Dear Diary,

After only two days of resting, I had had enough and was eager to get out. My illness was receding, I felt well enough to travel, and I was confident that it would clear up within a few days as long as I got enough sleep. I also realized that lodging was expensive, in addition to all the medical bills I had been racking up. We were quickly bartering our supplies away just for my sake when we had begun to run low on necessities. This had become abundantly clear when we took a pit stop at a truck stop between towns.

"Hey, Silver, ya got any tampons or pads?" Grapevine asked. "I just ran out."

"Sure," I said, digging through my bags. I found that I only had one small box left.

"Here, take this," I said, giving her the box after I had removed a few for myself. "You probably need them more than I do."

"Do you have enough to get through your next period?" she asked.

"Only half of it," I said. "It's fine, I'll just grab some toilet paper and--"

"No way," she said with the stomp of her hoof. "Friends don't let friends stuff toilet paper up their crotch. Soon as we reach the next town, we're getting you some proper sanitary products."

"The way I see it, we'd better get used to using toilet paper," I said. "They don't make tampons anymore, and sooner or later we're gonna run out. Just look at this convenience store, and all the products were looted ages ago."

"Truck driving is a male-dominated profession," Dmitry chimed in. "They didn't have much here to begin with. I'm sure there are plenty of tampons out there."

"I hope so," I said. "I'd hate to have to trek all the way to Mexicolt just to have a pleasant period."

"Hey, that's a great business opportunity!" Grapevine exclaimed. "We could make trips down to Mexicolt and back to bring cotton up here."

"And what are we going to sell them in return?" I asked.

"I don't know. Something we have a lot of."

"Like what?" I asked. “Rain? The color green? Crippling depression?”

“Rain might work,” said Dmitry. “Clean water is important.”

“We’d drink it all by the time we get there,” I said.

“She’s right,” Grapevine said. “And it ain’t that hard to set up a basic filter. I was thinkin’ we could sell trees.”

Dmitry and I started laughing.

“Trees?” he exclaimed. “Do you realize how heavy a tree is? We’d need a truck or a train to carry them down.”

“Or we could just use balloons...” Grapevine said quietly, staring off into the distance.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dmitry said. “And speaking of trucks, we’ve been here long enough. I know of a pretty decent motel up ahead that we might be able to reach tonight if we leave now.”

We packed our things and headed out, but Grapevine’s eyes remained fixed in the sky. My curiosity eventually got the better of me and I looked too, seeing what appeared to be a house, floating high in the air and suspended by balloons. I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I turned away, blinked several times, and looked back. I swear I saw that same house for just a few seconds before it suddenly disappeared behind a cloud. I looked away, blinked, and looked back again, and saw only the grey skies of the wastes.

The floating house left my mind for a few hours, but reappeared when we reached the outskirts of the nearest city. On the very edge of the city, the first thing that greeted travelers on the freeway was a baseball stadium. The stadium itself was preceded by a small clump of trees, which hid it from view at a distance so that it just pops up when you get near. The effect is no less dramatic whether you're traveling by car or by hoof, and the sudden emergence of the stadium caught all of us off guard, even though Grapevine told us it would be the first thing we would see as we entered town. The effect was doubled because just above the stadium, we saw the floating house slowly descending.

"What's up with that house?" I asked.

The others just gave me shrugs and blank looks of confusion.

"Should we investigate it?" I asked.

"Why not?" Grapevine said. "I'd like to know how it's doing that."

"No, it's probably just some prewar publicity stunt," Dmitry said. "We should scavenge some supplies from that nearby mall and get going."

My pipbuck rumbled a bit and gave out a light 'ping.' I looked at it and it displayed a notification in a small window that said 'New Quest Added: Investigate the Anomaly above the Stadium,' and below it two buttons labeled 'Okay' and 'See Details.' Never having noticed such a feature before, I pressed 'See Details' and it presented me with a menu that I never even knew was a feature.

"Huh, I never knew that feature existed," Dmitry said.

"You didn't?" Grapevine asked. "I thought you were our designated computer guy. How do I know more about this than you?"

"How did you find out about this?" he asked.

"I got one of those pings every time I decided to go out and get a midnight snack," Grapevine replied, showing us the quest tab on her pipbuck. It was full of completed 'Acquire Sustenance' "quests."

"I'm pretty sure that's not how these are supposed to work," I said. "Otherwise, our pipbucks would be full of midnight snack related 'quests.' Maybe yours just has a glitch?"

We approached the stadium and, seeing that there were no gates along the side of the fence that faced the freeway, we went around the side to come in through the main entrance. A chain link fence surrounded the parking lot, and surprisingly we found the gate was unopened. Inside, there were several trucks and vans parked in lines. Some of them belonged to the Ministry of Peace while others belonged to the army. There were also several tents set up, in varying arrays of repair. Notably, most of these tents were MoP tents, while spaces that likely would have housed army tents had been abandoned and left large stains on the ground.

"Keep your guard up," I said. "This looks like a raider feast."

We cautiously advanced along the stadium's walls until we reached its main entrance. Curiously, although the parking lot was unlocked, the stadium's gates had been locked pretty tight with multiple locks and reinforced with chains.

"Ooh boy, this looks tricky," said Dmitry. He set to work on the locks while I kept watch for intruders and Grapevine just stared into space. For five minutes, nothing happened, but once Dmitry was working on the last lock, a loud groaning sound emerged from behind the vehicles. A zombie emerged, appearing every bit as tattered and grotesque as the ones we saw at the airport. Its leg looked like it had been half gnawed off by an animal or a cannibal, so it could only move in a slow shuffle. I wondered if it was still capable of feeling pain to some degree, because its leg looked unbearable. I'd certainly be groaning loudly if I had to walk on that, even if I was as brain dead as it was. Still, the sight was incredibly unnerving and I didn't want any of my legs to end up like that, so I pointed my pistol at it, aimed for the head in SATS, and fired.

My shot lodged deep into its skull, but it simply stumbled backward for a few seconds, then regained its bearings (what little it had) and began shuffling forward again. I shot it a second time, then a third while it was stunned. The damage of the third was enough that it fell to the ground and couldn't get back up, no matter how hard it tried. Still, I didn't want to take any chances, so I walked over and shot it two more times in the torso at point blank range. These last two did the trick and it stopped moving altogether.

However, we were soon greeted by several more noises, all groaning in unison. I looked around and saw more zombies coming out from behind the tents and trucks. It wasn’t a huge horde like you see in the movies, maybe around thirty of them in total, but it was enough to overpower us, especially when one of us was trying to pick a lock and another needed to reload her gun.

To make things worse, a thundercrack roared throughout the sky and little drops of rain started falling. Very tiny droplets, but unlike typical rain each droplet had a faint green glow to it.

“Um, guys, a little help here,” I called out. They both stopped what they were doing and looked out at the approaching horde. Grapevine drew her weapons, while Dmitry just cursed under his breath and tried to work faster. He had only one lock to go.

When the horde got close enough, I threw a Moltotov and it just barely missed, but luckily there was an oil spill on the ground that brought the flames over to the zombies. However, even though the zombies’ bodies were consumed by the flames, being on fire didn’t faze them one bit.

“Grapevine, throw some frag grenades!” I said.

“Can’t,” she replied. “Sold all of mine to pay for your medical bills.”

“Damnit,” I said under my breath. “Those would have actually been effective!”

“Whatdidja say?” Grapevine asked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just keep shooting!”

But the horde kept coming closer and closer, forcing us into the shade under the roof in front of the stadium's main gate. It seemed like we were going to be overrun, when suddenly a small, fast-moving object about the size of an orange but with a white texture smacked one of the zombies on the side of the head. It stumbled backward a few steps, then stood up and looked upward toward the source. Another such object fell and grazed its face. Then a third fell and smacked it in the gut, causing the zombie to collapse.

Once I realized that these projectiles weren't going to harm me, I resumed shooting, first targeting the fallen zombie to ensure it wouldn't get back up, then I moved onto the next closest one. I soon found that the fastest way to take them out was to target ones that had just been hit on the head with the mysterious projectiles to incapacitate them before moving onto the next one. I could save bullets by simply getting them onto the ground, then stabbing them dead with a knife after the fight, which I ended up doing.

Once none of the corpses were moving anymore, I checked the Pip buck's targeting function to confirm they were all dead, shown by an absence of red bars on the screen.

"What were those things?" I asked Grapevine. "They looked like albino oranges."

She laughed, then picked one up from the ground to examine it.

"I wish. They're actually baseballs."

"Can baseballs even fly that fast?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "We'd need a speedometer to confirm that, but I have a hunch that those flew 20% faster than normal baseballs."

"Maybe there's a machine?" I asked.

"Nah," Grapevine said. "Most of those were curve balls. That's gotta be a pretty advanced design if a machine can do that."

Suddenly, five more balls fell from the sky in rapid succession.

"Curveball, slider, slurve, knuckle-curve, and screwball," Grapevine said. "Probably not a machine. Those all require wrist movements to throw."

"Definitely not a machine," said Dmitry. "They all fell just when you were talking about pitching... by the way, I finally opened the gate."

Just as he said 'gate,' I saw the weirdest baseball pitch I've ever seen in my life: one that not only curved 90 degrees just before hitting the ground, but landed right on the gate, pushing it open. All of us stood there for a moment in shock, and not a sound could be heard except for the creaking of the gate’s unoiled hinges as it opened.

Finally, Grapevine broke the silence.

“Alright, let’s see just who’s behind this,” she said.

We walked out from under the awning and looked up, but aside from a house suspended by a million balloons floating over the stadium, we saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nopony was there, but one of the doors on the house was wide open.

We entered the stadium but we didn't find anypony. Or, really anything, for that matter. It just looked like an ordinary stadium, save for the giant shadow over hanging directly over the diamond... and only over the diamond... except not quite. It was definitely centered on the pitcher's mound, but the corners of the house seemed to be slightly off from the bases... or maybe I'm just seeing things.

Also of note was the giant anchor resting on home plate. A long rope stretched from the top of the anchor all the way up to the floating house.

I descended the stairs on the lower set of bleachers to get a closer look. However, as soon as I reached the bottom and rested my hooves on the railing, the faint sound of a music box began to play over the speakers. Then a loud 'boing!' sound came from the floating house. I looked up and saw a familiar magenta pony in the center of a cloud of dissipating smoke and glitter. She was still wearing a baseball uniform, but this time it was for the local team. As soon as the smoke cleared, she leaped off the house's porch, then latched her hooves onto the rope and gracefully slid down the rope until her hooves touched the anchor. She then leaped off of it and landed, gracefully, on her hind legs. As soon as she touched the ground, an explosion went off in the distance, and she began to bow to a nonexistent crowd as canned applause played over the speakers.

"Just what is going on over there?" I muttered under my breath as I stormed off to the side in search of a staircase down to the field.

As I approached home plate with my companions in tow, I found her giving an interview, or being interviewed by, a broomstick.

“Imagine: a perfect, cloudless day. The sun is warm and welcoming. And on the horizon, they appear... like knights of yore, armed with bats of ash… and hickory. Their name: the crapital cuckolds. Their purpose: to make you, dear Equestria, revel in the joys of sport and sunshine, if only for an afternoon. Now, ask yourself--”

"O hai, Mark," she said, finally noticing me once I was nearly within striking distance.

"I don't know just what you think you're doing,..." I began.

"Oh, I do everything," she interrupted.

"...But I came here to--" I continued.

"--Thank you for saving our lives!" Grapevine exclaimed, before proceeding to engulf the purple pony with a bear hug.

“No problem!” the magenta pony exclaimed. “It’s just another day’s work for the greatest pitcher in the world!”

"Those were some great pitches you threw!" said Grapevine. "They should call you screwball."

"They do-- err, they did," the magenta pony said, correcting herself. "Back in high school... which I never went to..."

For a second, I thought I saw her uniform's logo morph into that of a high school-- my high school, before changing back to the local Minor League baseball team.

"...The classes, I mean. Yes, I skipped classes. Doesn't every pony? So boring! Now who wants lunch?"

Now, I swear to God, this is exactly what I saw happen next: First, spaghetti began to drip out of her pockets. Then she stretched her fore hooves four or five hooves long like elastic and grabbed a pristine dining table seemingly out of nowhere, complete with a tablecloth, plates, glasses, silverware, a candle, and even a salt and pepper shaker. Then she reached over and grabbed four chairs for every pony, as well as a phonograph playing Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons.' The spaghetti fell square onto each plate into a perfect little pile, and came with sauce, meatballs, and a little bit of parsley garnish mixed in.

Our 'chef' sat down and enjoined us to dine.

"Come on, let's eat!"

Day and I reluctantly sat down at the table and inspected the food while Grapevine started eating it right off the plate. It looked and smelled like freshly cooked spaghetti made in the conventional way, but I remained skeptical.

"What's wrong?" our ‘chef’ asked, having swapped her baseball cap out for a chef's hat and donned an apron while I was paying attention to the 'food.' "Try it, it's good!"

"I still can't get over the fact that this came from your pocket," I said.

"So?" our ‘chef’ asked with a raised eyebrow. "Doesn't matter where it came from. Food is food."

"It came from your freaking pocket!" I restated.

"Sure, it's not somewhere you would expect, but you'd be surprised at just how good pockets are at cooking food. They're obviously very warm, but they also provide the perfect amount of pressure to simulate a conventional oven. Plus they save a lot on your electric bill. And who cares where the food comes from, right? As long as it's good, then it's edible. And your friend over there seems to be enjoying it quite a bit."

She pointed to Grapevine, who has finished scarfing down all the food on her plate and was now disappointed there wasn't any left. Her sadness was soon placated by our chef procuring another plate and swapping it out for the old one. She then took the old plate and flung it into the air behind her like a Frisbee.

“Did she really enjoy it that much, or--?” asked Dmitry.

“She always eats like that,” I replied.

Since I hadn’t seen where this newest plate of spaghetti had come from, I decided to pretend that it, and the rest of the food, had come from a completely normal and not-at-all-unusual kitchen. I twirled some of the noodles around my fork and bit in. Surprisingly, it all tasted exactly like it would if I had made it with my (very) limited cooking skills out of store bought ingredients. Well, everything except the breadsticks. Those were restaurant quality.

“Where’d you find all these ingredients?” I asked. “And why’d you anesthetize me back at that flower shop?”

“Oh, you know, I do a lot of traveling,” the chef-pitcher said. “And in that traveling, I’m mostly just looking for parts to add to my airship. But every now and then, when you’re scavenging, you make a really great find such as durum wheat or ripe tomatoes that make you say, ‘wow, this would make a really good meal!’ So you just take it, you know?”

“An airship?” asked Dmitry. “So that’s what this is?”

He gestured towards the floating house.

“Pretty much, yeah,” said the pitcher-chef. “I prefer to travel the wasteland in style. You’ll never get harassed by bandits in the air. As for the second question, why’d I anesi-- anesti-- an-es-th-eh-what?”

"Anesthetize," I corrected. "It means ‘to administer an anesthetic.’"

"A what?" she asked.

"You put me to sleep!" I replied.

"Oh, /that/," she said. "Well, I was just trying to broaden your horizons. You struck me as the kind of pony who really needs to get out more."

"I've spent most of the past two weeks on the road," I said. "I'm also more or less homeless."

"By 'get out,' I meant 'lighten up,'" she said curtly. "You're a very dour pony who only looks at things from a single point of view."

"I'm rational," I retorted. "I view things in the way that makes the most sense. But what does this have to do with--"

"Oh, but for all your rationality, you still find things that utterly confuse you," she replied. "Sometimes you need to drop the rational angle and see things irrationally. That's what I was trying to do there: to teach you. And I may have ground up some hallucinogenic mushrooms and disseminated them through the air as a fine mist, buuuuut--"

"You made her ingest magic mushrooms?!?" Dmitry exclaimed.

"I dunno. The dealer didn't call them 'magic mushrooms', she just called them 'shrooms,'" she said. "But there's nothing wrong with that, because one, they aren't illegal anymore owing to the fact that every drug law was repealed eleven months ago, and two, it was for an educational purpose!"

Dmitry held his hooves up in confusion.

"What kind of 'education' involves hallucinogens?"

"Dude, you'd be surprised what kinds of stuff they get up to in universities these days," our pitcher-chef-pharmacist said. "On some campuses, getting stoned is no longer just an extracurricular."

"Can confirm!" Grapevine exclaimed.

"Well, they do research at universities," Dmitry replied.

"Precisely! I do research too," said our pitcher-chef-pharmacist-researcher. "And what I did to Silver here was just one of my many projects."

"Yeah, a 'research project' with a sample size of one," I replied. "And there wasn't even a consent form or anything!"

"Consent is a spook," the magenta one said, waving her hoof dismissively. “A fiction. A social construct. All that really matters is the ability to impose one’s will on--”

"Alright, that's it! I’ve had enough of this,” Dmitry shouted as he got out of his seat and began storming out. “We should leave this mad hatter to her tea party before anything bad happens. She’s probably drugged all the food with who knows what."

I got up and followed him, but Grapevine stayed in her seat.

"Awwww, but I wasn't done yet!" Grapevine whined.

"Come on!" Dmitry said. “Or else we’re leaving without you!”

Faced with the choice between her friends and more pocket-spaghetti, the choice was clear: Grapevine reluctantly got up and followed us.

The magenta pitcher-chef-pharmacist-researcher-egoist was indignant.

“Fine! Be that way, party poopers!” she cried. “Now I have to cover the whole bill myself. Well, if you end up going into the city, and I mean into the city, not just taking the highway through it, just be really careful, especially if you go downtown. And STAY AWAY from the Capital Mall, you hear me? Just-- don’t. It’s a really dangerous place, full of zombies and mutants and stuff. FULL of them, okay? Like, really, really dangerous. Well, not for me, but for a couple of SQUARES like you, it’s really deadly. Okay?”

By this point, we had climbed up the stairs, through the bleachers, and were now about to leave the stadium through the front gate.

“We heard you,” I called back. “‘Stay away from the Capital Mall,’ okay, bye.”

"Whatever you do, just STAY AWAY from the Capital Mall!"

Upon leaving the stadium, we decided (by a ⅔ majority) that from now on we will avoid this crazy pony, but agreed to take her parting words of advice. We continued our journey south... or rather, resolved to after we attempted to loot the mall next to the stadium, but we found that nearly everything of value had already been looted. Then we proceeded south, after resolving a disagreement on which road to take.

"Hey, that sign says 'Capitol Parkway,'" Grapevine said. "I wanna go on the parkway, it sounds fun."

"A parkway is just a type of road," I said. "It's not actually a park."

"She's right," Dmitry said. "It's just a fancy type of road and it wont' get us to where we're trying to go. We need to stay on the freeway if we're going to get to that hotel in time."

"It's kind of a park," Grapevine replied. "They're usually lined with trees."

"Yeah, lifeless, dead trees," said Dmitry, rolling his eyes. "So pretty."

"I'm gonna have to side with Grapevine on this one," I said. "It says this is a business route, so we're likely to find more supplies over there. I'm sure we can still make it to the hotel in time. After all, both roads head south."

"Alright, fine," Dmitry said. "I'm outnumbered. I suppose we can take the parkway."

We traveled down the parkway, only to find there were fewer stores than I expected, and most of these were just car dealerships. Still, you can be pleasantly surprised at just what you can find in certain places, and we were able to find quite a bit of ammo.

After a while we reached the end of the parkway, which deposited us in the middle of a city, where we got lost. We traveled in a general southbound direction for several blocks. The city was completely abandoned save for the occasional zombie or two, but their incessant moaning made their presence known well in advance and they traveled in small enough numbers that we could easily defeat them. What's more is that some of them carried ammo, refunding the bullets we expended to kill them, but most carried supplies. For us, these tended to be facts, medicine, and even clothing. Their clothing tended to be much nicer than the clothing of the zombies we saw at the airport. It was just as worn and dirty, but the choice of clothing implied that these ponies had become zombies either during or right after the Great War.

Eventually we reached an area where towering buildings of stone and brick rose four or five stories into the sky. We were clearly in the downtown, and after spending so long running around the countryside, it made me feel small.

We stumbled across a park consisting of a large open field with very large trees scattered throughout it and forming a thick wall along its edges. I imagine it would have made a calm, quiet place to escape from the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city had the trees still had leaves and the grass been mowed recently. Instead, the barren branches of the trees did little to hide the city and made the place look more like a cage. The long brown grass of the park's fields furthered this image and appeared more like bedding. Then, as if the appearance wasn't revolting enough, came the smell.

"Eww, that awful smell!" I exclaimed. "What in Equestrian is that?"

"Witchweed," Dmitry said. "A powerful, dangerous, addictive drug. Stay away."

"It actually ain't that bad," Grapevine replied. "Smells kinda pleasant if you get used to it. It ain't addictive and it's great for relieving stress. Y'all should try it sometime."

He just glared at her. I rolled my eyes, since I'd heard both arguments a hundred times.

"I know what it is," I said. "There isn't a single teenager who doesn't. I just want to know why the hell we can smell it from here!"

"Somepony's been smoking it recently," Dmitry said. "Somepony we shouldn't associate with. Come on."

"Witchweed smokers are some of the nicest ponies I've ever met," Grapevine protested. "Especially when they're smoking. Maybe they can point us to where we should scavenge, or at least where we shouldn't."

She began walking into the park. As repulsed as I was by druggies, I decided I'd go along hear what they had to say (and so we'd still have the information in case Grapevine forgot it again). Then I stepped on a round, circular object under my fore hoof. Fearing it might be a mine, I reeled back in terror, then noticed that the object was simply an empty syringe... one of many which had been strewn across the field.

“Grapevine, come back! They’re doing hard drugs!” I cried, but she didn’t listen. She kept going until she was halfway across the field. Suddenly, the eerie silence which hung over the city was interrupted by a chorus of hoarse groans. They came from the other side of the park, where one of the streets ascended into an overpass, creating a large covered area where you might expect to find a congregation of drug-addicted hobos. The groans of a drug-addicted hobo and a zombie are virtually indistinguishable, but hobos don’t usually groan in a chorus. Nor do they emerge from their dens in a mass.

At the sight of the wall of equids that emerged from under the bridge, Grapevine stopped, stared in horror, then ran back to us. Then they started to run after her. Then Dmitry and I started running too.

We ran a block down, but the zombies were much faster than we anticipated. They moved in a peculiar way, alternating between lethargic shuffling and rapid sprints at a speed I thought was only possible to obtain with military-grade experimental steroids. However, their sprints were fairly easy to counter simply by side-stepping or running in a zig-zag pattern, since they would continue running in the direction you were in and wouldn't correct their course mid-sprint (probably because they lacked functioning brains). Sometimes this would result in them hilariously crashing into walls and hitting their heads, or into fire hydrants and hitting their... other heads.

But after just a block of running like this we were starting to tire out, and there were too many zombies for us to disable. We had to find cover before they could mob us, and fast.

"Over here!" Grapevine exclaimed, heading towards a parking garage. Dmitry and I hesitated.

"Seriously?" I asked. "More exploding cars?"

"What choice do we have?" Dmitry asked. "There's nowhere else can take cover in time."

"We'll lure them into a trap!" Grapevine replied. "Fewer cars on the roof, we'll be safe up there!"

"Or in a stairwell," Dmitry said. "That would be safer."

The argument was compelling, so Dmitry and I followed.

We ran into the garage and up the ramp to the second floor. But when we got to the top, we were greeted by another group of zombies to the left hoof side. We veered right, ran around the side of the ramp to the other side, but came across another group of zombies.

"We're trapped!" I said.

"Head for the stairs!" Dmitry replied.

We veered left and headed towards the stairwell in the corner of the structure, but then more zombies emerged from there.

"The other stairwell?" Dmitry suggested.

We turned left again and began running towards the stairwell in the other corner, but the first group of zombies had advanced and now blocked our access.

"Wait, I saw another stairwell in the middle!" I said.

We turned around and dashed into this stairwell, which fortunately did not have zombies in it... yet. I spotted a pair of glass doors leading into a sky bridge leading into the next block. I pulled on the door handle, and to my surprise it actually opened.

"Quick, in here!" I said.

My companions ran inside, and I bolted the door by sticking a hunting rifle through its handles.

"That door's made of glass," Dmitry said. "It won't hold long."

“Get over there,” Grapevine said, pointing to the pair of glass doors on the other end of the bridge. “I’ll plant some mines.”

We got over there, but to our dismay the door was locked.

“Wait, I’ve gotta pick it,” Dmitry said, studying the lock and reaching for his equipment.

“There’s not enough time!” Grapevine exclaimed, as the zombies began to bang on the glass.

“It’s bolted shut!” I said, spotting a piece of wood between the handles on the other side. “We’ve gotta break in!”

Dmitry stopped what he was doing and looked up, then promptly put his stuff away, procured his assault rifle, and stood on his hind legs.

“Stand back!” he said, then raised the gun and struck the panes with its butt. It didn’t break.

“Let me help,” I said.

“No, let me--” he said, but I whipped my gun out and stood on my hind legs, then tried to break the glass. I couldn’t break it either, but with the two of us working together, we were eventually able to break the glass…

...with a small hole. A measly hoof-sized hole. Not enough to fit a whole body through. Dmitry prepared to lay another blow, but I got an idea.

“Stop!” I shouted, then I tried removing the board telekinetically. It was wedged pretty tightly in there, but I was able to muster enough force to pop it right out.

Dmitry pushed the door but it didn’t open. Then he pulled it and it did.

“It’s open,” he called to Grapevine. We went on through, then Grapevine followed and re-bolted it with the board.

“How’d ya get it unbolted?” Grapevine asked.

“Telekinesis,” I replied.

“Why didn’t ya do that before?” she asked.

“Telekinesis can’t go through solid objects,” I said. “We needed a hole to break through.”

“Oh,” Grapevine said, looking dumbfounded.

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Dmitry said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Can Changelings even do telekinesis?” Grapevine asked.

Dmitry raised his eyebrow. His horn had been continuously glowing to hold the assault rifle after he stopped using his hooves to bang it against the glass. To make it clear enough that even Grapevine could notice, he moved the rifle in front of him, pointed it at her, and cocked it.

“Okay, okay, point taken,” Grapevine said. “Sheesh.”

Just then, the faint sound of broken glass rang throughout the building. On the bridge, the zombies had stopped tapping against the glass and were now banging against it, even rearing up on their hind legs like feral cats trying to claw their way out of a cardboard box. They had broken a hole large enough to stick a forehoof in and move it around, and they probably could have dislodged the rifle bolting the door. In fact, one unicorn zombie tried just that telekinetically, but it couldn’t focus and instead made little sparks appear everywhere in front of it, like it was blind and trying to feel its way around the room.

“They’re getting closer,” I said. “Let’s move away so we won’t get hit when they finally break through.”

“Lemme lay a couple mines near the door first,” Grapevine said. “I’m not sure our initial trap will be enough.”

We wandered through the large building we had found ourselves in. There weren’t any windows inside so it was too dark to see without the flashlight feature of a pipbuck. But later on, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, it became clear that we were inside a department store. At first I worried that we might have to deal with more zombies, or perhaps a rodent infestation, but no, it was simply just a store that looked really creepy because it was dark and had been abandoned for quite some time. Several objects were out of place and it looked like somepony had attempted to raid it, but very little of the merchandise had removed from the store. As it turns out, designer clothing really isn’t worth much in a town full of zombies.

The only really important thing we found in this store was that the entrances to the street on the lower level had been deliberately boarded up, but not the entrances leading into a room that was well-lit and had a different set of tiling.

We entered this area and found it was an actually an atrium. The ceiling contained skylights which brought in what seemed like a plethora of light to our darkness-adjusted eyes, and the room seemed even lighter with the beige wall paint and faux marble tiling on the floor. On the walls around us were several storefronts, and I realized that we were now inside a mall.

“Didn’t that purple filly tell us not to go inside any malls?” Dmitry asked.

“Only the ‘Capital Mall,’ Grapevine said. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

“This is the capital city,” I said. “And this is a mall. Put two and two together.”

“Okay, it’s a mall, and it’s in the capital city,” admitted Grapevine, “But that doesn’t mean it’s the ‘Capital Mall’ she was warning us about. It could be called something else.”

“Capital cities name everything after the capital,” I said. “It’s always capital this, capital that. Why wouldn’t they name this mall after the capital?”

“Plus, we’re in the downtown,” said Dmitry. “The Capitol isn’t very far away.”

“Well, okay, maybe it is the ‘Capital Mall,” Grapevine admitted. “But what if she’s wrong? What if she just said that to scare us? We’re inside this mall, which may or may not be the ‘Capital Mall,’ and we haven’t found anything yet.”

“Keep looking,” said Dmitry. “It seems calm, but there might be something lurking around, especially in all this darkness.”

“Like what? Like a changeling?” Grapevine asked. “They’re so dark you can hardly see ‘em in the shadows.”

A flash of green light shined through the skylight, followed by rolling thunder.

“Changelings can be very dangerous,” said Dmitry, feigning calmness. “Especially when they’re mad. Don’t piss off a changeling.”

“And what exactly would a changeling do, impersonate me?” Grapevine taunted. “Ooh, big fucking deal.”

Drops of rain began to tap against the skylight.

“Are you seriously implying that’s all we can do?” Dmitry asked.

“Pretty much,” Grapevine said. “What else can you do? What else have you guys done?”

He brought the assault rifle back in front of him and pointed it at her face.

“We built this,” Dmitry said. “And we can use it, too.”

“Guys, I don’t know what the heck you’re arguing about, but can you please stop it?” I said angrily. “Whatever it is, I can assure you it isn’t nearly as important as you think it is. Why don’t you make yourselves useful and help me scavenge through this place? We’ll be here a while. Grapevine, you take the downstairs, Dmitry take the upstairs, and I’ll… well… I’ll go check out the next building.”

They did as I told them, which I figured would keep them separated and occupied for at least thirty minutes while I scouted out the rest of the mall. According to the directory, there were four buildings connected by sky bridges on the second floor. Scavenging it all would give us plenty to do while we waited out the rain, but I hoped it would end before sundown because I didn't want to spend the night in such a large, empty, eerie building. It just didn't feel safe.

As I Wandered through the mall, I found it was mostly just a repeat of the department store: most of the wares had already been sifted through but ultimately discarded, and virtually everything of value had been taken long ago. I was ironically able to find a few things of value, such as bottle caps, an unopened Sparkle Cola, and a few perfectly good rounds of ammunition in some trash cans. I considered looking through all the trash cans in search of more treasures, but I remembered that some of them still held the rotting remains of food waste in them.

New policy: only loot trash cans without food waste. As desperate as I may get, plunging my hooves inside a can with rotting food will never be worth it.

When I came back to the first building, I didn't see Dmitry anywhere. I wondered if he had wandered off into one of the other buildings without me noticing, but I didn't attempt to find him. I felt thirsty, so I decided to go check out the food court and see if there were any water bottles left to scavenge. Just before I entered the court, I spotted a vending machine selling acne medication. Recalling the numerous breakouts of my early adolescence, I figured I'd get some. At this point I realized that really could have used Dmitry's help, but I decided to try my own hoof at lockpicking for once so I could hone my skills and not have to rely on him all the time.

After about five broken bobby pins (which I didn't mind because there were plenty of those here in the mall), I managed to crack open the lock and open the door. It's been so long since I've really had much time to look in the mirror so I don't know if there's any acne on my face right now. Since nopony's ever run away screaming yet, I guess that's a good sign. I reached in and removed a single three-step kit, just in case I ever needed to impress somepony.

“Hey smoothskin,” said a gravelly voice.

I was startled and turned around. I didn’t see anypony around except for a dark figure peering out from behind one of the darkened storefronts.

“What? My name’s not ‘Smoothskin.’ Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“Yes, you,” the voice said. Under its breath, it softly muttered, “You smoothskins are all the same.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your compliment, but--”

“It’s not a compliment,” the voice said. “It’s supposed to be an insult.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound very insulting to me,” I said.

The figure emerged from the shadows. It was a zombie.

“Eek! A zombie!” I screamed, and shot it in the face.

“All the same,” the voice whispered. But as the voice spoke, the zombie’s mouth appeared to be moving in tandem with the voice.

Did that zombie just speak?

Before I could think about it more, several more zombies emerged from behind the restaurant counters at the food court all groaning their zombie-hobo-druggie groans and I had to run.

Somehow, somehow I was able to kill them all, but only after fleeing into another building, missing half my shots, running out of ammo for the assault rifle and breaking the 10mm pistol, and throwing bedsheets at them. At one point I had to resort to fending them off with coat hangers because I didn’t have time to fish a knife or a crowbar out of my bags. I would give you a better description of what happened if I was able to remember more than a few details. It all happened so fast and in a dark room that you couldn’t really tell what was happening.

What is certain, however, is that I found myself utterly exhausted and a bit angry that my friends didn't come to help. Come to think of it, i hadn't seen either of them in a while, ever since I had told them to split up. I wandered around the mall for a while looking for them, found nothing, and came back. Still no sign of either of them.

Then I heard a loud clanging noise from below, as if some pony was dragging several chains across the floor. I peered into the darkened chasm that was the first floor. I realized I had forgotten this part of the building even existed, so I brought out my .32 pistol, one of the only working weapons I still had ammo for, and descended the escalator into the abyss below. To my pleasant surprise, some pony had, fairly recently, moved one of the potted plants scattered throughout the store up to be just a few hooves in front of the bottom of the escalator and started a fire inside it, providing some illumination to the surrounding area. The plant was obviously made of plastic because it failed to catch fire, though it was starting to bend a little as the plastic slowly melted from the heat. I looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary, except for a large number of twisted and broken bobby pins scattered across the floor.

There was also a faint clicking noise. I checked the Geiger counter on my pip buck, but it showed no signs of radiation nearby. Then the clicking stopped and Day emerged from one of the shops.

"Where were you?" I asked. "And why didn't you help me with those zombies just now?"

"Sorry I couldn't help you," he said. "We had some zombies of our own to deal with. We also had to break into this."

As he gestured to the store, Grapevine came out and dumped several boxes of ammunition at my hooves.

"It's a genu-wine motherlode," Grapevine said. "I couldn't break in myself, so we've been working together."

I realized they had just broken into a gun store. Together. I smiled at that.

"Good," I said. "I think the rain just let up. Let's finish up here and get going. I'd rather not spend the night."

We left the mall fully stocked with ammo and weapons in working condition. In addition to replenishing our original arsenal, we took extra guns and ammo that we could either salvage for parts or barter for supplies if needed.

To find an exit that wasn't boarded up, we had to spend a while searching, but eventually we found a backdoor that we could simply unlock. As we emerged into the gloomy city, everything seemed shrouded in bright light, although nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

We only traveled one block, passing a large bus station on the way. The block immediately after the bus station contained a large, white, rectangular building surrounded by trees and lawns. The structure itself seemed very imposing, and rose from the ground in three stages: first a broad two story base with wings, then a third story excluding the wings, then finally a tower at its center adding three more stories. All throughout, the building’s windows were large, darkened panes of uniform size arranged in rows. The window frames looked more like bars on a jail cell than anything else. Each floor was separated by pilasters that divided the floors into sections. All of these pilasters taken together looked like a giant cage surrounding the building. The structure itself obviously wasn't a prison because it lacked any exterior walls and appeared to be open to the public, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with law enforcement. A police station, perhaps?

In front of the building stood five or so ponies in thick metal suits of armor surrounding three ponies in clean business suits. One of these armored ponies spotted us, then said something to another armored pony and pointed at us. They both stared at us, but since their faces were obscured by their helmets, I couldn’t tell what they were feeling. Given the circumstances, they probably regarded us with suspicion.

I looked up to the building again, this time to observe a curious statue on its roof. It was grey, in contrast to the white building, and it stood on the edge of the roof of the tower, looking out upon the world with a cautious gaze coming from its amber eyes. The creature itself resembled a gargoyle, but was instead a canine and lacked wings. For some reason the sculptor had decided to give it a brown robe, likely made of bronze. It would have actually been impressive if there had been a park across the street, but instead there were just some office buildings and a small parking lot between them.

Then the ‘statue’ leaped from the building into the air, landed on the branch of one of the trees in front of the building, then leaped from the branch and landed on top of a bush, virtually destroying it in the process under its weight. It then began to dash towards us at an impossible speed, snatching one of the unarmored ponies, an apple-green earth pony with a bronze balance for a cutie mark, as it went.

As it came towards us, I nearly panicked, but managed to pull out my hunting rifle and fire off a few rounds in SATS, carefully aiming my shots at its legs to both slow it down and to avoid friendly fire against its captive. All four of my shots hit squarely in the calf with one even blowing through to the other end, but the beast remained unfazed.

The beast ran straight in our direction as if it wanted to ram us. We only scattered just in time to avoid being pummeled. It was such a close call that I could hear and feel the ‘whoosh’ of cold air as the beast passed me. After it passed, the armored ponies opened fire with the miniguns built into their armor, sending a hail of bullets after it. Most of these missed, but the beast was still hit with at least two dozen. Only about six or seven punctured its skin while the rest just appeared to have bounced off.

The beast tried to run into a coffee shop across the street from the bus station, but one of the armored ponies launched some missiles at the building making the roof fall down. The beast was perturbed, but simply turned on a dime and went the opposite way towards the terminal of the bus station, a rectangular brick building with a recessed entrance and four floors of office space above. The armored ponies shot some more missiles turning the building’s second floor into rubble to block the entrance. This time, the beast skidded to a near halt, but then began running to the left towards the corner of the building, presumably to take cover behind it.

Completely forgetting the beast had a hostage, I used the fifth and final shot of my hunting rifle against the rear of a bus parked on the edge of the bus lot and very close to the corner. When the beast got close to the bus, it tried to stop again, apparently recognizing the smoking engine as a threat, but stepped into a puddle of oil and couldn’t change its direction.

Then the bus exploded, setting off a chain reaction of exploding busses. Each explosion created a large cloud of dust which obscured the scene. After all the busses in the lot had exploded, enough of the terminal’s ground floor had been taken out that the entire building fell on its side, burying the remains of the transit mall in a heap of bricks and kicking up an even larger cloud of dust that obscured everything. As the dust began to settle, a silhouette reached its forelegs out of the rubble, thrust the rubble on top of it away, and then climbed out. It looked in our direction for a second, then with its hostage in tow, it scampered off into the dust. When the dust finally cleared, the beast was nowhere to be found.

"Well, at least you tried," said a tinny, muffled stallion's voice behind me. I turned around and saw it was one of the ponies in power armor.

"Yeah, we tried," I said. "Are you going to go after it?"

"Nah," he said. "He's too fast and agile. But we know where he lives. If we had more ponies, we might be able to take him down."

"We can help," I offered.

"No, he meant more Steel Rangers," said one of the other armored ponies, a mare who was noticeably smaller. "We're tied down protecting settlements and doing all these escort missions."

My eyes widened.

"Did you say 'Steel Rangers?'"

"The one and only," the stallion said. "Who else has power armor like this?"

No pony did. Only this elite branch of the military had such armor. The thought of some part of the military not only surviving but actually protecting civilians, especially in large numbers, filled my heart with joy.

"Do you really need Steel Rangers to protect settlements?" I asked. "There aren't any Steel Rangers up north, yet the survivors are doing just fine."

"No we don't," the stallion Ranger replied. "CPG and civilian police work just fine. The main problem is we're spread thin, and our commanders are hesitant about resorting to militias or mercenaries. They think it sends a bad message."

"You should have some sort of reserve so you can deal with things like this," I said.

"I agree, but we don't make the decisions," the stallion said. "Our commanders make the decisions and we just carry out their orders."

"If you really want to, you might be able to help," the mare Ranger said. “Go talk to our CO's yourself. Given the circumstances, they might consider hiring mercenaries to deal with this problem."

“That was Habeas Corpus, the Chief Justice” said one of the non-armored civilians. “Mention that and they’ll have to say yes.”

“Chief Justice?” Grapevine asked. “I could have sworn my last ballot said she was on the Court of Appeals.”

“She was,” the civilian replied. “But in light of the circumstances, she’s been promoted to Chief Justice of the provincial Supreme Court, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, Chief Judge of three dozen Circuits, President of the Cascadia Bar Association, and acting Mareion County District Attorney. There is one other judge who’s more experienced, but since most of his experience is on the Tax Court, the Governor thinks it doesn’t count.”

“They should have just gone with the Tax Court guy,” said Grapevine. “If he’s the guy I’m thinking of. That guy can survive anything!”

“Bullet Dodger?” asked Dmitry. “Yeah, he’s survived a dozen assassination attempts, at least. He’s immortal. You’d never have to worry about him.”

“Those were all by the same pony though, said Grapevine. “Some crazy grudge from a bitch who thought she could avoid payin’ taxes by pointin’ out what she thought was a spellin’ error ‘cause she thought ‘employment’ was spelled with an I, insisted the course go to court, then became ass-devastated when the judge just took out a dictionary an’ corrected her.”

“Boy, you seem to know a lot about this case,” said Dmitry. “Did you have any connection with this so-called ‘bitch?’”

“Oh, I might have sold her some RDX at some point, but I thought she was just a fellow exploding toilet enthusiast.”

“A what?” asked Dmitry.

“Why ‘Bullet,’ though? I thought ‘Bullet’ was a girl’s name. Hey Silver, is Bull--”

“As far as I know, it’s unisex,” I replied. “But none of that really matters. Why do they bother keeping any judges around? This place will probably be under martial law forever, Just look at it!”

They looked at it, and simply shrugged.

"Honestly, it doesn't look all that different from before the war," said Grapevine. "Just... quieter."

I face hoofed.

"Well, look at it when we get back to a business district," I said.

"She's right," Dmitry said. "It does seem kind of pointless. It seems like summary executions are the norm these days, but who knows? Maybe the Steel Rangers are a strong enough deterrent to prevent total bloodshed. Speaking of Steel Rangers, can either of you make heads or tails of their directions? Are we on the right street?"

We were walking up a street in a neighborhood full of quaint, old-time cottages nestled between large deciduous trees with the occasional conifer, which still retained its leaves. Even with most of the plants being dead or overgrown, the neighborhood still had a certain charm to it. The ponies who owned them must have been very old (or had government jobs) because they seemed to have way too much time on their hooves for gardening. The roads in this street seemed very narrow by modern standards as they had been built in an era before the proliferation of automobile transit. The entire neighborhood also seemed to be somewhat tilted as there was a visible upward incline as one traveled westward.

"I'm pretty sure this is the right street," I said. "They told us to turn at that landmark, so we're on the right path."

"None of these look like mansions though," said Grapevine.

"They said it was kind of hidden," said Dmitry. "We need to look carefully and not miss anything."

"Why would the Governor's Mansion be hidden away?" I said under my breath. "Are they trying to hide something?"

"What did you say?" Grapevine asked.

"I said, 'that one over there kind of looks like a mansion,'" I replied.

Indeed it did. On the left side of the road, we saw a large house which strongly resembled a medieval-era country manor for the nobility, partially tucked away behind a clump of trees and bushes. It also had a very nice lawn and the property was surrounded by a low hedge.

"It might be," said Dmitry, "Although I think the Governor's Mansion would have better security..."

"No, this is a mansion!" Grapevine exclaimed. She raced over to the next block and stood in front of a large Colonial style red brick mansion, complete with a portico outside the front door supported by four long, thin columns, a driveway shaped in a semicircle that started and ended at the street and rounded its way up to the front door. Between the driveway and the street was a large lawn.

“No, it’s gotta be more discreet than that,” said Dmitry. “That mansion is an invitation to every robber around here to ransack it.”

“Not if it has a good security system,” said Grapevine. “Appearances can be highly deceptive.”

“Look at that tiny sign near the entrance,” I said. “That’s the logo of a private security company. This can’t be the Governor’s Mansion. Let’s keep going up the street and see if we can find any others.”

We kept going up the street, finding other mansions with various landscaping and architectural styles, but we could never agree on an undisputed candidate for the Governor’s Mansion. Then, right where the road we were on ended and turned left to join another road, we found a huge clump of trees obscuring a tudor mansion. The few parts of the lot’s perimeter that weren’t blocked by clumps of trees were separated from the street with an iron fence. The driveway in particular was blocked by an iron gate bearing the seal of the provincial government. The gate itself was flanked by the flags of our province and our country protruding from the top of each fencepost, and there was an intercom one one side and a card reader on the other.

“Okay, we’ve found it,” I said. “But how are we going to get in?”

“Well, obviously breaking and entering is off the table,” said Dmitry. “Let’s try the intercom.”

“It won’t work,” said a voice. It came from a unicorn stallion in Steel Ranger armor with his helmet removed, smoking a cigarette on the front lawn. He began walking up to the gate. He spoke and moved with a coolness that is often attempted but seldom done right outside of movies.

“They won’t let anypony in who they don’t already recognize. The Governor isn’t exactly keen on receiving visitors.”

“You mean the Governor is still alive?” Grapevine asked.

“Of course,” the Ranger said. “There’s a bunker underneath the house. She’s been living there for nearly a year and she refuses to come out.”

“There’s no way that can be healthy,” Dmitry said.

“I agree, but no matter what we can’t convince her it’s safe out here, so we just have to work around that,” said the Ranger.

“Well, we’re here to help you work around that,” I said. “Have you heard the news?”

“No, I haven’t,” the Ranger replied. “What news?”

“Habeas Corpus has been foalnapped by some giant dog-thing,” I said. “We tried to stop it but it was too fast.”

"Whoa, that's really bad!" the Ranger said. "Here, I'll let you in."

He pressed a button on his foreleg.

"Control, we've got a few ponies at the gate who say the Chief Justice has been foal napped by a dog. Can you confirm this? Over."

"Yes, her guards informed us fifteen minutes ago," said a voice on the other end. "They mentioned three mercenaries would arrive to discuss it with the Captain. Please stand by while we verify their identities with the escorts. Over."

A few awkward minutes of silence passed as they verified our identities with the Rangers we had first met. The radio was still on, so we could hear a faint voice asking several questions punctuated by silence as they listened to the response in what seemed like the world's longest game of 'Guess Who?'. It was quiet enough that we could hear the whistling of the wind, and I realized that the world just seemed very empty without the rustling of leaves on the trees as the wind blew through them. Instead, there were only barren branches protruding into the sky with not a single leaf remaining. Meanwhile, the few trees which retained their leaves, the conifers, did not extend their leaves but held them close to their trunks as one would a cloak on a cold, rainy day.

"Alright, we have confirmed their identities. You may let two of them in, but stay out there to keep watch. We're sending some pony to escort them. Over."

"Roger that, over," said the Ranger.

The gate opened slightly with a little click.

"Just two?" Grapevine asked. "Why not all or just one?"

"Changelings," the Ranger curtly replied. "The Governor is... sort of... really concerned about security, understandably. But maybe we... could... admit three of you if you swapped the changeling out with that friend of yours over there keeping watch."

The ranger pointed to a clump of trees across the street.

"Friend? What friend? There's no--" Grapevine asked. I wanted to muzzle her on the spot, but instead said,

"Why, yes, our friend... over there. Our blue-maned stallion of a companion who we have known and trusted for a very long time."

Dmitry furrowed his brow.

"Fine, I'll switch places," he said reluctantly.

He plodded over to the trees and went behind them. I looked up to the sky.

“Gee, looks like it might rain again soon,” I said.

Grapevine looked up and was confused. Aside from the cloud ceiling which had always been there, there were very few low-hanging clouds that could really rain on us.

Then there was a green flash of light.

A blue unicorn stallion with greying black hair came out from behind the trees, wearing the same stable jumpsuit and bags that Dmitry did, but had a completely different body. Even though I knew it was him, it still felt a little unnerving.

“Great, much better,” said the Ranger. He opened the gate wide enough for us to come in. “May I be the first to welcome you to Marehonia Hall!”

Grapevine went in first, followed by me, and not-Dmitry last. As I passed the ranger, I asked him,

“If anypony asks who let us in, what should we say?”

“They call me Placeholder,” the Ranger said. “That… wasn’t always my name, but that’s who I am now.”

Then, as Dmitry passed him, Placeholder leaned in and whispered to him,

“Don’t feel bad, there’s more of us inside.”

Dmitry’s eyes widened and his mouth curved into a small smile.

“My name is Lovebug. Follow me.”

The Mansion was big and grand, but it felt very unwelcoming. In contrast to most buildings, the mansion’s interior had sustained virtually no damage from the apocalypse or the elements. Instead, the furniture remained in tact but unused, most of it sitting beneath dust cloths while the features that didn’t had accumulated a fine layer of dust.

“I used to dust this place every week,” said our chaperone, a petite light green pegasus who was extremely nervous and jittery. I would later learn that she was generally like that all the time, but it was more pronounced whenever she was in the presence of somepony important.

“...but lately I’ve been so busy that I just didn’t have the time. Eventually I stopped dusting altogether.”

Then with a cheeky smile she said, “Since she never leaves the bunker, she doesn’t have to know.”

We went around the grand staircase in the foyer and stopped in front of a door behind it. I was expecting either a broom closet or a staircase into a dingy cellar, but instead we were presented with an elevator which still looked pretty new. She inserted a key card into a slot that replaced the usual call button, and a few seconds later the doors opened and we entered the car.

“Beneath the cellar there’s the electrical and HVAC equipment,” she explained. “Beneath that there’s the control center which leads into the bunker itself. Only thing below that is the reactor, but I don’t have the proper clearance to go there.”

The elevator stopped at the control center, where we disembarked in an area which strongly resembled the entrance of the Stable, featuring thick concrete walls covered in metal support beams and pipes. The floor was tiled with spotless light green linoleum, and the room itself was awash with artificial light from fluorescent tubes. There was no natural light whatsoever, as we were presumably several yards underground. Instead, only artificial light which was designed to mimic natural light, but took a while to get used to and simply appeared eerily unnatural in the meantime.

The room was I-shaped, with narrow hallways on the ends leading to storage and utility closets, connected by a wide corridor leading from the elevator to a downward staircase at the opposite end of the room. Two large metal boxes raised on platforms stood on each side at the middle of the corridor, creating a bottleneck in between them. Both of these boxes had windows with metal bars on the outside. The one on the right was a control center where three ponies wearing headsets monitored several computer screens, while the other appeared to be some sort of armory. The hallway between them was further divided into two by a large desk

In the hallway between them, a unicorn police officer sat at a desk with a small gate on each side. He put down his book and stared at us until we reached his desk.

“Can each of you give me your name, age, and prewar address?” the officer asked in the dullest, most routine manner possible, as if he just wanted to get back to his book. All of us (except for Lovebug) gave the information, which he recorded on his computer.

“Now I need to inspect your bags. Put them on the table.”

We put them on the table and he quickly rifled through each.

“Yeah, we’ll have to keep these here,” he said. “Remove any items you think you need. No weapons are allowed inside. You may retrieve your things on the way out.”

“I don’t think we’ll need anything inside,” I said.

“Okay,” the officer said, then gestured to another officer, who approached the desk from behind and began taking the bags into the armory room.

“Now I’ll need to scan your bodies one at a time.”

His horn glowed an emerald green color that matched his eyes. A green-tinged black cloud emerged around Grapevine’s hooves, causing her to flinch, then it gradually moved around her body. The cloud produced an X-ray vision of her bones, which appeared white while her tissues and internal organs appeared in dark blue. When the officer had examined her entire body, it moved onto me. I instinctively braced for some kind of physical impact, but instead it just felt like a soft breeze.

Dmitry was getting nervous. The officer looked at him with some suspicion, then said, “I’m randomly selecting you for an enhanced scan. Follow me.”

“Umm… ok.”

Dmitry complied while trying his best to contain his shock. The officer led him into the side hallway behind the armory while the other officer stood just behind the gate and watched us. Shortly after, Dmitry and the original officer returned to his desk.

“Each of you take a visitor’s pass and return it here when you leave. Have a good day.”

The second officer stepped aside and allowed us to pass after we had taken our passes.

“Well, isn’t he cheerful?” Grapevine remarked sardonically.

We descended the stairs and were greeted by a familiar sight: the gear-shaped door featured at the entrance of all Stables, and a more iconic emblem for Stable-Tec than their actual logo. This door was wide open, with the giant gear stored off to the side within the Stable’s walls. As I passed through it, I was greeted with vivid memories of my own Stable, with this very room being one of my last experiences inside it.

We continued down another corridor of concrete and steel before re-emerging on the second floor of the atrium. Before us stood a large open space constructed out of metal beams painted brown to resemble trees. The walls consisted of large concrete slabs between these beams, painted white. The floor was paved with dark green linoleum tiles and the pipes running along the ceiling were painted blue. The color scheme was an obvious reference to our province's flag and the symbolism which inspired it.

The atrium was on two levels, with the second level consisting of two parallel walkways running along the long ends of the room. These two were connected by two bridges at the edges of the room and one at the middle of it. At the far ends, there were stairs connecting the first and second floors. Just shy of the railings on the two parallel walkways the ceiling sloped upward at a very steep angle, creating more space up above. This feature, combined with the tree-like support beams, made the entire room look a little like the hut of a jarl in an ancient Helm village. At the other end of the room, a large circular window rested high above the second floor, casting a watchful eye upon every pony below. The window sat inside a U-shaped frame with wings on each end. This was Stable-Tech's logo, and it appeared around the window to the Over mare's office in every stable, but here it was made entirely out of gold, shining down like the sun. The jarl of this village was inside, but siting at her desk with her back to the window. I wondered how often she looked out of it, gazing over her domain?

Probably pretty regularly, as the atrium itself was spotlessly clean. The ponies wandering around here stood up straight and didn't dally on their way. The only exception to this was the large mass of ponies huddled in the far left hoof corner of the first floor, in what appeared to be a dining commons. They were safely in a blind spot of the otherwise all-seeing window.

As we walked through the atrium, we saw several doors and windows built into the walls for various service areas, such as a general store, a hairdresser, and clinic. From the middle of the room were two doors, leading out to long, wide corridors containing the residential areas for most of the stable's inhabitants. Although there were many ponies congregating on the first floor, our handler seemed to be in a hurry to deliver us, so we wasted no time crossing to the other side of the room. Here we traveled down a short hallway past the doors of several individual offices on one side and a large communal office on the other. Through the windows of the communal office, I could see several ponies in cubicles working frantically even though the normal working hours were over. At the end of this hallway, we traveled up a staircase which led to a small reception room. The receptionist stopped filing her nails and eyed us with suspicion, then slowly reached for the button on an intercom.

“Your Honor, the mercenaries are here,” she said.

“I’m busy,” came the reply. “Could you have them wait a few minutes?”

A few seconds passed. Then the seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned into what felt like hours. Boredom began to set in, so I thought like this would be as good a time as any to update my diary.

Progress to Next Level: 4028/7200

Stats:
Ponies Led: 2
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 108 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Notes:

Beginning of a new story arc here. They're going to spend a couple of days in this area.