"The common room is just in here." Tara opened one of the many near-identical doors and stood aside for the trio to enter.

Luna nodded her thanks and stepped into the room, tensing herself for any surprises. To her relief, the common room turned out to be a typical, slightly dull-looking canteen.

The room was long and wide. Several tables with attached benches stretched the length of the room, while propaganda posters, workplace safety announcements and menus lined the walls. At the far end of the canteen was a small worktop with a sink, some cupboards, a couple of vending machines, and a fridge-freezer.

"Sit wherever you like," Tara told them. "The rest of our personnel are all busy at the moment, and Becky, I mean, President Shoichet will probably redirect them all elsewhere for dinner, so feel free to relax."

"Right." Luna highly doubted that any of them were going to relax, but she dutifully took a seat in the middle of one of the benches. Trixie and Sonata settled in on either side of her.

Tara closed the door and turned to face the trio. It was clear by her expression that she was as out of her element as everyone else in the room. "So, um… oh, food! Uh, do you want any food? Or drinks?"

"What have you got?" Sonata asked instantly.

"How can you be hungry?!" Trixie snapped.

Sonata rolled her eyes. "Because I haven't eaten lunch yet. Duh."

"Food would be a good idea," Luna cut in, stopping the argument before it could start. "Bad times always feel worse on an empty stomach."

"That's true." Tara strode towards the refrigerator. "I'm afraid we don't have anything hot, just cereal and, um… oh, that's about it." She frowned at the almost-empty fridge. "That's right, we didn't bring the supplies down today because we were too busy setting up the portal experiment. Cereal it is!" Tara fetched a few boxes of various cereals and several bottles of milk and water, plonking them on the table and settling herself opposite the trio. "Help yourselves, and I'll try and explain everything that's happened. Um, if I can figure out where to begin."

Luna raised an eyebrow as Sonata immediately poured three different types of cereal into a bowl with milk. In an effort to put Trixie at ease, Luna reached for a box that looked like it might be healthier than the others, only to baulk as a surreptitious glance at the ingredients revealed that it had a sugar content roughly equivalent to that of cotton candy. She tried not to grimace as she filled a bowl anyway. "Proper introductions might be a good place to start."

Tara chuckled awkwardly. "Good point." She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. "I'm Doctor Strong, head scientist of the Enclave, but you can just call me Tara. I'm assuming that the three of you are from Canterlot High School?"

"You guessed right," Luna replied. She felt a little relieved; the fact that this otherworldly scientist knew of CHS lent credence to their assertion that they knew the Rainbooms in some way. "My name is Luna, I'm the Vice-Principal of CHS, and these are Trixie Lulamoon and Sonata Dusk." Luna gestured to each girl in turn.

Tara's eyes widened when Sonata was mentioned. "Wait, aren't you one of the sirens that attacked the Rainbooms?!"

Sonata just shrugged, not even looking up from her bowl of oat milk-coated diabetes. "That was ages ago."

"It's a long story," Luna cut in. "Your turn. How exactly do you know the Rainbooms?"

"That's… also a long story, and not one that paints the Enclave in a very good light," Tara replied quietly. "Still, things are improving, and a great deal of that is thanks to the Rainbooms." She sighed heavily. "I suppose it's best if I start with a little background. You've already heard about the nuclear war."

Trixie scowled into her bowl. "I'm trying not to think about it."

"I don't blame you, but it's a fact of life for everyone in this world," Tara told her. "Some elements of the old world's governments foresaw the coming war, and the devastation it would cause, and took steps to secure their future. One of the main ideas proposed was creating subterranean shelters to protect portions of the populace, who would emerge when the world was safe and rebuild."

That sounded like a good idea to Luna, though she couldn't fathom how the Rainbooms factored into this. Just as she was about to ask, the door suddenly slammed open, making the four of them jump out of their skins.

Whipping around, Luna saw a young woman sagging against the door frame, gasping for breath. She had jet-black hair tied back in bunches, and a pair of pink-rimmed glasses that didn't suit the lab coat she was wearing at all.

"Sienna?! What are you doing here?!" Tara asked frantically.

"Vincent told me what happened, he said the President wants me to check on the visitors," Sienna panted. "And you should call me Doctor Bohn around strangers. It's more professional."

Tara rolled her eyes. "This is Doctor Bohn, the chief medical professional for this facility. She's a sarcastic pain in the neck with the bedside manner of a sociopath, but she's actually a pretty decent person."

"I'm also one of the only sane people in the Enclave," Sienna said flatly. "Are any of you women injured?" The three replied that they weren't, Sonata simply shaking her head as she had already gone back to her food. "Good. That makes my job easier." Sienna walked over and dropped onto the bench next to Tara. "I assume you're running through explanations."

"Yes, I was going to tell them how we met the Rainbooms, but I figured they should have a bit of background to everything first," Tara said. "Beginning with the Vaults."

Sienna snorted. "Make them hate the Enclave right from the start. Good plan."

"They're going to hear everything from the Rainbooms anyway, we may as well be open about it," Tara shot. "And we are doing better," she added tersely.

Sienna shrugged. "Fair point. Continue."

Tara sighed heavily. "As I was saying, here in the United States, that's the old name of our country, a company called Vault-Tec built massive underground shelters called Vaults," she continued. "Other countries around the world had similar ideas; the United Kingdom had the Shire Settlement Program and the Morrison Shelters, France had the Catacomb Network, Germany revived their Flaktürme complexes, Korea had the Burrows, and so on. The idea, as I said, was to protect enough of the population that they could rebuild after the war."

"Did it work?" Sonata asked bluntly.

Tara grimaced. "I can't speak for other countries, but here in the US, the circumstances surrounding the Vaults were a lot darker than they appeared."

Luna gave her a cold look. "Let me guess, they were reserved for those people who had the wealth and influence to buy their way in?"

Sienna's answering laugh was caustic. "Not even close. You see, Vault-Tec was, and still is, part of the Enclave, but the founders of the Enclave weren't originally interested in rebuilding."

"They weren't?!" Trixie stared at the woman in stunned disbelief, a feeling that Luna shared.

"Rebuilding was seen as too difficult and risky, so the Enclave came up with a different idea," Tara explained, sounding remarkably like a college lecturer. "Project Exodus. A plan to abandon the world entirely and escape into space, find a new planet, and colonise it."

"Creating a utopia populated exclusively by 'the very best that humanity has to offer'." Sienna snorted and crossed her arms. "That quote alone should give you an idea of what the Enclave was all about, at least until very recently. They still peddle that crap to our children."

“That’s on the President’s list of things to change. It’s not ideal, but she’s got her hands full with everything else at the moment,” Tara admitted. She noticed the distinctly frosty expressions that Luna and Trixie were wearing and cleared her throat, quickly changing the subject. “Anyway, the early Enclave knew that, if they wanted to travel through space, they would first need to have an idea of how people might react to difficult circumstances in a cramped and confined environment. Of course, their scientists soon came to the conclusion that travelling to other planets was impractical in the extreme, but the unpredictable nature of resetting an irradiated wasteland meant that such data would still be valuable, especially if the surviving subjects of such experiments could also serve as a reservoir of undamaged human DNA.” Tara sighed and closed her eyes. “That’s how they came up with the idea for the Vault Experiment.”

Luna listened, both sickened and enthralled, as Tara detailed how the Vaults had been designed, not as sanctuaries, but as part of a massive sociological experiment. Some operated as advertised; protecting their inhabitants until the world was safe enough for them to emerge, then serving as a base upon which a new settlement could be built, but they were the lucky few. The vast majority of the Vaults were each designed around a unique and inhumane experiment, ranging from the relatively practical to the outright sadistic. The Enclave themselves had ridden out the end of the world by retreating to their own special facilities, including an offshore oil rig.

Next, Tara described how, much to Luna’s surprise, some people had actually managed to survive the nuclear apocalypse despite not being in a Vault. Many of those survivors had even managed, against all odds, to found their own settlements and factions in the wake of civilization’s demise.

One of the many factions that rose to prominence was a group of military remnants calling themselves the Brotherhood of Steel. Luna had to appreciate their taste in names. Unfortunately, as Sienna pointed out with thinly-veiled venom, the Enclave was just as twisted and bent on control as it had ever been and, after over two hundred years, they decided the time was ripe to retake what they saw as rightfully theirs. Naturally, the Enclave and the burgeoning Brotherhood of Steel came into conflict, and began a war that lasted on and off for decades.

Then the Rainbooms arrived. The Diviner dropped them into a Vault, one that, Luna thanked her lucky stars, had simply been given an order to never open under any circumstances, rather than one of the more twisted Vaults. Her relief was short-lived, as Tara went on to explain how the Rainbooms had escaped, wandered across the Wastes, and finally came into contact with the Enclave.

“You kidnapped them?!” Luna spat angrily.

“Believe me, that was never our intention,” Tara insisted. “We put a request in with our previous President for a meeting to be arranged with the Rainbooms, and he turned the responsibility of facilitating that over to our military leader. At the time, that was a man named Colonel Autumn.”

“A bull-headed tyrant who firmly believes that might makes right,” Sienna scoffed.

Tara nodded. “Colonel Autumn didn’t seem to realise that we wanted to open a peaceful dialogue with the Rainbooms, and decided to go in with full force and subdue them before delivering them to us. Don’t worry, they weren’t injured,” she added quickly, seeing the expression on Luna’s face.

“Why did you even want to talk to them in the first place?” Trixie asked.

Sienna gestured vaguely around the room. “When we discovered that travel between alternate realities was possible, Project Exodus was immediately revived. The top brass were ecstatic to find a world that wasn’t plagued by war as ours is.”

Luna stared at the women incredulously. “You can’t honestly believe that any of the governments in our world would even consider allowing a group like the Enclave to come to our world?!”

“The version of events our brass gave you would have been heavily sanitized,” Sienna said in a bored tone. A slow smirk spread across her face. “Still, thanks to the Rainbooms, things quickly got very interesting.”

The two doctors went on to tell of daring escapes, horrific battles, conspiracies, and magical experiments, all culminating in a military coup and an all-out deathmatch between the Brotherhood of Steel, the remnants of the Enclave, and those who realigned themselves to stand with Project Exodus. Naturally, the Rainbooms were right at the heart of all of it.

“You’re telling me the Rainbooms were actually forced to fight in a real battle?” Luna asked quietly, torn between horror and cold fury.

Tara and Sienna shared an awkward look. “I hate to say it, but yes,” Tara admitted. “However, it’s thanks to them that this war is finally over, and the Brotherhood and Enclave are finally working together for the good of the wasteland. That’s part of the reason that we’ve been prioritising work on the portal-”

“Which is now broken,” Luna said flatly. “Thanks to an Enclave scientist.”

Sienna raised an eyebrow. “There’s not much we could have really done about Turner. He was locked away, and the guy who let him out had spent the last few months in a coma. Even if we had the manpower to spare, we’re hundreds of meters underground in a secure facility and neither of them were believed to be capable of anything. Our guards were better used protecting the surface entrance and the President. We couldn’t have seen this coming.”

Luna very much wanted to argue, but it was pointless. “Where are the Rainbooms now?” She asked with a sigh.

“I’m pretty sure they’re currently at a settlement called Megaton, it’s one of the bigger settlements in the area,” Tara replied. “They’re technically supposed to be searching for extra equipment in case something goes wrong with the portal, but I imagine they’re probably just trying to take it easy after everything that has happened.”

“There’s irony for you,” Sienna muttered. “Still, the President is probably going to send them a message as soon as physically possible, so they’ll probably be hammering on the front door before long.”

The overload of information was too much for Luna. She wanted nothing more than to storm out of the building and find the Rainbooms herself, but she didn’t have the faintest clue of how to begin. Besides, if the world truly was as dangerous as the women were saying, then she couldn’t drag Trixie and Sonata out into it, and leaving them with these strangers certainly wasn’t an option.

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Trixie asked, beating Luna to the punch.

“You don’t,” Sienna replied bluntly. “Not yet, anyway. As soon as the Rainbooms arrive, they’ll tell you everything, with more detail than you’ll probably want. You’ll just have to trust us for now.”

Luna frowned. Something wasn’t adding up. “Trusting you would be a lot easier if we had more details. I know that the Rainbooms are good, but I find it hard to believe that even they could manage to get so much accomplished in only a few days.”

Bewilderment flitted across Tara’s face. “A few days? The Rainbooms have been in this world for about three or four months.”

“What?!” An icy claw seized Luna’s heart. They were lying. They had to be.

Tara suddenly looked horrified. “Time dilation. Oh my god, there’s time dilation!” She leapt off the bench, her hands shaking uncontrollably. “Oh, this is bad. This is really bad! The equations weren’t… oh my fucking god! I have to let Becky and the Rainbooms know!”

Without so much as a backwards glance, Tara tore out of the room, leaving the others behind in appalled silence.

---

The snow was starting to pick back up again. Sunset was starting to wonder just how much snow the average winter brought in this region. If it continued at the rate it had been, there was a good chance that the Rainbooms were going to end up snowed in inside the Vault.

Sunset glanced around at the others as she walked. All of the Rainbooms had agreed to accompany Adam on his return to Vault 101, and each of them was fully armed and wearing every scrap of armor they had. Ostensibly, it was because the journey to the Vault was risky, despite how close it was to Megaton, but that was merely an excuse. The reality of the situation was that all of them, Adam included, expected trouble with the security team if they went in dressed the same as they did when they left. Hopefully, the security team wouldn’t be stupid enough to pick a fight with what was clearly a team of heavily-armed combat veterans.

If she was honest, Sunset was slightly looking forward to an argument. After struggling against deadly foes like raiders, Super Mutants, and the powerhouse that was the Enclave military, facing down a bunch of untrained bullies armed with batons and a handful of tiny pistols would be a nice change of pace. As Rainbow pointed out, the girls would finally be in a confrontation where their opponents were hilariously outmatched. The only thing that kept Sunset’s aggressive anticipation in check was Adam.

It was impossible to tell what Adam was feeling. He had requested that they avoid Springvale on the way to Vault 101, mostly so they didn’t have to deal with the Holy Light Monastery again, but he hadn’t uttered a single word since. Even now, he was striding along silently at the head of the group, using his power armor to forge a path through the snow for the others to follow.

On the bright side, with Adam at the fore, it didn’t take long for the group to reach the road leading up the hill towards the Vault. An odd sense of nostalgia filled Sunset as she strode past some of the battered old cars. She smiled softly as she remembered wondering whether any of them would be intact enough to drive, and her surprise when Pinkie had casually tossed her Pip-Boy at her. Even simply turning off the road and making their way up the hill gave Sunset mixed feelings, which only intensified as they passed the old promontory from which the girls had first surveyed the wasteland.

A short distance further on, Adam finally came to a stop. A rickety old wooden door sat half-buried by snow in the rockface before him.

“Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked him quietly.

Adam nodded curtly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Let’s do this.” He rolled his shoulders, then strode purposefully towards the door.

Next Chapter: Chapter 124 - Underground Again Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 47 Minutes