Star Blaster origins/AP. (later confirmed)

“What is it?”

“Nastiest magical gun the Equestrian Wasteland has ever seen to my knowledge. One shot from that thing will turn whatever you hit into vapor. And not like the magical energy weapons you’ve seen, which do that only once in a blue moon. Every. Single. Time.” Homage actually sounded scared of the gun. “I believe you could kill a dragon with one shot from that thing.” And with those words, so did I.

“Where did it come from?” I wondered aloud. The idea that there were ponies… the pegasi maybe… with weapons that devastating chilled me tail to forehooves.

“Jokeblue figured it was from some sort of flying tank that the pegasi were experimenting with that blew up on them. Me…” Homage swallowed. “I know I’m being foalish, but I can’t help but think it fell from a lot higher than that.”

“Higher?” I had the strange mental image of items falling to Equestria from the moon, emptying from Nightmare Moon’s toy chest.

Homage looked a bit embarrassed, “You’ll laugh.”

I promised I wouldn’t. And resolved not to, no matter how hard it was.

The beautifully sexy grey unicorn took a moment to gather her thoughts. Then, starting cautiously, “I once met a zebra.”

That wasn’t what I expected her to say at all. My ears shot up. I leaned forward.

“They… don’t have the same relationship to the sky that we do. Obviously, since they have no pegasi. But it’s more than that. Before the apocalypse, we ponies had always looked to the sky with a sense of joy and safety. We saw the sun, guided through the sky by Celestia during the day. And the moon, Luna’s charge, keeping an eye on us during the night. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were our benevolent rulers. And even though most ponies never met them personally, the sun and the moon were symbols of their kind presence everywhere and to everypony in Equestria.”

I felt my body leaning closer, wanting to catch every word of this. I’d never heard Celestia and Luna spoken of this way.

“When they perished in the apocalypse, and the pegasi closed off the sky, stealing the sun and the moon from us, we turned them into deities to keep them always with us. Even those trapped underground in the Stables seemed to do so. A sort of parallel evolution.”

What she was saying was almost blasphemous, but I bucked away the desire to admonish her, leaning precariously closer to hear. Homage had a perspective that I wanted to hear, even if I probably would not have listened to it from anypony else. She made me wonder, ask questions. For instance, would this explain why Calamity did not believe in the Goddesses? Was atheism a pegasus trait? Unlike us, they had never lost the embrace of the sun and the moon.

“The zebras, though, they cringe from the sky,” Homage said. The statement was something I would have expected from a propaganda poster, not a pony who had learned this directly from a zebra. But I knew Homage, and it would not be like her to not speak objective truth as she knew it. “The zebras look up and see the stars staring down at us from a great black emptiness. And the stars, they know, are not benevolent.”

I leaned further, tipped over and fell on my face.

Homage stopped, covering a chuckle with her hoof. When I’d gotten back up, probably looking as sheepish as I felt, she continued. “There is intelligence up there, the zebras believe, from the stars themselves. The stars burn with cold, malicious fire. No number of them could warm the sky at night. They wish ill on our world. And sometimes they will act, not against us directly, but to enable us to harm and ruin ourselves.”

I opened my muzzle, the suggestion that the zebras were a bit batty dying on my lips. Yes, it sounded insane. But didn’t we have legends that suggested the same? I recalled the story of The Mare on the Moon. (The real version, not that “Stallion on the Moon” nonsense.)

The stars will aid in her escape.

“In particular, they tell of four malevolent stars with hearts of cruelty and chaos which yearn to taste our pain and destruction, wrought by our own hooves.” With a grimace, Homage added, “If there’s any truth to the zebra mythology, I’d guess we’ve given them quite the banquet.”

Four stars helping destroy Equestria. Now why did that sound familiar.

Homage shrugged off the eerie atmosphere that had settled in the room by her tale. “Anyway, like I said. Foalish. Jokeblue was probably right. Some pegasus experiment that blew up in their faces.”

Fallout Equestria: Chapter 20