Equestria Girls: Cataclysm

Twilight’s previous assessment of Longmeadow being a town was overly generous; barely a hundred people must have lived here at one point. It was perhaps one of the few comforts that the fifty or so mangled bodies provided, out where they lay strewn through streets in the remains of the war zone she’d left behind. There had been survivors.

I hope they made it to safety, Twilight found herself thinking, before she ripped her gaze from the window of the house she had commandeered. There was too much to do to be thinking about that.

The house she had selected was chosen with a few things in mind. Namely, it had a lot of windows aligned to the east and west of the living room and dining room, in addition to a skylight for noontime, providing excellent lighting throughout the day no matter where the sun was, seeing as the interior lighting wouldn’t be helping her. The second was the pond in the now untamed yard, which meant minimal travel distance if Twilight ever wanted to eat or drink. The more time she could spend with her work uninterrupted, the better.

Most of the things in the houses she had found were of no use to her. Tools of various shapes and sizes, assorted clothes that could never suit her anatomy, food of questionable edible states in the long-dark fridges, various odds and ends that she couldn’t recognize…there was not much she could actually salvage from these homes, and the handful of businesses were not much better. Most everything that hadn't been nailed down had been looted already, and a few things that were nailed down looked like someone'd had a swing at fixing that. It took most of an afternoon to loot an entire village of everything that meant anything to Twilight, which was quite disappointing.

Though that wasn’t to say that Twilight hadn’t found anything useful. Far from it.

A small black device sat on the table in front of Twilight, illuminated by a citrine-tinged sun where it filtered in past open curtains. A single antenna stood at attention, and as the dial on its base turned back and forth, the magenta glow moving it fractions of a hair’s width at a time, subtle changes in the audio crackling and popping from its central speaker could be faintly heard.

To her left, a pile of books had been assembled. She’d found a plethora of books that would have excited her at any other, less dire time, but chief among the ones she had found were a pair that had been retrieved from the basement of someone whose special interest seemed to be old arcade machines, which now sat separate from the rest for ease of access. Their titles read, "Electronic Circuit Theory" and "Ham Radio For Enthusiasts." This "radio" was discovered down there as well.

She hadn’t had to read very far into it to identify its potential uses. There were a few tools that Twilight had confidence she could binge-study her way to understanding, experimentation being able to fill in the gaps where the books themselves didn't spell it all out to her (How hard could a soldering iron be, after all?), but there was one issue: she had to actually find others out there broadcasting for her to listen to before any follow-up could even be considered.

Twilight listened for hours with laser-intense focus, checking every possible frequency she could and starting a detailed catalogue of anything that could vaguely resemble voices, or conveyed anything at all that wasn’t random noise.

Almost everything was automated, she'd found. There were several different weather services, which diligently reported the date, weather, and expected forecast for the rest of the week to an audience that had long since stopped listening. A few random frequencies appeared to be broadcasting, but the only way Twilight knew that they even existed was because the static cut out, utter silence filling in where the station sat barren, somehow still powered, wherever they were. A handful had the perpetually looping sound of an emergency broadcast informing her that a biological attack had been carried out, that this was in fact not a test, and to evacuate her presumed home for a pre-designated safe location that it failed to elaborate on.

"Sure, let me get right on that," Twilight had snarked. The message then looped, which she chose to interpret as defiance. She responded in kind by twisting the dial, banishing its message to the static dimension.

Twilight worked at this well into the night, where own own illumination became necessary, only being stopped by the frustrating need to repeatedly re-ignite her horn when it suddenly sputtered out. She let it die a third time, from then on resigning to ignite it only when she found something that she needed to see to write down, seeing as it wouldn't last much longer than that anyway. When she did light her horn again, she felt a stab of pain - she hissed and grabbed her forehead with one hoof, the pen slipping from her lips and clattering to the floor, much to her vexation.

Twilight hadn’t had this much persistent trouble with her magic since she was still trying to master the fundamentals of the field that had since stolen a space on her flank when she was small, along with a place in her heart. Headaches plagued her constantly the more she used her magic, and anything that took more than a moment to see it’s effects completed turned unreliable in any semblance of the long-term. She’d yet to get this simple light spell to last longer than ten minutes, when it was supposed to last hours.

Magic might work in the human world now, but apparently it didn’t work especially well. It thus struck Twilight as strange that she was having so much trouble with her own magic while hordes of undead were able to freely roam the streets for indeterminate periods of time, not to mention whatever else was out there being made odd and uncanny by magic. Every spell, no matter how strong the magic involved, had some element of impermanence about it. Things didn’t just become different; it’s previous state was remembered by the world itself, and all the spell did was temporarily overlay that state by however much or little the spell called for. Even complete and total changes caused by polymorph or transformation spells would be completely undone the moment the effect was no longer being actively maintained, or was somehow disrupted.

In that way, animating an undead was no different from making the air brighter than it actually was; animation was being applied to a corpse via the spell, alongside some level of base intelligence. Yet despite how her light kept cutting out, Twilight hadn’t seen a single inanimate body lying on any of the streets or in any structure in all of Longmeadow indicating where the animation spell had failed and the body had resumed being a body.

Why weren’t the undead randomly snuffing out like her light was? Clearly magic wasn’t reliable, and raising the dead was no simple matter; if anything she'd expect that to fail more or less immediately, given the complexity and how much could break if magic acted poorly. Why did these zombies work so much better than even the most basic of utilities she could conjure up?

It was a puzzle indeed, the sort that Twilight enjoyed digging her teeth into and getting to the bottom of. It was almost painful for her to admit that she simply did not have the time to indulge in such mysteries when there were so much more important things at stake than her sated curiosity.

Twilight roused from her thoughts to see a faint bluish-white glow barely illuminating the radio she continued to fiddle with. She cast her gaze upwards, through the skylight above where she sat. The full moon had patiently been inching its way through the sky until it found the angle that it needed to faithfully keep her company. Twilight smiled a little as she thought of Luna watching over her, though it faded just as quickly. Luna couldn't see her out here.

Day two was coming to a close. Day three wouldn’t be far behind, and with it, her chance to get home before another month had to pass. She was running out of time, and fast.

Twilight expected to be distressed by this, and indeed, it did cause a pang of worry to go through her, but the more she thought about it, the more naively optimistic that prospect seemed. Canterlot wasn’t close enough to even see, and she hadn’t found a single map containing the information that she needed in this whole village. What hope did she have of getting to the portal in the time she had at this point?

Besides, even if she was right on top of the portal, she couldn’t just leave. Not until she found her friends, and made sure - this time, beyond any possibility of doubt - that they would be safe.

A sigh escaped her lips as Twilight came to terms with the fact that she was stuck here, and likely would be for quite some time. All because I was careless...

Twilight didn’t remember falling asleep, but she jerked awake suddenly, nearly falling from her seat. A loud blaring noise was coming from the next room, deafeningly loud in the silence of the early morning, and for a moment Twilight was disoriented and confused when she did not recognize her surroundings. The amnesia passed, and Twilight rubbed her forehead, which bore a particularly sore, flat spot.

Spike had lost a lot of sleep a few nights ago so that she wouldn’t keep doing this - a thought which brought a pang of guilt. Sorry Spike. It’s an emergency. Lives are on the line.

Twilight stiffly abandoned the kitchen chair to silence the morning noisemaker in the next room by ripping out its batteries, then slipped outside to have some breakfast. It wasn’t great eating, grass, but it would keep her alive, and at the moment that’s all she could hope for.

Twilight took only as much time that she needed to stretch and work out the worst of the stiffness before she made her way back inside. It was a beautiful day out, but sadly, sunlight would have to reschedule if it wanted to be enjoyed. Books were being opened, and Twilight Sparkle had just started writing a list.

If this world didn’t know what that meant, in a few hours, it was about to.

GASP- "Rarity, look! Cows!"

...the blade of the shovel in the designer's hands met the earth with a dull chnk, and Rarity pinched the bridge of her nose, heart hammering. Her fury was vast, endless, UNIMAGINABLE, and yet she breathed in slowly, and managed to only slightly murderously mutter, "Yes...cows. Lovely."

Sweetie Belle was pressed up against the fence surrounding this small plot of land, pale green eyes as wide as saucers, blissfully (or pointedly) unaware of how dangerous a game she was playing by startling her sister while she was holding the exact tool needed to hide a body. "Look, there's a bunch of them! They're in their cow house there!"

When Rarity had found her happy place again and booked a space for herself in it, she sucked in a breath, opened her eyes, and dared to follow her younger sibling's finger, where it pointed ahead at one of three structures on this plot. Sure enough, one of them had several large black and white masses inside, though truthfully, Rarity had known they were coming up on a pasture of some kind long before they saw this place off the side of the road. The smell was not flattering, and didn't get any better the closer they got.

"It's not a 'cow house,' Sweetie, it's-"

"What's in there?" The finger moved, and now pointed at the middle structure. "Is that the cow house?"

"Darling, this is a dairy farm. That's probably where they do the milking. Now, would you come-"

"Can I pet the cows?"

"-come over h- NO!" Abject horror overrode everything else Rarity had to say. "They are filthy livestock animals! Can't you smell that?!"

Sweetie Belle's head swiveled toward her sister, blinking once, then squinting at her conspiratorially. "You said this is a dairy farm, so they're milk cows, not livestock."

"Whatever!" Rarity threw up her hands, and then occupied the one not gripping a shovel with the arm of her sibling, whom she began to drag around to the other side of the property towards the entrance through the fence. "We're not rubbing our hands against filthy, disgusting animals that roll around in their own filth all day!"

The outrage in Sweet Belle's voice was nearly as sharp as her voice crack: "Cows are NICE! Be nice to them!"

"They aren't pets, Sweetie Belle! Now stand right there," Rarity planted Sweetie directly in full view of the dairy house, "and keep a lookout. I'm going to see if there's anything good in this place here."

Sweetie whined loudly. "Why can't I go in?"

"Because," Rarity explained, in a way that barely disguised how this was the tenth time she must have explained this exact thing, "if something is in there, I don't want them doing any taste tests on the delicious, tender little girl blundering her way into its arms."

"I won't blunder!" Sweetie snapped, stomping her feet against the pavement. "And I'm not delicious!"

"Well that's a theory we're just going to have to leave untested. Now I mean it, wait right there, I'll only be a minute." Rarity turned and stepped towards the dairy house, pretending she didn't hear Sweetie start to count the seconds as she did.

Insufferable child...

Rarity walked the perimeter of the building, testing every window. None of them gave. She came around and tested the door, and it also was locked. Fortunately, Rarity had ample time to peer into this small structure, and confirmed that there did not seem to be anything inside of it.

Thus, with no other way to enter, Rarity raised her shovel and prepared to do a most unladylike thing, though before she did, she called out: "Breaking!" Then she shattered the window.

Sweetie peeked her head around the edge of the building from where she was placed in front of the property, fingers displaying some number that included a nine. "You didn't knock." All the fingers dropped, and she started counting up again, second by second. "It's rude not to knock."

"Well there's not much point in it," Rarity retorted, stabbing out jagged bits of glass with the shovel's blade. "No one is home, so all I'd really accomplish would be standing there looking silly."

"You always look silly."

Rarity pointedly ignored this comment. After being certain that she wasn't going to slice her bare legs open in the process, she vaulted up through the window and inside the house, glass crunching beneath her shoes as she landed. Out of sight of her sibling, Rarity very briefly glancing at herself in the reflection of what glass remained to ensure that her comment was a farce. Just adjust the springy, coily bangs a tiny bit, back into alignment...perfect. With a happy sigh, she resumed her search. The world ending was absolutely no excuse not to look your best.

The dairy farmer that lived here was of the 'modest' variety, decidedly, and there was little here that interested Rarity as she skimmed it over. It was a tiny house, barely large enough for one, and not particularly well-furnished, nor well-stocked. The most interesting thing Rarity found was a pair of cans of beans in the pint-sized kitchen, as well as a box of toaster pastries that was still sealed. She tucked them all in her bag, sneaking the last one in a space she felt her sister would be least likely to spot if she ever snooped. That would be a nice surprise later...

Rarity gave the rest of the place a terse once-over, but was otherwise content to depart only a minute or two after she had entered. She unlocked the front door, stepped out through it, and closed it behind her. She then proceeded to nearly have a stroke right then and there at what she saw. "SWEETIE BELLE!"

Said girl was in the middle of the field, most definitely not where she had been left, and had her hands outstretched to a cow that had wandered out to investigate the visitor, towering over the small girl and leaning in towards her. Rarity raced over, but could do little more than watch the massive bovine's pink, rounded tongue roll out and lap repeatedly against Sweetie's hands, who shrieked and laughed in delight. "Eeeewwww!"

"SWEETIE BELLE, WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU TH-"

Sweetie whipped around before her elder sister could grab her. She splayed her fingers with malicious intent, causing strands of gooey slime to spread between them like webbing, causing Rarity to rear back like she'd been struck. "One more step and your mascara gets it!"

"I thought I told you to STAY OVER THERE!" Rarity shrieked, but most definitely did not get one step closer.

"I waited one minute, just like you said! Then you said there was nothing there, so I-" A pink tongue interrupted Sweetie Belle as it gently slapped her aside the head, going up the length of her cheek and flipping her pink, now slick hair back, amidst more screaming laughter. "EEEeeewwWWww!"

Rarity looked as though she was going to faint. Sweetie looked like she was having the time of her life. The cow looked pretty confident that Sweetie was delicious.

Rarity had seen a lot of horrific things in this apocalypse, but her sister's literal cowlick had officially topped the list.

Damage control was of the UTMOST importance, so while she was loathe to do anything for her incredibly uncouth and nasty little sister, Rarity had no choice but to unveil the box of strawberry toast-ems as a bribe for her unconditional cooperation. As she was thoroughly toweled down and had her hair done, redone, and triple-redone while she filled her face full of junk food, Sweetie Belle beamed ear to ear like someone who had just won the lottery.

Awful child. Awful child, Rarity thought vehemently, desperately undoing what had been wrought with a comb. Note to self: chain her to a tree next time.

After an incredibly thorough combing, Rarity relented her assault on this crime against hair. "That will have to do..." She put her comb away, and snatched up the half-empty box of toast-ems before Sweetie Belle could feast any further. "Now come on, I've had just about enough of this place. And no more funny business, do you understand me? None! We are leaving."

Sweetie felt like she'd won in just about every way she could have, so she was content to take her sister's hand and be pulled away from the dairy farm, though not before turning and waving goodbye to the cows she had decided she'd befriended. She knew they couldn't wave back, but she decided they did, just in case Rarity ever asked. She didn't ask.

The two continued their trip down the road in relative silence after that. For a while, Rarity kept a firm grasp on Sweetie's hand, but as her fury at the girl ebbed, so too did her grip, and she allowed Sweetie to eventually slip free and skip around the area, so long as she remained close. Sweetie kept vigil as she insisted on always doing, peering out across the field that expanded around them like she was looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Rarity was just happy to put the stink of manure behind them.

They both saw it at the same time, but Sweetie nonetheless insisted on calling out and reading the sign ahead where it stood beside the road, the outline of a settlement in the distance. "'One and a half miles: Eust... Eu...'" She squinted, waiting for them to step up closer, then arched one eyebrow incredulously. "Eustis?"

Rarity blinked. She pulled out a small local roadmap, unfolding it and snapping it open. A brief little bit of searching...followed by an incredibly confused expression at the name that was indeed spelled right. "That is what they named their town?"

"That's dumb!" Sweetie giggled and laughed, prancing laps around her sister. "That's an old guy's name, not a town name!"

"That...that's what it says," replied a befuddled Rarity. After a few moments of confusion, she huffed, then put the map away where she had unpacked it. "Regardless, I'm not feeling like going through a town right now, especially not one called Eustis of all things. It's probably some backwater place anyway." She tugged her sister by the shoulder, taking her towards the south, where the road branched off and strayed towards the tree line. "Come, let's go this way instead."

Sweetie continued to laugh as she was pulled along, though it suddenly stopped. "Rarity."

Rarity paused and looked, and followed Sweetie's finger. Tucked against some trees, barely visible at first, a small, broken down shack lay crumbling under the weight of time. Out of it, a figure appeared, and as they watched, it moved in a straight line towards the two of them. Its wobbly, unsteady gait betrayed its undead nature.

"Start walking," Rarity said, tone firm but otherwise relaxed. They both began to do this very thing, pace brisk but still sustainable for the one with much shorter legs between them. "They can't keep up if we move like this, so just treat them like an annoying boy: walk away and wait for them to get the hint.”

Silence dominated the air, much more tense than prior. Sweetie kept glancing back, pressing up close to her sibling. Meanwhile Rarity remained quite calm. It was a simple strategy, but it had worked many times before. Turns out, the best way to survive a zombie apocalypse was simply to power walk in the opposite direction until your short-sighted pursuers inevitably lost sight of you.

Unless, of course, it was one of those undead that were faster than their kin, but there weren't many of those compared to your bog-standard shuffler, and what were the odds of this one being one of those?

"Rarity, it’s getting closer."

Fuck.

Rarity flashed a look over her shoulder, and was alarmed to see the undead had gained significant ground on them. Their pace picked up sharply, Sweetie Belle having to break into a light run to keep up, and continual glances over her shoulder at their pursuer lead to the horrific realization that this thing was not only keeping pace, but steadily gaining on them. The cadaver's arms pumped as it unevenly jogged - yes, jogged - after them, and the closer it got, the more its features stood out. It was a woman in life, blonde hair tied back, eyes like pits of coal, teeth almost glowing against her void of a mouth. She was topless, breasts looking almost painted on as they had grown stiff and unresponsive, though they seemed to be about the only part of the corpse that remembered it was supposed to be dead. The shorts looked like the sort that you'd see on someone who went out for a morning jog, like what she was doing right this moment, but with murderous intent.

"Oh of course you're on the zombie track team." Rarity rolled her shoulder and flung her purse aside, turning around to face their pursuer. "Sweetie, stay behind me!"

"NonONo, we have to go!"

"No point, we'll tire and it won't! Stay behind me!"

Another response came, but the zombie runner arrived at its destination first. Just before it did, a shovel cut through the air, finding the side of the runner's head with a satisfying twung. That would have dropped most anyone, were they alive. Sadly, this being was no longer alive.

Rarity was nearly steamrolled in the collision that came immediately after. The zombie grabbed hold her the clothing around her stomach, and as Rarity beat it back with the handle of the shovel, it held on tight, and then twisted the skin beneath. Rarity shrieked as she tore away, breaking the grasp and lashing out with the tool in her hands, catching it a second time aside its head. Its skull was slightly caved in now, its right eye sagging nearly half an inch further into its face than it should have, but it didn't even react to the injury.

It barreled down on her once again while Rarity was recovering from the swing with the bulky tool, jumping slightly as it lashed at her with every limb - its feet had shoes on them, and they both skinned Rarity's leg, accidentally kicking it out from beneath her with the force, and before she knew what was happening, she was down.

Everything was a blur- Rarity was rolling across the ground, heart hammering in her ears so loud she could barely hear Sweetie Belle's screaming. Rarity lashed out wildly at the mostly nude figure as she rolled onto her back- too wildly, she realized, as the weapon missed the undead over her, and kept going, pulling itself out of her hands. The thing dove on top of her, knees first, earning an "OOF" as the breath was forcefully expelled from Rarity's lungs.

Blows rained down, striking her everywhere. A punch got her in the ear, which felt like it had been lit ablaze, and Rarity threw up her arms over her head, which took some blows, but the blazer she wore did little to cushion the force of the strikes. Rarity thrashed and kicked as she tried to get out from beneath the zombie, but it had her pinned down, and she felt one of her arms being wrenched free from where it was covering her. She lashed out violently with that fist, catching it right in the teeth, but it just opened its mouth and-

There was a sickening crack, and the topless zombie's back arched in a U shape. It dropped like a lead weight, directly onto the shovel that had been embedded into the middle of its spine like an axe. Sweetie Belle stumbled away, ducking and shrieking as swiping claws lashed out at her face from the ground. Though it continued to claw wildly and scramble at who was now closer to it by its own perspective, it was unable to do much more than drag itself inch by inch across the pavement, the body's bare stomach and breasts being ripped open by the asphalt below. Its lower body no longer seemed to respond to its desire to kill, and its legs dragged behind it uselessly.

One foot planted itself firmly in the center of the crawling zombie's back- it immediately contorted and lashed out at the source of the contact, but the shovel being ripped from its back caused it to spasm uncontrollably. By the time it recovered, the flat of the shovel came down against its head, hard, splitting the skull like an egg. Red-gray fluid sprayed out from where the zombie's head and blacktop met, causing it to fall suddenly still. The second, third, and fourth subsequent blows each sent out larger and larger sprays of chunky red-gray paste from its rapidly deflating head till it was nearly flat, the strikes hard enough to have bent the curve of the shovel's head the other way.

As quickly as it started, the fight ended.

Brains and blood speckled the end of the shovel that Rarity let slip from her fingers, clattering to the street.

Rarity was shaking from head to toe, both from pain and adrenaline. The right side of her head felt like it was on fire. Something hot rolled down her arm, and she glanced down and saw blood drip onto the street. Her right leg was torn open, and red likewise trickled from the spots where her skin split open, greasy gray ooze smeared around every injury. She had to force herself to breathe, barely able to do so where the wind had been knocked out of her, and her chest ached where her ribs met her abdomen. She felt many smaller aches across her arms and torso, and her side burned where she had crashed to the pavement, skinned slightly beneath her clothes from the rough pavement.

"Sweetie," someone said. It took several seconds for Rarity to recognize her own voice. "Are you okay?"

She looked utterly terrified, and pale as a sheet, but Sweetie nonetheless nodded rapidly.

"G-" Rarity started forward, and nearly collapsed to the ground from the lightning that shot up her wounded leg, nearly crashing down atop the felled zombie. She let herself go down in a controlled descent, shoving herself a good distance from their latest kill. "Bag- my bag."

Sweetie was off like a bullet, and back just as soon. Things were going flying from the bag as it was hastily torn through, seeking any kind of medical supplies. They didn't have much, and as it turned out, they had even less than they thought; Rarity winced as she watched a handful of bandaids spilled out onto the street where she had expected there to be a roll of gauze. She hadn't exactly had an artery ruptured or anything, but even still, this was not going to cut it.

"How dreadfully inconvenient." Rarity tsk'd loftily and pulled a sheet of cloth she had intended to use for clothing repair. Bits were carved free with a quick series of snips from a pair of scissors, one for each place she was bleeding. She tried very hard not to scream when the fabric touched her leg, squeezing the wound in an iron grip in response to the pain that momentarily made her see stars. "Sweehggh-" she wheezed, then cleared her throat and tried again, a bit clearer, much calmer. Sounding like everything was normal. "Sweetie, are you hurt at all?"

Sweetie shook her head as rapidly as last time. Her pupils were pinpricks, and she had a striking resemblance to a hare staring down oncoming traffic as she looked at her bloodied sister.

"Come closer, darling. Let me see."

She obliged, and Rarity put her non-bloody hand to her cheek, trying to repress the way it shook. Gently she ran the hand down to her chin, turning the girl's head from side to side, inspecting it...indeed, flawless. The swipe had missed completely. There was a raw spot on her arm, but that appeared to be where she had landed on the road, scrambling to get away from the zombie, as opposed to anything it did directly.

"You did a good job," Rarity told her, voice measured and even. "I would be a lot worse off if you hadn't helped me, and it was very brave that you did that. I'm proud of you."

A beat.

"And most importantly, you didn't let that fiend mess up your hair again! Getting that gunk they're always coated in from your hair would be an absolute nightmare. Thank goodness it never came to that."

Sweetie swallowed the rock in her throat, and though her voice broke profusely from its quavering, she managed to squeak, "Th- that's what r- eally ma- atters r- ight?"

"Precisely, darling." Rarity pulled her sister over closer and gave her as tight a one-armed hug as she could manage. "Precisely."

The two held each other for several minutes in silence. Rarity continued to apply pressure to her bleeding wounds, but would not sacrifice the hug of her little sister to do so.

It took some time to get all the bleeding to stop. She hadn't lost a ton of blood, but it was more than Rarity had ever been bled for before, unless you counted actual blood donations, which this definitely did not count as. String was retrieved from the pile of loot on the street, which tied the red-dyed bits of cloth in place on her leg. Her arm wasn't that bad, just a lucky lucky scratch amidst all the punching that drew blood. That was fine. Her ear was most definitely split open, and she couldn't really tie that rag in place. She'd have to hold it there.

Rarity cast a wry glare towards the corpse on the street across from her, head looking like it had been run over by a car. I can't believe I got the shit kicked out of me by a woman in booty shorts.

"I s-saw," Sweetie eventually started, "a-a...ahead, there's a building." She pointed, and Rarity had to squint to see what she was talking about. It was white, and barely visible down the road, tucked behind some forest. "Let's g...go, in there."

"So long as it's not occupied, that would be a good idea...I don't much fancy running into more company like this." Rarity began to re-assemble their belongings, tossing it back into her purse. Once everything had been collected again, she made motion to rise. "...darling, could you help me up? This leg isn't the best for this right now."

Sweetie did so, without pause. She pushed up against Rarity’s side every other step to help her hobble along, too, as they made their way over to this building, dragging the bloodied, misshapen shovel behind them to the tune of metal scraping against asphalt.

The building in question was a relatively small one that looked almost like a tiny warehouse, its walls incredibly plain and nondescript. It had double doors at every side of it, each flanked by a pair of windows, which made it look even more cookie-cutter and seemingly as deliberately boring as possible to observers, either due to a complete lack of imagination or as some brilliant plan to make it look as un-appealing to looters as possible. So many windows made it easy to see in the shaded interior lined with simple, impressively uncomfortable-looking benches, and a few cautious laps around the perimeter confirmed that it appeared to be unoccupied. Outside of what appeared to be the front door, and sign was nailed to the wall which read: 'Emergency Shelter 65143'.

Rarity had a feeling that the evacuation shelters would look something like this, but had never actually seen one herself. Even knowing that they were dime-a-dozen, made as cheaply as humanly possible, and were entirely for show, Rarity still managed to be disappointed by how crappy this building was the longer she inspected it. It wasn't on high ground, so it couldn't pass as a flood shelter. The doors were wooden and didn't seal air-tight, the windows were standard windows with no shutters and probably also weren't air-tight, so it was no use in a gas or biological attacks...there were lockers and such in them, half of them were empty, and she didn't spot a single gas mask anywhere she poked her head in, which just reinforced the last point. It didn't even have any internal power source, save for the computer in the back of the room that glowed dimly with a green emergency message plastered on it.

Worst of all, it was ugly. Plain white drywall, really? And black and white tiles in the basement? What was the design supposed to capture, that cubicle feel combined with the authentic 'ran out of funds to floor the kitchen and had to empty the clearance bin' experience? Rarity hoped whoever designed this place was the first to have their brains extracted by the undead, it was absolutely hideous.

Sweetie Belle quickly helped herself to one of the lockers, and retrieved a piece of paper, which she immediately began to read from. "'Welcome to your emergency shelter. We hope your stay will be short and comfortable. Provided are an emergency blanket, high-visibility jacket, gas mask, and food and water for one day.'" There was the sound of a metal hinge squeaking slightly. "...I don't see any food or water. Or a jacket. Or a blanket."

"Or a gas mask," Rarity said disdainfully, as she closed one locker firmly. There were some blankets and jackets scattered around, but not in the evenly distributed way that seemed to be implied.

"I think these guys were lying when they printed this sheet.”

"Always possible, darling," Rarity said, absently, as she continued to limp around, searching for anything that might be potentially useful. The stairs down were proving to be quite an obstacle, but she, gingerly, staggered her way down, gripping the railing like a lifeline.

Sweetie Belle, meanwhile, continued to wrinkle her nose up at this piece of paper, fixating on any little thing she could, rather than the terror she was still feeling the lingering effects of. Her eyes caught the light in the corner, and she shuffled her way up to the computer terminal there, leaning up past the keyboard to view the screen.

GREETINGS, CITIZEN. A BIOLOGICAL ATTACK HAS TAKEN PLACE AND A STATE OF EMERGENCY HAS BEEN DECLARED. EMERGENCY PERSONNEL WILL BE AIDING YOU SHORTLY.

"Rarity, the computer says that emergency personnel will be aiding you shortly!"

Distantly, across the building: "I doubt that very much, darling."

Sweetie put on a scowl, the kind of dirty scowl that she saved for people and computer screens that lied. Sweetie raised one hand up, and slammed it on the keyboard with a declaration of, "You are GUILTY of lies!"

The computer bleeped very loudly, and Sweetie fell backwards onto her butt in surprise. She scrambled away to hide behind a bench in case of an explosion. The computer did not explode, however her sibling called back: "Sweetie, what was that?"

"Nothing! It's fine!" Sweetie hastily ran over to wherever her sister was, eager to draw attention away from the unfamiliar text scrolling across the computer's screen that she absolutely had nothing to do with, nope, not her. "Here, let me help!"

"I'd actually appreciate that very much, darling, thank you..." She was aware her sister was acting incredibly guilty of something, but in this precise moment, Rarity did not much care.

Meanwhile, the computer screen now read something completely different:

Emergency shelter beacon now broadcasting.
Press any key to continue...

An entire afternoon had passed her by, but Twilight was more than happy with the outcome.

A "directional antenna" seemed useful on paper; what better way to point her towards a signal's source than something that audibly increased the signal clarity the closer she pointed it in the right direction? In practice, it wasn't quite so great. As far as Twilight could tell, signals and transmissions like radio waves spread out all over, so yes, theoretically speaking she could get a better reception if she pointed the antenna at the source, but the effect getting up close could be negligible, and that wouldn't be particularly helpful if she couldn't tell immediately where the signal was actually being transmitted from. That, and she didn't have a good idea of what powered this radio, and keeping it on for sustained periods of time sounded like a good way to drain the batteries, which she did not have a large supply of.

So she improvised, using the best tool she had in her entire arsenal: magic.

Obviously, the reliability factor wasn't great; she could barely get a light to stay on for longer than a few minutes. However, quick spells seemed to work just fine, and this is what Twilight exploited.

One of her own feathers had been plucked out (ow), then carefully disassembled, the quill set aside and the delicate fluff of the feather stripped from the rest of the structure in a single, uninterrupted piece. This strip of lavender fluff was then carefully placed against the side of the radio, where it was taped in place. Dividing it in half again to make it an even narrower strip was enough to give it the length needed to wrap one end around the underside of the dial, and the other the base of the second antenna that she had soldered in place, made out of one of the tongs of a fork. It was incredibly fragile, but additional applications of tape seemed to do a good job of holding the parts in place, and the material itself would not get in the way of what she intended to do next.

Ensuring that the radio was currently attuned to one of the frequencies broadcasting weather information, Twilight closed her eyes. She felt a faint pressure build up in her horn, and as she expelled the energy, she opened one eye and watched it visibly illuminate the base of the feather's material, starting at the knob and working its way up. The vein-like designs lit up like circuitry as the magic rippled through them. The pulse continued all the way up to the spoke of silvery metal, and from the very tip came a ripple of pink through the air which spread out about a foot in all directions. One side was substantially more defined than the other, which was nearly completely transparent, compared to the near-opaque opposite end. Before her eyes, a rounded arrow of magenta energy manifested in the air, pointing off somewhere to the north, and then dissipated less than a second later.

Twilight grinned widely, and changed the frequency to an empty broadcast, sending another pulse of magic through the device. Once again, watched the ripple scale the delicate feather material, then up the antenna, and then pulse a magenta arrow in the air above it, this time in a completely different direction.

"Perfect," Twilight breathed, sinking back into the kitchen chair. For the first time in two days straight, she relaxed. That's not to say she sat idle, however.

Twilight liked to be thorough. Some would call this behavior "obsessive," but Twilight preferred "diligent." She began to cycle back through each of the radio stations, the glowing knob tilting a hair's width at a time, as each frequency was once again inspected, just in case she had missed something. She cross-referenced her list, and confirmed so far that everything was where she had last found it. Nothing had gone out in the time since she had listed them out.

There was something new, this time, though. Arching an eyebrow, Twilight turned the dial back the other way, trying to home on in the signal so that it would come in as clear as possible. It wasn't totally clear, but she managed to get it most of the way there, and she could understand what was being transmitted behind the noise easily enough.

"This is aut#mated e#rgency shelter b#con 65#3. Suppl#, am#ities, and shelter a#ocked. This # automated emergency she#r beacon 65143. #plies, amenities, and shelter are s#ked. This is..."

It kept looping like that, and Twilight found her eyes widening.

An emergency shelter. The kind that people would flee to in a crisis.

Why was it transmitting now, as opposed to before? Had something changed?

Twilight's thoughts spun with questions, but her focus shifted to the radio she had strapped bits of her feather to. Her horn hummed slightly, and the feather material gradually lit up, followed by the antenna, and a magenta pulse was emitted in the air. A ripple-like arrow pointed out the front of the house, in a direction that she quickly identified as southeast.

This has to be a sign. Right? Someone trying to call out for help the only way they can? Or did they bring the power on, and it's only just now transmitting, and people will start to show up there?

Twilight gathered up the radio, ripping a curtain down and tossing the device into the bundle she made, alongside a few books and a gallon jug she'd cleaned out and filled with water. She then hurried outside, caused the radio to ping once again, and took to the sky, the setting sun to her back.

It would be dark soon, but Twilight did not care. All she could think about was that emergency beacon coming to life, and the people there who might need her help.