“In this world, someone will see death a dozen times, whether real or fake. The one thing they will never see, is the joy of the old world.”

Flying was not fun, and I made sure to tell Gold this was a last for me. I hated how the sand scraped me as it rubbed against my body. I hated how little this cloth did to actually keep the sand from getting in. However, the thing I hated most was the horrible noise of all the sand that scratch the cloth covering my body. It reminded me of whenever my mommy and daddy would use sandpaper, but that never went on for this long.

I remember something about a Stable 68 in Trauston, but the city was so big it needed even more than two. In fact, according to Gold, Stable 68 was actually two separate stables that shared all resources between each other. Water, food, tools, and even air was shared to the point that not many ponies actually survived inside. Gold told me that the Shadow Corporation didn’t hate the idea of two stables sharing resources, but Stable-Tec didn’t think out how much they would both need.

“One side fell silent. After, the other thrive,” Gold told me. “The Enclave arrived. Tried to destroy the Stables, and Shadow Corporation stepped in. Saved all residents, and keep them safe. That is when they abandoned the other.”

I looked up at the clouds covering the sky. This Grand Pegasus Enclave was quickly becoming a pain in the ass. They tried to kill me twice, and I didn’t feel any enjoyment in killing them back. They were just bad ponies who believed themselves to be good, but killing fillies are not something good ponies do. Thankfully, I haven’t seen anymore since the little fight we had earlier.

“So, heard about what happened in Sandtown,” Rere’s voice caught me off guard slightly, but it was nice to hear her again. “Didn’t really expect that to happen, but I’m glad your okay. My friend would be furious if I let you die.”

“How the hell did you find out about that?” I asked quietly, not wanting Gold to hear me talking. He would probably think I’m crazy if he saw me talking to nopony. “It hasn’t even been a day.”

“I have my ways, just trust me on that,” Rere replied. “I’m not kidding when I say I’m glad you got out though. Now that they know about you they’re going to want you dead faster than the zebra’s nuked Equestria.”

“Why did they want me dead to begin with? I did nothing to hurt them,” The question had been bugging me ever since the fight. “I just got out of the Stable, and I don’t know anything about them except that the are bad ponies.”

“I want to know just as badly as you do Lucky, but my friend is not telling me what the hell is going on,” Rere’s voice backed up what she was saying, sounding like she was only able to guess at what was really going on. “Look, they want you dead, and at the moment that’s all we need to know. I’m tracking you current location, and I’ll meet up with you and Gold in a matter of- oh shit!”

Without any idea of what’s going on I suddenly felt Rere’s presence leave me, and as I turned back to reality I realized that I could finally see the ground again. Most of the area was filled with streets and buildings, as expected of a city, but something caught my attention not too far in the distance. What was once a city quickly dissolved into nothing, and I mean nothing. No buildings, roads, ponies, and strangely enough even the sandstorm dissipated as we entered. However, the moment we enter I suddenly felt like I was being forced to the ground.

“Wh… what is-”

“Don’t talk. It’ll pass,” Gold said, though I didn’t really have much faith in those words of his. “Megaspell dropped here. Caused gravity to act weird, especially to unicorns. Called Nebula One. Something to do with magic. Everything has to do with magic,” He turned to me curiously. “You know magic?”

“N-not really,” I admitted, doing my best to speak against the growing pressure. “I… know t-teleken-whatever it is. I don’t know it w-well, though.”

“Don’t worry. Out soon,” Gold told me, smiling. “Keep talking. Why you don’t know much?”

“W-well, the first time I… put a hole in the kitchen wall,” I said, the slight pause actually being purposeful, and not a cause of the constant pressure against my body. “And the second time, and third. In other w-words I’m not very g-good with mag- can we please get out of here!”

The pressure was actually starting to make me hurt, and I had no idea how Gold was able to stand this. It hurt so badly I swear that somepony must have been laughing at me, thinking I’m just a stupid little filly. I shook that thought away, and looked at my hooves, reminding myself how much older I now was. I was older after waking up in Stable 71 compared to when I entered the Stable. It was a scary thought, but I was no longer a filly. I was a grown mare, right?

“If Lucky uses magic, make sure I’m not here,” Gold said. “I can’t help you dead.”

By the time we made it out of the area hit by this megaspell thing Gold mentioned, we had started making our way back to the ground. There was an actual city again, instead of the nothingness of the area we were just in, and more importantly I knew where we were landing. I saw an alleyway with a unusually large open area in the middle of two buildings. The alleyway opened up into a large platform with one of those giant Stable doors laying on the ground. The numbers “68” were painted onto the door with paint, which hadn’t yet been scrapped off by the endless storm around us.

My question as to where we were when I saw the words “Stable 68 exterior” next to my vision.

“This is 68. Shadow Corporation used this till taking tower,” Gold told me as we landed next to the door. “It’s safer here. Enclave calm down. Then we search for parents. I’ll contact radio mare. She’ll be helpful.”

“You mean Broken Record?” I asked the griffin, but he didn’t answer me. Instead, he walked over to the door, looking over it as if it would fall apart any second. I walked up next to him, looking around at the totally normal gigantic door on the floor. “So this is the side that didn’t make it? Everypony died here because those stupid Stable-Tec ponies thought-“

“Don’t move,” Gold said as I attempted to step on the door. He took his gun out, angled it into a crack between the platform and the door, before speaking to me. “No mechanism underneath. I touched it, and it went down. Hold ears.”

He didn’t give me enough time to cover them before sending a shot out with his gun, and in a matter of seconds the door disappeared into a large hole beneath it. I finally got my ears covered as the sound of scratching metal filled the air. It was worse than sandpaper, or the sound one of those tools mommy and daddy used to fix the house sometimes. It got less noisy as time went on, and it all ended with a loud thud at the end. I let go of my ears and looked down at the hole that had taken the doors place. Actually, it was less of a door and more of an elevator now that I think about it.

“Mechanisms must be broken. We go down, I contact radio mare, and you see what they are,” He explained as he motioned to his back. I looked at it and then looked back at him.

“Um, who are they?”

“Lucky don’t like pronoun game?” Gold asked me. Having never heard of this ‘pronoun game’, I shook me head. “Oh. Gold loves pronoun game. Makes targets angry. They say “Tell me who sent you!” I go “They did.” I shoot. They die. Everyone happy!”

“Huh, I’ll have to try it sometime,” I said to him. It would be a great way at getting back at any adults that made me mad, and if that’s the case I have a lot to say to the pony inside of Stable 71. “So, we going down?”

“Only when Lucky gets on back,” Gold said as he once again points to his back, wings already spread. Didn’t take him for the impatient type, but he did seem anxious to get into the Stable.

I looked at the hole in the ground, and it immediately wanted me to say no. Stable-Tec made these places, and they were all bad ponies now. They took me away from mommy and daddy, put me to sleep for a hundred years, and wanted me dead. I wanted to tell Gold all that, but I knew he was a good griffon. He didn’t have a cutie mark and he wasn’t an adult pony so he was much smarter than most ponies. Bloodlocke was smart too, but he doesn’t matter all that much.

Mind made up, I jumped onto Gold’s back with a smile. He made sure I was comfy before jumping into the giant hole in the ground. We weren’t really flying, but falling wasn’t really the right word either. Gliding also wasn’t correct as he did sometimes flap his wings up in the air. Hm, falling and flapping at the same time. I sat on that thought as Gold continued to go down the tunnel. Finally, the word hit me.

“Fapping!”

“I’ve come to realization. This will be long day.”

After Gold explained to me not only how wrong I was but exactly what fapping is, we reach the bottom of the hole. To embarrassed to look at him, I got off his back and saw that the way in had been blocked. The elevator didn’t land flat on the ground like I thought it would, slanting up as if a very strong pony was holding it from underneath. There was a opening, but it was rather small. As smart as he was, I don’t think Gold would be able to fit through. Looking to him, I saw him looking at me with a glance that told me all I needed to know.

I walked up to the gap and lowered myself to the ground. I thought back to all the games of hide-and-seek I use to play with my mommy and daddy. I would always try and find the tiniest place in the house to hide, and in this case I had to do something similar. I squeezed my head through easily, as well as my front hooves, by my shoulders didn’t want to do this. Knowing that Gold was expecting me to get through the gap, I did my best to ignore the feeling of my back scrapping on the entry way as I pushed out of the elevator and into the stable. I fell to the ground, landing on my back and making it hurt more than it already was.

“Fucking growth spurt,” I mumbled to myself. “Now how am I going to hide in the cabinets during hide-and-seek.”

“You okay?” Gold asked as he looked down at me from the Elevator’s platform. He nodded up to him as I got onto my hooves. “Gold don’t know why no gear underneath platform. Press button and fixed. If not, that’s bad. Head into Stable after. Explore.”

He pointed to a small panel on my side of the elevator, and I couldn’t help but notice how familiar it looked to the one back in the hotel. I walked up to it and pressed the button in the shape of an arrow pointing up. Before I knew what was going on, tons of sounds I didn’t recognized filled my ears as a giant pillar came out from underneath the elevator platform. It pushed the platform up, but it was still just as slanted as before. I watched as Gold disappeared, and I suddenly felt very scared.

I looked behind me to the room the elevator ended at. It looked too similar to Stable 71, and for a moment I thought I had somehow ended up back in that prison. I expected to see a bunch of angry adults shouting at me, saying how I had been bad. I tensed up, remembering how some of those mean adults back in Ponyville use to treat me. They hated Stable-Tec, and they didn’t like me because my mom worked for them. I shook that thought out of my head instantly, and brought my knife in front of me.

“You will protect me, right?” I asked the knife, and I imagined it saying yes to me. “Thank you knifey. Oh, can I call you knifey? Of course I can, because nopony else is going to name you.”

It was then that I heard something coming from right in front of me. Laughter, but not the kind that I thought of whenever I was picked on for being a blank flank. It was like the laughter I had when playing with mommy and daddy or when they tickled me. I looked up, expecting to see another me, but instead I saw somepony else. A filly, maybe a year or two younger than me, talking with a mare whose face I couldn’t see. It was weird, ice cream without chocolate syrup weird, and to me that was as weird as it got.

“Thank you for coming again miss head of Shadow Corporation!” The filly said in an echo voice. It was at that moment, when I heard her voice echo, that I realized I wasn’t looking at something happening right in front of me. However, the weird part was that the voice the filly used was the same as mine. “You haven’t been around lately. Is everything okay?”

“Oh don’t you worry your little head. I’ve just been busy keeping everypony up in the city safe,” The mare said, and I couldn’t help but notice the really long mane that she had. It looked a little similar to mine actually. She has some good taste in style if it really was similar to mine. “Listen, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but things are getting dangerous down here in 68. Your tech ponies are saying that the air filter might break in a few days from now. So, as much as I hate to say it, we’re moving everypony out of the Stable.”

I noticed something wrong about that, or more specifically I noticed how different this felt compared to that of what Gold had told me. If this really was Stable 68, why was the Shadow Corporation already around?

“But it’s so dangerous up their,” The filly told the mare, seeming worried.

“Yes, and that is why we’re going to take all of you someplace where you will be safe until anypony here is willing to head into the city,” The mare explained to the filly. She seemed like she was about to say something, but stopped for some reason. “Actually, why don’t we tell your parents as well. I’m sure they would want to know what’s going on.”

The filly nodded and turned to go down a hallway on the left side of the room. Before she even reached it both the filly and mare vanished in front of me. They really weren’t ever there, but I was unsure what to think as I stepped over to where the mare had stood. It felt terrifyingly real, but I don’t know why it scared me so much. All I really wanted to know is who that filly was, and why her voice sounded exactly like mine.

“Exactly… like… mine.”

I looked to the hallway that the filly was going to head down before fading away, and I knew that I would learn who she was if I went do there. Following that thought, I made my way over to the doorway. Everything was dark, and the only sound I heard on my way there was that of the elevator behind me. I didn’t like the dark, but that wasn’t because of the mare in the moon or anything like that. I’ve heard of what the Ministry of Morals does to those they see as bad, and I remember the posters of Pinkie around Ponyville. I looked to knifey, and then back to the doorway.

“You’ll protect me if they come after me, right?” I asked knifey, a smile creeping on my face as I heard a faint ‘yes’. “We’ll put them to sleep and watch them cry. I’ll cover you in blood, like you seem to enjoy so much, and then we’ll see just how long they can last.”

I gripped knifey in my mouth as I started down the long, spooky hallway. It didn’t take me long to consider heading back the way I came, but by that time I could even tell where I was anymore. I heard something close behind me, but it was so dark I couldn’t tell what it was. I decided it was best to just keep moving forward, hoping that I would at some point find a light. Instead it seemed to stretch on, making me feel like I wasn’t even moving; as if somepony was holding me by the tail and letting me think I was making progress.

I heard something open to my right, causing me to let out muffled scream as I moved away from it. I wasn’t able to move very far before I felt something brushing against my fur, causing me to jump back into the middle of the pitch black hallway. I looked to see what had touched me, only to learn that it was just the wall. First mystery solved, I looked to my right to see exactly what had opened, finding that a doorway had opened up.

“Hello?” I called into the room. No answer came, and it made me worried as I considered my options. I decided it was better to investigate then continue walking nowhere.“Please don’t be a ghost, please don’t be a ghost.”

The moment I entered the room the door closed shut behind me, freaking the hell out of me and causing me to dive to the other side of the room. I backed myself against the wall and took knifey in my hooves, waiting for whatever had closed the door to make itself known. It didn’t come, but in that time I quickly realized that there was a strange lump against the wall. I crawled over to it and rubbed the strange lump with my hooves, realizing it was both really long and not actually attached to the wall. I followed it up, and I quickly found that what I thought was a wall turned out to be a couch.

Then, what I touched seemed to fall forward. It grabbed me around the waste and brought me to the ground, giving me enough time to recognize the lumps as hooves. My fear was right: the Ministry of Morals was here. Shaking free of the pony’s grasp I quickly grabbed knifey — who had fallen on the floor — and striked the pony in the chest. I continued to do this a few more times, but the lights turned on in the room. It was at that moment I found that the pony I had stabbed was already dead, his insides visible and gross looking. I didn’t find it very scary, but I was rather disappointed. I looked at knifey, hoping that I had gotten some blood on it, only to see the blade covered it sticky, brown stuff.

“Ew,” I had to turn away as I got a whiff of how how bad the body smelled. “What the heck happened to you knifey?”

“Ahahahahaha. That was priceless, absolutely priceless!”

I looked behind me to see exactly who was laughing, and my eyes went wide at what I saw. It was an alicorn. She was rolling on the floor, with a mint colored mane and a dull, light green coat. She had a cutie mark (which instantly explains why she was laughing at me) that looked one of those annoying alarm clocks mommy and daddy always had. I also noticed she had a very large weapon with a box-shaped body to it. I knew alicorns were supposed to be royalty, but I instantly hated her for what she just did. She recovered quickly from her laughing fit, only to start speaking again in clear excitement.

“That was the best reaction I’ve managed to get in… probably fifty-five years I must say,” The alicorn said to herself. Her voice was high pitched and childish, which did catch me off guard with how tall she was. She clapped her hooves together as she tried to hide how bad she was with an innocent smile. “Today’s your lucky day Olive Branch. All that worried you had when following this filly around finally paid off. All you had to do was jam the radio, jam the elevator, rig the lights, and hope to Celestia things would go right, but it did. Well, now that I’m good praising myself,” She finally looked to me, a smug grin replacing that innocent smile. “Would you please tell me your name so that we can start my game.”

“Why should I tell you?” I asked the alicorn, pouting. “You know, I could stab you right here and Equestria probably wouldn’t care.”

“Oh, you wound me small fry,” She replied insultingly, leaning back and holding her chest as if seeing a puppy that was too cute for anypony to see and live. Just like with her laughter, though, she recovered quickly and was in my face in seconds with a less happy face than I had seen her with before. “Okay, seriously though, tell me your fucking name or I magic you into a pretzel.”

“Lucky Heart, not that you need to know,” I spat back, trying to look even more upset than she was. “And as I said I can stab you and-”

“-nopony would probably care. Yeah yeah, I heard you the first time,” She rudely interrupted. “Look, you put me in a happy mood so I’m gonna ask that you keep any comments about me to a minimum until after I explain why I just did that to you,” She backed up a little, cleared her throat, and continued. “You see, I have this little game I like to play. I call it ‘Stable Baiter’. You need two players and I go around Equestria finding Stable Dwellers stupid enough to leave their Stables and force them to play.”

Hearing that only made me hater her even more. “Force ponies to play isn’t very nice.”

“Well your not very nice miss stab-the-overstallion,” Hearing her bring that up quickly caused me to do a double take. How the fuck did she know about that? “Anyways, this is my first time playing it in Trauston and the Shadow Corporation has been nothing but a bag of shits in terms of cooperation. They see me hanging around any Stables and they shoot at me, so I’ve had nopony to play with. You, on the other hoof,” She touched my nostrils with her hoof as she said that. “Seem to be a very special pony. I don’t care how much the Shadow Corporation is probably watching you, I was dying to have you as my new playmate.”

“Still not interested,” I told her, though she didn’t really seem to care.

“Well to bad. You’re playing and I’m not taking no for an answer,” She said, hitting me over the top of the head with her hoof. “You see this gun? It fires shotgun rounds at the rate of twenty-five rounds per minute and has over two hundred loaded into it. If you continue to refuse, I will show you exactly what it does to ponies. Still want to argue?” I didn’t know what half of that actually meant, but I did know who she was planning to use it on. I decided it would be best to keep quiet, seeing the trap she was trying to set. “Good. So allow me to explain the rules real quickly.”

“You see, Stable Dwellers have this form of naivety about the world around them,” She explained as she floated around the room on her back. “They don’t know anything, and they are certainly not prepared for what they will undoubtedly see. I’m sure you’ve already notice that though, so I’ll skip the entire ‘raiders, ghouls, and radroaches’ section and get to the actual game rules,” She took out what seemed to be a medal of some kind, like the one you got at athletic events. “You have one year, and over the course of that year I’ll give you a series of miscellaneous tasks to carry out in a certain timeframe. You complete the task in the time I give you, and I, Olive Branch, will reward you with a little bit of my history.”

“And why would I want to know that?” I asked.

“Come on, don’t tell me your not interested in learning how an alicorn other than Celestia and Luna came to be,” Olive Branch answered, and I had to admit she was right. I was a little curious, but I still didn’t see why she was making me do this. “Look, I understand that I have absolutely no reason to be here, but you caught me at the peak of my boredom so you’re going through with this no matter how little story impact it makes. Oh, and just letting you know, if you don’t complete the task I’ll kill you.”

That last one took me by surprised, and to an even bigger extent it made me even more angry at this alicorn. Celestia and Luna were nice, or at least as nice as somepony with cutie marks seem to get, but she was definitely not. As if being forced to play a game I didn’t want to was already bad, she’s now threatening to kill me. I wanted to do the same thing to her, but the giant gun on her back kept me from making an advance.

“You also loss if you die, though that’s a little obvious,” She continued, not caring to explain why she would kill me in the first place. “Anyways, I’m pretty sure your griffon friend is going to down here in not to long, so I’ll come back later with my first task.”

Before I could say a word, Olive disappeared in a flash, leaving me both confused and shocked at everything that just happened. I don’t know how long I stood there, but in that time Gold had managed to find me. He looked around to see what I was staring at, only seeing the wall.

“Is Lucky pretending to be statue?” Gold asked, but it his question wasn’t answered. Instead, I asked something that I really hope he knew the answer to.

“Did an alicorn just… threaten me?”

Author's Note

So, this story is going to include a lot of characters that have either been in fics that I've long ago stopped writing or were in stories that I never actually released. I figured I just give you some background on these characters when they pop up.

Broken Record
At the moment, the only one we've seen in the story so far has been Broken Record, who was going to be the main character of my cancelled story Fallout Equestria: The Wilderness. In that story, she was the radiomare of the Stable before a lottery that takes place every few years forced into the Overmare position with no training. Saddly, due to not making it all that far into the story I wasn't able to develope her character much, and the version of her here is far more aggressive and irritable than in The Wilderness.