Author's Note

I am SOOO dumb.... This has been done for an age now....

Daring Departure

If you had rolled a grenade between the three ponies, their hearts would not have raced as fast as with the singular event in front of them. Dinner was over with, the last meal they would have here, filled their stomachs like rocks. After suffering a small bit of the giggles randomly, the silent party remained that way until Lilly sprung to her hooves and said aloud: "I have to use the bathroom."

This was the first time anypony would ever say those words with two other ponies ready to keel over from a heart attack in excitement at this news. There was now a precedence set for a jubilant bowel movement.

"Ok, Ok." Ticker said out loud, rolling through the plan one last time in his head. "So, to the bathroom you used the vent on. Go down the service corridor to the first available door. Open it slowly, it should be a normal locked door. Twist the handle and push it open a few inches, we'll be in the area to see it move. Got it?"

"Yes!" Lilly nodded. "Door in the hallway, turn and wait for you."

"Good." Skye confirmed.

"Head down, we will follow a bit behind you." Ticker said to Lilly as she began to head away from them, going down the ramp at the top of the special area.

Hearts thundered in chests, Skye and Ticker kept eyes locked on Lilly, the small little key. Right now, everything hinged on her getting that door open. They watched, waiting as the robot approached her and then led her to the nearest bathroom. She disappeared inside and they began to watch the long padded hallway.

Seconds ticked by like hours, eyes feverishly searching for a bit of padding that moved. By now she should have been there, it was just a short trot away.

"What if she got caught?" Skye asked, twisting her head to Ticker to ask, then back on her section of wall.

"She probably used the bathroom first. She's not pumped and plugged like we are. A-" His reply had to wait, he thought a wall move. "Door, DOOR DOOR!" he muttered loudly.

The two bolted to the section of wall that had moved. Ticker used a rubber suited hoof to help pry it open a bit more. To his relief he saw Lilly on the inside, waving a hoof for them to come in.

"Anything I can say that will make you stay?"

Ticker and Skye felt themselves hit the ceiling, though it was more like they ran into each other and fell over. In the near-heart attack they both suffered, they managed not to curse.

"Zephyr!" Lilly chirped, "Want to come with us?"

"No... no..." he backed away from the door from his position where he seemed to appear. "I... can't."

Ticker regained composure and slipped inside the door. "We offered, he said no. Let's go."

Skye needed no convincing, she slipped into the service hatch.

The zebra took a timid step forward. "Don't" he shook his head. It was as if he knew what was out there, what awaited them all. His eyes were more focused than before, softer in a way. They were pleading for them to stay, to close the door and come back.

"We have to go." Ticker said to the group, it was eating away time they didn't have sitting here. The zebra just watched them as the closed the door, never moving closer, but just staying still. Soon the wall was back to normal, just a padded wall with no hint of a door behind it.

"Lilly,"Ticker said, now that they were outside the Ark's living area, "We need to get to those weapons, let's go."

The three walked at a cautious pace, looking for any signs of danger as they followed the darkened hoof prints to a door where Lilly stopped for a second, then went inside. Her two friends were now seeing what she did before. The shelves on shelves of 'supplies'. Muzzles, jackets and piles of latex and straps. There was enough in here to mummify anypony beyond being recognized in any real way.

Skye approached the large bin where she saw the barrels of guns protruding. She approached it, but paused, as if she hit a wall. Ticker grew concerned as she just stood there and approached her.

His stomach twisted, as if a shotgun had been discharged into his chest. Everything inside him was burning, pulsating in a rythm with his heart, shooting what could be only described as pain into his entire being. Barbed wire felt as if it were wrapped around his entire body, the coils drawing it tighter, cutting deep invisible wounds.

"Whoa..." He shook his head to clear a fuzz building. "What... is that?"

"I.... I don't know. Its... wrong." Skye mumbled while backing up with Ticker.

"Its... We need to go. This thing or not, we need to leave." Skye gritted her teeth together and pushed onward towards the cart. She was grunting the closer she got to the weapons. By the time she picked up the rifle, she was almost in tears. Her hooves fumbled with the belt around the stock, getting it to strap on the outer hoof was a challenge. Soon the rifle was slung around her hoof. She struggled with the magazine, but eventually got it in.

"See. N... nothing to worry about." She grinned. Both of Ticker and Lilly knew it was a lie, they could sense it. They could also feel the pain she was in.

Lilly did as Skye did, though she seemed to have an easier time retrieving the gear than her friend. She grabbed a bundle of the weapons in a pack and slung it over her shoulder. Ticker managed to collect the apparel, bundle it up and toss is over his back.

Looking over at his companions, he noticed that they felt different to him. He couldn't put a hoof down on what it was, how they had changed, how he had changed. He had a sinking feeling build up, that they were no longer who they were.

"We are not who we are." he mumbled. "I... We had best get to a terminal, I don't know how long we have until the place becomes alive with them damned bots."

"Let's go, I know where one is." Lilly said, leaving the room and beginning to head down the hallway, following her tracks from the day before, she led them into another store room. This one had a terminal inside, in the back behind more shelves of restraints.

Ticker let the clothes slide off his back and pressed the power button. The old terminal sprung to life, the noisy whine as the tubes heated up, soon the screen flashed in a pale white as text began to spool down the screen. Soon the Arkitechute logo was displayed and the menu popped up.

Ticker hadn't manually breached a system lately. He was able to get through anything with his box. He'd already done all of this code cracking work, it was all saved and ready to go. He found the command line input and used the buttons to tick out a line of code. The machine blinked out and sprung back to life, this time with more options, full access.

He sped through several design documents, blueprints laid out as tiny dots across the screen. From a distance they formed a solid line, but close to the screen, the glasses he wore clarified it to the tiny dots. He scanned through several more pages and found what he was looking for.

The Ark didn't have one main door, as he was soon to discover. It had seven. Scattered across a rather large area were four. The three others were accessed through the mine. One at the rail depot they were headed towards, but he was looking at one that led into the first mine shaft. Shaft number 1. All they needed to do was open the door and get out, strait shot. Sadly, the most direct route took them though the maintenance area, across a garage network and into another service shaft that led directly to the door.

He stared at the maps a bit longer, memorizing them solidly. Once sure he had the directions down he closed the terminal and pushed the keyboard back under the display.

"Ok, I have got it. A way out. Bad news, we are going to have to head to that store, I need my breakout box. We can grab whatever else we need there then head out. Food, water, canteens, anything we will need for the trip back to Las Pegasus."

"We should probably try and grab whatever we can. Ammunition is a bit light, and we can take some things to trade. I doubt they have any Healing Salve lined up neatly on shelves waiting to take." Skye added.

"Actually, everything in the store is sorted." Lilly told them, "Ammunition, clothes and everything. Just take what we want and go. It's a store where you don't have to pay."

"Allright, I figure we need to hold here for a while, let the bots go down to the maintenance area and follow them after. We should be safe if we stay back here." Ticker said. He had allowed for a waiting period, but only after a terminal was found. Waiting again. This time it wasn't the food in his stomach that was gnawing at him, it was something else.

The trio watched something nopony had probably ever seen before. For just being in one quarter of the Ark's exterior halls, the stagering amount of robots that hovered near the door on their way to the maintenance bay had them re-thinking their plan. Ticker counted over thirty in their silence, meaning that there were perhaps four times that many along their route. It was an insight into how big this Ark really was.

They spent more than twice the necessary time after the last bot passed, freezing in place. This was going to be common place, an over cautious approach to everything, as this was the part of the plan where things were going to go wrong. They couldn't afford that now, or ever.

Ticker slowly crept to the door, minding the piles of clothes slung over his shoulder on the shelves. The only good use for the suit he was in was the fact that his hooves were encased in rubber, completely silent as they pressed down on the thicker bottom layer as he strode forward. He watched to the right and left of the door, making sure it was safe.

"Come on." he whispered, waving a hoof. "Lilly, where do we need to go?"

"Follow the prints on the ground." She answered. "They go to the store and the robot area."

"Ah." Ticker mused, he hadn't noticed the prints on the ground, he was too focused on staying free. Sure enough, there was a line of hoofptrints, coming and going left on the concrete floor. The suits were shined and coated so heavily that it soaked into the concrete. He also noticed that the few days they had been here, their exposed coats and manes had a gloss to them as well, a by product of being in and around latex every second of the day.

The three quickly and quietly trotted down the access tunnel. Ticker knew Arks were large, but this one was even larger. On the terminal he saw schematics for several larger rooms, not any maintenance tunnel sized areas either. There was a large portion of this Ark that was... missing.

Nearing the bottom of the tunnel, they slowed down, making sure to check and see if the bots were offline. To much relief, they were. Facing inward so the arms on the outside of each alcove could attach the power cables to charge them up. None were at the steel machines that looked like an octopus, arms all folded neatly away.

Lilly guided them to the store, though the doors were shuttered at this time of night. They were metal shutters, with a single lock near the bottom, storage gate for all intents and purposes. The small mare leaned forward and sent a bucking into the door that sheared the simple latch from ground.

Progress was slow through the room. The ponies felt more than sluggish as they combed the shelves. Ticker pulled out some better clothes, something more suited to the cold and then moved down to what looked like an electronics section. Skye was concentrating over the munitions, having dumped her current load-out for something more devastating. Lilly didn't know guns, but problem solved. Lilly did know medicine, not what all the parts were used for, or why, but memories made her capable of choosing the important supplies.

Ticker found his box, stacked neatly among the radiation detectors, lights and the seldom pip-buck. It had been damaged during the events that led them here, but an outer case overbuilt for the wastes had cracked the plastic he used for several selector stitches. A quick tap on the power swtich and the bulbs sputtered to life, a hum coursed through the case as everything was working fine.

"I have it!" He cheered.

"I have got some better weaponry and Lilly has packed up a rather complete medical set. Let's grab some caps and head for the exit."

"Not caps," Ticker mumbled, "Medical supplies are worth twice their weight in caps. Miscellaneous electronics, rare parts." He told them, sweeping several things he saw of importance. An XR-KB memory chip, an intact pip-buck, several I/O sequencer banks, then moved to what could be called an ores portion of the large room. Several gems, rocks with gold flakes in them, bags of crudely smelted silver, gold and other ores.

"All in all this weighs about ten pounds, cap-wise, that is just over a two thousand. What is inside here now, roughly thirty thousand caps. We have everything we came for, we need to go."

"Wait, I can carry alot more." Skye said, "We need-"

"No, because if we run into problems and have to ditch something, we wouldn't spend hours debating on what to throw away. We have enough for now. Come on, we still need to find a place to fill the water, get food and crack the door open." Ticker countered.

"I'm going to take a few more things-" Skye had a hoof wander up to the shelf. Ticker stepped in, and moved her slightly away.

"No, we go now." He stated flatly, averting her gaze from the shelves.

"Yea." She nodded, realizing he was right.

The group silently moved out of the store and back to the maintenance, taking a more somber tone than before. Ticker paused to get back into the system inside the bay, off-loading maps onto the breakout box. He had it in his mind that with the memory chip he managed to grab, this would just more than a code breaker. With maps in tow, they moved down towards the main concourse.

The large tunnel opened up to an ever wider area. The lights appeared as dots on the ceiling, barely able to illuminate the ground, some were dead on the rows overhead. Special lights were on to highlight the main path, though spotty at best as to their condition. As their eyes adjusted to the dark state, they began to see things off to the sides of the tunnels. Ticker and Skye recognized them as vehicles, trucks, buses, construction equipment. They had managed to collect quite a bit of dust, obscuring their real color.

Most of them sat low on the ground, the tires have bled the air and dry rotted over the centuries. It was questionable if they would ever run again, oil had leaked out, the fuel had rotted the lines and any hydraulics had collapsed a century ago. Small rodents had found their way inside, chewing wires, making nests in the seats. If anything they were a decent house for anypony.

"Was this all the equipment from building this Ark?" Skye asked.

"Or a last convoy before the doors closed." Ticker remarked, looking at the amount of buses stored as they approached the end of the cavernous area. Four tunnels, each going to a different place had him consulting the maps. "We go down the last tunnel to the left for food, back out and down the farthest right tunnel for the Ark door." Without debate, they slipped into the four vehicle wide tunnel and stayed on course until they reached a smaller vehicle storage area.

This area was vastly smaller. The lights were able to illuminate the area completely, showing several busses and a fleet of small, twin pony cars. No tops or glass, just clean white bodies, two seats and a small area for luggage. They passed them and went to the unloading area, a dock or receiving area for the food and seed shipments. One pony lagged behind.

"Some of these are clean." Ticker remarked, pushing on the seats of two nearby carts. His hooves did nothing to one, but pulled a layer of dust off another. "We need to be careful... Something still lives in here." Lilly drew in close to Skye, Ticker followed suit.

"Dry storage is up ahead." he whispered.

The group went in through a pony door, to the second part of the loading dock. Lifts were lined up against the wall, some charging, others not. Overlooking the large bay were two windows, two offices inside. A wide hall ended in a door. They moved inside and found themselves facing two great walls, one silver and the other painted a light blue.

To the left was cold storage. Neither of them wanted to open it, fearing that the seal on the many large doors were the only thing holding back a fog of rot that would turn their noses inside out. They instead went through the first door, dry storage.

Rows and rows of shelves spilled out before them, stretching into a darkness that they couldn't see into. They weren't concerned by that, rather their jaws dropped as they were greeted by a wash of perfect silver. Hundreds of thousands of cans, tins and boxes stood them in the face. There were no labels, just black text that was stamped on the top of every item.

Peaches, pears, apples, blue berries. Before them was enough food for the rest of their lives and beyond, for several hundred ponies. Carrots, beets, jalapenos, their eyes ate the words like nutrition inside the cans.

"This is where they store all of the food that is produced. Open it later, recycle the cans." Ticker mused in awe.

"I want strawberries, and grapes and anything!" Lilly whispered in a rather loud tone.

"Get oranges, apples and pears, it's going to be cold and we'll need energy out there, sugars are quick energy. Then anything else you want." Ticker told them, knocking two of each tin and can into a small satchel. They were little more than a snack at best, holding the equivalent of two muzzle-fuls inside the metal. He stacked them as much as the bag would hold without feeling too heavy.

The ponies packed what they could, careful not to disturb the rest. Soon they were back out on the road from the bay, traveling to the split off. They made a quicker pace as things began to go their way, an invisible push helped them along.

Jumping at the pipes that sprang to life, the odd fan turning on and other noises that the Ark made as they traveled down their interiors. They exited the main road at a junction, entering a service tunnel and winding through a maze of corridors.

"Door, NOW!" Ticker growled, darting over to a door, the three ducking inside.

"There's something up ahead. It's supposed to dead end, with a door to the left. There is no mention of a structure up ahead." he whispered.

"Did you see anypony?" Lilly whispered back.

"No, but its a place where they stop you. I don't know when it was made, but it's newer than the blueprints."

"Let's go." Skye said, edging a hoof out the door, the other raised with the pistol mounted to the sling. Before there was any objection, she was gone towards the checkpoint.

Ticker hid behind her, whispering pleads to Celestia to help them, to have them pass without incident. Killing anypony or the robots was a bad idea. Skye jumped up on the half wall and peered over, nothing. She motioned for them to proceed.

They found several chairs, a table and ceramic mugs. All coated in a layer of dust. Ticker breathed a sigh of relief. It had been abandoned years ago, perhaps from when the outbreak started, the wasteland ponies taking over the Ark and pressing outward.

"Just two more flights of steps beyond that door and we are in a sub-service corridor to the exit. Let's all agree now not to shoot anything." Lilly nodded as soon as the sentence was over, Skye nodded shortly after. "We are so close, no buck ups now."

Skye took lead, going up the steps with a firm determination in her eyes. She could smell it, taste it, home. The wastes. At the top she went down the hall, Ticker calling out a direction after she was already going that way. The tunnel collapsed down to barely head height, Skye was nearly crawling through the area, her height betraying her.

A grate was kicked off it's mounting and they wriggled though to the opposite side. Ticker propped the grate against a wall and began to move through the room.

The room had a string of monitors at standing height, a couch, a television, radio and a small refrigerator. The unicorn moved to the terminals and set the box on a chair. He selected the cord and plugged into the access port.

Skye switched the lights on, revealing the room entirely. The monitors sat under a glass window, looking down on an pentagram tunnel. The size was large enough for a bus, and the occupant in the control room to look into the driver's window dirrectly. A service door to the left of the window led directly into the area. The area where the door was.

Only, instead of one door there were two. The concrete floor marked them out, Ark and Exterior. Both doors were closed, locked tight and looked as if they hadn't moved in two centuries. However, one was going to move. They had worked so hard to get here.

"I have to see if the hydraulics are working, the air pressurization and all of the servos. This is going to take a while." Ticker said, sliding his chair from terminal to terminal, flipping switches on the adjoining boards to the side. "It's been an age, let's hope Arkitecture build their stuff to last." he winced, as one of the switches crunched under the pressure, turning on, but breaking in the process.

Skye moved through the thick door and into the tunnel. Just a few trots away from freedom.

"No hydrulic failures, the air pumps are fine. Last pressure check was earlier today. We are..." Ticker paused. He stared for a second at the screen, shaking his head. He moved from terminal to terminal, glancing up at the tunnel from time to time. He stood up from the terminal and swung the large bag, the canteens and clothes from his back. "I need you two to get all the stuff into the tunnel." he said, returning to the seat.

The two mares nodded, gathering what they could on their backs and gripping the rest in their muzzles. They moved into the door tunnel and set the bags down. They turned to head back inside, to wait, but they found the door they came through closed.

"Ticker?" Skye asked, giving the door a heavy push, locked solid. The air screeched at them for a second as the speakers warmed up and began to transmit sound, the unicorn's voice floated over them pair now locked in the room.

"Once you get through the door, take a left. There are lights inside my satchel. You will reach the end of the tunnel and wind up in Shaft number one. Then it's a right and you will see the entrance, that office where we stopped to look at maps."

"What?!" Lilly and Skye shouted. "No, you can't stay... you have to come with us!"

"I have to stay. Not because I want to. I have to." He said, not paying attention to mares at the door, but rather the screens.

"No! What are you talking about? You have to come, unlock the door and we can leave together." Lilly pleaded, edging over to the glass so she could try and draw his attention.

"I have to stay. This isn't just a push button system. It's a sequential lock. I have to manually open each one. It's some bullshit security they added, I haven't seen anything like this. That means that one pony has to stay behind, flip the switches as they need to."

"NO! We can figure this out, we can work through it. Hide out in the service areas until you can figure this out. Ticker, please open the door! I-I can't protect you in there." Skye yelled, pounding as hard as she could against the door.

"The second we left the maintenance area, the collars started emitting an RF frequency. We wandered out of range. That frequency alert is stored in the data center, and once the day starts, we will be tracked down. You two have to go and go now."

"Then we'll come back for you. We'll sell this junk, use it as an attraction to get ponies to come here. We can bust down the doors and get you out. The NZR will want to know about this place anyway." Skye backed away from the door, tears forming in her eyes.

"NO! The NZR can't learn about this place, nopony can! Don't you know what this is, this place?" His voice boomed over the speakers.

"Its a bunch of shit, that is what it is." Skye responded, beginning to pull on the clothes they brought over her suit. Boots, under garments and cloak, Lilly was mirroring her, getting ready to go outside.

"No... look at us, take a look at what happened to us when we were in the Ark. How we felt inside, it was something... its beyond words. In all my travels, everything I have heard, this... I can't even say."

"Since we left the Ark's walls, and started the escape, we have changed, for the worse. That feeling when we approached the weapons. It wasn't right, it wasn't natural."

"You are talking shit, the only thing I have felt has been misery. This damned suit, this damned thing, this whole damned place. It's been one horrible ride every damned day. We are going to get you out, all of Equestria is not going to stand in our way, we will get you out." Skye shouted to the window, her hooves eager to get out. Sooner she did, the sooner she could come back.

"And do what? You felt the same thing as I did, as Lilly. The wasteland is not a place for ponies like me, the closer we get to going back outside, the worse we feel. I don't want to feel that, I don't want to go out there. If that means I have to live inside a tiny box until the end of time, then so be it. I'd trade thirty of those lifetimes if I never had to step hoof in the wasteland again." Ticker said over the intercom, his voice was low and quiet, as if he had long ago made peace with this decision.

"It's all shit Ticker," Skye said, "What we felt was nervousness, that what we were doing was going to. That is why we felt what we did. It wasn't anything else, just jitters."

"Two hundred year ago," Ticker started talking, his hooves hitting switches as he bagan the boot up cycle for the depressurization. "Bombs fell on Equestria. Hundreds of millions died. There was a decision made to end everything, because if they were going to die, then so should the rest of the world. End the war at any means."

"Tell me that; that many lives ripped of the face of the planet didn't do anything. Tell me that the hundreds of years of tears shed by ponies before they were left to rot where they were slain, that it didn't change anything. Shattered innocence, senseless violence and hoarding because we believe that it's not enough. It is everywhere, the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, it's poisoning us slowly."

"We live in a world where magic lives in everything we are, everything we do. It's a part of us that we can't ever get rid of. It gives us senses beyond what we see, what we can do. It survives even when we expire. This darkness, this numbness and pain we feel... It comes from that magic. Centuries of ponies slaughtered for trivial reasons has tainted it, made Equestria a dark place to live."

"This Ark. There is something here that isn't that fog. Breathe in now, you've been slowly depressurized with air from outside."

Lilly and Skye did, though the smaller mare was the only one to say anything.

"Its... I can feel something." she remarked, scrunching her nose to see if that made the feeling stronger.

"It feels heavier, harder to breathe. Like its choking you. Anything beyond that door is a world of pain I do not want to enter. This place... there is something odd about it, and it is a good feeling. There is something here, something that Arkitecture would go to so much trouble to protect."

"That is why you have to promise me, to never come back, to never bring anypony here, never mention this place. Never return. Tell me you will stay away. If the wastes fouls this place, this last bit of Equestria that isn't dead. Things might not ever get better."

"No. We will come back. We'll get you out. We won't stop, we can't just leave you here." Lilly shouted. The room had the air whipped into a frenzy, a cold bite ate at their noses.

Ticker stoped talking as the deep thrilling screech coursed through the two rooms, the door was shaking off centuries of rust coating the locking pins. The rooms vibrated, a deep seated rumble that knocked the dust off the walls and fixtures. One by one the large pins ground home, out of the recesses in the steel holes.

The door slowly crept backwards on hydraulic rails, pulling the door from the hole, sending the room into a cloud of dust as air spilled in from the outside. A single piston applied pressure to the gear shaped door, giving it enough energy to roll on the spines several times. Short of a new system, the massive door opened halfway, the hydraulics were past their prime. A crescent black hole awaited the mares.

All the lights dimmed slightly as a new load was put on the electrical system. Amber caution lights began to flash throughout the two rooms. Small speakers inside the hazard lights began to croak out a tone, they were broken, but still let the trio know it was an alarm.

"Ticker! Let me shoot out the window, then you can get out, come with us!" Skye lifted her hoof and aimed the pistol at the glass, firing three rounds. The glass shimmered a light blue, the bullets mushrooming across the plate, the energy being absorbed by the enchantment.

"It won't work. It would take an Alicorn to get though this glass. The pressure would also suck me out, killing me in the process. You need to go now, those lights are a security alert, this place will be swarming with bots soon. Remember, left out the door and then right at shaft one. Use the pump-cart to put as much distance between the Ark and yourselves as possible."

Skye was beating on the window with all she had, the only thing it was doing was rippling blue waves across the surface. She slowly stopped, realizing it was useless. The lights had stopped, Ticker's attention was drawn downward, his eyes widened.

"Go NOW! They are sending a master over-ride for the door, its going to close!" He shouted, nervously looking at the monitors, spending a fraction of a second on each one. "The hydraulic pressure is building, if you don't leave now, you'll be stuck in here as well. GO!" his screamed into the microphone, the speakers cracking and an electrical pop fried them.

A blast of air forced out the wasteland from the area, pure air entered and a loud whine filled the room. Skye slid down the ramp to the window and went to the door, Lilly beside her. She edged Lilly to jump the gap and leave the Ark, Skye jumped as well, though turning to look through the window one last time. Ticker was waving his hooves to go, she heard the drone of fluid pumping through the lines and the large door started to wobble. She withdrew to beyond the door, into the mine.