“Months,” Luna muttered half to herself, too shocked to even be rattled by Tara’s foul language.

Sienna nodded, watching the three nervously. “We figured that it would be the same in your world. I don’t think the Rainbooms ever mentioned anything about time dilation.”

“It’s not possible,” Trixie said quietly. She was staring blankly at the table, her food barely touched. “It can’t be possible.”

“I’m afraid it is. The Rainbooms turned up in Vault 101 about three or four months ago,” Sienna told her firmly, though not unkindly. “They wandered for a few days, ended up in a place called Rivet City for a couple of weeks, then spent a fair while stuck in the war between us and the Brotherhood. That all ended just over a month ago.” Sienna rubbed her temples. “Hell, if this had happened a few days ago, they would have been here to greet you.”

Almost reluctantly, Luna glanced at the door, trying to make sense of everything. Thinking back on it, she remembered Sunset mentioning that the time difference between Equestria and CHS could get a little wonky, especially when the portal wasn’t used for a while. But for it to be off by that much was unprecedented.

“It makes sense,” Sonata said suddenly, still quietly munching on her cereal.

“What does?” Luna asked.

Sonata swallowed her mouthful and shrugged. “The Raing- Rainbooms being stuck here for months. That gross little changeling told us that Starswirl disappeared, like, a thousand years ago. I haven’t been in your dumb human world that long.”

The words felt like a hammerblow to Luna. It was bizarre enough that Sonata Dusk, of all people, was providing useful information, but the fact that it corroborated what the Enclave was saying had a particular sting to it. Unlike the Enclave, Luna couldn’t imagine any reason that Sonata had to lie. It would actually work out better in the siren’s favor if the Enclave were lying.

“If they really are telling the truth, then you’re in a lot more trouble than you already were,” Trixie hissed as she glared at Sonata, her thoughts clearing running along the same line as Luna’s.

Sonata just gave her a blank look. “Wait, why am I in trouble?”

“Because you Dazzlings are the ones who sabotaged the portal in the first place!” Trixie spat.

“Uh, no we’re not,” Sonata said, genuine confusion in both her expression and her voice. “We just answered the changeling’s dumb questions about the Rainbooms. The changeling and the other Sunset were the ones who messed around with the portal.”

Sienna held a hand up to stop the brewing argument. “Hold on a second, you mean there’s three Sunset Shimmers, too?”

That number didn’t sit right with Luna. She knew that there were two Twilight Sparkles and Sunset Shimmers, but she hadn’t heard about there being three of anyone. “What do you mean, three?”

“There’s three of a bunch of people that we know of,” Sienna replied. “There’s the pony Twilight, Rarity, and Sunset, there’s the Twilight, Rarity, and Sunset from your world, and there’s a Twilight, a Rarity, and a Sunset from this world. They’ve got different names, though.”

Luna wasn’t sure how much more surprise she was capable of feeling. “What are their names?” She asked weakly.

Sienna hummed as she thought. “If I remember rightly, the Rainbooms said that this world’s Rarity lives in Rivet City. Her name’s Tabitha. As for the other two…” She smirked ever so slightly. “Our Sunset is currently trying to clean up a certain portal mishap while sending a message to the Rainbooms, and our Twilight just ran out of the room in a panic.”

A look of realization flashed across Trixie’s face. “Is that why you look like-”

“Don’t call me Sugarcoat,” Sienna said bluntly.

Luna reeled as she suddenly understood why everyone looked so familiar to her. Right there was the moment that she finally reached her limit. It was just too insane. Either the Enclave women were phenomenally good liars to come up with such a ludicrous story on the fly, or they were telling the truth. Luna resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t know which was the case until the Rainbooms actually showed up. “What do we do until the Rainbooms get here?”

“Pretty much whatever you want, as long as it involves staying down here in the basement,” Sienna replied. “The President probably won’t want you going up to the surface until the Rainbooms are here. Everyone down here has security clearance and can be trusted. Upstairs, not so much.”

Trixie scowled at her. “So, we’re prisoners?”

The look Sienna gave her was withering. “That depends on whether you believe that we’re trying to contain you, or protect you. I’ve heard the others saying that your world is a nice place. This world is not. We have people like Horrigan to protect us for a reason.” She stood up and brushed the creases out of her lab coat. “Come with me. If you want to feel less like prisoners, let’s go and wait by the magic pillar. I’m pretty sure I won’t get executed for that.”

---

Tara belted through the corridors as quickly as she could. The revelation that there was significant time dilation between her world and the Rainbooms’ world had shaken her to her core, sending cold dread at what the portal might have unleashed shuddering through her veins. The President had to be warned immediately.

As she rounded a corner at top speed, a horrifying sight made Tara skid to a sudden stop.

A man was staggering along the corridor. He had a fist-sized smouldering crater in his chest from what Tara guessed was a plasma shot, and a similar one where his face should have been, but the bulging mutations on his arm made him instantly recognizable.

“Doctor Turner?!” Tara exclaimed.

Turner turned towards her, giving her a clear view of cauterized and melted tissue through the hole in his face. Even more disturbingly, yellow tendrils were pushing through the damaged flesh, quivering and pulsating as they reached across the wound. A low moan emanated from Turner’s ravaged jaw.

“What the fuck?!” Tara stared in abject horror and disbelief at the shambling corpse-thing, then shook her head angrily. “Damn it, I don’t have time for this bullshit!” She whipped a hidden taser pistol out of its holster under her lab coat and fired at Turner’s chest. He dropped instantly, his whole body spasming as the electrical current coursed through his nervous system.

Tara gave Turner a prolonged jolt, just to make sure that Turner was thoroughly incapacitated, then plucked the wires out of the taser and put it away before drawing a laser pistol instead. “You know what? I’m actually glad that Becky made me carry these.” She stepped over to Turner’s prone form, then calmly and deliberately fired a single shot into each of his joints. “I don’t know how you survived with those wounds, but I can’t let you go wandering around unsupervised and, frankly, after what you pulled I want you dead.”

Bright red flashes lit up the corridor as Tara emptied the rest of her magazine into Turner’s face. “Now, stay dead,” she spat as she slipped her laser pistol back into its holster.

With Turner dealt with, though probably only temporarily, Tara returned her attention to the task at hand and sped off through the corridors once again. It didn’t take her long to reach the main hangar. Tara almost sagged with relief as she spotted Horrigan and Vincent waiting at the base of the magical pillar of light. Hearing her footsteps, the two turned towards her. “What’s wrong?” Vincent asked worriedly, her expression clearly giving away her anxiety.

“Two... things,” Tara panted. “One... Turner is... alive.”

Vincent’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? But, I shot-”

“He’s alive!” Tara snarled. Vincent baulked and hurried off to find Turner, prompting Tara to shout after him, “Head to the common room, you’ll find him!” She waited until Vincent called back to her that he’d check, before turning to Horrigan. “Where’s the President?”

“Upstairs, contacting the Brotherhood of Steel,” Horrigan replied. “Is there a problem?”

Tara nodded grimly and strode towards the elevator, calling back over her shoulder, “I think we might have a serious issue on her hands. I need to contact her this instant.”

“Hold on a second.” Tara glanced back and glared, wondering why Horrigan would ask her to wait when she was clearly in a hurry. To her surprise, he dropped to one knee and held two fingers to the side of his helmet. “I had a radio transmitter installed in my helmet, and there’s signal relays in the elevator shaft. You can contact her from here.”

“Fantastic!” Tara eagerly hurried back to Horrigan’s side. He reeled off a bunch of military jargon to whoever was waiting on the other side, then held a hand up for her to wait.

Each second felt torturously long to Tara, but it was only a couple of minutes before Becky’s voice crackled out from a speaker in Horrigan’s helmet, “Tara, What’s going on? Is there an-”

“Time dilation,” Tara interrupted. “There’s a significant difference in the flow of time on either side of the portal.”

Becky swore and ordered someone to secure the area she was in. “Damn it, Tara, this shit is highly classified. Can’t it wait unti-”

“The portal wasn’t designed with time dilation in mind!” Tara cut in again. "That means that the equations weren’t accurate, and the power requirements-”

“Tara, slow down!” Becky demanded. “I get that this is important; it’s going to suck for the Rainbooms, but you’re talking as if this is an immediate problem, and if it is, you need to tell me why.”

Tara nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose, gathering her racing thoughts. “Okay, okay. Look, the SDT detects all sorts of signals, including Equestrian magic, which is how we were able to get coordinates for the portal to lock on to. The problem is, we needed to adjust the coordinates according to any time dilation. We allowed for a small amount of leeway either way, but nowhere near enough for how much difference that there was.”

“Okay, I’m following you, but why is that a problem right now?” Becky asked.

“When the Rainbooms arrived, their portal connected to the SDT itself, and it had only a small quantity of power compared to what we had on hand, and a small quantity of magic,” Tara explained.

“Yeah, that’s why the Rainbooms were dragged through. The portal seized any nearby magic to try and stabilize itself,” Becky recited. “Why is this significant?”

Tara fought the urge to snap at her. “It’s significant because we had a considerable reserve of magic, and every tiny quantity that the portal used was bombarded with radiation to make it multiply exponentially as it passed into the portal, turning that reserve into a massive amount, much more than the SDT should have needed to account for the difference in time dilation.”

“Right… so the SDT used up all that magic to overcome the time dilation, and the excess is what melted the portal, is that what you’re saying?” Becky asked.

“No,” Tara replied, desperate to get Becky to truly understand. “If the excess magic had simply built up in the portal, we would have had another eruption of power like the one at Raven Rock. But if the portal had too much power, then why did it drag Luna and the others through when it connected to CHS? It should have only done that if there wasn’t enough magic left for the portal to sustain itself!”

There was a pause from the other end as Becky digested the information. “So, the portal had too much magic, but it didn’t dump it all in our world, and it didn’t have enough to hold the portal open in CHS, so… where did all of the excess magic go?” A pregnant pause followed. “Did we just blast all of that magic into Equestria?” Becky asked anxiously.

“Thankfully, no, we made adjustments to the portal so it wouldn’t connect to Equestria itself.” Tara bit her lip nervously. “Unfortunately, it’s very likely that our world, CHS, and Equestria, aren’t the only three realities out there. I’m just doing the math off the top of my head at the moment, but I think we might have just fired Equestrian magic into dozens of different realities.”

An appalled silence was all that remained in the wake of her explanation. Finally, Becky started giving out orders at high speed, “Get all non-essential personnel up to the surface, now, including our new visitors. Horrigan, guard the portal room in case something decides to investigate where the magic came from and comes looking. I’ll get hold of Elder Lyons again. We need the Rainbooms.”

---

The dramatic return to Vault 101 was derailed almost immediately. Adam reached for the door handle, but the snow stopped him from pulling it open. He braced himself to put some force into it, but instead of yanking the door open, he ended up ripping the handle out of the door. Everyone stared at it in bemusement.

“Uh, do you need a hand there, fella?” Applejack asked.

“I’ve got it.” Adam tried to prise the door open using the new hole he had made, but it still wouldn’t budge. With a huff, he took a step back, then launched himself shoulder-first at it. The flimsy wooden door gave way like a wet paper towel beneath his power-armored form.

Sunset snorted softly. “That’s one way of doing it.” She carefully pushed through the trench Adam had left in the snow and stepped through the doorway. The rocky tunnel within looked much the same as it did in the vague memories Sunset had of it from the last time she had desperately sprinted through, save for the smattering of snow and splinters that Adam had brought in with him.

The man in question was brushing debris from his armor. “I guess it’s a good thing that the Vault didn’t actually need that door.”

“They do need our help, though,” Fluttershy said as she entered the tunnel with the other girls.

“Yeah, about that.” Rainbow brushed snow from her clothes and nodded further into the tunnel. “How exactly are we going to get through that without breaking it?”

Sunset looked down towards the far end of the tunnel. The wan sunlight trickling in just about illuminated the immense cog-shaped door of Vault 101 set into a concrete wall. A yellow ‘101’ was stenciled right in the middle of it.

“Don’t worry, Amata sent us the password,” Adam replied. He straightened up and strode down towards the door. The girls followed, stoically walking past the skeletal remains of those unfortunates who had tried and failed to get into the Vault after the bombs fell.

Next to the door, strangely devoid of skeletons, was a control panel that Sunset hadn’t noticed before. It had several dials and a single lever on it, but no keypad or other obvious method of inputting a password. Before anyone could point that out, Adam whipped out a knife and used it to pry open a small panel next to the lever, revealing the necessary keypad. He deftly inputted the password and pulled the lever.

An alarm immediately started blaring. There was a metallic scraping sound, then a horrific grinding screech as the door was dragged inwards and rolled aside, revealing the interior of the Vault.

The entrance chamber looked just as dank and grimy as Sunset remembered it. No-one was there to meet the group, which was mildly suspicious given the amount of noise they had made. Just as the group was about to enter, Fluttershy called out in a loud whisper, “Wait. I can smell dead bodies in there.”

Sunset felt her blood run cold, remembering how Officer Gomez had tried to protect the girls from the other security officers in this very room. Thankfully, there was no stench of rotting flesh, so she knew that Gomez hadn’t been killed all that time ago, but that was cold comfort. “Where are they?”

“One by the control panel, up there, the other in a side room off to the right,”Fluttershy replied. “One at least three days old, the other I’d say about a week or so.”

Pinkie shivered and looked around warily. “Uh… aren’t they probably going to be people that we know?”

“Probably,” Adam growled. He stomped down the path towards the control panel, the girls following close behind. Soon enough, they spotted a body slumped next to the railings by the control panel. A pair of bullet wounds could be seen in his chest.

In an effort to spare Adam’s feelings, Sunset stepped around him and over to the body. “I’ll see who this is. Rainbow, Applejack, check the side room.”

“On it,” Rainbow replied.

Sunset carefully crouched next to the dead Vault dweller and, as respectfully as she could, lifted his head so she could identify him. “Shit. It’s Jim Wilkins,”

“Isn’t that the man you used to play Grognak with when you were children?” Rarity asked Adam. He just nodded slowly in response, his helmet hiding whatever expression he was making.

With a mumbled apology, Sunset closed Wilkins’ eyes and folded his hands over his chest. She hadn’t known him well, but he had always been polite and courteous whenever she had encountered him while wandering the Vault.

“Steve Armstrong is back there,” Rainbow said somberly as she and Applejack returned from the side room. “I can’t say for certain, but from the wounds he’s got, it looks like radroaches got him.”

“He had a Stealth Boy on him, but no weapons,” Applejack noted. She shook her head and looked down at Wilkins’ body. “What the heck is the Overseer playin’ at, leavin’ the two of them here like this?”

It was Twilight who answered first, “The two of them were probably trying to escape. If Steve had a Stealth Boy, then there’s a good chance that the Overseer doesn’t even know that he’s out here. As for Jim…” She adjusted her glasses and shrugged. “Either the security officer that killed him was too lazy to bring his body back in, or the Overseer deliberately made them leave his body here as a punishment and a warning to anyone else who tried to leave. Either is equally plausible.”

“Was the secret tunnel to the Overseer’s office open?” Adam asked.

Applejack glanced at him in surprise. “There’s a secret tunnel?”

“That’s probably a no, then,” Pinkie said with a soft snort.

“Good.” With a quick glance at Wilkins, Adam turned towards the door that led deeper into the Vault. Sunset spared the body a look, too, before she and the others fell in behind him. She was starting to lose track of how many people she didn’t quite know who had been killed in this world.

Just as Adam shoved the door open, the group discovered a surprise lying in wait, as a panting security officer skidded to a halt in front of them. He backpedaled a few steps when he spotted Adam. Sunset realized, with his helmet on, Adam probably just looked like some random power-armored nightmare here to terrorise the Vault population. To the security officer’s credit, he straightened up and drew a small pistol. “Stop right there! I don’t know how you got in here, but-”

“Hi, Officer Gomez! Long time no see!” Pinkie cut in brightly.

Sunset felt a mix of relief and amusement as Gomez paused in his threat. He glanced at the girls, then back at Adam, then back at the girls again. “Hold on… Wait a minute! It’s you!” The girls all grinned as Gomez lifted the visor of his security helmet. “I hardly recognized all of you, what with all of that armor and gear! But does that mean…?” He glanced at Adam meaningfully, and sighed with relief when he removed his helmet to reveal his face. “Whoa, you damn near gave me a heart attack there, boy. Guess that explains how you got that door open. You’ve got more experience with it than most everyone down here combined.”

“We heard that there was trouble brewing down here,” Adam said, not bothering to mention that it was Amata who had sent a message out. “What’s going on?”

Gomez winced and glanced over his shoulder, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “Yeah, things have gotten a little, um, tense, since you all left. We thought that it would die down a bit after a few incidents, but it turns out it was just warming up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sunset asked.

It was clear from Gomez’ expression that he didn’t really want to discuss it, but the glare from Adam told him that he wasn’t getting out of it. “A lot of the residents, led by Amata, want to open the Vault up to the outside world. Of course, the Overseer is trying hard to suppress it, and he’s got a lot of residents backing him, not to mention almost all of the security team.”

“And what about you?” Rainbow asked pointedly.

“I just want what’s best for my son,” Gomez replied. “I thought that he would be safest if the Vault stayed closed, but after everything that’s happened, I’m not so sure any more.” He glanced over his shoulder again. “Look, this isn’t your problem anymore. The Overseer would go ballistic if he heard that any of you had come back here and gotten inside somehow. Just turn around and leave, now, and I’ll pretend this conversation never happened. You’ll be saving yourself a lot of trouble.”

Applejack snorted. “Ah think you’ll find that we can handle anything the Overseer can throw at us. We’re comin’ in.”

Gomez looked at the girls warily, his gaze finally settling on Adam. “I don’t recommend it. When the Overseer finds out that you’re back, he’ll-”

“Fuck the Overseer,” Adam cut in firmly. “Take us to Amata. We’ll figure out what to do after that. If the Overseer has a problem with it, he can come and tell us himself.”

With a heavy sigh, Gomez nodded and lowered his security visor. “Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Come on, the rebels have barricaded themselves in the lower levels.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 125 - Grim Reveals Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 32 Minutes