I opened my eyes. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. There was a small cottage in front of me. One floor, a little garden in the back.

I ran a hoof over the garden wall. It felt just like I remember. I trotted over to the door and tried to push it. It was locked. But she never locked the door. I tried again. It wouldn't budge. I calmed myself down. There's a back door, it doesn't even have a lock . I jumped over the fence and into the garden.

The flowers were in bloom. Walking through her garden I saw a bucket and a pair of clippers lying in between a pair of tulips. That's unusual, she'd kill me if I left them out like that. Walking out of the garden and into the green back yard I saw the door I was heading for. It was boarded up.

I took a closer look at the house. The windows were broken and covered by planks. I turned around. The grass was dead, the tulips were dead. The sky was no longer blue, but a mess of gray clouds.

It started to rain.

I stood there in the rain. None of this makes sense, I thought. She would never let this happen.

Then I smelled it, like acid dripping into your nose. I saw it come from under the boarded door, slow pink mist melting anything it touches. I ran as fast as I could, but I was frozen in place. The Cloud slowly reached my hind leg. I saw it disappear in the thick fog. It slowly covered me.

Everything was pink. My lungs felt like a dragon took up residence in them. My skin burned, I could feel it melting and going down my unmoving legs. Every second lasted for days and I could feel every sting, every moment engraved itself into my head like a chisel striking a rock.

But with time it all started to feel numb, the Cloud no longer burned, the skin was no longer melting, the dragon moved out, even the chisel turned to light tapping. The heat of pain changed to cold numb nothingness. The pink slowly turned to purple, then a little light showed up, then another until they filled up the night sky.

I was lying on something cold, my eyes refused to open, the entire body felt like I'd just run from Manehattan to Ponyville and back. Suddenly I felt a light push.

"Hey. You alive there?" there was another poke. "Hello! Ya there?" one more poke, "Is he dead?"

"Maybe? How am I supposed to know?" said somepony else. The second one was definitely a mare. Her voice was coming from the opposite side of the other one.

"Aren't you the so-called medic?" he replied.

"I was a vet. We treat animals, not ponies."

"You keep telling that to yourself and we'll all die because of a rusted nail!"

I tried to get up, but my legs were too weak. Couldn't even move my head.

"Oh, shut up, he's alive," said the vet.

"Phew, don't like to snatch stuff from dead ones. Gives me the creeps. Let's take a look-see at what he's got," the one poking me said, then he pushed me on my back. "There's some weird book and that's it."

"Take the book, the Boss likes books," the medic responded.

"Well, that was obvious. What's we gonna do with the dude?" I heard the first pony say.

"We're taking him. Can't just take all his stuff and leave him to die, can we?"

"Technically-" the first one started.

"Shove you're 'technically' "– she sighed – " somewhere deep. We're taking him and that's that."

Suddenly my body was lifted in the air and put on somepony's back. Then they started moving.

It felt like at least a couple of hours of walking in silence. I still couldn't move a muscle. That spell sucked everything out of me.

We were going through some sort of tunnel judging from the echo.

"Hey! Do you think the Boss'll like the book? I just flipped through a few pages and it's all gibberish nonsense," the first pony said suddenly.

"I think the books are just to remind him of the old days," answered the vet.

"Think he'll give us more food for it?" he said flipping through a couple of pages.

"I don't know and to be honest I don't care," she mumbled. "I just want to get back and drink myself to sleep."

"So, it's drinking then? Thought you're a pills kinda girl. Wanna get a few shots together?" asked the one carrying me.

"Shut up, Jester, just shut up. I don't want to drink with you, I don't want to speak with you. You're an embarrassment and I don't even know why we keep you around."

"Alright, sheesh," he jerked himself in the opposite direction from the vet.

I didn't really know what was happening to me. First the spell, then the garden and now this. Where was I? Who were these ponies? Where were we going?

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud scream.

"Oi! Who goes there! You're in Tunnelers' territory. You better get out!" the voice was old and hoarse.

"Saddles, you damn idiot, open the gate," said the mare with quite audible frustration.

I could hear grumbling coming from the old pony. Then there was a loud bang and murmuring of a generator. The gate rolled to the side. We went inside and through a few doors.

I felt the touch of somepony's magic picking me up. Then, a sharp surge of pain as I was dropped on the floor. A metal door slammed shut. I tried to stay awake but was quickly pulled back into unconsciousness.

The concrete was cold and a little wet, the wind blowing in my face didn't make any of this easier.

A particularly strong gust of wind woke me up. I was barely able to open my eyes and see where I was. The room was small, lit with a single table lamp standing on the floor. There was no door to this room, hence the wind. But the worst thing was that I was lying in a cage made of rebar and road signs. I couldn't really see much of the room, the signs covering most of the cage.

"Look at this, the little Princess woke up," said a dark blue unicorn standing near the entrance to the room, "Now, I'm gonna be brief. You are with the Tunnelers now, so you either work good, get fed, and then maybe join us as a full member or you die in this cage. The choice is yours," he looked at a broken clock hanging on the wall, "You've got, let me think, an hour or so to decide. Have fun!" he finished while leaving the room.

Well, that was unexpected. It's only been a month and there are gangs already, I thought. Joining wasn't really an option, they already took my stuff and locked me in a cage, who knows how far their craziness goes? Maybe they eat ponies for dinner, and they are just calming me down so that I didn't panic and ruin the taste. Maybe they were zebra spies and now they were going to make me a part of their weird rituals? I began to panic. I needed to escape. Yes, that way they couldn't sacrifice me to their spirits or whatever it is that zebras sacrifice to.

I wasn't in a good place or a good state for that matter. Every muscle still hurt after using that spell. Plus I was locked in a makeshift cage, that wasn't great either.

The lock was the first obstacle in my way. It didn't look well-made, they probably put it together themselves. I could probably use my magic to simply take it apart. It not that hard really. This goes here and that bolt goes out, then we simply bend that bit halfway aaaaand.

There was a click and bits of the lock fell on the floor. That was surprisingly easy, these Tunnelers definitely don't know how to make locks. Maybe that's because they were expecting me to escape? Maybe this is some sort of test?

After taking a quick look around the room I came to the conclusion that there was only one way out of here. The way that unicorn went. Now I just needed to check if anypony is in the next room, then try to get out of here.

I started to move to the door, seemingly an easy task, a hundred times easier than taking apart a lock or casting a spell from an ancient tome, but I somehow couldn't do that, because I stumbled over the only thing in the room. The Celestia damned lamp, I didn't pay it any attention until my front leg touched the hot bulb and I reflexively kicked it into the wall. Being sneaky was never my strongest side.

Not a second passed after I kicked the lamp and I heard a commotion outside the room. Somepony was definitely going to check on me. I got as close to the entrance as I could. Maybe I could do something. Think, Fritz, think! Maybe if I do this? Yes, that could work.

I picked up the lamp with my magic. Yes, this will work.

"Hey! What's going o-," the unicorn from before was just about to enter the room. But then his leg got caught by the lamp's cable and he went face-first into the concrete.

"That works, I guess," I poked him to check if he was still up. Luckily the fall knocked him clean out. That wasn't what I had in mind, but it worked just fine.

He didn't have any weapon with him, which is strange considering he was supposed to keep ponies in that cage from escaping. But then again, it's not like anypony has any experience in keeping prisoners. Well, besides the Ministry of Morale workers. Those ponies sure know how to keep someone under a lock.

I took a peek into the next room, it was empty, thankfully. Just a small sleeping bag and a radio. The room itself was completely made of concrete.

I carefully made my way into the next room avoiding any cables or other tripping hazards. Once inside I noticed a closed metal door to the left and a corridor to the right. This building, whatever it was, made little sense to me.

Getting close to the metal door I put my ear close to it to hear anything from the other side.

"I tell, you listen. All clear?" a loud voice with a thick accent boomed from the other side almost knocking me over, "You build cage, but is all wrong. Cage has more bars, so nobody escape. And cage has roof! I mean, come on, did nopony teach you how to build cage when you were little?"

"Ummm, no? And it's not like a lot of ponies know how to escape a cage either way, so it doesn't really matter" said a confused voice a lot quieter.

"What? Ponies here don't know how escape from cage? You definitely kidding me, right?" the loud one asked. There was no answer.

"That at least explains your failure with building. How can you build cage if you don't know how cage work? Now, you lucky you have me, I know how cage works and I can teach. Like my father teach me and his father teach him and his father teach him..." I pulled my ear away from the door. Corridor it is!

I looked into the corridor, it was so dark there that I couldn't see a damn thing. The second I raised my hoof to take a step I saw a bright light shining into the corridor from the left. Then it started moving. It looked like the corridor had something like pillars instead of a wall on the left, because every five feet the light would go behind something only to appear again just a couple of feet away. When it reached my end of the corridor it quickly returned to the other side and began moving towards me again. It looked like somepony was keeping an eye on this route. But I had no other place to go, besides the cage or the cage builder, that is. And these options seemed less pleasant to me. So I decided to stick with the corridor.

I waited for the light to swing back to the other side, took a deep breath, and began to sneak my way to the first pillar to hide behind it. My heart was going wild. I had to be very slow to make as little sound as possible, so by the time I was behind the first pillar the light was already on it. The pony swinging the light seemed to focus on the pillar for a few seconds, but they soon returned to doing circles with the flashlight.

Again waiting for the light to be on the other side, I made my push. Slowly and silently I got behind the second pillar. I sat down. It was going well so far, but I was starting to shake.

The light passed by.

I got out from behind the pillar. Only two left. I carefully placed my hooves on the wet concrete. Step by step I made it to the next one. Again the light was just behind me as I hid. I couldn't even wipe the sweat off my forehead my legs were shaking so bad.

The light went by again and I started to move to the last pillar. I turned my head to see where the light was coming from and who was swinging it. It was an old-looking unicorn in a high-visibility jacket. He was sitting on what looked like a subway bench, but somepony sawed it in half. The pony was looking the other way and was moving the flashlight with his magic, so I sped up a little and got behind the last pillar.

At this point, stepping into the tiny puddles of sweat was a potential danger and the shaking wasn't getting any better. But I needed to push a little more, and hopefully, after that, I wouldn't have to sneak anymore.

I raised a hoof to take the next step, but suddenly the old stallion turned his light away from the corridor and towards somepony coming to him. I didn't listen much to their conversation. Only a couple of steps separated me from the end of this corridor. I could barely see what was waiting for me there in the shadows, but hopefully, it was better than the zebra-worshiping-pony-eating-cage-obsessed crazies that locked me in here.

Finally, I got completely out of the flashlight's way. It was pitch black. I stretched one of my front legs and slowly went forward.

For a few seconds, there was nothing. But then my hoof touched something. It was wet and cold, like everything there. I felt my way around that object. There was a strange protrusion if I moved my hoof to the left, like some sort of a stick. A cold metal stick. I tried touching it. It moved. Just like a door handle. That was a door.

I let out a sigh. This was stressful. There was nowhere for me to go, but into that door. But first I had to open it, I prayed that it wouldn't be closed.

It wasn't. But apparently, nopony has tried to open this door since Celestia was a filly. Because when I tried to open the damn thing it squicked louder than a train engine.

"What in the... Who's there!?" I heard a voice from somewhere back. I started to push the door harder, but the thing wouldn't budge.

"Ha! Hey, guys, we've got a runner!" said presumably the flashlight pony.

Using a combination of what little magic I could muster and force I managed to open the door just enough to squeeze through.

"He went in there! After him! Finally, some action!" screamed ponies behind the door, "Open 'er up! I wanna catch him!"

I turned the other way and ran as fast as my tired legs would carry me. It was some sort of a room or maybe another corridor, I stopped paying attention right when I heard a gun discharge somewhere behind. Then another. They were shooting me now?!

I ran like crazy room after room, it all looked the same, just gray concrete here and gray concrete there.

"Hahahahah! That's a dead-end, you idiot! There's nowhere to run!" howled the ponies chasing me.

But being a little panicked, I didn't pay any attention to their war cry. Or at least I thought it was some sort of war cry. Suddenly I saw a large pile of rubble right in front of me blocking the path. The part had caved in. I heard the shooting and screaming get closer.

I trotted on the spot not knowing what to do. There had to be a way out. I couldn't just die like this. Then I heard the floor under my hooves break and I saw a small crack travel from the cave-in right to me. I tried to move away from the breaking concrete, but it crumbled right around me and I dropped down right after the floor itself.

It was almost silent for a second. The sound of grinding stone and metal stopped. I decided to get up from the ground. Placing my front hooves firm on the concrete, I started to move my hind legs into position. And the floor collapsed again.

I lay on the floor surrounded by chunks of stones, bits of concrete, and a lot of stone dust. I didn't feel much honestly. But it was hard to move and every attempt made a surge of pain go through my body. So I, being the smart pony that I am, decided to lay there for some time.

Then I saw lights shining above.

"Oh, damn. The idiot fell a good way down. That's what you get when you don't join the Tunnelers, right boys?" one of the Tunnelers said, his voice sounded familiar.

"Jester, shut the hell up. You're not helping," I heard the mare from before, "Now, who's gonna tell the Boss that we lost a potential member and wasted ammunition?"

They quickly moved back not wanting to end up the same as me. The lights were gone and I was left alone, in the darkness, with nothing to my name. Great.

I spent some time fumbling in the dark. Without any source of light, it was hard to find my way around. It didn't help that every couple of minutes I'd bump into something and run back to the hole to the upper floors. It gave off the tiniest bit of light, not even enough to distinguish color properly. But a little light is always better than no light.

I decided that I couldn't stay near the hole forever and went into the darkness. The floor here wasn't wet or dirty or anything like the floor above. The place itself was deathly quite. There was nothing but the sound of my hooves hitting the tiles on the floor. Then suddenly my hoof got caught in something. It felt like a cable, but it definitely wasn't one. Cables are not supposed to move by themselves.

I tried to get free, but the more I yanked my leg the more it got stuck. It felt like some sort of snake was coiling around me. I struggled, tried to help the first hoof with another, but it got tangled up as well. There were more of those things now crawling all over my front legs.

The things were starting to hurt a lot. It felt like the damn thing was slowly getting tighter and tighter. Regular telekinesis didn't help, but instead made it squeeze harder. I didn't want to use proper magic, it could be dangerous plus I didn't recover from that spell yet. But this situation was getting out of control really fast.

At this point, these things were all over both my front legs and they were tight enough to draw blood. I didn't really have a choice whether to use magic or not.

The problem that only now became apparent was that I didn't know any spells that could help. The EEA didn't really teach employees any combat spells. We got a lot of other types of spells, mostly related to paperwork. There was that one thing they taught us like a week before the Cloud. It was a simple stun spell to "stop any anti-Equestrian spies", it's supposed to be easy to do and shouldn't take too much effort. But I never bothered to learn it properly and after we got stuck in the EEA building I didn't really have a chance to.

I concentrated. A spark appeared at the end of my horn. The spark grew into a small ball of energy. The ball shrank as the things around my legs tightened. I drew every bit of focus I had in me into that ball of light and I released it right into my leg where the cables were thickest.

I'll admit that shooting a stunning spell directly at myself wasn't my brightest idea, but in my defense, there wasn't really any one thing to shoot at.

The spell worked like a charm... or like a spell... because it was one. My head was a little dizzy and I couldn't feel my leg. But I could feel the grip around me weaken. The things stopped moving. Suddenly sparks started to come out of it, the spell wasn't supposed to do that, it was supposed to stun things not burn them.

I could somewhat see what it was. Some kind of metal wires, all leading under a tile in the floor. Throwing the sparking wires off of my legs I hobbled away from the trap. It looked like the tile was about to go off, it was red-hot and sparkling all over the place.

Then a robotic voice announced.

"Overload in testing cell 03. Repeat. Overload in testing cell 03. Deploying fire preventing measures. Repeat. Deploying fire preventing measures," the voice boomed from somewhere above me. There was a little hissing sound right above the tile. Then nothing happened.

"Error. Error. Fire preventing measures are deactivated. Please contact a Stable-Tec engineer to fix the problem. All workers are advised to leave the perimeter," the voice was being very helpful. Then the tile just gave off a small poof sound and a little waft of smoke rose to the ceiling.

"The problem has been resolved. All personnel is to return to their workstations immediately," the voice reassured me.

Although I wasn't being killed by some defunct household robot prototype, I still had just fallen two stories down and I now had spirals cut into my legs. And the cuts were bleeding, mind you. The cuts weren't too deep, but there were a lot of them. Thankfully I couldn't feel at least one of my legs, so that's at least half the pain.

Oh, and on top of that with the cables no longer sparkling I once again couldn't see a damn thing.

But this time I kinda had a solution to the darkness. Right before I shot myself, I saw that the ball of magic was giving off some light. And I thought that it wouldn't be too hard to keep the spell prepared as a crude flashlight.

Now that I think about it, a flashlight spell would've been a really useful thing to teach an EEA worker, but for some reason, the upstairs decided that light is not something we need. Because the EEA building sure could've used a little more light, there wasn't even electricity on most of the lower floors.

The energy appeared around my horn again, it formed the little ball of light and I could finally look around the room I was in.

It was a big room with a window on one of the walls. Besides the weird tile-thing, there wasn't anything interesting there. There was a door like the ones that Stable-Tec promised to have in their Stables. I don't really know if these doors were in the Stables since I, you know, never got enough money to buy a ticket. Far as I remember these doors are supposed to open with "but a press of a button!", or whatever the ad said.

I found said button and pressed it. The ad didn't lie, the doors did open with a push of a button, how convenient.

The door slid open and I walked into another room, this one had a lot more stuff in it. A bunch of strange equipment was all over the room: binoculars, blowtorches, some screwdrivers, and even some sort of a helmet. There was also a terminal on a table overlooking the window into the cable-tile-thing room. It was on, but the brightness on the screen was set to a minimum. Weird, you can barely see what's on the screen.

"Well, I got nothing better to do. May as well check it out," I said to myself so that it wasn't too silent.

INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.5.1
STR-TSR-LAB-012/RESEARCH/DEFENSE/ONYX
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Onyx Storm

Entry 1. First day on the job. Loading...

It is the first day of the "Thestral Specialized Research". I've just been moved to this facility. We're developing some bat pony specific tech. I assume it's something like lamps that have a low-intensity mode or maybe radios that are very quiet. I even got a few ideas of my own. To be completely honest, I'm kinda excited to be working on a civilian project, all of this war stuff doesn't really work for me.

Entry 2. Okay, that's not what I expected. Loading...

I got my hopes up for nothing. We're developing some military tech so that bat ponies could be effectively used on the battlefield. Day-vision goggles, earplugs, and stuff like that are already taken by other ponies here. So I got, and I quote, "low visibility based perimeter defence measures". What do they expect me to give them? Any defense measure is better when you can't see it.

I'll try to come up with something. Loading...

On a separate note, the idiots running this facility decided that getting rid of every light source that isn't a terminal is a good idea. To accommodate our bat pony friends. It's just a stupid way of doing things, bats don't even come to this part of the lab, they tend to stay in their rooms unless they are called for.

Entry 3. Eureka!. Loading...

Yesterday I got tangled up in some cables some moron left out in the middle of the floor. I even had to go to the med bay, thankfully it's near my work station. And then I got an idea. I already have all the things I need to build it.

Entry 4. The first prototype. Loading...

It took me a few weeks to finally build it. I call it "Wire trapper", the name's not final. It's inserted into the floor and when activated will throw out a bunch of metal wires, it's easy to overlook them. Then when somepony touches any of the wires it sends a signal to slowly wrap itself around the target. It's silent, non-lethal, and doesn't require a lot of energy to run.

It has some problems, that I haven't come around to fixing yet. The thing is easily overloaded, if the current is a bit bigger the thing will fry. It didn't pass magical stress testing, but zebras don't exactly have unicorn magic, now, do they? And above all, this thing caught the eye of some thestral big guy, he was somehow connected to the Princess I think, he said he liked it.

AUTOMATED FACILITY-WIDE MESSAGE. Loading...

Sorry to inform you all, but this facility is being closed down. The TSR project is being moved to another location. Don't worry, you're all still employed, you're just being relocated because some pony higher up suspects that zebras got their hooves on something really dangerous and this place wasn't meant to be a vault. Please copy all of your blueprints and terminal information. Anything physical stays here.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY
STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.

After the automated message there was nothing. And the last date was like two or three months ago. So this place was

supposed to be abandoned. Well, that's a relief.

The terminal mentioned a med bay and that's just what I need right now. It may not hurt now, but if I get some sort of infection... Without professionals, I don't even know how I'd get that treated.

So, I set out on my way to find the med bay. It was supposedly somewhere nearby.

After a minute or two of me hobbling around, I found the med bay. The inside looked like any typical doctor's office, well, plus all the darkness of course. The only light source besides my improvised flashlight was the dim terminal. I tried to look for some sort of cabinet. And I found one pretty quickly. But it was locked. It can't ever be easy, can it? Maybe the terminal has an answer to where the key is?

No luck, the terminal was locked with a password.

I really didn't want to go around with a bleeding leg, so breaking the lock was the only solution.

Looking closely at the lock, it was a thousand times better than the Tunnelers' one, but no lock could stand before my might. I just looked at the door keeping the cabinet locked and took it off of its hinges. They really should've invented a better way to lock a cabinet.

There it was, the healing potion, the sweet pinkish goodness. I didn't know if it was actually sweet or not, but that's beside the point. I downed the entire bottle and it took effect immediately, the spiral cuts on my front legs started to close up. Then came the bandages. A lot of them. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I knew nothing about how to bandage properly. I just wrapped it around the cuts and that was that.

I then came up with a genius idea, if I had some sort of a saddle-bag I could take these potions, bandages, and whatever else is in that cabinet with myself to use it when I'll inevitably get hurt again. It's not like there was anypony in this place who could need them. But without a bag, I couldn't carry more than a few potions with me.

So I left the med bay until I could procure myself a bag.

I wasn't in any rush and could peacefully look for any kind of bag or a way out of this place. Both would be just fine.

My search was stopped when I found the head researcher's office. It was, unsurprisingly, better furnished than any other room I've seen so far. There even was a nice red sofa, not unlike the one I slept on back at the EEA.

The head researcher's terminal was my goal. It just had to have something useful. Ponies tend to keep some interesting information on their terminals, I know that from experience.

I turned the terminal on and was faced with the same problem as before. A password. Maybe this researcher kept it written down somewhere just in case?

I checked every drawer in the room, every piece of paper, but there was nothing. Sitting down before the terminal, I checked every surface of the table another time. Maybe I missed something? Then I decided to take a look at the terminal itself, it wasn't the standard model, this one had a custom case with some additional buttons that weren't on the regular ones.

I pressed one of the buttons just to see what would happen and wouldn't you know it there's a secret compartment in the casing. Inside, Bingo!, the password, and other things that I presume were the researcher's personal things: a hair comb and a hair pin. The password was a combination of random letters and numbers.

With the terminal unlocked I could finally learn what it was hiding.

INITIALIZING STABLE-TEC(TM) BOOT AGENT v3.5.1
STR-TSR-LAB-012/RESEARCH/HEAD/DERELICT
THIS TERMINAL IS PROPERTY OF THE EQUESTRIAN GOVERNMENT.
FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TRYING TO ACCESS THIS TERMINAL WILL BE TAKEN FOR QUESTIONING.
WELCOME BACK, Head Researcher Derelict Light.

Entry HR-1. Loading...

I am Derelict Light, a Ministry of Arcane Sciences researcher. By the order of Princess Luna, I have been assigned as the head of the "Thestral Specialized Research" project. The project itself was created on the demands of the Captain of the Lunar Guard. They requested a lot of new bat pony specific tech. The Captain wants the Lunar Guard to be an elite unit and claims that they can't be one without "specialized equipment". It's all filly nonsense, in my opinion. My skills and the skills of the researchers under me would be better spent on more pressing matters. But I can't really go against orders here.

Entry HR-3. Loading...

The progress is going steady. Most equipment that the Captain requested will soon be ready for testing. Developing the gear was a breeze, the traps and weapons on the other hoof have proven quite hard. The pony I put on traps hasn't come up anything yet and the guns aren't fearing much better. They have a design at least, it's some sort of a needle gun because we stopped the attempts to make silent solid slugs or magical guns long ago.

Because of the Captain's stupid idea to get rid of all lighting in the facility we had to get night-vision goggles for everypony working here. We'll give them out from the guard post, I think, all the ponies go through there and I don't want to gather anypony up for such a minor problem.

Entry HR-4. Loading...

Most of the tech that was tested was found safe enough to be sent off to production. We had a few accidents involving permanent blindness and hearing loss, but the Captain wanted it in production, so we had to comply. I barely managed to convince him that the traps and weapons must be tested thoroughly. I must admit, I am not feeling good working under these conditions. We're at war and I understand that, but it seems to me that the Captain just wants new toys to play around with.

Entry HR-7. Loading...

We have a breakthrough with traps. It's silent, it's non-lethal, it's all I could have hoped for. And it doesn't even involve explosives.

Entry HR-8. Loading...

I had a chat with the Captain. He wants us to relocate and continue our project, says that his ponies have more requests for personalized equipment. It's not an order yet, but he's thinking it over. I'm afraid my team will be reduced to nothing more than his personal tech developers.

Entry HR-10. Loading...

It's an order now. Officially, we are moving because this location proved to be unsuited for our research, apparently if a research center can't take a megaspell head on it is considered "unsuited" nowadays, whatever that means. I believe it's so that the Captain could keep a closer eye on us. I've sent a network-wide message explaining the situation. We'll be moving shortly. I leave all access codes on this terminal for anypony unfortunate enough to be working here after us. Sometimes I question the Princess' decision to assign me to this project.

TERMINAL SHUTTING DOWN
THANK YOU FOR USING STABLE-TEC(TM) TECHNOLOGY
STABLE-TEC. PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.

The last message was also somewhere about a month before the end.

After reading the entries I now had a solid goal. Or as solid a goal as I ever had. I needed to go to the guard post to get myself a pair of goggles. The spell might not be hard, but keeping it up for a long time might not be the best idea.

It took some searching, but by this point, I somewhat understood the layout of this place, so it wasn't all that hard.

The guard post itself was just two tables and a few chairs blocking a corridor. There was a bag on one of the tables labeled "TSR Property". I peered in and there it was. A singular pair of goggles. They were a lot bigger than I expected, I imagined them to be something like a pair of glasses, but with some magical glass or something. But this was a whole headpiece with wires and lenses and Celestia knows what.

I put them on and nothing happened. I took the goggles off and examined them, maybe they were broken? There was a small button, it got pressed immediately. And the goggles turned on.

"Now don't I feel stupid," I said to the now green-tinted walls around me. The thing didn't really sit comfortably on my head and it was quite heavy.

I took the bag to the med bay and filled it with all the potions I could find and then tossed a few other meds in just in case. It was time for me to get out of that place, the longer I stayed there the likelier it was that the Tunnelers would decide to check out where I'd fallen. And I really didn't like the idea of meeting them again.

After packing up all the potions I could carry I went past the security post and into the unknown.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading! Any comments or thoughts are always welcome. If you find any mistakes you're more than welcome to point them out.