New Old World [Closed][TG][HARDCORE]

Dr.Beans looked at the security pony blankly. "Because there are things that might have survived the megaspells, not to mention other Vaults and I'm sure there are spots that didn't get hit as bad, so there would be survivors there who have come and gone and built their own civilisations."

The stallion snickered back at her; "A likely story."

Long listened to the two talk, leaving herself out of the conversation for the time being. Not that she was some sort of egghead like Beans, goddesses forbid, but she knew how to put two and two and two together, then Shot did.

With her head pointed upwards, watching the mote of light above them grow larger and larger, she rudely entered the conversation. "Might be all there is dead, but, well, want to risk it? That's why I'm with them, to keep them all safe from any harm. And you know... we're alive. Why not somepony else..."

The sentence let the period at the end lose itself in the hum of the elevator that was quickly approaching the surface.

Key snickered at Cascade's remark. "Shut your keyhole" Really that was the best she could come up with? Like he hadn't been hearing that one for years now. He didn't get a chance for a rebuttal though as one of the other ponies introduced herself, then flat out stated that she was the leader of this party.

He was about to say something, but Cascade beat him to it, so he settled on glaring at the mare, he most definitely wouldn't be going along with having her as the leader. And it didn't look like many of the others would either.

He retreated back to his corner and glowered some more, at least it looked like they were almost to the top.

The light above grows closer as the seconds tick by, becoming only marginally brighter as the platform crawls up the shaft by the teeth of its gear mechanisms. The rough-hewn, uneven, slick stone walls around the platform give way to uniform, trim gray metal, discolored with age and grime at a point...and to the dismay of some, it dawns that the light is not the outside world, merely an extension of the tunnel below. The top of an elevator shaft. The light came from dingy yellow fluorescents bracketed by metal wire, making cruel mockery of them.

Out of nowhere the platform jerks to a halt, treating its occupants to an unexpected jolt and screeching of metal, and it remains a few hoof-lengths below the edge of the floor above. Close enough to step up, even if it was steep. Nevertheless the technician swears under his breath and looks to the panel again, knitting his brow together.

A few moments passed before the second member of Security sighed, and spoke up; "...well, folks, guess we just have to climb up. With that, he half-hopped, half pushed himself off the platform and through the doorway above. A shorter tunnel presented itself here; this one, they could see the end of. It was at the top of a short staircase, in the form of a simple metal hatch, like the doors back in the Vault.

(Or was this still the Vault?)

One way or another, the ponies got up and off the aging platform.














It gave way moments later. The last two ponies on it, the elevator technician and Cascade (who was rudely bustled to the back of the group), were thrown off guard as the platform screamed in protest as it ground several hoofs down in a shower of sparks.

The gears weren't holding. They were too old. Cascade was lucky - she could fly up the shaft.

The technician was not a pegasi. He could not fly. The look on his face was one of bewilderment and confusion, then sudden realization as it dawned upon him.

"...sweet Cel-" was all he had time to say before the metal teeth of the gears snapped. The platform dropped, sent hurtling downwards into the darkness of the shaft in the blink of an eye.

The poor bastard was too shocked to cry out.

As the lift ground to a sudden halt, Cascade groaned impatiently, and then frowned through the hound's explanation.

She stretched her wings a little. At least the climbing part wouldn't be a problem for her. If there was a shortage of standing space up there, she was the only one of the group that wouldn't need it, so she stood and waited for the ground-bound ponies to push past – ungrateful jerks.

But before that other technician could climb off the elevator, the whole platform violently jerked beneath them. A reflexive flap of her wings took her above the platform. She looked at the technician pony, who was vainly trying to reach the passageway that was now hopelessly out of his reach.

"...sweet Cel-"

Cascade swooped down and grabbed hold of one of his forelegs just as the elevator platform fell screaming into the dark. “I got you!” she cried out, pumping her wings desperately just to stay airborne. She looked up at the passageway. It was only a few metres above – no problem.

“Damn it! Why are you... so heavy?”

She worked her wings harder, faster, but she was only gaining height at an agonising crawl. Her muscles ached from exertion.

Her grip faltered.

“No!”

A wild panic flooded her mind as the technician plummeted away from her, and she dove after him, into the darkness.

About a minute later, she rose slowly from the shaft, downcast and empty-hoofed. As she alighted in the passageway, she looked briefly at the ponies in front of her before her eyes fell to some unknown point beneath the floor.

“I... um...” Her voice was a little hoarse. She cleared her throat, but didn't say anything else.

With the platform grinding to a halt not far from the top, it seemed they'd have to make a small climb to get there, which wasn't Dr.Beans' strong suit, physical activity, but if she had to do it she would.

Probably making the most fuss in the actual climb by having the strength of ten kittens, it took her the longest out of all to climb up, which wasn't too long before the platform gave out.

It only just registered with her that she wasn't the last one who needed to get off of the platform, so as it fell she was just relaxing over the fact she had climbed off of it. But the horror dawned as she heard just the last fraction of a curse from the engineer pony before the major commotion begun, the platform plummeting and Cascade trying to save him...

For a ganger, the filly had at least tried, there were no words that could describe the thoughts over what might be happening below now, there must've been panic spreading throughout the Stable as they realised they'd be stuck down there forever now.... And they'd have to see what had happened to the engineer. "A...." She tried at least saying something to help the pegasus over her attempt to help the pony. Despite the clouded mind caused by Mintals, this was a very real problem they had on their hooves, she had to try and say something.

Most deaths in the Stable were due to illness or an engineering accident if not old age, and while this may fall under the engineering accident category, it wasn't for any pony to suffer such a fate. Having dealt with death presumably more than the others, it shouldn't have hit her hard, but it did considering the situation. "At least you tried...." She attempted to console, trailing off at the end of her sentence.

Key got off the elevator as soon as possible once it grounded to an agonizingly slow halt, not looking back even a little bit, eager to get off it, especially since it dropped down a little, most likely signifing that it would fail all the way quite soon afterwords.

Sure enough, shortly after he had started up the stairs he heard a loud tortured metal groan of metal on metal and the elevator started to fall. Despite his best effort not to, he had to look back to see if anyone had been still on the lift when it fell. He was really hoping that it was that prissy mare who had declared herself leader had gone down.

Unfortunately it wasn't, but instead was Cascade and some techy that had taken a dive. Knowing that Cascade could fly, he wasn't to particular worried, and when she came up without the techy he shrugged and moved forward. It's not like they could do anything but move forward now...

Long looked down into the shaft. When the platform finally crashed and sent shockwave through the shaft, ruffling through Long's mane. She knew about technician that was left on the platform. She looked at Cascade safely landing next to them, and wondered why she left him him there to die.

Still... for some reason, she wasn't really concerned about his death. She knew she should, everyone should be sad, or shocked, or at least, well, feel something, a stab at the heart. But she didn't. Despite her best effort, he was dead. Ta-da, end of story. And also, they had no way back, and the platform likely killed another pony standing down there. Neither that managed to wake some bad feelings inside her.

Long Shot at least sighed. "Well, darn. I guess this about does it. We can mourn him later." Or whatever. "We should get outside. Maybe find a long enough rope to get back down. Or maybe we have some at us?" she asked, looking at the other securitypony.

There was a moment's pause for Bright Skies as the platform stopped suddenly and settled onto its emergency braces. The Unicorn frowned, "Well that's unfortunate at least it stopped at the top and not the middle!" He spent no longer on the beleaguered lift, climbing up with the others, as he did he heard it, the tell tale sound of stressed and aged metal failing.

The unicorn spun around just in time to watch Screwy vanish into the abyss, one of the pegasi in flight after him. Skies found himself frozen, then as he heard grunts and gasps from the shaft her hurried to look down. There he saw the pegasus, Cascade, he reminded himself, trying her best to lift the much heavier technician. He quickly tried to light up a telekinesis spell, but found himself floundering a bit in the stress of the situation and just as it clicked over, the death yell of Screwy sounded out along side the ragged crunch of metal as the lift found bottom.

Bright Skies fell to a seated position, "Screwy," he was lost for a few moments, brought back only by the general movement toward the exit. "I... I should have inspected the lines, we both should have." He looked back at the hole as he rose and joined the walk toward the door, "I don't think I'll ever be able to take an elevator like that again." He righted his gaze and shook his head sadly, "Mother of all screw ups."

As soon as the elevator came to a halt, Aurora tried to ensure that she was first off. Leading from the front, as she saw it. She tried to shoot a glare at Key Ring as he bustled past in a hurry to get off the elevator. Such poor manners she supposed she should expect from someone with such an extensive criminal history.

She sighed, and turned to address the others as they stepped off. This seemed like a good opportunity to try and set some rules, and how they should proceed once on the surface.

A sound of grinding metal was shortly followed by snapping noises, and the elevator plunged out of sight. Aurora was quite aware that there was still a pony on it as the machine fell. She raised an eyebrow. “Stand back!” she ordered the others. “I don’t want anypony slipping over the edge.”

She gestured towards them, and after a moment’s thought, illuminated her horn to provide some light. She took a couple of cautious steps nearer to the edge, only to spot Cascade flapping back up sadly. It seemed the pegasus had witnessed the death of the technician.

Aurora took a moment to consider her words. A leader should support and cheer up, she thought. Be supportive, a light in the dark. She nearly turned her head to look at her cutie mark, but paused. She tilted her head towards Cascade. “Bad luck, a real tragedy.” She shook her head. “Still, we’re not going to benefit waiting here, are we? Let’s go, everypony.”

Clover wouldn't vocalize a response to Aurora's earlier words, giving only a light sneer in response. He would show her, he'd show them all exactly what a genius like him could do.

When the group got off the platform, Clover would have barely given a glance back, his mind entwined with thoughts of success and victory on the surface world, but even his active imagination couldn't prevent him from hearing the sudden grinding of metal as the elevator dropped a decent amount.

Quickly, he turned around to look, a few Engineer instincts jumping into play on hearing something that definitely should not have been. Looking back into the shaft, he only saw the Technician for a moment, before the elevator broke, and plummeted back down into the darkness.

However, as cold as it was, Clover was used to accidents like this in the engineering section, and all he felt on seeing the Tech's certain death was anger, rather then sadness.

"Celestia damn it, another unneeded death due to shoddy design..."

He would mutter, before backing away from the shaft.

"Anyway, I suppose I must agree with the 'Resources Manager' for the moment. We have a job to do, and we can't stand about here all day..."

Lucky stared back at the space where the platform fell, her mouth agape. 'That could have been us,' she thought to herself.

"W-wait a minute!" she exclaimed, as the other began to trot onward. "How are we gonna get back? What if there's nothing outside? Then we'll be trapped in a nothingless nothing, with no way of getting back! What if anypony else dies from a collapsing metal platform?"

Lucky quickly turned to her brother, "Field, don't let me stand on metal platforms! They're dangerous!"

Bright skies turned on Clover with a shake of his head, "That's not shoddy design, that's beautiful design. That thing lasted and still ran after how many hundred years? We're lucky it ran at all, I will say this though, whoever decided on not putting stairs here deserves whatever fate befell them."

He waved back at the elevator shaft before moving on, "It'd have been fine if we could have come out here though, put a little oil on the thing, tighten a few bolts replace some corroded parts." He kept on rambling about what could have been done to avoid it, partly to avoid thinking about how close they had all been to falling to their doom.

Field would let out a snort at Skies defending the elevator.

"Please...if that elevator was designed to allow us to leave the Stable, then breaking down like that is clearly a rather hefty design flaw. I don't know what kind of mechanics or engineers they had back when they were designing this, but the lack of foresight to incorporate multiple safety mechanisms to avoid such an issue shows clear lack of foresight on Stable-Tec's part. Now, if someone more intelligent had designed this, I'm cetain they would ha-"

Field was cut off from his quickly turning-egocentric ramblings by his sister and her panic.

"Huh? Oh...uh...Don't worry Lucky, I'll make sure any more elevators we get on are in workable condition..."

“At least you tried,” said Greeny. But it wasn’t good enough.

“Well, darn. I guess this about does it,” said one of the hounds. Looks like she’s useless, after all.

“Mother of all screw ups,” said the old timer. That’s what you are, kid.

“Stand back! I don’t want anypony slipping over the edge,” said the Princess. The only pegasus on the team clearly can’t be trusted with such a responsibility. “Bad luck, a real tragedy,” she continued, shaking her head with smug disdain.

“Celestia damn it, another unneeded death due to shoddy design,” said the bespectacled prick-face. Whoever put that punk on the team needs a kick in the head.

“Field, don't let me stand on metal platforms!” said that... other pony. I don’t want that pegasus to let me die!

“I know!” Her voice ringing through the tunnel caught her by surprise, but she was too pissed off to let it concern her. “He’s dead because I messed up,” she yelled somewhat less loudly this time, angrily sweeping her eyes over the rest of the group. “I get it, okay? You don’t need to rub it in!”

Her nerves were jittery with rage. She took a breath to settle them, but it was like spitting on a fire.

Key had ignored the others as they continued to blabber on about the death of the technician, and continued to move forward through the tunnel towards the exit. He was surprised that for all their talk they hadn't moved on yet. It's not like spouting worthless blame was gonna do anything.

The techie was a splatter mark on the bottom of the elevator shaft. Nothing they could say or do would change this fact and the sooner they accepted this inevitably the better in Key's opinion. Once he reached the end of the stairs and or the tunnel, he would sit down and yell down to the others.

"You coming or not?"

Field would raise an eyebrow at Cascade's breakdown. It seemed that the pegasus was blaming themself for the Technician's fate...how foolish.

"Oh stop it. That was a full-grown pony, and that elevator fell far too quickly. Expecting anyone to have been able to save him is simply assigning blame where the only one to blame is the idiot who designed that elevator to begin with. There was nothing you could have done."

He would state, his obnoxious tone making it unclear as whether that had been an attempt to cheer Cascade up, or to stop the pity-party before it began.

"Now, let's move on. We have a job to do, and standing around dwelling on it won't solve anything."

With that, he would readjust his glasses, before trotting over to join Key.

Bright Skies let out an exasperated sigh, he'd planned to say something nice to the distraught mare, but instead he had to continue on the idiot designer. "It's not the design! The design determines in initial limitations, structure and how well it stands alone the test of time. Given that that elevator lasted, how many hundred years?" He directed his question to no pony in particular, not waiting for an answer before continuing his rant, "For it to be operational that long between maintenance visits is a feat of design, engineering and construction, but no matter how good a design is, no engine runs forever without lubricant and no machine left dormant for hundreds of years can be expected to survive dormancy unscathed!" He let out a frustrated huff, Field had clearly never been down in the depths of the stable replacing hoses and bolts.

That's about when he reminded himself he was supposed to be at least trying to console the mare, "Look, it's not your fault you couldn't fly him up, you did damn good though, you caught him! If I or numb horn here," Bright nodded his head toward Field,"had gotten to the edge sooner he'd be up here with us. Try to look on the bright side, he didn't suffer, that fall would have killed him on impact." Skies quickly ran some numbers figuring out the impact force, he quickly decided he didn't actually want to know and went to join Key at the door. Field was officially on Skies's 'Dumb Ponies' list, which was not particularly long, but long enough...