"Can you do that? Can you explode twice?"

Chrome Fragrance walked downed the grey halls of Stable 174 towards the maintenance wing to start his shift. He passed by the ponies of first shift as they were leaving and heading off to the cafeteria to grab some food or off to the entertainment wing to enjoy their time off. Wiping his dark purple mane from his eye he stepped into the maintenance wing breathing in the familiar scents of grease, oil and metal.

“Hey Chrome, first one through the door as usual I see.” Came the voice of a mare.

Chrome looked over at the older yellow mare with a green mane. “Hello shift chief Night Bright.” Chrome said to the mare, his boss.

She sighed. “Do you always have to be so formal? You can just call me Night, or Bright. You don’t need to always call me shift chief.” She sighed looking at him like she has every time they’ve had this conversation.

“But that is your title Shift Chief.” Chrome replied flatly. He and her had been having the same conversation about once a week since he joined the maintenance team 3 years ago.

She sighed in exasperation. “Fine, whatever. Looks like the rest of the crew is arriving, your duty list is at your work station.” She said to both Chrome and the rest of second shift as they filed in. She didn’t have to as their duties were already waiting at their station, left by first shift, usually the jobs they never wanted to do.

Chrome made his way down the wall of work stations till he reached station 36, his. He stepped in his Pip-Buck pinged as it connected to the terminal in the room and downloaded the duty list. Within seconds the list was displayed from most important to least. Glancing at it Chrome grabbed the saddle bag that was on the work table. Once it was on he scrolled through his Pip-Bucks inventory system to make sure all the tools were in the saddle bags, sometimes the previous shift doesn’t put everything back where it goes.

Scrolling he found everything was present and accounted for. He selected the first task on the list, a jammed door in the security wing, and with that a beacon appeared on his EFS leading to the security wing. Chrome hated having to work on doors; it was difficult to work on something that required precision. It was a job for unicorns, not earth ponies.

Slowly the dark grey earth pony made his way towards his objective, passing by families heading to or from the cafeteria while foals ran and played down the halls.
All and all Stable 174 wasn’t a bad place to live. It was safe and had everything a pony could ever want. Even though Chrome may seem depressed to the other ponies he actually wasn’t, he just didn’t see the point of using more energy then was needed in any given task.
“Oh finally one of you maintenance ponies decided to grace us with your presents.” Said a firm voice beside Chrome. Looking Chrome saw was one the Stable Security ponies falling in line beside Chrome. “It’s about damn time; we put that ticket in hours ago. How do you lot expect us to do our jobs if we can’t even close the door to our own office?”
“I don’t know, walk through it?” Chrome replied flatly.
“That some kind of joke, smart ass?” The security pony blustered.
“No.” Chrome replied flatly once more. he didn’t understand why this had been made a priority if the door was jammed open there wasn’t much of a problem, the security chief was have used his clearance to make it a priority.
“Whatever, just get it fixed and keep your smart ass remarks to yourself.” The security pony snapped and trotted off as they reached the jammed door.

With a sigh Chrome got to work removing the access panel and was reaching back for his tools when there was a loud Thwamp from deep within the stable. Chrome and the few security ponies in the office beyond the door looked around. “What was—“one of them started to say when she was cut off by a loud klaxon that started to blare throughout the Stable address system followed by a synthesized voice.
“Warning, fire in main reactor room. Fire teams report to main reactor ro—“With a loud crackle and pop the voice died as smoke started to filter out of the air vents.
“Oh fuck fire. “ The security pony from before said as she looked at her Pip-Buck and activated the broadcaster. “Chief? Chief come in. requesting orders.”
With a burst of stacked the security chief voice came over the pip-bucks speakers. “Remains calms, evacuate everypony from the areas near the reactor rooms, fire teams are in route.” There was another thwamp and then static from the pip-buck.
“Chief? Chief respond?” The security pony said with a bit of panic.” Fuck shes not responding.”
Chrome looked at her starting to panic and cleared his throat.”Even still, I believe she gave you orders and don’t you have a job to do?”
“Yeah, r-right.” She said looking at the other mare. “I’m going to head towards the reactors and see who we can get out; you stay here and direct reports.” The other mare nodded and then galloped from the room and down the hall.
Chrome’s pip-buck started to click and his vision had a warning of 1 RAD/S.

“Well that’s not good.” He said as he looked over at the remaining security pony as she was listing to reports and relaying information as more smoke was pouring from the vents and he could hear other ponies starting to panic.

The stable shook as there was another louder thwamp and the rads jumped to 10 RADS/S. “that’s really not good.” He said out loud as he looked around at the smoky halls.

“You there, report to the atrium, NOW!” the security pony said looking at him as she left her terminal. “We are evacuating the stable.” She said with authority but chrome saw the fear in her eyes and could hear it in her voice. No one had ever left the stable; no one had ever even talked about leaving the stable.

Chrome blinks as she spoke. “Um…yes. Yes reporting. “He said as he grabbed his tools and started to trot down the hallways blinking against the smoke as the security pony trotted behind him shouting at everyone they came across to get to the atrium.

The atrium was a mass of panicked ponies all coughing and talking loudly. In one corning the medical ponies has set up a makeshift medical area and were treating various ponies for burns and smoke inhalation. Chrome recognized some maintenance ponies from his shift among the injured. There were few security ponies trying to maintain order.
“Everypony remain calm, everything is under control.” She said but another louder explosion shook the stable and sent a ripple of scream through everypony there.

Chrome looked over the crowd, this wasn’t everyone. A lot of the stables residences were missing. The highest ranking security pony was the one he had spoken to in the security station who left to go help with the fire. Now her side and part of her face sported a burn but she was refusing the medics attempts to give her a healing potion telling them to give it to the others as she was trying to direct everyone as best she could.

“Why should we listen to you?”

“Where’s the overmare!”

“What’s going on?!” ponies shouted as she was trying to maintain order but the panic was over running the crowd.
BANG!

The crowd fell silent as the security pony lowered her pistol after firing a round into the ceiling. “I understand you are all scared but panicking won’t solve anything. Remain calm please.”

“Where’s the overmare?!” somepony in the crowd shouted again. “She should be here!”

“The overmare is dead.” The security pony said and the crowd froze. “As is the security chief.” She said sounding calm but Chrome could see the fear in her eyes; it was everything she could do not to panic like the rest of the crowd. “The reactors are on fire, most of the stable is on fire. We have no choice but to evacuate the stable.”

“OUT SIDE WE CAN’T GO OUT THERE!” The crowd started to panics.

BANG BANG BANG

More shots into the ceiling.” Enough. Its go out there or burn alive in here! We have emptied the armory and clinic as well as the cafeteria. We have everything we need to survive on the surface. Once the fire burns itself out, we will see about returning to the stable but for now it’s safer on the surface.”

The crowd calmed a bit but still looked scared. They probably wouldn’t have listened if not for the security pony passing out riot shotguns and carbines to the remaining security ponies. Another pony whispered in her ear.” Are you sure?” The other pony nodded.” Very well. Everyone follow us to the stable door.”

Seems that was everyone the security ponies could find, half the stable was missing. Slowly the crowd followed to the security ponies to the large fear shaped door to the outside.

Once everyone was gather and surrounded by the remaining security the lead started to work the controls. A klaxon started to blare and lights started to flash and then the console powered down and everything went still. The gather ponies started to murmur and shift again and threaten to panic again. “YOU! MAINTENACE PONY.” The security lead yelled pointing at Chrome louder then she needed but she was showing the crowd everything was under control. “I need you to fix the controls, can you do it? “ She asked and Chrome looked at it and the access panel for under the floor and nodded before going and removing the panel and climbing inside. The rad meter was slowly rising every second as the fire was getting closer as it consumed the stable, most likely following the electrical wires.

Chrome crawled deep under the floor till he found where the controls were supposed to integrate with the large arm that opened the door system. A fuse had blown, easy fix. Popping the blown fuse and worked to replace it, as soon as the new one was installed the alarms started to sound again and he could hear the sound of hydraulics as the arm moved.

Chrome started to slowly push himself back down the maintenance tube as he hear the arm start to pull the massive gear door loudly from its resting place.

A few second later there was the sound as if a great beast was taking a massive breath then an extremely loud roar and the screams of hundreds of ponies as they were consumed by the fire rushing out the opening door. The tube became and oven and Chrome screamed as his pip-buck clicked madly. His lungs burned as he inhaled hot air and his vision was going black till he collapsed to the sound of everyone above died in the fire.

Author's Note

Level Up: New perk added. Fire-Proof 1
Your exposure to extreme heat has made your body more resilient to fire or other weapons that cause burning effects. However breathing in super heated air has damaged your lungs causing you to have trouble breathing when running for long periods of time or exerting yourself to much.

25% damage resistants to flamers and 10% damage resisitants to beam weapons. -1 to endurance

Subject: Chrome Frangence

Stats
Strength: 7
Perception:6
Endurance:5(-)
Charisma:6
Intelligence:7
Agility: 6
Luck:8

Equipment:
1 Stable 174 maintenance barding
1 Maintenance Pip-Buck 3000(will automatically connect to terminals and download important files and possess low-level decryption algorithms as well as be able to diagnose and highlight sever damage to structures and systems as needed)