Nothing.
Void.
Darkness.
A light at the end of a dark tunnel.
The light began rushing towards me, surrounding me and blinding me. Following it were the muffled yells of several ponies near and far from me, and the not-so distant bang of guns. My vision, currently only composed of white, got a sudden tint of red as I heard a bang, much louder than the others. I felt teeth grab onto my fur-less back and carry me away. As I began to open my eyes I saw the building we were in crumble down in flames, with a dozen raider ponies surrounding it.
That is how I was born
Silver Scavenge, the bastard orphan pony who was born by fear in the middle of a raider attack.
What a title. Plus my cutie mark is a pile of junk; how appealing.
My parents are supposedly both dead. My mom is believed to have died during that attack, and my dad went missing after raping one too many mares that still had a speck of life in them.
*** *** ***
I've been living with 'Mr. Pokey' (ironic name, isn't it?), - an old MaidBot who tends to boss me around like I'm his son – for the past two years now. Every week I have to go out and scavenge the area for food and occasionally oil for him (he can get quite squeaky) and bring it 'home'.
Speaking of our home, it's currently a rusty old trailer in the middle of nowhere we happened onto one day, and it was in rather good condition seeing what it had to withstand. We tend to move a lot, for various reasons.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I spotted a massive building which resembled a store of sorts and I marked down it's location mentally, to return to it one day. Today I decided to do so. On my way out, Pokey wished me good luck as he always did - he's rather friendly seeing his original purpose – though this day of scavenging wouldn't go as they usually went. As I left, I looked around me trying to remember where I saw it and began to walk. I expected it to be about 1 hour away.
It lasted much longer than I expected. Mostly because there was both a huge BloatSprite nest and a Raider camp site along the way; it ended up taking me five hours to get to my destination.
The store was massive, with lots of decorations along the exterior walls and looked in near-perfect condition: no broken windows, no burnt walls, nothing. It was slightly dusty but that was the only sign of 'wear' the building had. Even the windows were still intact!
Above the door stood a large sign.
Flim & Flams 'Pop' Shop
The only place with your best pre-war items!
I stared at it for a minute, thinking I had misread the name, and thought to myself “Now they were a creative couple.”
I pulled my view down from it to look at the door
CLOSED
until further notice as of (date smudged away)
…
The sign above said it sold 'pre-war' items, and yet it closed before the war started.. How is that possibl-...
I got cut short on my thought when I thought I saw movement inside. I tried to look in but the dust was too thick to wipe off the windows. I thus decided to kick on of them in; it didn't budge.
I looked at it for a minute and wondered if I hadn't got enough exercise recently. Maybe I didn't hit it hard enough? I tried again, but this time much harder; still no movement. I think I even heard a 'crack' in my leg as I began to limp. 'Smart'.
I looked around to see if there was any way in and noticed a large boulder on the hill I had crossed. Using my magic I picked it up and prepared to toss it at the window (more like the whole building, this thing was huge) when I dropped it as I noticed the door get blown open; I guess I should have tried that before going for the windows. The boulder rolled down the hill and crashed through the massive raider camp down below that I had cleared out beforehand.
I walked over to the shop and pushed the door open; it was rather smooth on it's hinges.
As soon as I got inside I was blown away: the shelves were lined with canned food and other forms of nourishment I had yet to see up to now. There were two doorways in the back, one leading to a large refrigerated room full of apples, the other to some sort of StableTech gift shop.
Seeing as my main objective here was food, I ran over to the apples. Having never tasted one before (I would dream about it sometimes) I quickly grabbed a hold of one and bit into it.
It was rock hard and tasted of old, dusty plastic.
I spat it our and glared at it confusingly, expecting to have a much sweeter and juicier taste in my mouth. I then began to believe if all those stories of apples being so delicious were just old pony-tales.
To be sure, I took another one and bit into it as well; tasted the same. Disappointed and feeling a slight touch of anger, I tossed back at the shelf, causing all the apples to fall onto the ground.
I went back into the main room and checked one of the tins of canned food. It looked alright.
'Fresh Carrot Stalks' it read. Attempting to open it proved impossible; like everything else here. I moved up to it and picked it up with my hooves, immediately dropping it when I felt it's texture: plastic.
What the hell was going on?! Was this the 'plastic' shop?
I was about to leave when I heard something fall in the gift shop. I crept over to it cautiously and peeked in.
Nothing, other than rows after rows of cheap, StableTech propaganda, and a miniaturized version of a Stable Door on the wall, partially engraved into it as if it were real.
Looking for what had fallen, I had time to look at everything else. There were just hundreds of bobble heads, wrist bands and snow globes, surprisingly. Nothing that would be of use back at home. I was slightly interested by the amount of stuff lining the shelves here that I tripped on one of the StableTech mascot bobble heads. Bizarrely, this one was covered in dust and didn't seem to 'bobble' any more. I put it back in it's spot and began to leave again.
On my way out I heard a large clank and mechanical noises behind me. As I turned around I noticed that the Stable Door had opened.
A light at the end of a dark tunnel. That is all I saw when looking through this secret opening.
I kept on getting flashbacks from when I was born, of the house burning down, of my mother dieing – if she even did-, as I descended into the tunnel to which the miniature Stable door led.
Not only was I getting flashbacks of my birth, I couldn't stop imagining what I would find.
Treasure!
Mountains of food!
Fresh water!
Friendly ponies!
A giant underground cit-
I was cut short when I came face to face with a massive – legendary, even – Stable Door. On it was imprinted in bold, dark letters '100'.
I had no idea there were so many.
Right in front of the door stood, like statue, a pony skeleton. It must have been a Stable Dweller seeing as it had a PipBuck around it's leg that slid down to it's hoof. I walked over to bump it with my own hoof when the skeleton just collapsed onto itself, releasing the PipBuck. I picked it up and attempted to turn it on, expecting nothing to happen.
Surprisingly it turned on without any issues. I checked through the notes really fast to see if there was anything of interest.
There was mostly just some diary entries and messages from other ponies. I scanned through them quickly but stopped on 'Diary Entry #147'. I stopped on this one for one sole reason:
Diary Entry #147
I've had enough of this place now; all my friends have disappeared, and Dad went missing yesterday. We all suspect they took him, like every other pony that has vanished without leaving a trace in the past few years. The Overcolt either hasn't noticed or is working with them.
I need to escape, get out of here.
This morning I managed to sneak past them into the Overcolts office when he left for his breakfast break. I wrote down the code to the Stable door and am re-writing it here just in case.
- 8GC31T5 -
This will be my last diary entry; I'm leaving tomorrow. It shouldn't be too difficult to get past them and to the Stable door to finally get out of this hellhole.
I won't miss it.
It truly was the last diary entry. Even though I had the code I didn't plan on going in, after how he described it. At least I got a PipBuck out of this little adventure.
I began my short walk through the tunnel back up to the gift shop, when I noticed the light getting smaller even though I was getting closer. I began to run, as fast as I could when it slammed shut in front of me. I ran into it with all my strength and yet it didn't budge. No use using any magic here, it was still a rather large door, and there was no visible mechanism to open it from the inside.
I was trapped.
Trapped. What a thought. I only had two viable possibilities ahead of me: Either I was going to die, alone, either from hunger, thirst or age, or I was going to get killed by whatever could be lurking down there.
I had no chance of finding another way out: Stables only have one way in. Looking at my chances of getting out of here, I thought I'd might as well go in, there's no use just sitting around in front of the door and die of thirst. It was possible I found some food and water inside anyway.
I walked over to the door console, punched in the code that was on that diary entry and pulled the rusty old lever.
After a few seconds of nothing, I thought it didn't work, and began to panic.
I blenched as soon as I heard a loud clank and bang against the door from the other side, and backed away, thinking something was there.
The door screeched as it was pulled inwards, and rolled to the side, ramming into the wall that was
So I set off into Stable 100, not knowing what to expect.
*** *** ***
I'd been walking through the many and seemingly never ending Stable halls and rooms for hours now, and decided to stop for (what I thought was) the night at a huge 3 level tall room I went through several minutes ago. My saddle pack was packed full of food and water I found in one of the kitchens a few hours beforehand.
Once I got back to said room, I began to set up a makeshift campsite with the materials that were still partially intact around it. I also found a simple map that just showed the many levels (15 to be exact) that this Stable was made of. It didn't show any of the rooms in detail so it wasn't very useful.
Once I had my campsite set up with a mattress I took from one of the sleeping quarters – I don't know why I didn't just sleep there, in fact -, I made myself as comfortable as I could and tried to sleep.
The next morning, hungry, I dug into my bag in search of food, which had somehow vanished. I began to wonder I had dreamed of finding it, or if I was dreaming right now.
I wasn't dreaming. My food was really gone.
Where did it go? Did I already eat it without realizing?
Then I saw it. My map. Except this time it had changed. This time it had a large red 'X' over floor 13. Above it was written, in what seemed to be blood 'Help us'.
I began to panic. I wasn't alone, and somepony or something was in danger and needed help. Why didn't they just stay up here? Why do they want me to go to floor 13? Was it them?
Why am I forced to say them or they like that?
Hundreds of questions rushed through my head when I stopped myself and decided I had to go. Either I was going to be a hero, or I was going to die without even getting there.
I packed my stuff and looked for my rifle. It was gone as well.
No weapons and no food; kind of stupid to leave without them, and yet I did.
Though before I set off, I thought I'd might as well put on the PipBuck I found, it couldn't do any harm.
It immediately analyzed me and Level 3 of the Stable (the one I was currently on), and began to show me my vital status, my equipment and a surprisingly detailed map of my surroundings.
I felt ready and left, leaving most of my campsite untouched and only bringing my saddle sack and PipBuck.
This is my story in Stable 100.
