=Prologue=

What we’re afraid of most, is the unknown.

“Get inside! The emergency siren’s been activated!” called the frantic voice of a mare.

Working for Stable-Tec, I always knew when there would be drills, and this wasn’t a drill.

Immediately my mind raced. I began to activate the startup sequence for the stasis pods of the Stable I was working in. Fortune would have it that Stable X-01, a secret shelter specifically designed for employees of Stable-Tec and their families would be completed today, and nearly everyone would be inside it already.

I passed Sweetie Belle, one of Stable-Tec’s founding members on my hurried checklist to get the stable closed. Sweetie Belle was Stable-Tec’s lead designer, in charge of designing the insides of each stable and the technology that would keep ponies alive for however long they were in their shelter.

I raced to the door controls, but Scootaloo, another one of Stable-Tec’s founding members had beaten me to it. “You keep runnin’ that slowly and we’re all gonna be dead, Ratchet.” Scootaloo was the CEO of Stable-Tec and managed everything big and small inside the company, and one hell of a bureaucrat, even though she hated every minute of it. She gave me a half-joking half-terrified look and continued on her own checklist.

That just left Applebloom, who was in Fillydelphia, in a manner of speaking. Applebloom was scary creative and brilliant, (almost as smart as me) and was the inventor of the famous Pip-Buck, a hoof-mounted computer, and the Crusader supercomputer systems. I looked down onto my own Pip-Buck, a hoofheld PDA rather than the usual model to see her worried face on the screen.

“How’s everything in Fillydelphia? How’s the Crusader holding up?” I asked. I already knew the answer about Fillydelphia, but the Crusader mainframe needed to hold up for the Stables to communicate.

“I just heard an impact that sounded downtown, but the shielding around the core should be holding up. Almost all of the stables are activated and in the process of closing or close to it. How’s everything there?” she of course knew the answer if she could see the status of each stable, but sealing yourself underground in a shelter for fifty years is always a traumatic experience.

“Good so far,” though I could hear the detonations of megaspells against the shield undoubtedly put up by the Royal Guard and the Princesses. “I’m just glad we actually built these things. Hopefully Equestria will live on, free of this damn bureaucratic nightmare of a government that led us to this.

There wasn’t a response to that, but I knew she agreed. She simply nodded and my Pip-Buck once again went back to its normal status screen.

I jogged back into the atrium of the stable, where there were 50 identical stasis pods lined in rows along the walls and floor. Most of the pods were already sealed, their occupants sleeping in bliss while the world ended.

Quite a few pods were still open, those not fortunate enough to have made it into the stable before it closed, but there was only one pony left milling about the pods: Scootaloo.

It would make sense that she would be the last one to be up and awake, being the founder and CEO of Stable-Tec and all.

“I still can’t believe it. It actually happened. Everything. Destroyed. I hate this fucking war so much. It took everything from everypony during the war, and now this. I still can’t believe it,” she said, sobbing softly. I walked over and held her in my hooves, but that only made the crying worse.

“You know that this isn’t the end. That’s why we built these Celestia damned things in the first place, right? Not that Luna didn’t try to stop us,” I stood up on my hind legs and crossed my hooves, and said in my best ‘Royal Decree’ voice, “I am Princess Luna! We will win this war! To think anything else is downright treasonous!” She laughed at that a little.

“Yeah, at least we won’t have to deal with that anymore,” she chuckled, still sniffling. We both began walking over to my stasis pod. Just before I began climbing in, I kissed her as hard as I could. She of course blushed furiously, despite the fact that we had been dating well over two years.

“For luck. See you in fifty years?” I asked, already knowing the answer. She kissed back in response.

With a soft hiss and a click, I began the longest nap in history.

** ** **

The door actually opened long before I woke up, bathing me in the flickering light of the atrium. Wait, the atrium lights don’t flicker. Shit.

I awoke to almost complete darkness, all but one of the overhead lights had failed, and the last one flickering periodically. The one thing I immediately noticed, however, was that every single pod was open and empty. Every. Single. One. Oh, this was bad. I felt like I had just overslept for school again, but about a hundred times worse.

I immediately reached for my Pip-Boy, PDA style Readius model and checked the date.

I thought I saw the date wrong it was so strange. 200 years. That took a full ten seconds to fully click before my brain officially flipped the buck out.

After about a minute of screaming an running around in circles like a foal, I gathered myself. Okay, the timer on the pods were all set for fifty years. I walked over and checked the display next to my pod.

‘Stasis Pod #42 malfunction. Power failure. Waking occupant.’

Well buck.

I took this chance to do a visual check of all the other systems of the stable. Just about everything had lost power, and keeping my pod online was the last straw. For some reason, the computer had decided that every other system was to be shut down to keep my pod online rather than initiate the wake up sequence. This included the door.

I opened the panel underneath the control console for the door and was greeted by a faint pink mist, which seemed to have fused the circuitry. Well, isn’t this one fine morning?

With no way to get power to any of the stable’s systems, I headed off to the armory for something to get this door open.

Even if this stable was only meant to harbor around fifty ponies, it still held a modest arsenal of weaponry. As the only stable equipped with accurate projections of the outside world, as opposed to the horribly over exaggerated predictions of aliens, zombie ponies, and deadly radiation, the only real threat was the radiation, which undoubtedly dissipated long ago thanks to the pegasi.

As I reached the formidable armory door, I pulled out my Pip-Buck, and got to work entering my lengthy access codes into the stable’s somehow still operational security system.

Unlike the standard Pip-Buck 3000, manufactured by Stable-Tec, which is mounted around the hoof, the Scorptech Pip-Buck Readius is a hoofheld pad which maintains a constant wireless interface with an implant in the brain. In short, it’s  a wireless version of the famous Pip-Buck, with all its tricks, like EFS, a compass that could detect threats, and SATS, a magical targeting program, and a few more all its own. One of the many drawbacks is that it is easier to break, and is difficult to manage if one is not a unicorn, but I seem to have gotten past that particular problem.

After about five minutes of tinkering, the door hissed open. The stench hit me before I could see what was inside.

Blood... So much blood...

It covered literally every surface, littered with rotten bits of flesh splattered on the back wall.

In the center of the room, was the body of a mare, a combat shotgun in her hooves, and most of her head missing, scratch that, on the back wall.

What’s worse, I knew this mare, even if only by association. Between the massive amounts of dried blood covering her hide, I could see the green fur covering her body. Her name was Bluegrass, a logistical supervisor for Stable-Tec.

I threw up, violently. The stench, the sight, everything. Celestia, have mercy.

The scientist in me did notice that the gruesome scene was very old, a hundred and fifty years old, if i had to take a guess. That meant that the other stasis chambers did open.

Did someone stop me from waking up? Why would someone do that? Did my chamber malfunction? Why didn’t I wake up with the others?

Momentarily occupied, I grabbed a military issue battle saddle, a rocket launcher to (hopefully) punch through the stable door, and my own personal .50 caliber Desert Pheonix and galloped out of the armory as fast as I could, leaving the gruesome scene behind.

Unlike Stable 1, and all other stables, which had huge, meter thick steel doors, Stable X-01 was equipped with a much thinner door, but more resistant to explosions and radiation made of an experimental alloy to be used in future armor designs. They were not resistant, however, to whatever pink stuff had been eating at the stable for two hundred years, and was significantly weaker as a result. I just hoped that whatever that pink stuff was, it wasn’t harmful to ponies.

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Wild Wasteland - This perk unleashes the wasteland’s silliest and strangest. Not for the faint of heart or serious of temperament.

Special Attributes:

Strength: 4

Perception: 2

Endurance: 6

Charisma: 4

Intelligence: 9

Agility: 5

Luck: 3

Special thanks to Kkat for creating  absolutely phantasmagorical universe that so many of us have enjoyed and added to. None of this would have been possible without your genius and creativity. Next Chapter: Chapter 1 - Echoes and Impact Craters Estimated time remaining: 7 Minutes