Deep in the forest of White Tail, a small town resides almost unknown by everypony in Equestria. That is until town entrepreneur, Midnight Spangle became the second richest pony in Equestria. He was second in charge of Lunarus Corp., the prosthetic company. He was the builder of their legs and wings but only oversaw the construction of them. Thankfully for the town, he kept the main pieces of the business he co-owned in Canterlot and Manehatten. Only special projects crossed his small machine shop in town.

One of those happened to be a lone farmer’s son and later his apprentice in town, Thunder Clap. His right foreleg was ripped from its socket and only held on by a single tendon after he tried manually un-jamming a harvester. The doctors called Spangle after they were forced to amputate completely to see if he could do anything. When the farmer couldn’t afford to pay for even the lowest grade prosthetic leg, Spangle started looking for loop holes. Under the nose of the unknown owner of the Lunarus Corp. and retooled it for Thunder Clap, free of charge since it costed next to nothing to resize it for the young colt.

The one catch was that they were the most high end leg anypony in Equestria could have. A normal leg would replicate the users natural strength, but this one would triple that and was also built for war. The armor plates were strong enough to take a direct hit from anything and only have a small dent. And when he said anything, he meant it. He pulled one of the new Silver Bit rifles on it and fired into it point blank range. There was only a scratch on the outer coating where the lead ball splattered.

Directly after that, Thunder Clap went to Midnight Spangle prepared to beg to be under his mentorship. He didn’t even have to resort to hoof kissing, he was accepted in an instant.

Many months have passed since Thunder Clap went under the tutorage of Midnight Spangle, and Thunder Clap was just starting to understand the most basic bits of advanced machining. He had been using his fathers harvester, the same one that took his foreleg, as a guinea pig and nearly blew up the barn when he tried taking apart the transmission. No pony in town knew how he was even capable of doing that, even Spangle. Thunder had just finished helping raise the new barn with Midnight Spangle when a question was brought up.

“Thunder Clap, how well do you think you understand what I’ve been teaching you?” the black Pegasus asked whipping saw dust from his wings and out of his matching mane.

“From the barn having to be knocked down after the harvester incident, ah don’t know.” the gray earth pony with a mint green mane replied whipping his forehead.

“Well, what about a gun?”

“A gun? Why on earth would I need to take apart a gun?”

“As it would seem, a friend of mine sent me a damaged Silver Bit rifle and has asked me to find out what’s wrong with it.”

“What do they think?”

“The hammer won’t go back and even when it does they say that the powder won’t ignite.”

“And you want me to put it back together after you fiddle with it?”

“No, I want you to head the project.”

Thunder Clap stopped dead in his tracks. “You want me to head a project?” he asked dumbstruck.

“It’s nothing huge, but I feel you can get it done above and beyond with this project.”

“Thank you! Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou a thousand times thank you!” Clap shouted happily hopping up and down.

“Okay, okay. It’s not like you just got a ticket to the Gala. I’ll have the rifle on your bench by tomorrow.”

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll be ready!”

“You better, I’m counting on you.” Spangle said giving the earth pony a smile as he walked off.

Thunder Clap waved with his robotic leg hoping his heart wouldn’t burst from his chest. Spangle wouldn’t have said it out loud, but that teenager was one of the most dedicated ponies he had ever met. He wouldn’t question anything unless he thought there was something wrong, which was almost never and he followed instructions to the letter and sometime didn’t things to machines that normally wouldn’t and through trial and error, seeing as science is 85% error that was most of the time, until something made it run with less stress on a essential component or used less power. Horizon waved back as he flew back to his shop in the middle of town.

Just as the sun started to set, a package arrived and Thunder’s robotic right foreleg would have crushed the package and snapped the rifle in half if he didn’t try his best to keep a level head as he took the package up to his room that he called his work shop. The box as beautify crafted. He carefully opened it and took out his tool kit from under his bench. Looking into the box, he saw the large rifle. Something of a oval cylinder, common sense told him that’s where that’s where the bullet came out of, sat atop a long wooden shaft. The cylinder had a pan and a hammer mechanism that held a piece of flint. On the what he assumed was the bottom was a small lever.

He took the rifle out of the case and found the schematics sitting at the bottom. He read them over started checking for the problems that the owner was having with it. He put the end of the shaft against he floor boards and pulled back on the hammer. It didn’t budge. He pulled harder until it finally gave and clicked back all the way. He opened up the pan to be sure there was powder sitting there waiting to go off when he pulled the trigger at the bottom.

He put the bottom of the shaft against his metallic under arm where his leg met the contact plate on the right side of his chest and put his left hoof in front of the trigger that had his right hoof poised over it. Looking down the barrel of the weapon felt clunky and unnatural, it was sliding around a bit in his hoofs. He pulled the trigger and watched hammer strike the pan in a shower of sparks.

He tired pulling the hammer back again but this time it didn’t budge no matter how hard he pulled trying not to break it. He set it up on the bench and ran his eyes over the assembly of the trigger mechanism. That had to be where the issue had to be. He had to be careful to ensure that the powerful springs inside wouldn’t cause the entire thing fall apart in a barrage of cogs and springs.

Using his right hoof, he held the trigger assembly in place as he unscrewed it from the main part of the weapon. He carefully pulled the trigger assembly apart and went over it a few time before finding the broken sprocket connected to the hammer. He then searched the organized chaos of his shelves until he found a sprocket that was the right size to fit in where the old one use to be. After screwing that back into place, he delicately put the trigger mechanism back on the gun with one eye on the instructions to be sure that he wasn’t putting it back in wrong.

After testing to see if it worked, he looked over the schematics a bit more before going back to find out why the powder wouldn’t work. How it should have worked, a spark form the flint would ignite the powder in the pan and that ignition would travel down into the blasting chamber where the main powder charge would explode and force the ball out the end of the barrel. The only thing he could think to do, and this is going to look bad if his dad stepped in, is that he would have to put his mouth on the end of the barrel and blow into it to see if the pathway to the blasting chamber wasn’t clogged.

He turned the rifle around and put his mouth on the end of it. He could smell pungent odor of burnt gun powder before his lips sealed up the end of the gun. Thunder then opened the flap that covered the pan and put his left hoof in front of the hole that lead to the barrel. He blew as hard as he could and he could feel his breath sticking to the inside of the barrel and not coming out the other side. He took the barrel away from his mouth and set the rifle back on his work bench. Thunder Clap stood in place and looked around his room for a moment.

“Where did I- Oh!” he said to himself.

He stood on top of his bed and opened a drawer filled with ever size pipe cleaner he could ever need. He sifted through it until he found the smallest one he could possibly find before returning to his bench.

“This auta fix ya up nicely.” he told the rife as he pushed the pipe cleaner through the small hole.

It took some pushing from his right hoof to clean out the passage for the powder. The white pipe cleaner came out covered in a clumpy black mess of old wet gunpowder. He blew back into the barrel and his breath came through the other end of the gun with a high pitched whistle. Thunder smiled in satisfaction and sifted through the case to find the required items to test fire the weapon.