And so we start, rather melodramatically, with Lil'pip looking at a blank grey wall, and wishing she could have the excitement of watching paint dry instead. Or at least the results of it drying after the stables painter makes a mural on it. This fairly quickly sets up yet more about how dull and boring Stable life is, trapped in the same limited space your whole life, the same ponies, only one new song a week for entertainment. It is nice to see that the ponies recognize this for the most part, and try their best to find a solution, encouraging the artistically inclined ones to be creative, though we'll soon see even that has a down side.
Suddenly, Velvet Remedy. Who seems to be the single biggest if not only celebrity in the Stable, and first we think it's just Lil'pip fan-girling, till we get a bit more detail and learn, which way her barn door swings. But still it rather effectively shows that she has a HUGE crush on the older mare (we never do learn just how much older then Lil'pip she is, not even vaguely.) But at this point it's little more then any young adults fantasy about a celebrity they like.Smooth line there Pip. At least you noticed it yourself to. And her brain finally catches up with her hormones allowing her to speak full words. And she proceeds to remove Velvet's Pipbuck, also adding in a little quick tidbit about how she keeps a plot-load of tools in her outfit pockets.
And after a long night of working extra hard on making her idol's Pipbuck perfect, she realizes she's been played. (side note, how the buck does a Stable with that small a population even HAVE paparazzi or know what they are?) And suddenly every pony turns on her for, you know, doing her job and not being a mind reader and knowing Velvet was playing her. Granted it seems the stable ponies didn't really have a high opinion of her to begin with. At least the Overmare makes a point of telling the ponies not to blame her, for all the good it does.
And turns out Velvet picked the wrong pony to leave her Pipbuck with, since not only is Pip an expert lockpick, but also a damn good hacker. She finds the access code for the stable, and decides to head out, and it it was such a hard choice, she had so much going for her in the Stable /sarcasm (on a note, I actually did not get the significance of that door code till the second time it was brought up.)
And Lil'pip is out, with a final note of "if you leave you can never come back" from the Overmare, immediately followed by Lil'pip recognizing the bullshit of telling her that, when she had been all gun-ho about sending a full party out to find and bring back Velvet not a few hours ago, and here she was volunterring to go alone to do just that. Shows you why Pip had no real issue leaving that place behind. And the very first sight of life outside the Stable, is a bunch of skeletons of ponies that died trying to get in.
The entrance from the outside world into Stable Two had been cleverly disguised as the door to a humble apple cellar. And by disguised, I meant that the person who built it had been building an apple cellar.
Why is that line just so damn funny?
and new perk, fully confirming Lil'pip's sexual orientation, and not that Velvet was a fluke case of Single-Target Sexuality
Overall, good start, it goes rather fast, but does a good job showing why a pony would want to leave the Stable, though more so for Pip then a pony who had it all like Velvet. But really it's almost more prologue, just giving us some basic character info about Lil'pip, small, mostly overlooked, no real friends, talented with electronics, and just moves along as quick as it can to actually getting her out and into the Wastes, where the true journey begins.
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