Chapter 2: Halls of Iron

“Utility barding,” I shouted to myself. Being alone in my own home felt rather awkward, putting on my utility barding though seemed to balance it out with familiarity. The lead-plated grey and orange cotton suit was made in two pieces, pants and vest, with attachments on the side for a variety of tools and other items, mostly ponies just used them for saddlebags, or if you prefer sticking something infinitely heavier and more armoured to your side, saddleboxes. Saddleboxes were generally cheaper than bags since metal was far more common around here, but I had managed to get mine free, mostly on account of being an apprentice to the two best engineers in the Hub, one of whom had taught me the spells used to cut and weld metal.

“Check!” I shouted once again at myself, just after I finished strapping the vest on. The cloth was thick, and hard to get used to at first, since movement in this thing when you’re only ten is a Celestia-damned nightmare, but a few years of consistently wearing it will get you used to moving in it, and it’s important to wear it if you’re doing a job like mine. The numerous pockets were tremendous in helping you to carry little bits that you didn’t want or need to put in your bags, and it had saved me from numerous bloody and potentially lethal cuts.

“Saddlebags and equipment,” I mounted my pair of saddlebags to the pair of side-attachments and mounted a saddlebox like a backpack. I took a few meters of steel cable, some copper wire, a screwdriver, and a wrench and threw them into my packs. “Check.” Anything else I’d need to get from the pony operating the airlock, usually a member of the Record Center. There were numerous things that most ponies weren’t allowed to carry inside the Hub... Weapons, like knives, bows, spears, and hammers, dangerous chemicals and explosives, and nearly anything magical save for your horn, and the only reason for that was because how critical magic was to the survival of the Hub… Well, that and from rumours Boron had shared with me, thaumic dampening rings were apparently really hard and costly to make.

I marched out, getting a few looks from the few ponies that were still wandering around the Hub… I probably looked silly going out with so many bags. Then my eyes locked on to a tall, slightly older stallion, with a sooty black coat and two-tone orange and red mane. I cringed a bit… “Oh no,” I whispered to myself… And now he was looking at me… “No, no, no, no.”

“Hey! Chem! Haven’t seen your pretty face in a while!”

“Heeey… Refinery Flare,” I forced a smile across my face, “Where have you been…” Wherever he went, I wish he stayed.

“Just up in Axel’s workshop… Yesterday was just horrible! The blackout and everything, you were probably huddled up in a corner crying, without some handsome stallion, like myself, to comfort you.”

I rolled my eyes, “Yeah… I need to go now, I’ve been assigned to finding another thaumic engine to power the Hub…”

“And here I was hoping we could go out, have some lunch… After all, you might not be seeing my sexy self for an entire week,” That caught my attention. Sure, I was glad he won’t be bothering me for a week, but ponies don’t just disappear for a week in this place… If they’re gone for more than two days, chances are that they died, and while Flare was annoying, I didn’t want anypony I knew dead.

“A week?” I said, surprised.

“Yeah, I don’t know how you’ll live without me… You see, with that horrible monster that snuck past yesterday, the Minister’s been needing more Liquidators, so I and a few other ponies from around the Hub have been reassigned. I’ll be taking a week of training up in the Central Line.” The Central Line… Its engine was the home of the Minister, and usually, his or her’s secretary, but the rest of the train was the headquarters of the Liquidators. Sometimes, as a foal, I would sneak out during the night and see strange flashes of coloured light coming from the train cars, usually accompanied by strange and distant noises.

“The pony that came by said something about me being ‘cheap and expendable’, but I like to think it was all thanks to my good-looks and magnificent physique… Though, I won’t be a proper Liquidator, just a recruit for now.”

“Yeah,” I finished, “Can I go now, I’m going to be late.”

He laughed, “Come on, those ponies aren’t going anywhere soon, it takes time to prepare for a mission like that, and I don’t think they really need you… After all, you’re just a mechanic, and going out there is a job for Liquidators, like me… They’ll just leave without you, we got all the time in the world,” He lurched forward and flapped his wings, grabbing me, and all my equipment, off the ground, a creepy, and rather shit-eating, grin on his face.

I had to fight the urge to smack him in a rather tender place… Which I did, lightly, just a warning kick. Clattering to the ground as he dropped me, I managed not to break anything of importance except my dignity, but I did gain a few bruises for the effort. “I have a job to do, and if you don’t stop I’ll hit again… Harder.”

“Well… As much as I’d love to get hit on by such a lovely mare, I’m afraid I have a real job to do… Go off and play in the ruins with your mare-friends, but I’ll be taking my leave.”

I grunted as he flew off, “Asshole,” I said, too quiet for anyone but myself to hear. Making up for lost time I galloped over to the airlock. There were at least six airlocks leading out of the Hub, the one I used was the one on the lower platform, on the right-hoof side of the Central Line, but there were two on each level, one on the right-hoof side, and the other on the left-hoof side.

The one I was heading to was thankfully on the lower level, this time on the opposite side of the tunnel. When I got there I was surprised to see a familiar mare, Palladium Plate… Her mane was still the same pale orange and her coat the same milky white, and her face still adorned with the same oversized reading glasses. Besides the mare was a beast of a stallion, larger than my father and even bigger than Boron. He wore a thick yellow trenchcoat with lead plates, far more heavily armoured than standard barding, and featuring a heavy-looking helmet. All around the stallion was a magical field, it only covered his skin, and didn’t extend outward, but, being a unicorn, I could feel it, Palladium certainly could, seeing her discomfort at standing right next to the buck.

The stallion had some kind of thick cloth around his muzzle, but a little bit of black mane peaked under his helmet and the rest of his face was a dark, pale, blue. He certainly wasn’t a unicorn, unless he had a horn smaller than that of a foal, but I wasn’t sure if he was hiding a pair of wings under his coat, doubtful, but possible. “You are late, explain,” He said in a deep, neutral, tone.

“Ran into a rather bothersome stallion, he slowed me down.”

“Your failure to show up at the given time has been noted, and will be going on my report to the minister, civilian.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t bother the big guy too much, he’s just a little on edge because of how important all this is!” Palladium said, cheerily.

“Your unnecessary chatter will be going on my report too.”

Not knowing what to say, I turned to face the stallion again and asked the first thing that popped into my mind, “Soooo, what’s your name?”

“I am Truncheon Trauma, a Liquidator under orders from Hydroxide and Sulphuric Acid, I am here to provide protection and ensure that the job is done correctly… That is all you need to know.”

“Palladium, what are you doing here?”

Before Palladium could answer, the stallion said, “She has volunteered to be here, that is all… It is not our place to question the mission, only see that it is completed, and completed correctly, is that clear!”

It was Palladium’s turn to roll her eyes, “I decided to come along, the team needed somepony to paint pictograms, most of the old ones have already faded, and we will need to mark off dangerous locations, good places for scrap, and directions too and from the engine room, whenever we find it of course.”

I nodded, even a few of the signs I followed back to the Hub yesterday were dim, and hard to make out from the background metal… Although that could have just been the lighting. “So, do you have any idea where another engine might be found?”

Truncheon Trauma took a step forward, “The Record Center has identified a potential location in which we can find a functional thaumic engine, although the record itself is ancient and potentially inaccurate, and warned that near this location was a potential danger to the Hub, it is, unfortunately, our best lead on finding a working engine.”

“Correct, I reviewed the plate myself, I didn’t get much useful information, clearly the plate had been neglected for some time, but it did give us the approximate location of the engine room, about thirty floors down from here, and a good three hundred meters to the head-left of the Hub.”

Thirty floors down and three hundred meters away, that was a very long way away… That was almost outside the Habitable Zone, in fact, that was close to the very bottom of the Habitable Zone, which mostly extended thirty-five floors both up and down, with a few safe places that extended a little further, but usually not by much. If you were looking at the City from a vertical perspective, then the Habitable Zone was a more-or-less circle that extended five-hundred metres from the Hub, giving it a radius of a kilometre in most places… Of course, just like going vertical, there were safe spots further out, but again, not by much.

That was a lot of ground to cover, and the Liquidators kept it secure by using the welding spell to seal most of the exits shut, there were a relatively low number of ways one could get in and out of the Habitable Zone, why the Liquidators didn’t seal off the place completely was a mystery, to me at the very least… Truncheon probably had a better answer than I could come up with, but I already knew that getting information from him wasn’t going to be a fun or easy task.

We were ready to depart, the three of us trotting into the airlock, inside was a pair of knives. Apparently, Truncheon already had his, being a Liquidator, he was exempt from most of the rules of the Hub and it seemed that among them was the restriction on carrying weapons. There was also a massive bundle of heavy cable, “The cable meant to be plugged into the engine and route power back to the Hub I presume.”

“Correct,” Truncheon said, dismissively.

“Looks pretty heavy, who’s going to be carrying that?”

Truncheon turned his head toward me, staring with those dead blue eyes… “Oh Fiiiiine,” I said petulantly, “I’ll take it,” Throwing the six hundred meter long cable bundle over my back. “‘Have the little unicorn mare carry the cable’, says the big earth-pony stallion,” I grumbled under my breath.

The airlock began to cycle, a little less loud and sparky, this time the lights didn’t cut out, nor the walls shoot sparks at me, but the grinding noise was just as loud and painful, then the door opened, and we were out into the bolted steel corridors of the City. While only half-lit, the chemical engine not providing enough power to light the entire Habitibal Zone, it wasn’t as scary, with the familiar sight of corridors, buttressed with I-shaped beams, every meter kept together with the large steel rivets, the floor below us a grating under which pipes ran… It was just like when I was a foal, exploring the Habitable Zone… Little did I know that my fillyhood hobby would become my job.

A few minutes passed as we trotted forward, with nothing else to do I turned to Palladium, “So, how exactly did the Record Center come across this engine?”

“Well, Copper Core was-”

“Silence!” Truncheon shouted, “Follow and keep your mouths shut.”

Palladium rolled her eyes, then continued in a whisper, “After we were told by one of Hydroxide’s ponies to find anything documenting a thaumic generator, we set to work looking through all the plates to find anything… Copper Core, another of us Record Ponies, started looking through some of the oldest records that hadn’t faded completely, afterwards he said that he thought any modern record wouldn’t have the kind of thing we were looking for on it, since we’ve been scouting the Habitable Zone since the beginning of time.”

“You know, that’s something I don’t really understand… If we’ve been here from the beginning of time, since Celestia created the City, why do we need to scavenge? If she’s looking down at us from beyond the City, with all her infinite power, why isn't she just creating everything we need?”

Palladium looked back, scandalized, “Haven’t you been listening to even a single thing Sulphuric Acid says in her speeches!” Truth be told, no I really didn’t, she was the representative of our leader, and that was all I really cared about… It was a sensitive subject though, many of the ponies in the Hub took the Minister and his secretary's speeches to heart, and my father had scolded me a few times for not listening.

“O-Of course! I-”

“Silence!” Truncheon yelled, a growl in his throat.

I continued, realizing that my voice was raised, once again returning it to a bearly audible whisper, “Of course I do, I just wanted to hear it from you, to know what you think of the matter.”

Soon we encountered a stairwell going down, with Truncheon in the lead, we descended, following the pipes and cables, held together with steel beams, that comprised the walls. Palladium replied, “Well, she’s giving us a mission, a test, see how well we can survive, see how long our lives last, and what we accomplish in it… If we’re loyal to the Hub, and help it survive, give birth and teach our children so they can continue our duties when we die, then she’ll accept us upon our death, and we can return to life on the day when our struggle, and the struggle of our distant descendants, is done and the world is perfect.”

I kept my thoughts private, I knew how seriously some ponies took history, and I knew that defying history was an unspoken taboo in the Hub, so I didn’t want either of the ponies here to hear what I thought of the matter. It was more like Celestia was waiting for us all to die… Nothing ever reappeared once it was scavenged, and while we could make what was scavenged last decades, even centuries, sometimes things would be destroyed for good, or otherwise abandoned, and steadily the Habitable Zone was starting to run out of salvage, and with how dangerous the Uninhabitable Zone was rumoured to be, there was no way we could last long if we were to be forced to scavenge from that place.

I also hated that part about us having foals to carry out our work… I didn’t intend on having one, and so did others in the Hub, but those were more vocal about their decisions and were generally bullied or abandoned. The only one who really knew I was more interested in mares was Boron, since he seemed to be one of the few able to keep a secret. And as much as I wanted Refinery to back off, I was afraid his reaction would be a bit more extreme than others.

We continued down the stairs until Truncheon came to an abrupt stop, I, in the middle, was quick to follow, but Palladium had trotted right into me without realizing and I had bearly caught her in a telekinetic grip before she sent all three of us tumbling down.

“The stairs are out in this section,” Truncheon said, monotone as always, “We’ll need to go back up and find another way around.”

I trotted up and saw past the stallion in front of me, a good chunk of the staircase had gone and an entire floor’s worth of stairs was missing, the closest solid ground being the landing two floors down. Palladium groaned, although I was unsure whether it was from her near fall or the fact that we would need to go marching back up countless flights of stairs.

A thought struck, and I opened my saddlebag and retrieved my steel cable, “Umm, how is that going to help us?” Palladium asked, however, from his body language, Truncheon caught on instantly.

He pointed a hoof toward one of the metal beams, “Attach it there,” I nodded and jammed one end of the cable to the beam, my horn grew a little brighter and from the tip sparks flew, the metal cable’s tip started to glow the same yellow as my magic, and not just from the telekinetic field, the two metal parts started to flow as if liquid and merge together into a cohesive whole. “Make sure to attach it in such a way that it can bear our weight without breaking… And, if you can, knot the cable so it can provide better grip when we climb back up.”

Soon, the cable, woven into a series of knots every meter and welded on tight to the wall, was dangling down to the platform below. “Are you positive this can bear our weight,” Truncheon said, for once showing a little bit of emotion besides anger.

“Look, if I was in the front of this group, I’d just climb down and have faith in my own abilities, but I’m not in the front, you’re in the front, and I can’t climb over you.”

Truncheon gave a grunt and carefully gripped the first knot with his forehooves, I followed once he had made it to the bottom. Once I had made it to the landing, I gave a little telekinetic help to Palladium, clearly not used to doing anything this physical. “Should we cut the cable down,” Palladium said, “We might need it later.” I nodded and the tip of my horn started to glow, a little beam of light flew outward and twisted in the air, cutting with as much precision I could muster from this distance.

My cable was a few centimetres shorter, but I felt much better having it with me. Palladium and I continued our whispered conversation, Truncheon could clearly hear us, and while he didn’t mask his annoyance, he had given up trying to get us to stop. “So, as I was saying, I like to think that the City has no end, at least not one we can reach, it extends outward in all directions without limit.”

“But how do you know that for sure, have you ever gone outside the Habitable Zone?”

Truncheon turned his head, “You are aware talk like that can get you in trouble back in the Hub, it inspires curiosity.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a little speculation!” I retorted, Truncheon continued marching on without a reply.

“Well… To be honest, this is the first time I’ve left the Hub, I’ve wanted to do it for a while, get a chance to learn a bit more about this place, but it’s just too dangerous.”

We finally reached the correct floor and marched out of the stairs. After we passed through a little antechamber that was absolutely filled with pipes, valves, and tanks, we opened out into a large circular room with a round vaulted ceiling. Hundreds of pipes, large and small, came from the walls and extended down a large central shaft, they were also going up into the ceiling, in which the shaft continued upward for as far as the eye could see.

After carefully making our way between the pipes, we left out of a door on the opposite side of the room, coming into a long room, more like a hallway, with huge cylindrical machines with glass windows looking in, they were connected to all sorts of smaller machines that looked vaguely like pumps, electric motors, and other similar devices. I noticed that Truncheon was examining the tanks very closely.

“Palladium, make sure to mark this place down, these tanks still contain some chemical fuel, and the parts from the pumps could prove valuable.”

Palladium nodded, pulled a plate from her saddlebag, and started writing down directions. I simply put my face up to the nearest tank… With a little spark of light from my horn, I could see that the tank was half-full of a yellow liquid, I felt a strange sucking sensation on my horn as I pressed against the tank’s hull.

The feeling was familiar, but my mind struggled to remember where I had first felt it… I wanted to remove my barding to look at my cutie mark, the yellow fluid was the same as was on my flanks… I remembered the day I got it.

Ten Years Ago.

I marched down some old corridor with a pair of ponies to either side, they both wore the stupid barding mom made me wear every day… They were both unicorns like me, and both had little metal plates floating along with them, I couldn’t understand why, all the plates had on them were a few strange symbols.

The spell, they wanted me to use it… I had only used it once, it was a few days ago, a holiday, no one knew the celebration’s name, but it had been a tradition since the beginning of time. Dad had gotten the sugarcane! I didn’t get to eat it often, but it was amazing, so sweet, and much crunchier than rice.

As dad slowly levitated it over to me, I reached out with my magic, I didn’t want to wait… When my magic touched it, something snapped inside the plant, but I couldn’t feel the same energy as I would when using telekinesis, this was something different, it wasn’t the same as if I had grabbed the plant and broke it in two, this time I could feel more things breaking, lots of things, more things than I could count… It was like the plant wasn’t a solid object, but more like a massive pile of tiny rods all stuck together, and each second billions of these things were snapping apart. Some parts of the broken rods seemed to boil away and float through the air, while most of it started to move more like a liquid.

What I saw with my eyes was just as strange, the plant seemed to shimmer yellow for a second and quickly grew darker, turning a dark black, as if it had been burned and turned into ash, but it didn’t float away as ash did, instead the air above it seemed to shimmer as if hot air was being shot up from it. Dad, shocked, dropped it and it fell to the ground, cracking apart. Still, hot gasses seemed to rise from it, and a pool of thick black liquid started to flow from what was once a plant.

I was just as scared as I was excited, a new spell! I had never heard of something like this, all the spells the other foals used were all the same, no one had created a spell in as long ponies could remember! I entered a room, a bare metal room, not a single pipe or cable in sight. I turned to see the ponies levitate over a series of plants and a strange bit of whitish-red material, I stared at the adults, “What do you want me to do?”

“Cast the spell, and put the resulting materials,” The stallion paused as he levitated over a series of glass containers, “In these… We want a sample of it when it’s solid, and when it’s a liquid…”

I nodded, and lifted the first thing, a small pile of rice grain, closed my eyes, and tried to see the rice as a big pile of tiny little rods all stuck together… This time I noticed that the rods weren't perfectly straight, but rather had tiny little branches sticking off them like they were a feather, or covered in miniscule hairs… I poured a bit of magic into the rice and tried to break apart the rods.

When I did, the magic started working all on its own, and started breaking the rice apart, some of the rice was now floating away into the air, and some was now starting to drip away like liquid. I clamped down on the magic, and in doing so accidentally stopped the telekinesis, but the magic inside the rice was gone. When I opened my real eyes, I could see that the rice was now a pile of hard black stone… It did look a lot like ash now that I thought about it, but it certainly didn’t smell anything like it.

The adults all looked excited and started putting half the black stones into a glass jar. “Good, now try turning the rest into a liquid.”

I lifted the black rocks and poured magic into it again, now I could feel the rocks slowly turn limp in my grasp, like it was a thick cloth, growing softer by the second… Soon I wasn’t holding a rock anymore, but rather a thick black liquid. I poured the goo into another container and saw one of the adults cast some kind of spell on the glass, making a series of symbols appear across it.

Following my instructions, I set to work on the next plant… Sugarcane. I was tempted to cut it in half and take a little for myself, but I knew my dad wouldn't like it if I didn’t follow the adult’s orders. So, disappointed, I lifted the plant and cast the spell again… This time I didn’t hold back, I poured as much power as I could manage without depleting myself too much. The plant broke apart much faster than before, in less than ten seconds it was black goo, I wanted to stop the magic being pumped into it, but I was too awed at what happened next. Quickly the goo turned into a gas, I couldn’t see it, or smell it, but I could feel something in my grip, the plant was there, just now it was floating in the air.

The adults looked confused, I tried to explain what I felt, they replied by asking me to put the gasses into a glass jar, and so I did. Something dawned on me right then… If I could turn the plant into a rock and a sludge and a gas, could I do it in reverse?

Next, I raised the cotton fibres… As expected, it turned into a black rock, then into a goo, then into an invisible gas. I pulled and twisted the magic, trying the process in reverse, and when I did, I noticed that tiny droplets of liquid were forming in the bubble of gas. The bubble slowly created more and more of the liquid, until the bubble of gas was gone and a sphere of liquid remained… This wasn’t the same black goo I had hoped it would be, rather it was a transparent yellowish-orangish fluid… I was disappointed, but one of the adults seemed intrigued, the other looked worried. In the flurry of emotions and the calm that came with spellcasting, I didn’t notice the tingling on my flanks.

I tried the thick slab of red-white stuff… The adults called it meat. It acted the exact same when I used my magic on it… After putting a bit of the rock, a bit of the goo, and a bit of the gas into their respective jars, I tried reversing the process again, but it had the same effect, creating a yellow fluid.

One of the adults whispered something to the other, then turned back to me, “We would like you to cast the spell two more times, is that ok?” I nodded, I was starting to feel tired, whatever this magic was it took a lot out of me. “We would like you to try casting on these.” He levitated up a small chunk of black rock and some kind of bug, a cockroach he called it. I reached out for the cockroach first, and-

Something was wrong, I felt my magic flow off the surface of the cockroach as if it couldn’t get a grip on it, it was like the little rods inside it were constantly breaking and reforming on their own, so much so that my magic couldn’t break a rod before it broke itself and reformed… I failed…

I tried the rock, hoping that I wasn’t a complete failure, I reached into the rock and… The rock wasn’t the same as the other things had been, this one wasn’t comprised of the little rods that the others were, this was something else, it was more like the rock was a bunch of little grains, dots, that were all stuck together… I poured in a bit of magic, but nothing happened.

“I-I can’t do anything, the magic doesn’t work… Have I failed? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, you didn’t do anything wrong… We expected that neither of those things would be changed…”

“Y-You mean I didn’t fail?”

“No, quite the opposite in fact!” He gestured to me… To my flanks. I turned and saw something, a patch of colour that wasn’t there before, a cutie mark! It was a metal barrel, the barrel was tipped on its side and spilling a yellow fluid across the fur of my flank. I didn’t mind the numbness in my horn, I didn’t hear what the other ponies were saying, I just got to my hooves and started running around in circles, chasing that little barrel.

Behind the excited little filly, too quiet for the foal to hear, the two stallions turned to one another, “I’ll go inform Petrochemical’s parents.”

“Yes, you should… I’ll collect the samples.”

“I don’t know whether to be proud or scared of the filly… Either way, I hope that yellow stuff isn’t what I think it is.”

“Only one way to find out.”

The excitement of the day was only soured when, that night, one of the two adults came to my house, I was asleep at the time but awoken when I heard the door open. Wondering what was going on, and not wanting to awake my parents if they were asleep, I silently crept to the stairs and peered down into the main room, standing there was one of the adult unicorns from my test talking with my father. I didn’t catch the full conversation, but from what I did hear, they were excited about the spell and wanted to run a few more tests, I was so excited I wanted to get up and run around in circles, but mom could still be asleep… Then the unicorn finished by stating that I was never to use that spell again without permission.

The group passed the room full of tanks and through several more rooms and corridors, full of the empty hulls of machines, clearly scrapped ages ago. We entered into a room, and the first thing we noticed was the floor, namely the fact that it was half-missing. “Looks like something collapsed in this section” Said Truncheon.

“We’re getting close, the instructions mentioned something dangerous around this area,” Continued Palladium.

Something did indeed collapse, the massive rends in the floor went down at least three or four floors, and were punctuated with collapsed and broken machinery, from either this floor or the ones below. From the lack of dust compared to the rest of the room, it must have been recently, at least in the past year. “I don’t think this is the danger those instructions mentioned,” I said. In the distance, past the destroyed room, I saw that the far door was open, and inside was a familiar-looking machine, a large rectangle with some kind of large studded sphere on one end, and a series of tubes and tanks, thaumically shielded glass portholes glowing with faint energy from within… It wasn’t painted yellow like the last one, but that was the only difference.

“I agree with Petrochemical, these are clearly recent damages, we shouldn't go through this room.”

“Why not! The engine is right there!” I said, pointing my hoof toward the thaumic engine in the distance, “We can just trot right over there, the floor isn’t that badly damaged.”

“Petrochemical, I would not do that if I were you, we do not know the structural integrity of this room’s floor.”

I scoffed, I had encountered rooms just like this and they had all proved safe to pass through, metal didn’t just give out beneath you at random, “You’re just being paranoid… I’ll trot over there, plug in the cable, and come right back here,” I stepped out into the room and toward the generator, the floor gave a creaking noise of stressed metal, but didn’t budge in the slightest.

“Petrochemical! Come back here!” Truncheon said, trotting after me. I was nearing the center of the room, right next to one of the big gashes, when Truncheon stepped out into the room himself, the floor gave another croak, this one lasting a bit longer and sounding a bit louder. “Petrochemical!” He shouted, I paused for a moment to look back at him. Palladium was looking a bit worried.

“Chem! Just do what the Liquidator says!”

Truncheon, in exasperation, stomped his hoof on the floor… With the full strength of an earth pony behind it. He left a big indentation in the ground, and only realized his mistake when from below came a loud creek, followed by a bang, and the floor below us falling a bit… It didn’t move all too much, only bending down a meter or so, but it broke my balance, and I fell over, falling toward the large gash in the floor. “Oh fuck!” I yelled as I tried to get my balance back before I went tumbling into that hole.

I managed to hook my hooves around the edge of the opening and hang on, “Chem!” Shouted Palladium, “I’ll save you!” She galloped into the room herself. Her horn started to glow and I felt a weak telekinetic field wrap around my midsection, then Palladium stomped her way into the room, and the floor gave another buckle. With her concentration ruined, and the floor breaking my grip on the floor’s edge, there was nothing to stop me from falling down.

Author's Note

So, for context regarding the directions mentioned in this and future chapters, the ponies in the Hub don’t have the concept of North, South, East, and West… Instead, they use the train inside the Hub, called the Central Line, as a compass… Essentially, Head is their equivalent of North, as the Head refers to “ahead of the train”, Tail is South, being toward the “tail-end of the train”, with Left and Right being East and West, as in “left or right of the train”, generally, whenever a character says to go left or right, unless they’re specifically referring to an object or person, they’re saying to go east or west.

And for those who didn’t understand the cockroach test, I hinted that the insect was still alive by the fact that hydrocarbon chains were moving around and undergoing chemical reactions inside it, thus the: “it was like the little rods inside it were constantly breaking and reforming on their own”, line.