Author's Note

This is a collaboration brought to you by the lovely PhealGud and I. We've got an outline for this all completed, and we're working hard to finish this in a relatively timely manner.

As always, I'm open for commissions. You can check out this post for more details. Or feel free to swing by my patreon if you feel like it.

Pheal is currently closed for commissions, but is still selling unpainted models of 3D printed sculptures. His link is here.

Here is an example of his work, and here is his pre-made model catalogue.

We hope you all enjoy this lovely idea we've cooked up. I know we've been having a blast writing this thing.

Locked in the Land of Plenty

Gretchen crouched behind a scrabble bush, her small body pressed into the hard-packed soil. She had two ponies in her sights, a unicorn and pegasi. Both were unaware of her, and seemed intent on making camp in this clearing. The fruits of their labor were laid out, ammo, food, and some useful junk. A good haul that would keep the small black and tan griffon alive for another week, maybe two.

Gretchen rustled her wings, waiting to get the drop on these two dolts, peeking through the bushes with eyes surrounded with midnight blue eyeshadow feathers. The pegasus was huge, much larger than her own stunted body. Clearly he’d had access to plenty of food growing up, unlike her. She grit her beak, and shook her head. They would be easy pickings, one slit of the throat, and a single shot to the temple with her 10 millimeter. She just had to wait until they fell asleep, then she would ambush them-

“Hello, little bird,” A gruff voice sounded from behind her. Gretchen jumped to her paws, scrambling out of the bushes, taking to the air with a quick flap of her wings.

A gunshot cracked through the air, and an explosion of pain tore its way through her left wing. Gravity angrily snatched Gretchen out of the sky and crashed her into the clearing, almost right on top of the pegasus, who had drawn a gun in response to the flurry of motion off to the side of his chosen camping site.

The unicorn had dropped an overfull sack to the ground, her eyes wide with surprise and fear. Her aura, a turquoise colour, had gripped a crowbar tightly. Gretchen climbed to her talons, her beak grit in pain. She kept her damaged wing close to her body, hoping to slow the flow of blood until things were calmed down.

A raider, a strong brute of an earth pony covered in crudely welded metal armour and bones, burst out of the bushes as well, a huge grin on his scarred face.

“Well, what do we have here? You three trying to lay a trap for us or something? Not very clever, sending in your chick there to spy on us, I thought unicorns were smarter than that”

The pegasus, a moss-green stallion with sharp amber eyes, stood to his full height, using a battle saddle to direct his gun, “You’re going to have to do better than shoot some poor griffon.”

“Oh, that wasn’t me. Come on out boys!” Suddenly, figures were moving through the trees. Countless figures, all of them ravaged deviants armed and dangerous, silhouetted in the light of the setting sun.

The pegasus grit his teeth, snarling at the still-moving figures, the guns on his battle saddle twitching between different targets. He flexed his powerful wings, swinging around the two guns mounted upon his back, “Come on, cowards!”

Gretchen shot him a glare, her eyes narrowing. She was injured, and useless in a face to face battle. I better get out of here she thought. This idiot is going to get me killed.

“Cappy,” The unicorn said reluctantly, “Cappy she’s hurt.”

Cappy’s eyes flicked to Gretchen’s injured wing, that was already dripping blood into the dry soil. He nodded, flexing his wings again. The unicorn must have understood some signal, because she picked up the sack she’d dropped earlier. She threw it into what seemed to be the largest throng of raiders, just as Cappy looked Gretchen in the eyes, and yelled: “Run!”

They’d barely gotten out of the clearing when whatever was in the bag exploded, seeding chaos and sounding screams of pain and anger.

Panting, Gretchen was already winded, her short legs couldn’t really keep up with the strides of the others.

The unicorn looked back at Gretchen, “C’mon!! We’ve only-”

Whatever she said next was drowned out by more gunshots. They went wild, hitting the dirt and trees around the trio rather than coming close to hitting them. Regardless, it lit a proverbial fire under Gretchen’s feet, and she ran all the harder, tears lighting in her eyes with every jarring step that hurt her wing.

She didn’t want to focus on it, but she could hear the wild screaming and taunts coming from the raiders behind them. If they caught up with them...Gretchen didn’t want to think about what would happen. She may have qualified as a raider herself in some circles, but that wouldn’t be enough to save her now. In desperation, the griffon took out her gun and fired behind her, some kind of suppression just to slow them down. Anything, absolutely anything to give herself some kind of advantage.

“We’re….close!” Cappy called, turning towards a small game trail, “Come on!”

Gretchen growled deep in her throat, but the sounds behind her caused her to keep her breath for running. Hopefully, they would have some kind backup nearby-

Gretchen, used to seeing things from a distance while flying, saw the cliff before they’d broken out of the trees properly. Panic lit in her chest because it was fine for the unicorn and pegasus to fly to the top. If the unicorn couldn’t levitate herself, Cappy looked strong enough to carry her, but that left Gretchen trapped-

Then she saw it. A massive cave surrounded by cars and old military vehicles, but that didn’t matter. She ducked reflexively when another volley of gunshots were fired. They pinged off the metal of the cars, but she could tell from the sound of sizzling that a bullet had pierced the nuclear engine.

Lacking the air to say anything, she only hoped that the cave was full of mini nukes, or maybe an army-

She plunged into the darkness when the car blew up. She could feel the dust and debris behind her as she careened past a corner. Which saved her life, from the sounds of shrapnel driving deeply into the rock of the cave. While her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw signs painted in red, with empty boxes and cans around them.

BEWARE

TURN BACK

TRAP

There, ahead of her, was a platform. It connected to a mostly-circular, thick metal door. The unicorn was doing something to a panel with her magic, but Gretchen didn’t care. She’d heard stories of Stables, and knew they were bad luck. All of them were twisted in some way or another, and the signs were not helping.

She screeched to a halt in front of the door, heaving or breath, “No...way-we can’t..”

“It might be our only option.” The unicorn huffed, flicking her mane to the side, “Maybe with the car we’ve-”

The sound of maniacal laughter from the entrance shut the unicorn up. She punched a button, and loud alarms sounded off. There was a rumbling, and the door started to rumble shut. The unicorn, using her magic, threw Gretchen in first, jumping in behind. Cappy stayed behind until the last moment, providing gunfire.

Just after he slipped inside, the heavy metal door rolled to a stop and slowly slid into the hole. The alarms quieted, and the lights turned on. A cheery, automated voice spoke.

“Hello, and welcome everypony to Stable 30. We hope you’ll find burgeoning happiness here.” The voice was female, but that was all Gretchen could tell.

The trio lay, panting for breath on a cold, metal catwalk for a long time.They kept waiting for something, or someone to appear from the door at the end of the room, but nopony did. All they could hear was the humming of air conditioning in the background, their own winded breaths, and the drops of Gretchen’s blood hitting the metal below them.

“How did you know this was here?” Gretchen asked after she’d recovered her breath. She’d spent that time bandaging her wing, flexing it experimentally, grimacing from the pain. The bullet had passed clearly, and she didn’t think any permanent damage would come from it.

“Heard stories,” The unicorn replied, “We were out here trying to find this place. It’s supposed to be a paradise.”

“Too good to be true.” Gretchen scoffed.

“Well, we’ll be here for a little while, until those jerks outside leave,” Cappy butted in, “So, it’s got to be better than outside.”

“What if we’re stuck in here?” The griffon asked worried, her feathers fluffed up as the sudden thought had jumped to the forefront of her mind, “What if you can’t get the door open?”

“There’s got to be a way to open the door from in here,” The unicorn soothed, “There has to be. All the Stables do. Until then,we should clear the entire Stable. We don’t know what could be in here. Hopefully it’s just us.”

“Anyway, we will be here for a while, I”m Divinity, and this is Bent Cap. I just call him Cappy. It’s nice to meet you, though I wish it was through better circumstances.”

Gretchen looked at the two cautiously, she was on the cusp of murdering them in cold blood just a few minutes ago, and now she was locked in a strange Stable because of them. “You ponies can call me Gretchen.

“Yes, yes,” Cappy aid bluntly, “Let’s get this going. We don’t want anything getting the jump on us.”

Gretchen nodded, and waited for them to trot away before examining her .10 millimeter pistol. It was better in closer combat, and it was a gun she felt comfortable using with her talons. Though as she pulled the magazine out, she cursed to herself. It was empty, and she didn’t have any more ammunition on her. Divinity seemed attached to the crowbar, and Cappy had his battle-saddle still. Which meant that she was outnumbered, outgunned, and defenseless.

“Gretchen, you coming?” Divinity asked, looking back from the entrance.

“OH, SURE, NO PROBLEM” Gretchen yelled back, hiding her empty pistol worryingly before catching up with the other two.

So, they began their preliminary exploration of the Stable. It’s metal halls echoed their every footstep, betraying their location to anything inside. Incandescent lights illuminated the stable, blank silver halls turning into pastel rooms, with the main center hall large and open, painted in a lovely blue. Wide doors lined the walls, and the halls were large enough for significant two way pony traffic. The group looked at it all in awe, the stable was in fairly pristine condition, other than several flattened chairs, tables, and a sofa that was in the main hall.

“Wow… this… this is…” Divinity stuttered, looking at the open area.

“Creepy?” Cappy asked, looking over at his unicorn partner.

“AMAZING” Divinity whinnied, both Cappy and Gretchen shushing her.

“Are you trying to get me killed” Gretchen squawked quietly.

“Dont worry” the unicorn commented, pulling a rag from a saddle bag and wiping the floor near the hallway, revealing a thick layer of dust, “if there was ‘anything’ in here, the dust is so thick that it would have left hoofprints.” The three then looked behind them, noticing the light haze of kicked up dust behind them. “There’s not a single living thing in this entire Stable.”

“Well that’s not… bad” Gretchen commented, looking around. She didn’t know what was worse, thinking that someone else might also be in this stable… or being all alone.

Divinity smiled, “We should check anyway, since we’re going to be here for a while. We want to know the layout of the Stable after all. So, let’s keep going.”

Cappy nodded in agreement, “Let’s do this.”

The trio made their way through the Stable, cautiously peering around every corner and making sure they really were alone. They found several more pieces of broken furniture, but everything else seemed intact.

“Well,” Cappy said when the group found themselves in what had to be the kitchen. It was the last stop on their tour, and they were all very hungry after such a stressful day, “We’re safe in here for now, and we seem to be alone. This is probably a good thing. We can get what salvage we can from here and make a few caps. Rest up, take a bath. It’ll be like...a-a-I don’t even know.”

Divinity shrugged, setting her crowbar on a counter. Her eyes roamed the expanse of the large kitchen. An odd-looking machine took up most of one wall, humming and buzzing with power. Refrigerators, working ones, lined another wall. Counterspace lined the remaining two walls, interspersed with other large machines that seemed bolted to the floor. Divinity wasn’t sure what they did, but she wanted to find out.

Gretchen wandered over to the odd looking machine, not entirely certain if she wanted to be the one to use it for the first time. After all, all she’d heard about Stables was how dangerous they all were. It hummed ominously, a strange sound that one from the wasteland would have never heard before.

The hiss that sounded like a small torch approached, causing all three to jump and spin around to the entrance. Divinity attempted to magically grab her crowbar once more, only for it to clatter about loudly and clang on the ground before it hovered nearby the unicorn’s head.

“I thought we searched everywhere?” Cappy grunted angrily.

“We did” Divinity shuttered, “I made sure of it.”

“What a shoddy piece of work you are” Gretchen cawed, “because of your stupidity, they have us cornered in the kitchen.”

The shadow loomed closer, the hissing noise growing ever slightly louder until the intruder hovered in with it’s glowing eye stalks.

“Well hello Stable Dwellers, welcome to Stable 30!” it’s natural sounding voice greeted them, one of it’s three arms waving in a jovial manner, “my name is K3H73L, but everyone calls me Kehtel.” The Mr. Handy hovered closer to them, his torch and buzz saw pointed away, “my my, it’s been awhile since I’ve been activated, look at this dusty mess.” The three merely watched with some relief as the Mr. Handy began doing chores, cleaning up the floor in the kitchen.

*GRoooowwlllllll*

Divinity jumped back with a nervous giggle, looking at the other two staring at her. Kehtel on the other hand noticed this and began heading over to the massive machine covering the wall.

“Oh my, ‘someone’ sounds hungry” he commented, heading over to the device and turning a couple of knobs before pulling the lever like a slot machine. With a hiss and a whistle, a chute opened up and out slid a Hay Burger, with steam rising from it’s soft bun. “Please enjoy this meal while I prep everything so that ‘you’ can get signed in, and start your NEW life as a stable dweller.”

Divinity looked at the burger, her ears perked and her nostrils sniffed.

“Divinity, you don't know where that’s been, or how old it is.” Cappy warned her

“But it’s… it’s FRESH” the unicorn whinnied, holding the burger in her magical grasp before chomping down on it. “OH… OH MY… IT’S…” She squirmed, taking a seat at one of the tables to shove the tasty treat down her throat like there was no tomorrow.

Cappy looked back at the Mr. Handy with a self conscious glare before asking, “I wouldn’t mind a Burger myself.”

“Me too” Squawked the griffon.

Kehtel chuckled warmly, he turned the knobs again, and this time a whole platter of burgers slid out of the shute. Kehtel set them out on a table, and gestured grandly, “Here, enjoy these while we get everything ready for you.”

Divinity launched herself into a chair, using her magic to pull another of these ‘hay burgers’ to her muzzle. Not to be left behind or starved, Gretchen got into her own chair. Using her talons, she lifted the large burger to her beak. The smell was incredible, everything smelled so much fresher and...slightly different than usual? Gretchen tossed the thought into the back of her mind. If the unicorn was eating, so was she.

Gretchen took a large bite, then moaned at the flavours dancing across her tongue. It was incredible, unlike anything she’d eaten. The hay was crispy and light, and the bun was soft and warm. Some kind of sauce was drizzled over the hay, which added a bit of a kick that the hay and bun wouldn’t usually have.

This was unlike any of the bread she’d ever had, fresh or preserved. Same with the hay. Before Gretchen had realized it, her own hungry stomach had moved her to grab another burger.
Cappy followed suit, realizing he wouldn’t get to have one if he waited for much longer.

The trio ate in almost complete silence. No one spoke a word, too busy chewing or making little noises of appreciation. By the time the tray had been cleared, Gretchen felt as if she’d eaten a chunk of concrete. Heavy, and sluggish. Her stomach ached, uncomfortably full for the first time in her life.

“That was amazing,” Divinity broke the silence, leaning back in her own chair. She looked as dazed as Gretchen felt.

“Agreed,” Cappy hunched over the table, staring at the empty platter with wide eyes, “I can’t believe we ate all of them.”

“I’m not,” Gretchen grunted, rubbing her aching stomach absentmindedly, “I almost wish there was more.”

“There will be, miss!” Kehtel replied, suddenly appearing beside them. Gretchen jumped, no one seemed to notice. “Once we get you all sorted, of course. We’ve been so long without any-creature here it will take me a little while to bring things back up to snuff...I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you at all. I’m sure you must have expected more from Stable-Tec.”

Gretchen blinked at the robot for a long moment, “What do you mean, ‘get us sorted’?”

“I need to make you feel comfortable in your new home, of course. It won’t be a proper Stable-Tec experience otherwise.”

“Right,” Gretchen belched, not bothering to cover her mouth, “What are you going to do with us?”

“I’m going to give you your jumpsuits, and show you to the living area! I want you three all nice and settled before we start your first full day here.”

“First full day?” Divinity questioned, “What time is it?”

“Twelve o’six AM, ma’am. Horrible that the megaspells should fall at such an ungodly hour. Now, are you three ready?”

Gretchen groaned, standing up, “Let’s get this over with.”

Divinity and Cappy shared a look. Divinity got up first, stretching as she did so. Kehtel led the way through the stable, entering a portion they’d explored well. It was the living quarters, where the highest percentage of broken furniture was.

Gretchen picked what seemed to be the best room for herself. All of the furniture was intact, and it had an attached bathroom. With running water still in it. It was all too luxurious.

“Here you are, miss,” Kehtel said, hovering close to her. In one of his appendages, he held a plastic bag. It was clear, and she could see a blue garment inside. The number, emblazoned in an eye-catching yellow, was the number 30.

Tentatively, Gretchen took the bag, laying it on her bed, “What is this?”

“It’s your stable-issued jumpsuit, miss. You don’t need to wear it just yet, but I recommend you do before the radiation sinks through to your skin.”

Gretchen blinked. Then realized that the robot thought the megaspells had just dropped. She wasn’t sure what he would do if she told him the truth, so she kept quiet. She watched as Kehtel hovered away, her door sliding shut behind him.

She set her bags on the bed, and opened the bag that contained the jumpsuit. She took it out and laughed, dropping it to the floor. It was huge. Clearly meant for somepony, or some-creature, significantly larger than herself. Both in height and weight.

“That robot is nuts,” Gretchen snorted, “If he thinks I’m going to wear that. Whatever,” She stashed her most prized possessions under her bed, deigning to leave her barding on. If the ponies really were out to get her, which she figured likely, it was better to be prepared.

Gretchen’s overfull stomach continued to complain while digesting those wonderful hay burgers well after Gretchen had finally fallen asleep.