If I'm going to tell you about my people, you must first understand our history. You see, when the war ended, and Marewaii fell to balefire bombs and megaspells, the pony population fled underground. Fortunately the underground was made with protection from magical radiation in mind, with deep tunnels and stations dug under hundreds of feet of rock and concrete. The deeper into the metro system a pony lived, the further away they were from the poisonous toxins that now permeated the islands themselves.

Each inhabited island formed their own communities, all vying for a semblance of control over what little remained of their ruined lives. Coming together through the various metro crossings was a start, but this didn't save us from another problem. Clean water and food quickly became hard to get, and ponies soon began to fight over what little was left accessible from the safety of the underground. Sickness also spread through the survivors, mostly from those who lived closer to the toxic air that had begun to slowly filter down from the surface.

This is when Stable-Tec first came to the rescue. Their R&D Stable had been built under one of the island resorts, and at the time, had been secretly connected to the metros. It was filled with enough resources to keep the new survivor station-cities alive, for a time. This helped quell the violence and restlessness, but a life lived underground is a harsh life. Many of the ponies had formed gangs, carving their own territory, and taking resources for themselves. Stable-Tec too had a solution for this, and helped form and-or supplied civil militias to restore order. There was much fighting in those early days, but the gangs were quelled, and the ponies of the metro had order. Again, for only a short time.

The next disaster to strike the station-cities, was when the first tunnel-born generation came to repopulating. The next generation of survivors were delivered sick, cancerous, mutated, or stillborn. The poison that seeped from the surface robbed mothers-to-be of their young before they were even born, or left their young crippled and in pain. Only ponies that lived deep in the metro were saved from the tragic defects. Because of their privileged position, they jealously guarded their section of the metro. It seemed that here in the metro, those ponies who were left less fortunate, would be doomed to gene death. The deep dwellers lived in the only small pockets of life never daring to leave what clean pockets they lived in.

Stable-Tec once more had a solution to this. To genetically blend all the upper survivors into one race. Each of the three pony tribes, and even that of the scattered zebras living there were blended together using state of the art magic and science. The goal was to form a new breed of pony that could be born surrounded and mostly unaffected by the poisons.

Desperate for a solution, many sick mothers flocked to Stable-Tec in hopes that their unborn foal could be saved. Still, others saw it as a perverse act against nature itself. Others called mixing ponies and zebras a treason against Equestria, and for the first time, Stable-Tec found itself the target of the same militias that they had once helped form.

To protect themselves, Stable-Tec became more militarized. They would close down whole tunnels, only letting select few enter them while keep any others out. The use of deadly force was rare, but it was used when it was necessary. The current OverStallion at the time, attempted to quell the hostility with propaganda.

He plastered the tunnels with posters of him with his family. The posters showed him with his wife, and his two young foals, both of them having been a product of the gene therapy. Along with them in the images was his pet, a two headed hound called an Orthrus. The attempt to calm the outside ponies worked for the most part, convincing the desperate to give the gene therapy a chance. Along with the calm, the posters also did something that Stable-Tec didn't expect; it give them a new identity. It started out as a joke, quickly became a nickname, and later was officially adopted by the ponies of Stable-Tec. This is how the peacekeeping group known to us today as Orthrus, was born.

The Gene therapy that Orthrus offered proved a success, mostly. The genetic change allowed a new generation to be born even if the parent had exposure to the toxins of the upper tunnels. Having the mish-mash of genes in the therapy, the new foals were born reflecting traits from all races, including zebras. They had the stripes of a zebra, a horn much like a unicorn, though much smaller, and had wings like a Pegasus, though much smaller. Most of the new breed of ponies could neither fly nor cast magic, a small price to pay for being immune to the toxins.

There however, were still other complications. While stillbirth was almost never an issue, most of the foals had crippling birth defects. Mainly you’d see them with multiple legs being malformed, or simply nonexistent. Once more it came down to a mother's level of exposure to the poisons from the surface, with healthier and cleaner couples less likely to have foals with genetic defects.

The problem was that for those closest to the surface, exposure was just a fact of life. Faced with a growing population of malformed ponies, Orthrus once more looked into a solution. After a while, it was found in the form of simple cybernetic supported prosthetics. With many families already willing to give everything they had to Orthrus, they started to provide simple models of them to those born malformed. Soon, many of the new generation grew up walking on mostly, or even all metal prosthetic legs.

As before, there was still a push back against Orthrus. Some of the more privileged ponies wanted to preserve the purity of ponykind, others simply wanted control over the metro under the lie of unity. With a fierce resolve to keep the peace and insure that a new generation was born, Orthrus overruled the opposing ponies. It was only with their help had we persevered and survived.

In time, this new breed of ponies became the majority. With much of the population unable to escape from the toxic and poisoned air, using the gene therapy had become unavoidable for the sake of the next generation. As the first generation of the modified ponies grew older, an oddity had been noticed in them. What they could do was generate and store a limited amount of magical energy inside themselves. When they did this, at a certain level of ‘charge’, the air around them would shimmer and wave. At a distance this made them look as though they were only a mirage. This is what gave us our name of Mirage ponies.

This new ‘charge’ state having come to light, a new use for it was quickly found. By discharging themselves, a mirage pony could recharge spark batteries, energy cells, and even talismans. This quickly put the mirage pony's at an advantage, able to keep much of the old world tech running just by being around it. It also allowed them to make new tech, completely based around and operated by their own magical abilities.

For just over the course of a century, the island communities had been able to work and live together in unity. The mirage ponies and the deep dwellers still had their share of small conflicts, but mostly lived together without issue. Only recently had the metro once again fallen into an unsteady peace, with Orthrus as the keystone.

And this is where you come in, ‘Mr. Enclave’. You are the unforeseen variable in our complex tunneled world. The flame waiting to light a fuse on a really big bomb, ready to become the next disaster that the metro survivors must learn to live with.

Author's Notes:

I want to thank Gamma Deekay for helping me get this up and running. He has been real busy with a lot of things, but manage to find the time to help polish my writing. I wish him luck with the things to come.

Also a shout out to McDronePone who helped make the concept image for the story, I wish you luck with your next story.