I Can Have a Dark Side IC (Closed)

“Great!” Bakewell grinned, having managed to regain a sizable amount of vigor while Scrap was away checking on the map. The mare seemed relieved to know who she was going to be with. “This is great. Now I don’t have to worry about Cross or Weld trying to pull me into their groups to torture me. You’re so considerate, Scrap!”

She looped a hoof over the buck’s shoulder and gave him a quick squeeze before swapping her attention back to Stable exploration.

“Have you ever been in a Stable before, Scrap? I don’t remember. Your plan sounds good, though maybe we should have a backup plan just in case administration is lo- oh, who am I kidding? Of course you’ve already considered that! When do we leave?”

Violet raised an eyebrow when Bakewell mentioned Arc Weld.

‘Why would Arc torture Bakewell? That doesn’t make any sense. Did something happen between them? I’m going to have to ask...Later.’

Violet pushed the question aside for now and nodded when Bakewell praised Scrap’s plan. “Yeah, that sounds like a great plan Scrappy! Oooh, and if we do run into any locked doors I should be able to get around them through the airvents! All Stables have airvents!” she exclaimed, before she frowned. “Wait...I bet any locked doors will have computers controlling them. That’s not going to work, I won’t be able to open them from the other side then...Stupid computers.” she muttered.

Arc smiled at the four in front of him. The pony inside his head nervously mentally gulped. This went... better than I expected, he thought. Seemingly all of them just went 'alright' with going into the Stable under his lead.

"Right then," Arc started. "I guess we're set then." Arc slowly sat on his haunches and for few seconds had an expression of deep thoughts. "When we get inside, as at least me and Lucky know, it's mostly narrow corridors and relatively small rooms accedes from those corridors. Everything is made for utmost efficiency, so the Stable is, when taken from a global look, roughly cubical in shape, from top to bottom. Beside Atrium, which is a large room made for gathering of ponies and is probably going to be close behind the airlock, and the apple orchard, which will be more deeper underground, everything is tight small spaces. Everything is built in right angles, so we will have good cover along the corners and bends and forks in the corridors, but it lacks natural cover when it opens into a larger room. All and all, it's easy to defend, bottleneck after bottleneck."

Arc took a breath, though a bit on his next words, and continued. "Next, security system. We should expect pop up turrets in both ceilings and floors, ready to jump us when we will have no cover to hide behind. All and all... we will have to move cautiously, and most importantly, silently. We have time, so lets keep our heads cool in there. That means... right. Lucky and Xeshir, I would like to have you guarding the rear of the team, watch our back. Rad, you'll be in the middle as a reserve for both ends of the file. I'll be in front with Nova, since I have the map, and Nova can move quietly."

Arc dryly gulped, feeling his throat parched after the monologue. "Any question, or notes on what I said?" Arc asked as he floated his canteen to his lips for a drink.

Cuppa simply smiled and nodded as Scrap gave a small explanation as to what he could gather from the map and Bake displayed relief over Scrap having her in his group.

"Ah'm jus' lookin' forward t' gettin' in there an' seein' what we gotta deal with, maybe check their medical facilities an' such when we find 'em." She said. "Then ah can get home an' see what else is in mah new book." The coffee-pony finished with a hint of pre-emptive glee in her voice. Who knew discovering spells could be so fun?

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"Okay, ponies!" Radiant Waves suddenly chimed. "Time to be going in, just need to organise two more groups and we're good to go." She followed up with, trotting to the ponies who'd not buddied up with anypony. Then pointing to Shooting Spectrum, Flash, Dash, Amber Core and Cyber Star. "You five go together, so we can spread out more and explore the Stable faster. Aaaand...."

She then pointed at Cross, Bone Head, Aquilinus and Marcus. "You four come with me. Clean Cut, could you please go with that group?" She said, pointing towards Scrap's group, to which Clean Cut gave a little nod, seeming rather nervous and embarrassed about something now.

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"How 'bout I come along with your little group of buddies, Rad? Waves is sorting the others out right now, and Stable adventuring could be fun." Bada Boom suddenly said, sort of breaking whatever group talk had been going on. "....So long as you guys don't mind, that is." A sudden change of tone from the buck making it seem as if he just realised he'd more or less tried to impose himself on Arc's group.

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Amber Core and Cyber Star would introduce themselves to their group and Clean Cut would do the same whilst everypony ensured they were geared up for entering the Stable.

Once ready, Cyber Star's group, accompanied by Amber Core, Shooting Spectrum, Lightning Flash and Galactic Dash, which was now known as Group 1.

Radiant's group consisting of Cross Roads, Bone Head, Marcus and Aquilinus would head in first, formally known as group 2 for now.

Group 3 was Arc's group, which contained himself, Rad Boom, Nova Surge, Xeshir, Lucky Draw and Bada Boom.

And the last group, group 4 was Scrap's group, followed by Bakewell Tart, Violet Star, Clean Cut and Cuppa Beans.
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A brief stream of curse words escaped Cyber Star as he worked the control panel for the door, furiously tapping buttons on his pipbuck before the sirens warning them all of the doors opening sounded loudly, disrupting most conversations for the time being.

"EVERYPONY IN PLEASE! NO LOLLYGAGGING!" Radiant's magically-buffed voice roared over the sirens, waving with her hoof in a large gesture for everypony to get going.

Once everypony was in they'd find themselves in a somewhat open area that looked almost immaculate in condition, anypony with a keen eye could see the Stable was very well maintained by something.

It was nice to see a Stable with enough space in the entrance hallway for everypony to fit in comfortably, with leg-space, Radiant encouraged everypony to stay in their respective groups.

"Now every pony, griffon and zebra, we've got a lot of ground to cover, so try not to get too caught up in what you're doing, alright?" Radiant's typically cheery voice was already making an announcement. "Now, are there any questions about what we're doing, or are you all ready to get on with this job?" She decided to ask, smiling all the while.

(Everyone has about... 24 hours OOC to get anything else cleared up, then we advance :3)

Scraps cheerfully followed the rest of the ponies into the stable after the klaxons that signaled the opening of the stable door, leading his little group. Once they were inside, he figured that he should inform the pony that'd be accompanying them, what his plan was.

"Alright Cut, just letting you know what our plan was. We were gonna head to the administration area first, since it's likely to have maps for the other floors, and good descriptions of what we'd find everywhere else. Then I think Cuppa wanted to visit the medical area, so once we locate the maps, I thibk we should head there. Sound good?"

Marcus smiled as they stepped into the Stable. Here they were, going into a relic of the old world! Who knew what secrets lay inside!?

Marcus chuckled a bit as he gazed around, but got ahold of himself to listen to Radiant. Shaking his head, he stepped forward to address her.

"I have no questions, Miss Radiant! I am excited to be exploring this Stable! I imagine the rest of the wasafiri are as well!"

After this, he stepped away to the rest of his group, beggining to hop in place with excitement once more.

"Are you all excited to explore? I am excited! Who wouldn't be excited in a time like this? This is probably one of the greatest things ever! I'm Marcus, by the way! Who are you all?"

He somehow managed to say this all in one breath all the while hopping in place. So excited was he that he had even forgotten to do his introductory bow.

“Oh. If we get enough time, do you think we could check out the dining area? Um. It’s not a priority or anything, though. We should probably check out the administration and the medical area first since those have use. It’s just… I don’t know. Maybe if we end up right next to it or something? If we're not having to rush around?” Bakewell inquired, before promptly managing to talk her own self down from her wishes as the mare followed close beside her husband.

“You know what? Never mind. It’s silly. I’m silly. Hello, Cut! Nice to meet you.

Bone head was surprised at how roomy the entrance hall to the stable was. He was expecting tight hallways and claustrophobic corridors, not a wide open space large enough for him to stretch his wings. However it was not peaceful, marcus made sure of that. The damn zebra was bouncing around like he'd had one too many boxes of sugar bombs. "Calm down zebra in a box." bone said as he held out a talon, using the nickname he'd giving the zebra back at the nightmare night party. "Save your energy for when you might need it." The large griffin then turned to the self proclaimed leader of his group and asked. "Just one question. Where to? And if I might make a suggestion I think we should find the security office and raid the armory, outfit ourselves for any dangers that might be in here."

Lucky rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you'd really like that, wouldn't you turkey boy?"

He looked back at the mare who appeared to be the leader of the expedition and said, "Personally, I'd suggest we get someone into the Overmare's office and turn off any security systems that might still be on." He then motioned with his head towards Bone and added, "Not the group with him, mind you."

Scraps frowned a little when Bake called herself silly and paused a little bit to give her a quick nuzzle.

"Of course we can swing by the dining area, Bakey. It's on the first floor, like administration, so we'll just hit there after we go to administration and before we head further into the stable."

Arc silently stood, slightly away from the rest of his team, staring into the Stable. Then he looked at the second token zebra they had, and at the griffin that stood the charge of being a raider from Lucky. Arc slightly frowned, now looking down at his pip-buck, looking at the map. First floor seemed to be lacking either armoury of Overmare's office. No luck then, but...

Arc grumbled. He couldn't think, not when Bada forced himself on him. He could feel where he was, a grinding, cold feeling on Arc's back in the direction of Bada. Damn it all... so I'll have two of them to keep track of. How nice.

Arc turned to his group. "Right. Bada, you'll be with Rad in centre, working as a reserve to both ends of the column. Now, our target will be the pantry, then we will regroup in admin with Scrap. I want to know if the inhabitants left in a hurry or not. Pantry should show us if they packed supplies. If not, we might find something of value in there." Hopefully cinnamon flavoured.

Dash looked around at his group. Lightning and Spectrum. Dash felt alot better that he was able to work with ponies he trusted. They had given him food and shelter in exchange for work which was quite easy by wasteland standards. It also allowed him to do what he could to go out and try to find his brother.

Dash nodded to Lightning and Spectrum, "It's good to be working with you two again. It's also nice to meet you, Cyber Star and Amber Core." On his way into the Stable Dash checked the ammo in his Carbine one last time before planting the magazine back in, "My name is Galactic Dash, my forte is marksmanship and infiltration, but I have a bit of experience with fixing machinery as well.

Radiant Waves eyed Marcus curiously as he said a word others hadn't heard before. "You're speaking Zebrican, aren't you? That's pretty interesting, I've not met any zebras who speak it, going to have to have a chat with you at some point." She said with that usual happy smile before glancing at Bone Head.

"You realise this is a place for scientific research, right? The most this place's armoury is going to have, if it has one, is small calibre-arms like pistols or sub machine guns." She said just to cut down any plans Bone Head may have had.

Turning her head to Lucky, Radiant gave a slightly annoyed hum. "If we could safely locate the Overmare's office then this would be much easier, that's only considering the possibility of there being any automated defences, for all we know it could have nothing in here other than research logs and device prototypes."

For now Radiant was done with explanations, so she allowed everyone to talk amongst themselves.
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Dash introducing himself to Amber Core and Cyber Star caused the both of them to give a smile. "You work with machines too? That's great! We should try and get to the reactors and see what they've got down there powering this place up!" Amber said excitedly, apparently cheerful to meet somepony who does the same sort of work as her, if only minorly dabbling in it.
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Listening to what plan Scrap had, Clean Cut gave a nod and then nodded to Bake. "Nice to meet you too, so long as we have a solid plan, I'm rather content going along with your four. I'm also happy to check the medical labs, see if there's anything of use there as well. But we can go there when we find out where it is." He said as he looked around pensively
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Seemingly pleased that he was allowed to go with the group, Bada Boom smiled. "Thanks. Uhh.... What should I call you? I should get everypony's names, actually." He then realised. Then looking to Nova, Lucky and Xeshir. "You guys all know my name thanks to Wavey. What're your names?" He innocently asked, waiting for their responses.
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Whilst everypony was talking and figuring out plans, the sudden call of the door sirens went off again as the Stable door closed with great haste, as if designed to close quickly, yet open slowly.

But now was not the time to worry about that, as some would notice the beginnings of a light show forming above everypony, not one of those magical energy weapon light shows, a genuine one that seemed to be creating some sort of shape in the air above them all. Good thing the Stable seemed to have a high ceiling.

After a long moment of the confusing shifting of light, floating above everypony now was what seemed to be an Alicorn. And she seemed just so very excited... and worried about the new arrivals in the Stable, looking around and focusing on everypony at least once.

A mane and tail consisting of a swirl of pink, purple, white, cyan, yellow and orange, almost symbolic, if someone knew of before the war.

Yet her coat... light seemed to be quite simply emanating from her faint silver coat as she stood there above everypony.

"OMIGOSHOMIGOSHOMIGOSH! Visitors! Nopony from Stable-Tec or the Ministry Hub warned me of visitors! I would've tidied the place up if I'd known. I would've baked cakes for everypony as well! Stupid Stable-Tec. Stupid Ministry, not telling me to expect visitors. I should file a report about this. Oh wait, are they all replacement staff? This place could do with it, I think everypony disappeared because I was too overbearing... It's perfectly normal to want to know what everypony is up to every minute of every day, right?" She spoke as if she was talking to herself, despite her eyes constantly looking over all the others, goodness knows what she was, let alone WHO she was, but she'd not tried attacking yet, so it had to be a good thing, right?

"So! Can I get everypony's names? I need to give you all identity bands so I can keep a track of you all whilst you're visiting, it's only a security precaution, filly-scout's promise!" The Alicorn said as she held her a hoof, as if saluting whilst saying her promise.
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Cuppa could only look at the Alicorn above all of them in astonishment, the same going for all five of the ponies who'd been waiting for others to arrive for this job... They certainly hadn't expected this. Whilst she spoke, Cuppa was trying to figure out just what she was, aside from looking like an Alicorn...

Was she a light projection of some sort? It definitely seemed that was as she was talking about things that technically no longer existed. She'd personally never read nor heard about something like this, so she was stumped for ideas unless it was a projection.

Behold my abominable recolour-work and gaze upon the Alicorn everypony can see:

Lucky had been going over the probability of the Overmare's office only containing useless information when the door started moving. He watched it close with an unsurprised expression, and when the projected Alicorn came out he held a hoof to his forehead.

He then sighed, removed his flask from his coat, unscrewed the top, and took a swig. Under his breath he muttered, "It's gonna be a loooong day..."

Bone heard the sirens and turned to see the door shutting, "Shit." he exclaimed as he spread his wings and attempted to fly out, the stable door sliding closed as he reached it. "FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUUUUUCK." he clawed at the metal slab of a door with his talons, doing little more then making sparks, after all it was designed to stop a mega spell. He turned to ask what now but his attention was diverted before he could even form the question. The lights formed into the holographic display of an alicorn. A "what the fuck" escaped his beak and he looked around at the others reactions. Seemed like lucky had the right idea.

Bakewell looked back and watched as the Stable door squealed to a rapid shut. The mare had to debate the sanity of her new and forced lifestyle when getting locked into a giant underground metal box was capable of being so easily sorted into the “not surprising” category of her mind. But really, when the earth pony thought about it, when had she ever, ever walked through a Stable door without it shutting behind her soon after? Pretty much never. It seemed like a vaguely familiar griffon was having more of an issue accepting the closed door, though. Perhaps she would have tried to calm him down had her attention not almost immediately been snagged by the display of lights.

And then an Alicorn appeared.

The wasteland variant of Alicorns weren’t exactly well known, or even really known by the masses at all. Because of this Bakewell had absolutely nothing to compare the “creature” she was confronted by with aside from bits and pieces of information concerning the royal sisters, and didn’t have the perception and scientific knowledge to immediately draw the conclusion of a strange high tech projector. All she knew was that she was faced with a creature that looked very, very familiar to what she had been lead to believe Celestia looked like.

“Um..?” The beige pony questioned softly, voice barely audible as she stared wide eyed up at the glowing form.

When the Alicorn’s gaze eventually focused on Bakewell, the mare quickly ducked into a nervous bow. After a brief pause filled with glancing self-consciously at the rest of the ponies present and realizing that not many of them seemed inclined to do the same, Bakewell stood back up and shifted her hooves around nervously, not sure of what to do or how to even react.

Rad had followed Arc into the Stable, listening to what he had planned. "The pantry sounds like a good idea, I haven't eaten since yesterday..." He had turned to look as there was suddenly a lot of noise from the Stable door, and simply stared at the door in awe as it slid closed. He would have been worried, but the flashy lights were far to mesmerizing for him. And then there were more lights! Next he knew there was some bright and shiny... Alicorn? Rad had never seen a real Alicorn before, so he was suddenly very excited, so much so that he was already in the air and up to the Alicorns level.

"WOW! Are you a real Alicorn? What's your name? How long have ya been here? This is so cool!! I bet you're lots of fun to be around! Can we be friends? I'm Rad Boom! What's your name? Wait... I already asked that..." Rad just hovered there in front of the Alicorn, a big smile on his face. He'd heard about them before in stories, but never thought he'd meet one.

Marcus had stopped bouncing the moment the door had started to close. He wasn't sure that the door was supposed to close with them inside, but so far it seemed as if the only one panicking was Bones, who had quickly began attacking the door in what looked like a futile attempt to tear it apart. Marcus couldn't help but to chuckle at such a display.

And then, the light show started.

Marcus' eyes grew large and his mouth held agape as an Alicorn appeared from the lights before the group! He felt small in comparison and found himself unable to do much of anything except stare in awe. Only when he found his vision darkening did he remember to breath. After this, he quickly dropped into a bow and hoped that he didn't come across as disrespectful for taking so long to do so.

Of course, he noticed a Pegasus, Rad Boom, had seen fit to fly up to her face and bombard her with questions. He then dropped his head lower and prayed that the Alicorn didn't smite the Pegasus where he flew.

Scraps jumped a little when the stable door closed behind them. He should've figured something like that would happen. Getting in and out of a abandoned stable and getting payed a load of caps for doing so was way way too easy. He sighed and prepared to look for a way out when the light show started.

Facinated, he stared at it, wondering how exactly it was being caused. Then of course an alicorn appeared and Scrap's jaw dropped. Even if it must be a projection since Scrap knew that neither of the alicorn sisters looked like that, it was still pretty impressive. Not quite sure of what to do, he decided that letting the others talk first would probably work best.

Xeshir gulped slightly as the Stable door closed as a slight feeling of dread took over her. She wasn´t particurlarly claustrophobic, but Stables always had that effect on her. She did jump at the noise, never hearing the ear-splitting sound the Stable´s made when they closed. After a few deep breaths she managed to calm herself.

And then the Alicorn appeared.

Xeshir´s eyes opened like never before, her pupils shrinking to the size of a pea. After a few moments of staring with her mouth open she realized that this creature might very well be dangerous and jumped into martial art position, standing on her rear legs as her hooves stood ready to strike to Alicorn...Too bad she was several meters away. When her eyes were aimed at her she shouted "Recede illuc monstrum!" accidentally slipping into latin as her muscles tensed.

Cross turned towards the door as it came to a screeching close. Cross chuckled before letting out a laugh at the sheer irony of it. Pretty strange at least in comparison to how worried everypony else was. He tapped Radiant on the shoulder.

"Hah, I forgot how fun this was Radi" He chuckled as the glowing figure continued to relay its centuries old message. He went up to the delayed AI's response and watched with amusement as it finished its message.

"Well, appears today won't be so terrible after all." He spoke aloud mostly to the ponies behind him.

"Point of Information: What is this Stable's serial number, designated assignment, and allotted resources?." He stood nonchalantly as he admired how well the Stable's projection system still worked, smirking a bit at how much of a find they were probably going to be able to access.

Arc froze when he heard the sound of door engine waking up. Oh. Fuck. Arc fell on his haunches and sat, watching the door slide in and close the way out from them. That... could be a problem. Arc looked at his group. He knew how feeling locked out like this felt, and knew how to live with it, but Xeshir seemed to have a small shock from it. He tried to give everyone around a reassuring smile, hiding behind it the block of ice that just dropped into his stomach.

The alicorn, however, was a bit too much for him to handle. That one he was not expecting, and Arc instinctively back pedalled away from her, hitting a support beam that stood in his way.

Arc started to fumble for his rifle. His eyes were open wide in shock, keeping on the alicorn in front of them. He heard Xeshir mutter a curse. Arc was expecting the thing to start screaming insults into his head, but then the thing spoke. And all Arc could think of was how she reminded him of Jasmine for some reason.

Arc just sat, staring at the thing, his mouth slightly open with expression of 'What-the-fuck-just-happened' on his face.

Nova continued to sit silently as she leaned against her rock. The fact that she finally had at least a little time to think without having to do so on her hooves was somewhat comforting. At the very least, she could have a small rest before they went on with what was ahead.

Whilst she was reflecting on this, the loud sound of the Stable door opening forced her to come out of her tranquil slumber in order to see what all the commotion was about. Nova trotted towards the others to see what appeared to be an alicorn. However, after what had happened only recently, all Nova did was yawn.

The Alicorn everypony could see let out a squeak of surprise as Rad was greeting her. "Uhh... Well I'm not exactly an Alicorn, no. But I look like one, that counts, right? But we can definitely be friends! Everypony else in here was boring and NEVER wanted to be friends." Then she gasped as a thought seemed to come to mind, it must've been confusing for some ponies who had already seen alicorns before.

"Can I hug you? Friends hug, don't they? Yeah, I bet they do!" Regardless of Rad's answer, the Alicorn tried to hug him, only for the light of her projection to basically go around him. She tried several times to the same result, one failed hug after another. ".....Oops. Forgot to activate the hard-light matrix." A small glow irradiated from her for a moment before the Alicorn seemed to be more solid now, swinging her forelegs out and giving Rad a big hug.

During this time, her attention was too occupied by attempting to hug the excitable pegasus to realise one zebra had taken her arrival as a bad sign.

Then Cross spoke up and the Alicorn looked at him, just blankly staring for a moment whilst still holding onto Rad with her fore-legs. "I'm not at liberty to tell you anything until you give me your name, then you at least get visitor-access to any information you require. C'mon, be a sport like Rad, all I need to know are your names and then you're all listed on my records as visitors."

"If you really must know, I am the Ministry of Arcane Sciences' Artificial Magical Intelligence and my current housing is Stable 84, which was a co-operative project between the Ministry of Arcane Sciences and Stable-Tec, in case everything goes boom out there." The way she spoke, it was as if she hadn't witnessed what had happened to the outside world, maybe for the better for now.

Then she booped Cross' nose with a hoof, which due to the hard-light matrix, he would actually feel. "Though, mister, it would be nice if you treated me a little bit better, you know. I know I didn't have a chance to bake anything for you all, but you can forgive me for that, right?" She asked with a somewhat pouty expression on her face.

Meanwhile, all the ponies who'd planned this journey were mostly looking on in surprise, though Radiant was giving Cross a curious look, which smoothed into a grin as Cross' request for information was deflected mostly. Though even knowing about this Stable and what it was meant for was definitely enlightening. "My name's Radiant Waves, ma'am." She politely said, causing the Alicorn to give a nod as she memorized the name.

Rad watched as the Alicorns forelegs just passed through him, then again, and a few more times. He couldn't help but chuckle at the holograms attempts to hug him. "Hah! You're fun, but what's a- Ohh... Cool!" His question having of course been answered before he asked it as the Alicorn hugged him properly this time. "I don't see how anypony wouldn't want to be your friend! But... What's hard light? I mean... Light isn't hard, or i'd be bangin' my head every time I walked under a light. Unless you can make light go hard with your Alicorn powers!"

Rad watched as the AI tried to get the others to tell it their names. He couldn't see why anypony would have a problem with it. He found this Alicorn fun. "Hey wait... What's your name? I can't exactly keep callin' you "floatin' Alicorn thingy," Can I?"