes until the secondaries kicked in and the lights came back on. Something also reminded me that my horn might go haywire again. I prayed it wouldn’t.

Reporting to level 4, with my PipBuck light glowing at full power, I had 17 minutes until the secondaries came back on. Engi was already there, working on the reactor. So was the Overseer.

“Ah, there you are.” Engi said, awhile I trotted into the room.

“I would have got here sooner boss, and ma’am. But security upstairs was giving me a hard time.” That was an outright lie, “They seem more jerky than usual. No offense ma’am. I’m not sure why.” That was partially the truth.

The Overseer looked at me, I tried to look as innocent as possible. I actually think she bought it.

“So what’s seems to be the problem this time?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. I’m running a diagnostic as we speak. But I need you to go assemble my tools for me and then get back here. I was talking to Cross when the announcement was given.” He explained, “It should take about 15 minutes for this diagnostic to complete. Actually you know what? It’s going to take that long anyway, lets both go.” Engi said. We were all standing there in the darkness, minus the PipBuck lights. The Overseer’s eyes were darting between both of us.

“Ma’am.” Engi said as he trotted by her, “Come on Dakota, lets go. We’ll be back.”

The Overseer nodded her head. She didn’t say anything.

We took the stairs back up to level 3, the elevator was dead. Once we got back, we were in the east wing. Engi made sure no guards were around.

“Here’s your chance get going. You’ve got 14 minutes.” Engi barked, quietly, but barked none-the-less, “Oh and you’re going to need this.” Engi took his saddlebags off.

I took off, headed straight for the south wing. Engi’s saddlebag on my back. It was bigger than mine for sure. I might be able to store more than one generator in each side of the bag. I didn’t bother pushing the bag through the vent when I got to the library, but instead I loaded up mine inside of the library with two generators, pushed that through the vent, then pushed 4 other generators through the vent. By the time I was fully loaded with 6 generators (and they were heavy) I had 9 minutes to get up to level 1. I chose to go through the west wing. Less security, more of a clean shot. It was 13:12 when I got to the top of the staircase, so Oliver wouldn’t be out on patrol. When I got to the top of the staircase, I had 8 minutes.

Through the Hub, I found a group of ponies, all talking together in their circle of light they had created, I assassinated my PipBuck light before I even got to the top of the staircase exiting the library. I crept through the Hub unnoticed. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left. Through the west wing I went. Both of the guards I saw talking to each other down one of the corridors off of where I needed to get to the staircase.

I pulled the door release to the staircase opening. Now I could relax. I checked my PipBuck, 5 minutes before power came back on. Getting up the stairs would be the problem, these bags were incredibly heavy. I had taken the liberty of removing the lamp portion from the generator, but still MF cells were incredibly heavy en-masse. Or maybe it was because the housing was made out of solid aluminum flashlight casings. Yes, this Stable had a LOT of broken flashlights. That may or may not have been my doing.

Up the stairs I went. Past level 2, level 1! This was the first time I had been up here. I pushed the door button. Nothing happened. Right, no power in the switch. I hit the manual release. The door sprang open. There was a security camera right next to the door, I looked at it from outside it’s field of view. Not being stupid on this one. The red flashing dot which would have indicated it was on, wasn’t doing anything. I prayed security was actually off. I knew the power to this level was permanently off, but I didn’t doubt the Overseer’s fanatics. I kept tally in my head, not including the 3 I have in the library powering terminals, there’s 8 more after these 6.

Level 1 was... lonely. It looked like nopony had been up here in forever. I had memorized the blueprint. Take a left from the west staircase, then a right at the second turn. Keep going, first door on your left. I had a little over 2 minutes left. I trotted along, I had turned my PipBuck light on to its lowest setting. I passed the second corner. That’s when it occurred to me.

This has been too easy. Not even guards in the stairwell? No security locks on the door to level 1? The button wasn’t powered, but the manual release worked fine.

Ah, powered lock. Shut down in emergency mode when power went out. Not even the security guards could get past that. That meant we would have to bust out DURING a power outage so we could open the door with the release.

Hey, you know what that powered lock also means? It’ll shut AND lock the moment power comes back on.

Fuck.

I took off, little bit more than a minute to go. I had already turned down hall to the Vault Door. The door was closed. I pulled the release lever, it hissed open. This one opened on hinges, rather than retracting into the ceiling, and it opened outwards into the hallway, which was odd. 1 minute to go.

There it was. The Vault Door, I, I mean Stable Door. This terminology was getting frustrating. But there it was, the Door. I turned my PipBuck light up to full power. I stared in awe. It was HUGE. Solid metal two feet thick protecting from the outside. Wherever the door lead too.

The room containing the Stable Door, there was a tiny set of stairs leading down to the Stable Door, the arm waiting to move in pull it inwards, and then off to the side was on the right side of the room. To the left was a booth.

There it was! The Door Control Terminal. Sitting there, waiting to be told the three passwords. The only thing stopping me from freedom was a little over half my height of metal.

Rules were made to be broken.

Likewise, doors were meant to be opened. I’d get you open soon enough. I thought to myself.

*Beep Beep*

That would be my thirty second notification. I dumped the contents of the saddlebags off to the side off the room, by the arm control console, not too violently. I didn’t just come up here to bust all 6 generators I brought with. Well, they weren’t really generators. Just a bunch of batteries. Well, energy cells... in series.

You’re wasting time!

I pulled the door shut. Pushing the lever back up into locked position. With two saddlebags on my back, I galloped as hard as I could for the exit staircase. I got through just as the secondary power came on. The door snapped shut.

So I guess not everything was unpowered on level 1 after all. From the sound it made, I looked like that could take your head off if you got caught in it.

Back down the stairs to level 3. My initial relief was replaced with stress once again, when I realized I had to evade patrols, and not look suspicious. I made my way back to the maintenance office. It was 13:25 when I got back to the maintenance office. Engi was there.

“Mission accomplished?” He asked.

I nodded, large grin on my face. “Yes.”

Engi saluted me. That was a first.

“I’ve been here gathering up tools. Lets get them into the bags, and back down to level 4 before the Overseer comes-a-knocking.”

Engi loaded me up. I was already carrying the bags. Then I took the toolbox in my mouth. We set off for level 4. The lights had came back on when the secondaries started up.

“Where would this place be without the secondaries?” I asked.

“In a hole, dying. Probably.” Engi said very bluntly.

I laughed. He was probably right. And the reality was, we were in a hole. Dying.

We spent the next few hours getting the manes back up. Core 4 decided it was going to have a bad day and overheat. One of the coolant intakes had become blocked. It wasn’t surprising. ‘Coolant’ was just water we pumped up from the aquifer underground. I had no idea how contaminated the groundwater was, what was in it. Opening the pipe leading into the core revealed nothing until we put a snake down it, 200 feet down there was a huge blockage of calcium. It was slightly radioactive. We opened up the rest of the pipes, just to be sure nothing else was on the verge of blocking. Core 6 was pretty stopped up. That wasn’t a mechanical fault, it was a system compromise, at least according to Engi.

Sometimes I thought he just made up these terms to sound more impressive. Not that he actually needed to impress me. Engi told me I could take the rest of the day off. So I went to the library, not like there was anything else better to do.

I sat there in the library. It was peaceful. It was mine. I was running through this whole plan in my head. I started considering things I hadn’t put much thought to before.

In the 5 or so years I had been working with Engi, the manereactor was just the worst of the problems. This piece of trash broke down once a month. Our water purifier was in good repair, but the pipes that bored into the earth and pumped water up, were not. They were made from cast iron, but even that rusted and broke down eventually. Throw 200 years of aging into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for disaster brewing right there.

This Stable was living on borrowed time. It was just how many problems it could throw at us before we got to something we absolutely could not fix. The thought scared me. Because the chance of that happening was becoming a bigger possibility with every passing moment. The Stable becoming just a little bit more unsustainable. We wasted water, I admit it. It went to everything. We pushed our manereactor WAY to hard. No thanks to that damn suppression device on level 5, even with level 1 completely shut down save the doors in the stairwells.

I don’t think Engi was wanting to get out because of the prospect of starting a new, fresh, sustainable life, using a B.U.C.K.E.T, I think it was more about getting away from this shoddily-fixed on a daily basis, unsustainable lifestyle we Stabledwellers took for granted. What happened when the De-Radifiers broke, as in pooched, kaput, that repairing it no longer required just some TLC, Tender Loving Care, but instead was a TLC as in Totally Lost Cause.

Engi was breaking out because everypony turned to him when something broke. I think it was more about him not wanting to get back-lash when one of our vital systems could no longer be repaired. At least, that’s what I thought. He told me a few times.

“Dakota, nothing is ever fixed. It’s only repaired until it breaks again. The only time anything is fixed is when it’s fresh out of the box. And that don’t last long.”

The secondaries wouldn’t last forever, every moment they were on, was a moment closer they got to breaking. And even when they weren’t running, they were still aging. This Stable would fail... at some point. I think Engi just didn’t want to be around to see it; and to be honest, neither did I. I didn’t want to be around for that time where Engi told the Overseer there was no way of possibly repairing something that we needed to live. I didn’t want to be around to witness all the faces in worry when the word got out we were down to the wire because the Stable’s maintenance crew couldn’t fix something.

I didn’t want to be around, when I looked my brother in the face and told him that we were screwed because I had failed somehow. I didn’t want to fail. I wouldn’t let myself do it. Failure was not an option.

But it would happen eventually. Something would fail, and we wouldn’t be able to make it work again. And I intended to be LONG gone before that happened. So what if I was abandoning the Stable? This Stable was a totally lost cause, like 15 years ago. Before I was even born. I mean who designs a Stable without spare parts? What the hell are we supposed to do...

We were supposed to leave in 2277, it was 2281 now. This Vault was well overdue for its expiry date. This place had been running for over 200 years. It was a wonder this place was working at all! Not counting the construction time, which was at least 2074 when we got the message that this Stable would not be getting a B.U.C.K.E.T.

Stable 8 and 21 did though. Or at least they were supposed to. That would be my first objective upon leaving. Myself and Engi would travel to either one of those, enter through any means necessary.

What’s necessary isn’t always what’s right.

That was the thought middle Dakota had left me with when I shut slammed the bathroom door. I didn’t care right now though. I just wanted out. I wanted freedom. To see the sun with my eyes, well not actually. You couldn’t look at the sun. But I wanted to see daylight, not this simulated compact fluorescent that broke down once a year. That was another thing. We were running out of lightbulbs. So it wasn’t fair to say we didn’t have spare parts. What was more accurate was that all our spare parts, were used.

We were running out of a lot of things. This Stable was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. This Stable was fortunate to be installed with food/waste recycling systems. We grew our own. We just had to return everything afterwards back to the soil.

Yes, EVERYTHING. And fortunately that was covered by the janitorial department. Not maintenance, thank Celestia on that one. Besides, all the stuff we had to do on a daily basis in maintenance, we didn’t have time to deal with everypony’s shit... LITERALLY.

I’m sure that wasn’t the entire story behind the janitorial department. But that was the one thing that stuck out in my mind. (Because I had been worried about that when I had been assigned to Engi all those years ago)

Right now we were just waiting for another chance to move more supplies up to the first floor. The first time, minus the time constraints was pretty easy. And I’m not sure if it had been too easy or not. I wasn’t sure I could make that call at this time. But I was on my guard, I had no idea what the Overseer had up her sleeve.

Yet again, I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out. Everything came down to time.

It was the one thing you couldn’t: Borrow, steal, buy, or otherwise acquire more of when you need it on your side the most. I was quickly learning that lesson. If that had been the case, then we would have been out of the Stable long ago. But here I am, half a decade’s work and counting. For all the garbage I’ve had to go through up to this point, I deserved like, a party with... streamers, and a... a.... a cannon. Yeah! A cannon that shoots confetti!

Good job, Dakota. Yet again, time efficiency: 0%

Nice try, Brain. You’ve already pulled that one. You’re not going to get me on that note twice.

The only difference between you and the Overseer is that she’s trying to keep ponies in the Stable, and you’re trying to get out.

WHAT?! Do NOT even so much as compare me to that lying piece of, fear mongering, pathetic... I am NOT the Overseer. I don’t lie to ponies to keep myself in a position of power. The Overseer’s word is law here. And what do I get from her? Fucking, her staring at me, plotting, waiting for me to slip something up.

You know, if we had a symbol for the door every time I made you fly off the handle, you would have been out, like three years ago.

Okay, that’s probably true. My mind wandered everywhere. I thought to myself, and in the end I always ended up getting mad at myself. Everything I did took time, it was like I was... failing myself. Never good enough, if only I was faster. If only I was faster I could have made more trips in that twenty minute window I had to move supplies.

If only I had been faster, I wouldn’t have had to tell Shade that fraction of what I know. I wouldn’t have ran into him. If only I had been...

Now you’re just beating yourself up.

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Um... yours?

Faceplant. I smashed my head into the book I was reading. I immediately looked up to make sure the book was alright. I didn’t care that I had probably just got a nosebleed. I wiped a hoof across my muzzle, then across my face. It didn’t feel like blood.

We’d probably be waiting another fortnight, maybe a month, before the reactor cut out again. Time to play the waiting game. For the billionth time. Until that time, it was time to read. Read, read, read.

One day, a couple weeks later, I decided to choose and aisle at random and take a book out of it. I did so a few times until I found something interesting. I was in H aisle.

Hunter’s How To: A Guide To Everything Hunting Related.

Written by: Forest Hunter and Sandy Shades

Published: 2056

I read through the book. It really did cover EVERYTHING, non-lethal traps for game. I guess game was their term for ‘Something we’re gonna eat later.’ Ponies could eat meat? I wasn’t aware of that. I thought we were herbivores. Basics on keeping yourself hidden, best ways to track without making yourself stand out. Their lethal traps I wasn’t a big fan of. I mean, who thought of a bear trap that had lethal poison on the tips of the teeth.

Or better yet, shotgun auto-triggers. Pull a line that pulls the trigger. That was... completely monstrous. From the depiction in the book, whatever a shotgun was, it looked a HELL of a lot meaner than the 9mm pistols that Security could use.

A couple days later I was talking to Engi.

“Look, the next time power goes out. Don’t even bother reporting to wherever the Overseer calls us too. I’ll tell her I said you could take that day off. Just move things. Try and get two runs done the next time around.” Engi ordered.

I simply nodded. We were dependant on the reactor breaking down. What happens when it broke down permanently. Secondaries could come on and stay on. Then we wouldn’t be able to even get onto the first level of the Stable. The thing I was worrying about was the particle field emitters. We had two of them, 5 feet tall each. Moving those wouldn’t be simple. Those would either go first next time around or last. I was thinking doing them first. Get it out of the way. I wasn’t sure what Engi was planning on doing with them. I got that they were to keep ponies out of places. Specifically they were so that nopony could touch the mane reactor. I wonder where he got them.

He said he “Whipped” them up. I was assuming stole.

“What are we supposed to do with the shields?” I asked.

“Which way does the door to the Stable Door Room open?”

“10 minutes? Oh that should be plenty. But is there enough gas in tanks it for that?” I asked.

“Sure hope so.” The frame for the field was too big for me to fit through the vent to the library. So it was one of the things we had to keep here. Any food we had stole earlier had gone bad already. That was awhile ago. Another thing we’d have to do before the break out. Steal a bunch of food.

“So I’m gonna move for level 1 with these, and then during the next blackout, you’ll steal food and then we’ll meet back up on level 1?”

“That’s the plan for the moment.” Engi said. I could tell he was worried, but he was pretty good at hiding it. “But if we can do it all in the next run, all the better.”

I still had 8 more generators to move as well. If I could do three trips (the field emitters Eni had probably yanked out of a closet somewhere and repaired plus the 2 runs I’d need for the generators) next time around, we wouldn’t have to wait for another blackout to finishing moving supplies. Unless Engi had a way for me to move all eight simultaneously, without being overly bulky, heavy, noisy, or otherwise conspicuous.

The timer to the next breakdown was already counting. By any luck it would happen within the month. But I had to be realistic with my expectations.

“If I can get the field emitters up there next run, I’ll be happy. And if I can squeeze in a run of generators, I’ll do it. But we’re going to have to wait for at least two more break downs.” I announced.

“Okay, that sounds like a plan. If I’ve ever heard one.” Engi was a very patient pony, “So do you wanna play a game in the mean time?”

“Sure, which game is that?!” Engi was normally really busy. I jumped on the opportunity to actually have some recreational fun. Wait, this could be a ploy for another one of his experiments.

“You get to play the waiting game.” He smirked at me.

My eyebrows slanted down. Ears dropped a bit. What sucks is your friends always know how to annoy you.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

“Or you can help me with this project I’m working on...” He started.

“Nope! I am FINE with the waiting game.” I spat out. Before I cantered out of the office. I went back to the library. I wanted to read as much as I possibly could.

You should probably pack some things for the trip.

It had taken so long to lay the groundwork for our escape that hadn’t even passed my mind. I had so many loose ends to deal with.

You don’t even know where you are on the planet, or if the environment is different. Take that into account.

Fair enough. Good thing our Stable Uniforms were warm. I’d have to pack a few. I think had like, 4 of them? One with red stripes, yellow, green, and orange. White and yellow was stock, but Engi had made his own dyes so I didn’t see any problem in well, changing the white to a different colour. Everypony was just a robot down here, no different from anypony else. Save personality. I bet if the Overseer had it her way, we’d all just be copies of a single template that actually listened to her. That would be ideal... for her.

Your father helped her ascend to the position. You can’t trust him.

I am well aware of that. Else maybe I would have told him, didn’t tell my brother either, or my mom. That’s all my family right there. From what I had heard, Engi fought hoof and tail against the elected position of our current Overseer when the old one died. Maybe he just didn’t like her. But I had done some poking around in the archives. Copper Ingot was the last Ingot in the entire Stable. My family, the Winds on the other hoof had spread out to three other families here in the Stable, not sure why Ingot’s family was dying out.

What I didn’t entirely agree with was, when somepony died, they were cremated and their ash was used to help grow new food. Questionable Ethics at it’s finest right there. I sat there in the library up on a stool reading a book on a desk, with my generator light shining so I could read, pondering all this in my head. It was peaceful. And that’s what I did for the next few weeks.

Chapter 10: Shatterpoint

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 10 - Shatterpoint

I sat there in the library, in my accustomed desk that I had grown quite fond if, reading in the darkness, the only light being the lamp from my generator. I should really think of a proper name for them. They weren’t generators, just a bunch of MF cells in series. They lasted a long time. I was reading through Unstoppable Energy Magazine.

A magazine about energy weapons, and all these tools. I guess these were met for soldiers and what not. Just something to think about, buying, what’s this? A laser rifle? Interesting.

The AER-12, the finest light based rifle around.
Range: Effective - 700 meters. Absolute - 1300 meters.
Ammunition: Standard MF-T2 energy cell.

Whoa, whoa whoa. Stop stop. I put the magazine down and looked at my generator, one of the cells specifically, on the the roll around the side had all the warnings on it. I was looking for a name. Ah there it is!

REM - Standard Type 2 Magical Fusion Cell. Handle with care!

My heart skipped a beat. I was using laser rifle ammunition as a battery. I didn’t know whether to be excited or worried! But this was absolutely fascinating. I kept reading.

The AER-12, the finest light based rifle around.
Range: Effective - 700 meters. Absolute - 1300 meters.
Ammunition: Standard MF-T2 energy cell.
Magazine: (AVMn) 24 rounds/1 MF cell.
Never lead a target again! The ‘projectile’ travels the speed of light, c. All you have to do is line a shot up and pull the trigger.

We here at Arcitech Energy Weapons recommend the Mk. 4 combat engagement saddle. ‘Battle Saddle’ From our friends over at Lyre Manipulation Systems. They’ve built it just for this type of weapon.

“Finesse of a unicorn, built for a work horse.” - Lyra Heartstrings, CEO of LMS.

Battle Saddle? Well, don’t that beat all. I was wondering how they would have normally used that shotgun they showed me in Hunter’s How To: A Guide To Everything Hunting Related.

I kept reading. Well that explained how non-Unicorns would handle the larger weapons, or you know, Unicorns that didn’t know how to, or couldn’t use magic. (*cough cough* myself) That made me wonder how they handled something smaller, like a simple pistol. Still, I continued to read.

Spend some of your hard earned bits on something that’ll keep you alive. Purchase the upgrade from your requisitions office today!

Are you serious? They made ponies BUY these as upgrades? I seriously hope the war wasn’t a pay-to-live tour of duty scenario. Did they have to buy ammo as well? I flicked the magazine shut. But that spiked my interest.

I booted up the library terminal.

Search>Battle Saddle

6 item(s) found:
AEW-0110 (SLF)KTX-7007 (SLF)LRM-2329 (SLF)TWI-0113 (SLF)BSE-0020 (CAB)BSP-0021 (CAB)

Huh, interesting. Cabinet entries and shelves. I went and rounded up the lot. I started with shelves; AEW-0110. I suspected just by the initials in the entry, it was something by Architech Energy Weapons.

It was a pamphlet.

Architech Energy Weapons and Lyre Manipulation Systems

Presents!

The Energy Firearm Combat Integration System

Energy weapons are an upcoming field. And we here at AEW have taken the time to redesign the Mk. 3 Combat Engagement Saddle, which was built to handle only projectile based firearms.

The new Mk. 4 Combat Engagement Saddle has been designed to mount and fire all AEW made weapons. Including the new Model 12 Architech Energy Rifle. As well as any pre-existing projectile based firearms. All you have to do is swap out the mounting and reloading attachments. Everything else stays exactly the same! No new tutorials or surprise changes. And because of such, we invite you to trade in your Mk. 3 CES for a Mk. 4 CES. Absolutely free upon turning in a Mk. 3 CES. Better yet, you keep the Mk. 3 attachments, for any existing weapons .

Turn in your obsolete Mk. 3 CES, your life may depend on it! This is the way weapons are evolving. Don’t get left behind!

Interesting. I bet they took all the Mk. 3’s back because they could refit them, and then resell them.

KTX-7007 was a set of technical readouts on the Mk. 1 CES by Lyre Manipulation Systems. Looks like that they had to design a Battle Saddle for every unique firearm that existed at the time. Meaning you needed a different Battle Saddle entirely to fire a shotgun rather than a rifle of some sort. I put that book back.

LRM-2329 was a book on the evolution of the CES, unsurprisingly by Lyre Manipulation Systems.

The Lyre Manipulation Systems Battle Saddle

Explanations and Readouts

Vol. 1

Published: 2062

I skimmed through some of the book. This covered the Mk. 1 and Mk. 2. The difference between the Mk. 1 and Mk. 2 was that the Mk. 2 could hold multiple weapons at the same time. That completed the link. Mk. 1 allowed you to fire large weapons, Mk. 2 could have multiple weapons at once, Mk. 3 was capable of firing any projectile weapon, and the Mk. 4 was built to fire both energy weapons and projectile weapons, by switching attachments. Energy or Projectile.

The cabinet entries I found: BSE and BSP were individualized Battle Saddles. One for Earth Ponies or Unicorns, and one for Pegasi. I guess they used E for the first entry, simply because it was expected that a Unicorn could levitate their weapon and manipulate it with magic.

I had a suspicion I would end up using a Battle Saddle if I ever got out of here, if I needed to shoot a gun. Engi would definitely need one if we needed to fire a gun at any point. Not that I had any plans too. I read through the cards. It finally explained how one worked.

Battle Saddles for Earth Ponies
The EP-CES is designed to allow finite manipulation of firearms by those not directly capable of doing so. The basic Mk 3. Battle Saddle has two slots for carrying weapons. Although it’s possible to have upto 4 on a single saddle.

Basic functions:
Arm, Aim, Fire, Reload

Arming a weapon is done by stretching out a front hoof on the corresponding side the wanted weapon is attached to. A weapon on the left side is armed by thrusting the left hoof forward, a weapon on the right side is armed by thrusting the right hoof forward.

A weapon must be armed in order to fire. Arming a weapon will move the weapon off to the side of the saddle. Counter weights will automatically adjust allowing for balance to be kept with larger weapons. Arming a weapon will also disengage the safeties on said weapon. This is done from the mount, which will trip the safety. Weapons with more than 2 fire modes can be switched to by stomping the opposite hoof. (Left side fire change - right side hoof stomp) this is to prevent weight from being taken off balance if the weapon is particularly heavy. To disarm a weapon, and return it to stand-by, simply thrust the desired hoof forward that corresponds with the weapon. Left hoof, left weapon... etc.

Firing a weapon is done by thought. This will only fire one weapon, putting priority on the right side should both be armed at the same time. You can link both sides, to be fired at the same time. This should only be done if the weapons are similar.

Aim. Arming a weapon will allowed it to be fired at any time. This is referred to as “From the Flanks” Firing a weapon from the flanks will only ever be able to fire forwards. To aim “Down Sights” tilt your head to the side, the weapon will move further forwards, allowing you to am down the sights. This will greatly increase accuracy. No movement while standing will further increase the system’s ability to aim. Counterweights will prevent loss of balance. While aiming down sights the weapon can track eye movement, allowing the forward facing view to be rotated up to 25 degrees left and right, and up to 70 degrees up or down. Additionally, some weapons can be rotated 180 degrees to be fired backwards. This requires a bearing attachment.

Reloading. A weapon will automatically reload if its magazine is depleted. This is done by measuring the weight of a weapon while it’s fully unloaded. Adding an attachment will require you to re-weigh the weapon. You can manually reload at any time, ejecting the magazine by thrusting the corresponding back hoof out. (Right reload, right back hoof... etc.)

Jams. Should a weapon jam. Simply manually reload. If jams persist. Consider cleaning and maintaining the weapon.

Additional settings.

Arm without loading. This will unload the magazine, and ejecting the round(s) in the chamber every time the weapon is disarmed. Requiring you to manually reload upon rearming.

Thought Automated Systems are included in some Mk. 3 Battle Saddles. They require practice to use. In reality, the Battle Saddle simply looks for a thought impulse. The best way to do so is through actions. Therefore, your actions do not actually control the systems. The act of doing that action is what causes the system to respond.

Assisted Targeting System. This will help compensate for wind, distance, bullet drop, ammunition type... etc.

Assisted targeting system? Sounds like a precursor to STATS.

They had to to all this just to let non-unicorns use a simple large firearm. This was amazing. I assumed it was simpler to train a bunch of ponies, and spend the money to outfit them, then it would be to just train Unicorns with limited numbers. Mass production of a soldier. Cost effective, simple, easy, non-discriminate, few prerequisites.

Reading the BSP cabinet entry was enlightening. Battle Saddles for Pegasi had to be lighter, more aerodynamic, have slots for their wings. All this effort into perfecting a warmachine. What could you have done with all the time and money spent making war technology if you had put it to something better? A cure for cancer? How about putting a pony (other than Princess Luna) on the moon? Getting them back within their lifetime.

How many other planets had doomed themselves to annihilation? Was there anything out there? We were alone?

You’re alone in the library. Also, do you hear that?

Yes, I’m aware I’m alone in the library. And hear what?

That...

Silence. I could hear the sound of my own breathing. My ears perked up. Silence. Silence is... golden? Silence means something’s done broke again. I left the library. Where was the hum from the manereactor? Lights were on. I got to the maintenance office. There was Engi, in a moment; working on something. I hoped I wouldn’t be the guinea pig.

“Engi, there’s no hum from the reactor.” I announced.

Engi broke from his out of phase stupor. He looked at me, then over to the wall. His ears perked up.

“Well that’s not good.” He said, “C’mon lets go.” He grabbed his toolkit. We reported to level 4. The guards let us pass the doorway

We found the reactor running with the containment fields down. Something was odd.

“Okay, the reactor’s out. But the lights are still running.” Engi opened the master control panel, “Reactor output 0%. We may have a problem here.”

“Are the secondaries running?” I asked.

Engi trotted over to the main breakers. They weren’t tripped.

“That’s odd, they should have tripped by now...” Engi was almost done finishing that sentence.

*CLACK*

“Ah there they go.” We were plunged into darkness. I managed to get my light on first. “The turbines must have been spinning long enough by themselves to generate the necessary power required before they fell below the demands.”

“Assessment?” I asked.

“Not sure. They should have tripped right away.” Engi was already pulling the reactor protection plate off.

“Okay,” He said, “Where is core 5?”

“What?” I came over next to him. Core 5 was outright missing. Gone. Fell off the face of the planet.

“Disconnected too. Somepony removed this properly. And we’re the only two that have the experience to do so.”

“Any signs of tampering. What about the coolant pipes?” I recommend.

“Disconnected, properly too. Fasteners aren’t in position, it would have been as simple as pulling it out after all that.”

That’s when we got the announcement, “Maintenance to reactor room immediately.”

Engi went to the staircase calling the guards down.

“Gentlecorts. We’ve got a problem.” Engi said. Looking to both of them.

“How can we be of assistance?” The one on the left asked.

“Has anypony been down here on your watch? Because we’ve got a missing core. If the shielding breaks on it. This entire Stable is gonna get COOKED!” Engi barked.

One of them immediately turned and pushed the panic button on the far wall. The one I had used to get help when Engi electrocuted himself.

“How does somepony steal a magical fusion core? Don’t they weigh like 50 kilos each?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t even aware you could remove them. But from the looks of it, all connections were severed WHILE the reactor was running. So that would explain why the lights didn’t go out. The system didn’t pick up any faults until the end of the output cycle.” Engi theorized.

Engi had motioned his hoof towards the open end of the reactor. Rotating his leg so the PipBuck light would illuminate it better.

The Overseer finally showed up.

“What was problem enough that somepony had to push the panic button. That thing rings alarms in my office, you know.” Wow, she was in a grumpy mood today.

She’s in a grumpy mood. ALWAYS.

Yeah, I guess that’s true.

“We have a bit of a situation. Ma’am.” Even Engi looked nervous trying to tell her.

“I doubt it was important enough to warrant pushing the panic but...” She started.

Engi cut her off, “We have a missing Mag-Core.”

Her shoulders dropped.

“Well. Shit.” She said. She brought a hoof across her face. She was trying to think.

“Yeah, pretty much.” Engi shook his head, lips curled around his mouth, just a bit. He was not pleased.

“Who could have done this?” She asked. Her brows tilting down, she was pissed.

“Anypony who has access to the level 4 reactor room. And it wasn’t us, we found the reactor in it’s current state on arrival. Just closed up instead of open.” Engi stated. He was being honest.

“Where were you before hoof?” She asked.

Shit. I was in the library. Time to lie! I was about to start but Engi had already started talking again.

“We were both in the Maintenance office. We’re each other’s alibi. You can ask some ponies, we walked through the hub together. I’m sure somepony saw us.” Engi lied, partially, damn that was smooth! “Your guards can confirm we arrived together, and whoever was on the last shift can confirm neither of us were in here before now.”

“Is there any way we can track the core?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Even if we could. I’m not entirely sure the length of an output cycle on the manes is.”

“Thirty eight minutes, twenty seven seconds.” The Overseer said.

I wasn’t going to ask how she knew that. Because I KNEW how she knew that.

“So within the last hour?” I proposed.

“That’s probably a good window.” Engi agreed.

“I want checks from the last shift immediately. We need that core back ASAP. Get the Chief down here. Tell all citizens to return to their quarters immediately and stay there until further notice!” The Overseer ordered, she turned towards us. “That doesn’t include either of you.”

“Yes ma’am!” Both guards turned to leave.

The Overseer pointed a hoof towards one of them.

“You stay here. And you!” She continued

“Yes, ma’am?”

“This is a tier one security breach. You understand me? I want answers within the hour.”

The guard nodded his head. He continued to leave.

“I’m open to suggestions.” She said. She was talking to us! “Is there anyway to easily track the core?”

“I’m picking up some residual radiation. But that’s about it.” Engi said.

“And?”

“I’m not sure if it’s just from having a core removed from the reactor. Yet again, I wasn’t aware you could. That or...” Engi stopped.

The Overseer was getting snappy, “Or... what?!”

I knew what Engi was thinking about, I deadpanned “Or if the core’s shielding is compromised. If only slightly. And it’s leaking radiation.”

Engi turned towards me, “Exactly. If it is leaking, it’s going to get steadily worse. It takes energy from the reactor to POWER it’s own shielding.”

I turned towards Engi, he looked at me. I think he could tell I was worried about well, everything.

“If that’s the case, we can check the entire Stable for areas of abnormally high radiation. I still don’t understand why anypony would steal it. I don’t know what they expected to accomplish.” Engi explained, “I still don’t understand what is so important about the manes. The secondaries can run everything fine.”

That was an outright lie. Engi knew it, I knew it. The Overseer knew as well, just not in the same way we did.

“I get that the problem here is we have a missing core. But the manereactor being offline has never been a serious issue.” Okay, Engi was just trying make the Overseer’s fur stand on end. He was doing a pretty good job at it, “It’s like every two weeks something else in the reactor breaks. The secondaries show no sign of letting up. So what’s the big deal?”

Engi turned to the Overseer. Holy shit, was he actually going to get confrontational with her?

“What’s the big deal. I want answers. Or I’m not doing SQUAT!” Engi yelled at her. I think he had about had it with her, “Why is it so imperative that the mane run the Stable. If we stripped it for parts. We could have enough to keep the secondaries running for another 200 years.”

Now he was trying to talk the Overseer’s language. How imperative was it that this Stable survive?

“Oh and after this. I want this entire level on twenty-four hour watch. Because I’m getting a little SICK of this reactor’s problems. More so now the entire Stable is at risk of being cooked by radiation!” Engi wasn’t even close to done yet.

“One bad fall. From a coffee table. A single misplaced kick. And we’ll be glowing green with radiation in less than an hour!” He was still venting, to the Overseer of all ponies.

“So you tell me. What makes the manes so important?” Engi tilted his head from side to side, making his neck crack, twice. I hated that sound. It sent chills down my spine.

Then silence. Engi was staring down the Overseer. I think he was actually winning. She opened her mouth. Then closed it again. Engi raised an eyebrow. We didn’t actually have eyebrows, but you get the point. Gryphons had eyebrows, sorta.

“Come with me.” She ordered.

We both stepped forward.

“Not you.” She turned to me.

Wow, what a bitch. I can only imagine was Engi was thinking. Engi didn’t argue though. I sat down. Head slightly lower than usual. She trotted back up the stairs, Engi in tow. Once they were both out, that left me and the guard.

“Wonder where they’re going.” I wasn’t really talking to the guard. Rather just trying to get the words out of my head.

“I have no idea.” The guard said. They were hidden behind their helmet and face visor. I couldn’t see who they were because it was so dark. But the secondaries should turn on in... 3, 2... 1!

*clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack*

That was the sound the lights made when they were turned on en-masse all at once. The guard shook his head, before he took his helmet off. It was Shade.

“Fancy meetin’ you here.” He said.

Oh great. This was the last thing I needed right now.

“Is this your idea of some kind of joke? Did you set this up?” I wasn’t very pleased. So I outright accused Shade of stealing the core.

Shade took a step back. Okay, maybe that was a bit more harsh than I originally intended. But still, my argument stood. One of the guards let somepony waltz down here, and steal a core.

“What are you trying to say, Dakota?” Shade retorted. Okay, maybe it was WAY more outright and frank then I originally intended. But I stand by what I said.

“I’m saying....” I started, “Your security crew is fucking incompetent.” Yeah, I swore at him.

I stared at Shade. He took one step towards me. I wasn’t done yet though.

“My PipBuck’s geiger counter is clicking just a tiny bit. How could you guys have missed that?! It’s not exactly hard to miss!”

He took another step towards me.

“What are you gonna do hit me?” My right eye twitched, as did my ear. I was mad. No, I was worse than just mad, I was furious. This has thrown a plan I’ve worked towards for half a decade into peril and I’m supposed to suck it up with a smile? NO!

And another step. Face to face. He didn’t look to pleased. I watched as his hoof slowly equipped The Vault Guardener. Yeah he was gonna hit me. I flinched as he raised it. Before he threw it to the ground. Making a clatter.

“Your little stunt cost me a promotion.” Why hadn’t he told me that in the hall awhile back? “I was originally going to turn you in right away. But I didn’t. Why? Because it’s never the whole story with you. And things just don’t add up.”

I reeled a bit.

“So, I sucked up my two week suspension with a smile. Forgot about losing the promotion. Because, I wanna know. I wanna know what you know.”

He was getting at the single line I had told him.

“Ever wonder why I, or any of the other unicorns can’t use magic? Or why any of the pegasi ponies can’t fly?”

“And unlike your damn secret hiding spot. I am NOT taking no for an answer. I turn you in otherwise, and the Overseer is looking for any excuse to take you down a notch right now. Yeah, she knows you’re up to something.”

Of course SHE knew I was up to something. She had for like a year. This was old news to me. I wasn’t impressed.

“You and what supposed ‘evidence’ do you have has proof? I wasn’t even in the hub at the time. I was hiding, and ponies will speak for me playing hide and seek with them.”

Smooth. Soooo smooth lying! Okay, I shouldn’t be that proud I was lying out my ass.

“The fact that Oliver went back later and tried to do the same thing. Not even he can throw that far.” Shade staring me down. It was getting a bit intimidating.

I realized he hadn’t answered my question, earlier. Opening the reactor, or removing the core had resulted in a slight increase in the radiation. How could they have missed it whenever who did it left level 4, presumably WITH the core. That meant, whoever did hadn’t removed it from this level.

Set-up. Clever girl. Get me to admit things in guilt to Shade. He tells BlueVisor. BlueVisor tells to the Overseer, because quite frankly breaking out of the Stable is a BIG DEAL. Shade gets his promotion.

I opened my mouth to talk. I was originally going to say “What you have on me is shoddy at best, more so with no security footage to back you up. I’ll take my chances.”

A little red flag popped up inside my head. Do NOT admit guilt. EVEN in the slightest.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I shook my head.

“Dammit Dakota! I’m trying to help you! I want to help you.”

“Well you sure have a funny way of doing it. And help me do what?”

He just had to let that slip. How did he know I needed help? Oh yes, the Overseer had her name written all over this one. Just trying to confirm her suspicions. You’re gonna have to try harder then that!!!

“I uh.” I think he just said ‘shit’ internally.

I trotted away from him. I had a feeling. Engi had said the manebreaker hadn’t tripped right away. Did that mean? I opened the panel to the breaker board. If it hadn’t tripped right away. Then maybe they had the secondaries running everything previously. Where would somepony had got the expertise to do that?

The Library. DUHHHH. There’s probably complete readouts to the reactor. You’ve seen it before. Than there’s probably a complete sheet on how to transfer things onto the secondaries without dropping the load for any time at all.

In that case, where had the Overseer taken Engi? Too many questions. But if this was the lengths she was going to go-towards to get us to admit something. I’d bet I was going to be followed after this whether I knew about it or not.

She probably finally noticed you in the camera footage, wandering down that hallway towards the Library, only not to appear on the otherside. She’s pretty good at putting 2 and 2 together; if you haven’t noticed that already.

I guess she wasn’t that good at proving it. Even if the Chief agreed, Oliver would have had something to say about it. Speaking of the Chief, he hadn’t show up yet. Who knows what they were doing to Engi.

So, the core was somewhere on this level. I couldn’t imagine the guards on the previous shift were informed about what was REALLY going on here. The Overseer coming down here wasn’t an irregular thing either. I doubted they even bothered to go question the guards on the previous shift.

So we know what she was in the library for. Or at least partly. I still wasn’t sure why she had the 0570 folder. Now to find the core. There was a good chance it was giving off a small amount of radiation. Not enough to be lethal (Unless maybe you swallowed it) but enough to be detectible. Level 4b was rather large.

“Come on, help me find the core Shade. Look for any spikes, no matter how tiny in radiation. It should go steadily up as you get closer to it.”

Shade looked at me, he put his helmet back on. I was asking for his help. Not that I had any right to ask for it. I did after all, cost him a promotion. Even though he came down here trying to get it out of my cold-dead hooves that I was up to ‘something’. The Overseer must have offered one HELL of a fine deal for him to do that; or maybe he was just in it for revenge. He was pretty pissed off, I could tell. He picked up the Vault Guardener, attached it back to the sides of his body armour.

Shade isn’t a hateful pony.

Oh I’m sure after what you did. He’ll have made an exception.

I was torn between telling my brain to shut up at the thought, or agree. I agreed. I’d be pretty damn ticked if somepony cost me a promotion for their own (semi-selfish) reasons. Even if I didn’t know the reason for those reasons. Or did know for that matter.

Unwillingly, or rather VERY hesitantly he followed me out of the reactor room. We took a left, down the long corridor. Level 4 was rather large. It just happened the staircase out of it was right across from the mane reactor. I was keeping an ear out for that glicking-clicking sounds the geiger counter would make. Nothing yet.

“How much did she offer you?” I asked.

“Who offered me what?” Shade answered my question with a question.

“In case you haven’t noticed Shade. I am not stupid. So DON’T play stupid with me. How much did she offer you?” I raised my voice just a tad.

“Not she, he. And more than you ever could.” Well, that was cryptic. I suppose it wasn’t anymore cryptic than the question I left him with in the hall.

He? He must have been partly out of the loop. Enough to know what to do, but not entirely aware of what was going on. Because sometimes, two parts doesn’t make a whole. I gave him a fraction, they gave him a fraction of the reality of things.

Both of us continued down the hall, I wasn’t getting anything. It had been a minute or so since we last spoke.

“Anything?” I asked.

“I got nothing.”

“Than we probably went the wrong way.”

I skidded to a halt, not that we were moving speedy by any sense. Shade turned around on a dime. Is that what the taught you to do in security? Interesting. I guess it wasn’t just standing and trotting around looking a bit menacing afterall. I think Shade must have failed the ‘Don’t blow your cover’ unit or something. A single sentence and I had busted their little plan wide open. Not that it was the only factor towards it. This had been odd since the beginning.

We both made our way back up towards the reactor room, and eventually past it. I wanted to tell Shade I was sorry. As funny as I thought it was at the time. I was quickly realizing the repercussions were starting to haunt me. Shade, one of my many loose ends I would have to deal with.

*click* *click* *click*

Bingo! My geiger counter started firing off. I kept walking. Shade’s started to click too a moment after mine did. It was on my side, the right side, of the hallway. Or mine was simply more sensitive.

I stopped and stared at it.

RAD Scale
0 - 1000
Area Activity: +.2 RAD/s
Accumulated: 30 RAD/s !

I would have to remember to pop some RadAway after this. Give some to Shade as well. Also, RAD Scale. I remembered the RAD x10 from the manifest terminal. That was out of 10 thousand, I assumed it was to be more accurate. Along the bottom of the slide I was looking at was a bar, with a little ticky that had moved slightly off zero. Along the slider there was markings at 200, 400, 600, 800, and finally 1000. I looked back to the display.

RAD Scale
0 - 1000
Area Activity: +.5 RAD/s
Accumulated: 31 RAD/s !
! - Updating
Regular Yearly Exposure (Ext.): 2.15 RAD/yr
Regular Yearly Exposure (Int.):1.02 RAD/yr

Ext. and Int. I assumed External and Internal. As in, outside and inside a Stable. I noted that even inside a Stable, you were still getting a *tiny* bit of radiation. But if that was yearly exposure, I had somehow managed to more than double what I should have had at my age. I should be around 14. Well, I had never taken RadAway before either. We were getting closer though, it was going up.

I kept the screen up, off the screen but still on my Pipbuck, there was a circle meter labeled RAD. Inside of it was a little arm that was moving just a tiny bit. Looked like a glance meter, the scale read x100 and there were the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 on it. The arm was pushing towards “2”.

“How much have you absorbed?” I asked Shade he was the same age as I was.

“I got...” Shade looked at his geiger counter again, “I got... I got 17. You?”

“More than 30. Mostly likely because I’ve had to open this damn reactor more times than you can imagine.”

I looked back to my own PipBuck, we were now getting a solid RAD per second.

“Lets make this snappy.” I ordered. We had kept walking down the corridor. I went over to the nearest door, the geiger counter clicked up to 1.5 RAD/s

I looked at the sign on the door.

Water Purification Room, System #3

“Is she FUCKING stupid?” I blurted out, “Yeah, that’s real original. Lets leave the fucking radioactive thing in the with water pumps. Remind me not to drink water for the next few weeks.”

Shade for all intensive purposes, could have arrested me for talking smack about the Overseer right there on the spot. He didn’t. I hit the door control. The door hissed open. Retracting into the ceiling and floor. Our RAD’s per second doubled. The noise from the pump wasn’t bad, but not great either.

“It’s definitely in here.” Shade said, slightly louder than normal.

“We’re getting 3 RAD’s per second. That’s thrice as much as we would get in a year. Lets find it and get it out of here.”

“Doesn’t this mean the shielding has failed?” Shade asked.

“It could. But the shielding is also powered by the reactor. There’s a few missing megawatts per year. I suspect that goes back into making sure these don’t let out any lethal amount of radiation. When it was removed, there was nothing powering the internal shielding. It’s been breaking down the moment it was removed. And don’t tell me the Overseer didn’t do this.” I looked over to Shade.

“I think I got it!” Shade shouted. The water pump was making quite a racket now that we were actually inside the room.

I trotted over to him. He pointed at a footlocker. It was locked. I looked over to my geiger counter again, 4.5 RAD/s! I was at over 70 RADs.

I quickly examined the lock. Without the key, there was no way I was getting this open. Lockpicking had been something I read about. One prerequisite other than patience was you needed to be able to levitate and could manipulate objects with finesse. And seeing as the damn suppression system existed, there was no way I was getting past this lock the direct way..

Hey, it’s off remember? Not a priority system.

Yeah, that’s great. If only I knew how to lockpick. Next idea!

Come to think of it, security was off too. With security down, they had to get a confession, which was why they had tried to get my to confess to Shade

I checked the back of the locker, the hinges were exposed.

“Lets get out of here.” I backed up, making my way over to the doorway.

“Can’t pick the lock?” Shade was examining the locker a bit closer.

“Not with that... no I can’t, even with...”

“Not with what? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry about it. I got an idea anyway.”

Shade crossed the room. I closed the door. Not that it was helping much. Gamma radiation was kind of a bitch.

Just like the Overseer! Maybe they’re related?!

I laughed a bit. Except she’s not kind of a bitch. She IS a bitch.

“What so funny?” Shade looked over to me.

“Uh.. it’s nothing.” I rubbed my leg against another one of my legs while I walked, trying to scratch an itch.

“So what’s the plan now?”

“Bypass the lock. Engi left his toolbox here.”

We got back to the mane reactor room. There it was, right where he left it. Engi’s red toolbox. I opened it up, and started searching through it.

“Hammer... hammer, hammer. Ah there. And.... screw driver... nope, smaller than that. Where’s the 2 millimetre flat head?

I found it under a wrench, closer to the bottom of the box. I picked both up in my mouth. Then proceeded back down the hallway, towards #3 water pump room. Shade followed.

“So explain to me this plan.” He said.

“Mrmmph! Mrump. Mmmmm.” I said with my mouth full.

“Uh... what?” Shade asked, eyebrow up.

I shook my head. I punched the button to open the door. Making it over to the footlocker, I spat both out.

“Take the hinges off, open it from the back. I mean, who in their right mind would waste their time trying to pick the lock? This is so much faster.”

“You’re going to unscrew the hinges?”

“Nope, just take the pivot out.” I applied the screw driver to the back of the pivot within the hinge and gave it a good smack with the hammer. I did so several times. It eventually came free and fell out, “Rads?”

“3 per second for me. Not sure about you.”

I repeated the process to the next hinge. This one was being stubborn, but I eventually got it. I spun the footlocker around, pushing the lid back, there was just enough leeway room on the front lock to open the locker.

There it was, core 5. I looked at my geiger counter. 5 Rads per second! I rolled the core back. It was lighter than I originally expected. I thought they one would have been like fifty kilos, which was the reason I had brought Shade along with me. I wasn’t rolling this thing all the way back to the reactor room. It was maybe... maybe 20 kilos. I could lift that. Gently, I tilted the footlocker until it rolled out on the floor. I picked it up in my hooves, before placing it on my back.

“Grab the tools. Lets go.” Another glance at my PipBuck, I was at almost 170 Rads! The meter off screen was practically on the number “2”.

Shade grabbed the hammer and screw driver. I walked out first. By the time I got back to the reactor room I was feeling sick. I shoved the core back into the reactor and did my best to reconnect the connections to it. I think I got coolant and the fasteners back in place. The core wouldn’t overheat, even though it had been shut off, and couldn’t be moved now. I was feeling really dizzy. I reconnected the couplers from the fourth core and the sixth core. I replaced the front panel of the reactor with Shade’s help. He asked questions about what I was doing as the process continued, I explained accordingly. I had seen Engi do this process so many times I knew what to do. Then I went and flipped the main breaker, as it hadn’t been tripped. The entire Stable was plunged back into darkness.

I turned my PipBuck light back on, before priming each core from the control panel and restarting them individually, then I went and flipped the main breaker again. All lights came back on. From lights out to restart, it had been less than two minutes.

“That’s enough Engi can finish the rest. If there’s anything else to do.”

I trotted up the stairs, Shade came with. He stopped halfway up, and brought a hoof to his face.

“Oh, I think I’m gonna be sick.” He said, before he put a hoof on the railing.

I stared at my geiger counter. 297 RAD.

“Whaddya you got?”

“Two... Two sixty six.”

We both made it to the top of the stairs... somehow. My PipBuck told me, both of us, had minor radiation sickness. If this was minor, I’d hate to see what moderate and major, or severe felt like. My vision had blurred a bit. There were two guards at the top of the stairs.

“Report!” One of them barked, I think it was to Shade.

“We found the core. Dakota has... successfully replaced it and... restart....ed the mane reactor.” He managed to blurt out before he emptied the contents of his stomach on the metal floor plates.

“Ewww!” The other guard shrieked. I was shaking my head.

Not gonna vomit. Not gonna vomit. Not gonna vomit. Not gonna vomit. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Even though my blurry vision, I saw one of the guards hit the panic button. My breathing started to get faster. I was still awake when the Overseer showed up, along with Engi, and two other guards. Oliver being one and the Chief being the other.

“By Celestia! Somepony go get Cross!” Oliver shouted. One of the guards that was here prior to them showing up took off.

“And a mopping crew.” BlueVisor said. The other guard took off as well.

“Engi!” I looked at him, “We found and replaced the missing core. Manes are back up. We couldn’t stay long enough to turn the fields back on. The... radiation...”

Engi waved his own PipBuck past me.

“Two hundred and ninety seven!” Engi continued to wave it past Shade, “Two hundred and sixty six!”

Shade somehow managed to bring up more stomach contents onto the metal floor plates. Then he hit the floor with a metal clang, landing in his own spew. His body armour adding to the clatter, on top of the Vault Guardener falling off and clanging around. His helmet rolled off into the wall.

NOT going to vomit. How about a bunch of NOPE. A few dozen shipments of NOPE.

“Get that core shielding back on, Engi.” The Overseer ordered.

“I ain’t going down there without an environment suit! So you better have one unpacked for me within the hour.” Engi snapped back, “Or faster, because Celestia knows if she replaced it properly, it could overheat.”

“Treat the Overseer with respect! You...” BlueVisor took a few steps towards Engi, equipping a baton. Oliver stepped in between them.

“ENOUGH! You!” Oliver pointed to the Overseer, “Get him a suit. Actually, make that two, because he’s not going down there alone. You!” He pointed to BlueVisor. “Pick him up and get him to the Infirmary! You!” He pointed to me, “Lets go. You’re coming with me to the infirmary.”

Neither the Overseer or BlueVisor had the guts to get in the way of Oliver’s orders. I didn’t blame them. I’d rather deal with a pissed off Overseer than a pissed off Officer Oliver. BlueVisor picked up Shade on his back, then he left for the Infirmary. Oliver waited a minute, the Overseer had already gone to procure some environment suits for Engi and whoever was the second poor bastard that was going down with him.

“Can you walk?” Oliver asked me, it was his nice tone.

“Yeah, yeah. I... I think so. I can’t see that well.”

Oliver lifted one of my front hooves up, and threw it over his shoulders.

“Okay, lets go.” He said.

I wasn’t sure what happened. I couldn’t see that well, but I guess BlueVisor had taken a different route, because one of the guards returned with Cross while we were walking along. He should have ran into them first.

Cross fell in line with us.

“What happened here?” He asked.

“Dakota and Shade are suffering from radiation sickness.” Oliver replied, I couldn’t even speak at that point. I was putting all my willpower towards suppressing the urge to vomit.

In a single quick motion while we were trotting, Cross waved his PipBuck by me. He stopped cold. Mouth slightly agape, I couldn’t see it very well though.

“C’mon, lets go. Lets go!” He shouted, he nudged Oliver’s back with his head. Oliver took my other hoof, and threw me over his back. It was just a blur, we passed through the Hub on our way to Cross’ office. A group of ponies had started to gather I heard some of what they said.

“What’s going on with her?”

“Is she alright?”

“What happened?”

“You know, BlueVisor walked through here not twenty seconds ago with Shade, the same way.”

The last sentence spiked my interest. But I couldn’t go and ask questions. Oliver just kept on going.

“Get out of the way. Clear the area. You’re supposed to be back in your rooms. LEAVE.” He shouted. I guess the Overseer gave the all clear after power went out and came back on. Oliver just reinstated that order.

When we got to the clinic, my vision was so blurry, I could barely tell BlueVisor was at the door with Shade. I could see he had bio from his vomit around his lips after Cross opened the door and we passed by them. Ewww.

Nope. Nope. Lets just nope-off to FuckThisShitVille. Not vomiting. Not gonna happen.

“Symptoms?” Cross asked.

“Obvious ones on this one. Severe nausea, vomiting.” Oliver said.

“What about her?”

“She can’t walk, or see very well.”

I spoke up, “Trying not to vomit here.”

They put both of us on beds.

“Hey listen up, Dakota.” Cross was looking me dead in the face, he was really blurry, as were the lights above him, which clouded my vision, “You’ve taken a mild amount of radiation. I’m gonna put you out, and then shoot you up with RadAway alright? You’ve been exposed for so long that I can’t just give it to you all in one dosage.”

I shook my head up and down. I never thought I’d be the one on the beds, it was more terrifying after what happened with Engi. I didn’t have any energy left to fight it though. He took his PipBuck and ran it by me once again.

“300 RADs there abouts. What about him?” Cross said.

“Almost 270.” I think it was Oliver. I doubted BlueVisor gave a single fuck about what was happening.

“You wanna go get their families?” Cross said, he was getting a sedative.

WHAT? What was that supposed to mean?!! I started shaking around. NO. Not happening on my watch.

“I think she heard you. And took it the wrong way” I was pretty sure it was Oliver. I had already started to panic.

Cross shouted, “Hold her down!”

Olver came over to the bed.

“No. NO. NO!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Oliver forced me down with his hooves at my shoulders, Cross used a hoof to get my head. He got me right in the neck, before injecting the entire needle.

My vision started to go, Cross walked away. I was able to turn my head towards the window. There was a crowd of ponies outside. Oliver, I think it was him. It could have been Cross. And flicked a hoof, gesturing them to get lost.

I was crying on the inside. And probably on the outside too. It started to get darker. And darker. And darker. I think I managed to get a final scream off before everything faded out and to black.

A Word Of Warning

STAY OUT

I know why you’ve come here.

Turn around, you’re making a huge mistake.

I don’t know where you’ve come from, what you’ve heard, seen, or done.

But please listen to me. If you’ve come this far, it means you’re free. Use that freedom of choice and leave this place now!

Anything you’ve heard isn’t the entire story and definitely isn’t the truth. So please think about what you’re doing.

You will find no salvation beyond this doorway.

Are you wise? You will go back the way you came.

Are you stupid? You will walk through this door.

Are you skeptical or curious? Read on and maybe then you’ll heed my warning.

Author's Note

Welcome to Fallout Shelter Fourteen.