Once again, we walked. This time, however, our procession followed not the roundabout path from the extensive knowledge of the two little fillies, but the more direct route chosen by the pegasus named Pepper Mercury. Apparently, both Tin Flower and Red Wire knew her, and judging by their confused glances at each other, didn’t expect the silent treatment and a gun barrel pointed at them. Nevertheless, the little fillies followed the steel winged pony without any complaints and didn’t look actually frightened, just perplexed.

Wings made out of metal… Moonie and I spent weeks, no, months, trying to create a pair of the artificial ones, it actually was our original plan to equip the equestrian army with the detachable metal appendages. Thus making every soldier airborne, giving all of them that only and very limited advantage we had. But after dozens of crystals with different enchantments, all of them failed. Even after the countless calculations being so close to resolving the secret of flight. After sleepless nights and restless days – we gave up on this idea and began a new project… the last one I remember. There was something about the way the pegasi soared in the skies – it wasn’t just wings, there was some kind of very subtle magic, primal and yet way too intricate to recreate back then. I wondered if it was Moondancer who somehow managed to crack that mystery in the end and who made the first pair of the artificial wings.

Those taunting steel appendages were the only prominent feature of the young pegasus mare, who looked rather unremarkable from a first glance. Just like Flower or Wire, Pepper Mercury looked small. However she seemed more mature and wasn’t as scrawny, yet she wasn’t as fed as the thugs who assaulted us earlier on. Her green coat resembled a military uniform, faded olive and dirty. Not at the atrocious level of dirtiness as Flower’s, of course. Her mane was an explosion of dull red, ungroomed hair that stood in stark contrast to her eyes – the deep pools of emerald shined with determination and intrepidity of somepony who was ready to fight the whole world. If not for the metal wings, she could be taken for a common filly from my time, except for her cutie mark – a crimson heart pierced by a dagger. It’s blade coming as drops of metal, quicksilver, from the other side. What could it mean? I had no idea.

As we trotted down our path, which was much wider and straighter than any road we had followed before, I could see some huts that looked habitable. Some even looked inhabited, however we had yet to meet anypony. Apparently at this time of day the denizens of the sector were either sleeping after a previous night shift or had long left for the day one. Occasional movement of the dark silhouettes behind the soot stained windows was the only evidence of any living beings.

All of a sudden, without saying a single word, Mercury rocketed into the sky with a loud metallic clang, leaving a billowing cloud of dust behind her. We all stopped in our tracks, the fillies coughing on the floating rust as they looked at the pegasus hovering in the air – she appeared to be watching for something in the distance. Through the coughing fit Red Wire spoke to me:

“She is usually more talkative and doesn’t point her gun at ponies, but we will be fine, I’m sure.” Though the young unicorn looked and sounded completely recovered from our encounter with Grime’s goons, her neck had still carried a noticeable red mark where the stallion’s hooves dug in her skin.

“But who is she?” I inquired to none of them in a particular, keeping my eyes on the armed figure in the sky. She paid us no attention, visibly scanning our surroundings – most probably looking for any patrols.

“Mercury is Dross Rain’s daughter, um, he is a sort of our unofficial leader. I help her with the wings from time to time. She is cool,” Answered Tin Flower, who just finished hacking her lungs out. Just like Wire, Flower seemed to have recover from the confrontation, though her right eye was a bit swollen. At least there was no bleeding from the cut on the little mechanic’s cheek. Overall, she looked better than I expected from a filly who took a hit in the head with an armored metal hoof, but earth ponies appear to be made from a harder material in general. I guess after surviving all that Equestria had already flung at Flower, it would take a lot more to bring her down.

“Then why does it feel like we are in trouble?” I asked, remembering Mercury’s powerful silent rifle and the fact that she didn’t sheath it and had been giving me wary glances all the time we walked.

“Well, she killed one the gang members, so, yeah, we are definitely in trouble,” Came the answer, accompanied by a roll of the eye from Red Wire who was now dusting herself off, sending puffs of rust in Flower’s direction, who wasn’t taking it very the dust well:

“Do you want a fucking slap?” Red Wire only smirked. Her eye widened in horror though as the earth pony filly shook herself like a dog, creating a thick cloud of dirt, even worse than from Mercury’s liftoff. As the unicorn jumped away from the eddy with a shriek, Tin Flower turned to me, a wide victorious grin plastered across her face.

“I think she is in more trouble than we are.” After a moment of thought she added with a shrug, “But, if Mercury did it, she knew what she was doing.”

Giving Flower angry glances, Wire walked around the still lingering cloud and joined back in on our little conversation. “Don’t worry Twilight, we will be alright. Mercury is gonna help us, she always helps the folks around. This situation is quite delicate, so Peps is just a bit tense.”

Despite being optimistic and appearing to be in lifted spirits, the fillies cut down their talk as Mercury began to descend. With a loud thud she landed on the ground afar from us, giving rise to another cloud of rust flakes, and motioned with her hoof to come closer.

As we approached, she spoke for the first time after we began to walk. “The path is clear, but we should hurry.” She squinted her eyes, looking in the distance. “It looks like all of Grime’s assholes are retreating to the food storage, we don’t have much time now.”

Without waiting for our answer, Mercury began to briskly trot away. But after only a few steps the pegasus stopped and turned back giving me a critical, yet somewhat amused, glance.

“You know, all the blood looks cool and stuff, but you better clean it up before we meet anypony. I mean, a tinhead walking around covered in pony sauce is gonna make folks extra nervous,” She commented.

This fact completely slipped my mind. I did wipe my eyes at some point between making sure Tin Flower was alright and the first appearance of Pepper Mercury, but beyond that, unable to feel anything with the surface of my body, I totally forgot that I still looked like a murderer pony from some horror movie.

Without a word Tin Flower came to me and began to clean the thug’s remains from my face and chest. Red Wire, mumbling something like “Why do I have to do this?” before being joined by her friend, helping Flower with telekinesis from the safe distance. To be honest, both fillies were doing a horrible job. While they removed the skull shards stuck to my body, they only smeared the blood all over without cleaning it, and instead of tossing the dirty, blood-soaked rags away, they just turned them inside out.

All the while Pepper Mercury was watching us from the top of the junk pile with a bored expression, and after a couple of minutes and she, fighting a yawn, said,

“Eh, that will do. Let’s go already.”

With those words she glided from the heap of metal scrap and began trotting once again. Having not much choice, we followed her.

Now it looked like we were walking through the central part of the sector – the paths between the piles of a scrap-iron were much wider and clearer, most of them were covered in the fresh hoofprints. The metal scrap changed in appearance as well – no more covered in thick layer of rust, the metal junk was lying in the heaps with some semblance of order. Eventually, we approached a huge concrete building.

Wait… I can recognize it! Looming over me stood nothing less but a bulk of the Maretin furnace, surrounded by a galo of haze, spewing salvos of a melted slug in air. Through the building’s exposed skeleton of the metal beams I could see the large metal kilns filled with blazing molten steel moving around, dripping with huge droplets of the liquid sun on the covered with cinder and dross floor below. Ceaselessly moving amongst all the incandescence and chaos were the besmirched ponies, who were dexterously dodging the shifting mechanic innards of the enormous industrial forge and unflinchingly danced under the rains of dross. But such an intrepidity wasn’t coming without a price – metal limbs and wings were boldy reflecting back from the merciless fires of the indifferent smelter. Though, the gleaming prosthetics only made these soot covered ponies look like they belonged to that place, as if they exchanged their flesh for the steel blessing of the forge to become one with the iron digesting giant.

While it was true that I missed the rise of the heavy industry in Equestria, this type of a furnace was something that was invented shortly before the war, actually “the open hearth furnace” as it was called by its inventor, Carl Wilneigh, wasn’t received very well. He advertised his technology as the next step from traditional forges and the rejected Bessemare converter, but on the practice it was a quite inefficient furnace of a size nopony needed… not until the war began. Then the engineer from Vanhoover called Emilia Maretin brought out the license from the almost broke Fillydelphian stallion and started building those huge smelters to fuel rising demands for steel desperately needed to produce armor and weaponry. But it had been five hundred years… those furnaces were used back then only because Equestria hadn’t any other choice – seeing them now was nothing but shocking. So much for progress...

Near the entrance of the smelter a few workponies were taking a rest from the exhausting labor in the bowels of the fire spitting giant. Covered in soot and glistening with sweat, the group of mares and stallions in the dirty working robes, most of them smoking cigarettes, were silently yet curiously following our procession with the tired eyes, a few of them were artificial along with many limbs.

One of the resting ponies, an unremarkable mare rose from her resting place and lazily trotted towards us. Slowly moving a butt end of her cigarette from one corner of mouth to another while cracking neck she asked, slurring her words:

“Whazzup, Peps? Who are these kiddos? And...” She squinted at me and in a blink of an eye all her ease was gone. “Wait… you can’t be serious.”

“Send somepony for my father, tell him to come home.” With a nod she curtly answered Mercury, her expression unreadable. Then a strange, almost predatory, smile appeared on her muzzle and she added, “And gather the gang, Ashes. It is time.”

The mare’s face instantly brightened, mirroring the same odd smile.

“Finally.” She turned to the other ponies, who had been intently listening the whole conversation, and with a sharp whistle motioned with her head for them to follow.

Tin Flower and Red Wire looked at each other in confusion. There was something bigger than us happening and we ended up right in the middle of it.

It appeared that Pepper Mercury and her father, Dross Rain, lived only a few minutes trot from the smelter. Their dwelling was just as miserable as any other hut I had seen in this sector, at least on the outside – made from the rusted thin plates of steel apparently torn from some machinery years ago, covered by the countless patches of different metallic hues. It was big enough to have room for two ponies, but still tiny by my standards, being just barely larger than Applejack’s shed for working tools at Sweet Apple Acres. The only window was made not of a one single pane of glass but from a few semi-transparent dirty pieces of glass put together with a duct tape. On closer look, I could tell that Mercury’s home didn’t have any holes in the roof or the walls, which put it above most of the houses around. But, honestly, I still had hard time believing that somepony could live in such horrible conditions.

The door wasn’t locked, most probably not from the trust of denizens of the Edge in each other but from simple absence of locks amongst other things, and something was telling me that most likely there wasn’t anything precious inside either. Without a pause Mercury entered her house and turned to us, motioning with her wing with metal rustling sound: “Come on in.”

On the inside it was bigger than I expected, probably due to the thin walls and the indented floor, or maybe because the whole house was a one singular room. It was easy to tell which part belonged to the young mare and which to the older stallion, even though there was no border to mark it and I yet had to meet Dross Rain.

The half of the hut, which, I presumed belonged to Mercury was a mess. Not like Flower’s “Discord was there” level of mess, but still. The only other two, more or less clear, surfaces of Mercury’s living space were an army cot and a workbench. Everything other than that was covered in the spare parts and blueprints, but again unlike Flowers’s workshop, Mercury’s working place was quite different – from that I could tell, it was dedicated to weapons of some sort. Gun barrels and stocks, among with the magnetic coils dominated the boxes haphazardly strewn all around the young mare’s half of the house. Even the wall above the workbench was covered in blueprints and metal pinions. It now was clear why the little mechanic liked the steel winged pegasus.

The part of the hut which belonged to Dross Rain was much more clean and less cluttered, though, not completely so. All the walls were covered in maps and lists, the same could be said about the table near another army cot. Of course, I couldn’t recognize the maps, nor could I see the contents of the lists. I could, however, try to use my eyes to zoom in and read them, but decided against it because I seriously doubted I could learn anything useful that way.

Between those two halves of the house a small smoky heater nestled near a crate of coal. Other than a couple of sealed boxes there was no other furniture or anything else remarkable in this room. It was habitable, and there wasn’t much else to say about such living conditions. And, considering the fact that it was home of the local leader and his daughter, I didn’t want to imagine how the less fortunate ponies lived. The levels of poverty and misery in the Edge was lower than Equestria had ever seen.

“Soooo, how deep are we in trouble, Pep?” Tin Flower broke awkward silence and interrupted my musing with the careful question. Red Wire perked her ears, being as much interested in the answer from the pegasus as I was.

Mercury’s face instantly darkened, her brows furrowing in a grim expression. Looking the little mechanic in eyes she spoke in a grave voice, her eyes blazing with judgment:

“Be prepared to spend next few weeks in an isocube, Flower.” Her words came out like the hit of an axe against a chopping block, thick silence following the sentence.

Upon those words, all color completely drained from Tin Flower’s face, which was noticeable even through all the grime, her eyes going wide with fear and her jaw dropping in disbelief.

“Told you,” Red Wire commented quietly and without enthusiasm, not happy to lose her friend to the slave labor of the hydroponic gardens.

But something was off… Yup. Looking at the pegasus I noticed corners of her mouth slowly going up, and the young mare herself trembling slightly. Finally, with an unladylike snort she exploded in fits of laughter so hard that she fell on the floor.

“Bwahah!” She alone laughed at her “genius” joke, hitting the floor with hoof. “You… Pff-hahaha… You should have seen… hahaha... your face!” She squeezed out, wheezing. Really, what a brilliant sense of humor, I bet she could make Pinkie blush.

“Haha. Yeah, a very nice joke, Mercury,” Deadpanned Tin Flower. “But seriously, you have killed one of Grime’s ponies…” She added nervously, reminding me of the exploding unicorn’s head, and, of course, how close I was to a such fate.

“Hm. He won’t be the last today.” The steel winged pegasus, who finally stopped laughing, responded with a dark smile, checking the rifle on her side. “I’ll tell you guys everything when my father comes, it should be soon.”

“Well, thanks for saving us, anyway,” Spoke Tin Flower with voice full of gratitude, smiling. Red Wire silently nodded in agreement, smiling as well.

“Yes, thank you,” I decided to chime in. After all, from three of us I should be the most grateful – Mercury’s intervention saved my life… if I can consider it life, of course.

The pegasus’ reaction was a bit unexpected – her brows shot upwards and mouth going agape in amazement. With a goofy smile she nudged Flower with the hoof, pointing at me.

“It can even talk?” Mercury asked the little mechanic looking at me with mix of curiosity and awe.

“Yes... and, actually, her name is Twilight. I sorta made her,” Flower answered, rubbing the offended shoulder with a wrinkled face – Mercury was a little bit too enthusiastic.

“Wow, Flower you outdid yourself this time!” Exclaimed the steel winged mare.

Just as the last word fell from her lips, the hut’s door all but exploded, hitting the thin metal wall with a rattling crack of thunder, making the whole meager building shake. All four mares jumped in the air, startled, their eyes round from fright. But before the cacophony could even begin to wind down it was only intensified by the furious growl of a pegasus stallion in the doorway.

It was, no doubt, Mercury’s father – Dross Rain.

During the war, I had to interact with high ranking pegasi officers on numerous occasions. And all of them looked like pretty much identical – the emotionless faces as if chiseled from stone, the coats perfectly matching the military uniforms in color and the just as uniform buzz manecuts. If I didn’t know better I could have said that they were born like this. Except for his contorted and furious muzzle, Dross Rain completely matched such a description. I guess some things will never change.

The enraged pegasus sported almost the same color of the coat as his daughter, or more correctly, it was her who inherited the dull olive hue, albeit of a bit lighter tone than her father’s. Dross Rain’s mane again was a darker version of Mercury’s, brownish in color while it was beginning to shimmer with silver on the temples. The only thing completely different between father and daughter were Rain’s eyes – steel grey with a subtle bluish tint, giving an impression of the vibrant sky trying to shine through a curtain of the leaden clouds. Despite him not having any obvious prosthetics, like hooves or wings, he wasn’t completely devoid of the augmentations – a few tubes coming in and out of his body in a few places could be seen as well as segmented pipe in a place where his larynx should be. However, I didn’t have much of opportunity to take a proper look at Dross Rain, because as soon as his eyes fell upon his daughter he began to yell at her.

“You outdid yourself, Mecrury!” Dross Rain shouted, his nostrils flaring. Probably because of the artificial larynx, Rain’s voice sounded a bit weird, with a slight metallic echo and occasional rattle. “Have you lost your mind!? Killing one of Orange Grime’s ponies! What are you going to do when he comes for us!?” Dross Rain continued to rage, the furious gaze drilling in his daughter. For a moment he paused and looked around the room and noticed me and the girls. His blazing eyes stopped at me, squinting. With the renowned fury he pointed his hoof at me. “And what is this?! A fucking equinoid!?” He flared his wings and advanced forward. “Explain yourself this instant!” He growled finishing his outburst.

“Grime is not coming for us, not now at least.” Pepper Mercury calmly began her explanation, she looked totally unfazed by her fathers outburst. Studying her hoof she continued. “At the moment he is sitting at the food storage shaking from fear, because it is the first time we fought back.”

“Yeah, and let me tell you what’s going to happen next: he comes for us, murders you and me and nopony in this sector is going to see the food rations for months!” Dross Rain barked back, stomping his hoof in anger.

“Nah, the next thing that happens – we round up our forces and get rid of him.” The pegasus mare answered with a smile, taking the rifle from her back in the hooves.

“Are you high on zebra chems? He made the food storage into a fucking fortress, the turrets are going to slay us all before we get to the doors of it. Is it your genius master plan?” The stallion retorted irately.

“You are forgetting something.” Pepper Mercury nodded her head in my direction.

“What does this rusty fucket have to do with anything? Wait, don’t tell me you killed over a tinhead.” Dross Rain put the hoof over his eyes with a deep sigh.

“It…” Began explaining Pepper Mercury.

“She… ” Tin Flower instantly corrected with an offended glare.

“Whatever. She is our best hope to get rid of Orange Grime.” Pepper proclaimed enthusiastically.

Wait, what? I am supposed to do what?

“How? The one and only thing a tinpony can do is to bring the TCE’s wrath on us on top of everything else,” Dross Rain answered, at this point looking more tired than angry, his face showing an expression of utter disappointment.

“Do you remember that old maintenance tunnel leading to the generator room in the food storage?” Pepper Mercury asked nodding at the map above Dross Rain’s table. While I couldn’t recognize its contents, I could clearly see the bright red line drawn across.

The older pegasus sighed again and rolled his eyes.

“We have discussed it dozens of times, the magic radiation there is way too high, even with a suit nopony can survi…” Dross Rains words trailed and his eyes fell on me.

Oh.

“And now, then all of this fat bastard’s degenerates returned to his base at the storage, we have him cornered,” Mercury said with a smug smirk.

“It is our chance.” Dross Rain’s face brightened, thoughts and calculations racing in his eyes.

I, however, wasn’t as enthusiastic about all that. They talked about me as I was some kind of a mindless automaton. Apparently, the magic radiation in the place they mentioned was strong enough to kill ponies. If it was so harmful for live tissue, it could also damage my metal and plastic body, and there is no telling that it can do to the memory crystals.

“Wait! What…” I tried to ask. I couldn’t wield magic anymore, but I haven’t lost all my knowledge and arcane experience, so maybe I could help in some other, less risky way. However, I was interrupted by Dross Rain as soon as I opened my mouth.

“Oh, it talks. Well, it makes things easier, there is no need for the programing.” The older pegasus, again, talked about me as if I was a mere machine, despite me showing clear signs of being sentient.

Confused, I just stood, frozen in place trying to think of that to say to resolve this situation, my mouth moving wordlessly, when Tin Flower came to my help:

“She can’t do it!” Tin Flower exclaimed loudly, drawing the attention of everypony in the room.

“Huh? Why? And who… Tin Flower, right? I remember you – you help Curie with the wings.” Dross Rain turned to the little mechanic squinting at her.

“Yup. I’ve made her and she has a problem with the hydraulic pump,” Tin Flower elaborated. Technically, it was true - I still had some trouble moving around, and the long walk across the sector didn’t help.

Tin Flower jabbed Red Wire with the elbow and the unicorn hastily added. “Yeah, she barely walks.”

Dross Rain glanced at his daughter for any explanation, but she only shrugged in the answer. After giving Tin Flower a long look he finally said:

“You do know it is prohibited to create equinoids, don’t you? We don’t have time for this right now, but we will have to talk later, Flower. Right now take it to Scuff Gear – he will think of something. And hurry up, we don’t have much time.” Turning to Pepper Mercury he motioned with his wing. “Curie, let’s go, we need to plan the assault with Ashes.”

We all exited the house and without a word both of the pegasi launched themselves in the air, leaving clouds of dust behind. Doing just what Dross Rain told us – Tin Flower began to quickly trot away in the direction opposite to where we came from, with Red Wire following her close. I had not much choice but to join them.

“What is happening? What do they want me to do?” I asked as soon as I caught up with the fillies.

“They want you to turn off the automatic defense of the food storage where Orange Grime made his base and then they will overthrow him. Pepper Mercury has been planning this for months,” Tin Flower explained to me, sounding somewhat discontent.

“Well, it’s a very good thing. I don’t think we are going to make it through the next winter with the amount of the rations we get,” Red Wire commented, sounding more enthusiastic than her friend.

“Yes, but I don’t want Twilight to get hurt… well, damaged,” Said the little mechanic, giving me a concerned glance.

“She will be fine, Flower, the tunnel is safe, except for the deadly radiation, of course.” Red Wire tried to reassure her, only to receive a scorching glare from the earth pony filly. “Erm, deadly for the alive ponies, I mean.”

Looking in the distance, Tin Flower quitely and thoughtfully said, “We can run to the city now, the tunnels entrances are not guarded.” The reaction from Red Wire was as immediate as it was fierce:

“What? Have you lost your mind? We won’t even make it there – either Mercury or Rain will spot you from the sky in a moment.” Unlike before, Red Wire sounded more desperate than angry this time. “And just think of what is going to happen if you do manage to escape! Orange Grime is going to hit back. He will go after us… after our families. Flower, please, don’t do this.” The little unicorn pleaded to her friend.

Tin Flower stopped in her tracks and her furrowed brow, weighing her options, to Red Wire’s dismay. I decided to absolve the little filly from making such a hard choice, especially considering the fact, that it wasn’t entirely hers.

“It’s ok, Flower. I’ll do it.” I broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Really? Why?” Almost in the unison answered in surprise both fillies.

“You live horrible lives in this miserable place… if I have chance to make it even just a little bit better, I’m not going to miss it.” It was true, and, Red Wire was right – I didn’t have much of a choice – fleeing right now would be a nearly death sentence for all who is left behind.

“Thanks, I guess.” Came a relieved answer from Red Wire.

“Just be careful down there.” Tin Flower said after giving me a long look.

The rest of our trip was spent in silence, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts and concerns. As before, our path ran through a relatively densely populated part of the sector, though, we didn’t meet anypony as before. Maybe it was for the best. Eventually we arrived something that could have been called a plaza – an open place surrounded by a few small concrete buildings interspersed with the signature huts made from a metal scrap, some of them build on top or on the sides of the concrete structures giving an impression of the tumor growths. On the second look I realized that this place was nothing less than a repurposed military camp, or even a concentration camp. Almost buried in the earth and heaps of junk, remains of a fence with a rusted barbed wire were the confirmation to my guess.

We passed the first building at a quick pace, probably the local hospital, judging by the almost completely faded away red cross. We stopped in front of the door to the second building – a low bulky structure with the words “Prosthetics workshop” crudely painted above the entrance.

Banging with her metal hoof on the door of the workshop, Tin Flower loudly shouted:

“Hey, Scuff Gear, are you there?”

“Gah! You woke me up, you, little scoundrel!” A surprised croaking yell came out from the inside. It obviously belonged to a stallion, who judging by all the racket was trying to get to the door.

“Did ya come again to beg for them ol’ spares?” He rambled hoarsely closer than before, but still making so much noise that it sounded like he was wading through a sea of the empty tin cans. Scuff Gear sounded a bit like Granny Smith, as if displeased with the whole world around. He had the same thick rural accent which somehow was only emphasized by what sounded like a lack of teeth in his jaws.

“I ain’t givin’ ya a shit fer your stupid equinoid project!” With those words Scuff Gear threw open the door and and stood in the doorframe, looking at us with still half closed eyes and half-opened toothless mouth.

So far, Tin Flower was the most dirty pony I had ever seen in my life, in sort, she was a standart to measure the filthiness of the Edge dwellers, who, by the merit of the surrounding area, were all covered in grime to some extent. However, compared to Scuff Gear, she was all but shining with the cleanness. The elder earth pony stallion before me looked like he was avoiding showering and even being outside in the rain for all his life, which, judging by length of his beard, lasted for quite a while. Covered in the generous smears of oil grease, soot and other unknown substances, hopefully of the technological origins, the old mechanic was also partially wrapped in just as dirty rags. Once more today I was glad to have a limited perception of the world thanks to my imperfect artificial body, because I didn’t even wanted to think of the smell. I had not a single idea of what color his pelt was, because I doubted I could even see it. While Scuff Gear’s bald head was the only shining and relatively clean part of his body, his wrinkled muzzle was half-hidden in the thick grey beard. And yes, it was clean enough to tell it’s coloration, though, it didn’t make the muzzle hair less disgusting – from that I could tell it was used as a napkin amongst other things, judging by the remains of nibbled mushrooms and canned vegetables. Of course, one could try and justify it with the fact that showers most probably weren’t a commodity in the Edge and that Scuff Gear’s body was covered in nothing less but an exoskeleton poking from under the filthy tatters, which would be a trouble for an elder to remove and put back every time. Apparently, less than acceptable life conditions and time took their toll and the familiar net of the hydraulic tubes circling his twisted joints served to allow this ancient pony to move his knobbly limbs once again. Surprisingly, despite being called the prosthetics mechanic, Scuff Gear didn’t have any, aside for the exoskeleton, which most probably didn’t actually count, since it didn’t seem to have a direct integration into his body.

As we stood staring at each other, some comprehension started to show in the widening discolored elder stallion eyes.

“Smack mah ass and call me a donkey… ya did it, I cannae believe my ol’ eyes,” Scuff Gear finally said in a raspy drawl, studying me with his gaze, his “ol’ eyes” suddenly having much more sharpness than I expected from a stallion who sounded like somepony at the sunset of their mind.

“Told you – I can do it,” Tin Flower said gleaming with proudness before she puffed her chest once again. Supposedly, both mechanics, old and young, were something like friends and had quite a history between them.

“Yeah, and now we are neck deep in shit because of it,” Snarkily commented Red Wire with a roll of her eye, giving her friend a dissatisfied glare, which didn’t affect the beaming earth pony filly at all.

“Huh? Whatcha do ya mean, Geode?” Scuff Gear shifted his attention to the young unicorn. Spitting on his hooves and rubbing them together he asked with a toothless smile, slowly moving towards Red Wire, his exoskeleton clanking with an each slow limping step. “By the way, do ya need your crystal eye to be checked, eh?”

“Um… Not really… But… ah... my neck! Yeah, I need my neck to be checked! Hurts like a bitch. I’m going to visit the med’s.” The unicorn filly hastily retreated from the outstretched blackened hooves of Scuff Gear, her eyes holding a horrified look as if they were hydra’s heads extending towards her. As she ran away the elder stallion cackled, coughing between the laughs.

“Hehehe, now when the hornhead is gone, let us dirt ponies have a real talk.” Motioning with his head, he added, “Come inside.” And limped back to the workshop.

I decided not to tell that I actually was an unicorn, though, it probably didn’t matter now – after all, machines can’t have the magic, right?

I expected Scuff Gear’s workshop to be messier and dirtier than Flower’s by the same degree as the old stallion was filthier than the steel legged filly, but it wasn’t that bad. Actually, it even looked somewhat orderly, at least, most of it. The walls of the shack were covered in the shelves and racks with the closed boxes. The workbench looked clear from any mess, ready for work. Oh, and almost no rust! Overall, it was just as bad as the RCRC in the heat of a project, which was tolerable, however, two things in this room were bothering me greatly.

The first one – a filthy mattress on the floor in the corner, surrounded by the empty tin cans and just some random garbage, which explained the cacophony from before. The most accurate description for it would be “a rat nest”. There was not many options of who it belonged to. Absolutely disgusting.

The second thing was a large metal table right in the middle of the room. At first glance I thought that it was covered in rust, but when I looked at the stand on its side with the various knives, saws, drills and other tools. It wasn’t a mechanic’s workshop, but a prosthetics station for no reason, a morbid realisation came to me.

Scuff Gear distracted me from the somber picture of this horrific operational table with the question, however, it wasn’t addressed to me.

“So, wazzup? Ya look like you hafta fight for yer equinoid, ” The old mechanic, who sat near the workbench, uttered before nodding towards me and then proceeded to crack his neck and joints, screwing his face with each loud pop.

“Actually, I did.” Scuff Gear stopped in his activity and raised his bushy brow at that, but said nothing, prompting Tin Flower to continue. “Long story short, we tried make it to the Outer City to get some fake IDs when Orange Grime’s fucks caught us and almost killed Twilight, Mercury shot one of them dead and now plans to use Twilight to turn off the food storage turrets and get rid of him for good,” The young earth pony said the whole phrase in a one breath, reminding me of the way Pinkie used to tell things, and, Flower’s explanation was just as unintelligible.

Scuff Gear listened to the explanation with an unreadable expression on his muzzle, stallion’s gaze pointed somewhere miles away, probably not even in this world. As Tin Flower was recovering her breath, in horror, I watched how he slowly opened his mouth and licked with the long tongue a mushroom out of his beard. Chewing on it, the elder stallion shifted eyes to the filly, his expression still neutral.

“Who the fuck is Twilight?” He finally asked. It probably wasn’t the first time he was told something from Flower like this, and it looked like that he managed to make a sense from the most of it.

I decided it was my turn to join the conversation: “I am.”

The reaction from Scuff Gear was instant, his chapped lips dissolved into a goofy smile, slobbered mushroom falling on the floor from the open mouth. Surprising Tin Flower he grabbed her and squeezed in a tight hug.

“Daaaamn, gurl!” The old mechanic gave his younger colleague a noogie firmly holding the thrashing, yet smiling, filly in his hooves. Proudly looking at Flower, he pointed at me, not letting her from his other hoof. “Ya have even got them matrixes!”

“Yeah, about that…” Flower limpened in stallion hooves, her face darkening and rubbed back of her head. “It’s more complicated than it seems.”

“Huh? Whatcha do ya mean?” Asked confused Scuff Gear, tilting his head a bit and giving me a curious look.

The filly avoided answering his question and instead brought up the reason we came here in the first place.

“Anyway, I couldn’t find an intact hydraulic pump, so she has only, like, half of the working pressure in her legs and Peps wants to send her to the maintenance tunnels real soon. Can you help?” Tin Flower inquired, not looking stallion in the eyes.

“Maybe.” Scuff Gear squinted at the filly, but decided not to press the issue. Instead he turned to me. “I need to take a look inside first.” That didn’t sound good – the thought of somepony fumbling around with my insides was making me feel very uncomfortable, especially with those dirty hooves. But, again, if I want to keep walking, I shouldn’t reject any help I’m being given. As if sensing my hesitation, he asked me directly, motioning with his hoof, “Twilight ya say? C’mere.”

As I reluctantly approached Scuff Gear, the old stallion fished out a screwdriver from the depths of the rags covering his body and dragged himself on the floor to my side with a terrible scraping noise, refusing to get his rump of the floor. I tried to take a look at what he was doing, but I couldn’t turn my head this far, so, again, I had to wait as somepony was tinkering with my innards.

“It’s been ages since I have seen an equinoid…” Scuff Gear quietly muttered – I couldn’t decide if to himself, or addressing me. “The tin ponies are not very welcomed in the Edge, ya know… hmm...“ He continued to mumble, fumbling with something on my side. As he was talking to me, I heard something fall on the floor – screws. He removed a slightly rusty metal plate, which he carefully put on his side. But before I could ask him about the equinoids, he gasped in a surprise. “Whoah… These are... the legit Princesses’ Age gems, I can count by mah hooves times I saw something like that. Where did you get them, Flower?” He drawled, slowly shaking his head in the disbelief.

Tin Flower, who was silently watching the older pony working all that time, decided to chime in. “I found them in the city and, yeah, she says her name is Twilight and that she was a scientist back then and used those crystals for recording and… she had kinda recorded herself on them. She doesn’t remember anything between then and now, though.”

Upon hearing my name Scuff Gear froze in place, the hoof with the screwdriver stopping mid-air. His eyes hardened, and something changed on his muzzle, the expression becoming unreadable once again.

“Ya know what, Flower, I can fix her hydraulics pump, but I need a spare one from the storage. Can you fetch me it from the shed outside?” Scuff Gear slowly said to the filly over his shoulder, but looked me directly in the eyes.

“Aye, I’ll be back in a blink of an eye.” Tin Flower, oblivious to change in the old stallion, saluted with her steel hoof and darted outside, with a spring in her steps.

Scuff Gear continued to give me that strange look for a few more moments, until the little filly’s steps outside faded away. With a deep sight he turned to the shelves and rose to his hooves.

“I’ve seen your kind before, you know,” Scuff Gear stated in a suddenly melancholic voice, slowly moving towards the towering rack near the wall with the large boxes, his exoskeleton rattling with the each step. Something had cardinally changed in this stallion, he no more looked as a weird semi-senile “that crazy grandpa”, his accent almost completely gone from his voice, leaving the expression of weathered and a very tired pony who had witnessed too much for a one life.

And what did he mean by that? Scuff Gear already told me that he had seen equinoids, so he probably referred to my crystal “matrixes”. On other hand, the girls told me that I’m the first of the kind…

“Really? Tin Flower and Red Wire told me that I’m the first pony who came this close to the True Transference.” I tried to clarify his statement, though, I wasn’t sure if the elder stallion heard me – he was too busy noisily rummaging through the metal containers on the shelf.

“For realzies,” Huffed Scuff Gear, who finally finished searching the boxes and fished something from one them. Wait a moment, it looks familiar… was it a hydraulic system pump? Before I could ask him about it, he turned to me and continued to talk.

“Equinoids rarely end up in the Edge, at least, not as a whole and with any gems inside, but I didn’t spend my whole life here. And yet, I’ve never seen an equinoid like you.” He moved to the workbench and picked up a few tools along with a duct tape and a box of screws, walking towards me he added with a sigh:

“And about the girls… I love them, the very bright fillies, but honestly, they don’t know shit, not like they can learn anything from spending all their time in this hole.” Finally, he came to me and again looked me in the eyes. “I meant the other kind of ponies, those from the Princesses’ Ages, the Former Ones.”

What? Wait, does it mean… he can’t be serious – it’s been five hundred years! Who could have survived that long?

“Do you mean there are others!?” I grabbed him by the shoulders, in a sudden movement kicking the metal plate from my body lying on the floor to the side, but ignoring it I continued to spill the stream of questions at him. “Who are they? What are their names?” Could they be somepony I once knew? Could they even be my friends? Because who else, but them, could be capable of such an incredible feat. But, a sudden realisation came to my mind: if my friends were still alive would they allow Equestria to become such a horrible place?

Scuff Gear, however, was totally unfazed by the assault of the questions. Brushing aside my hooves from his weary shoulders, the elder stallion silently once again took the place at my side and began to work with his hooves deep into my body.

All of a sudden I felt my limbs go limp as if something deflated inside of me, and, after the fruitless attempt to move, I found out that my body was paralyzed with my head half turned in a way so I can see only Scuff Gear’s face.

>WARNING! An unauthorized access is detected. Remember: modification of the TCE property is is considered a criminal offense. Please contact the TCE Equinoid Support Station as soon as possible.

>WARNING! Hydraulic system pump is offline. The hydraulic system is not functional. Please contact TCE Equinoid Technical Support Station as soon as possible.

>WARNING! Unidentified components detected. Please contact the TCE Equinoid Support Station for more information.

>WARNING! Critical levels of magical contamination in memory crystals. Please contact the TCE Equinoid Support Station as soon as possible. Remember: Negligence of annual magical decontamination for crystals is considered a criminal offense.

After a minute of silence, interrupted only by the clicking noises from my insides and illegible curses, Scuff Gear finally gruffly spoke. “As far as I know, there are, like, less than two dozen ponies from the time of The Great War, if you don’t count the fucking zebra witches with their weird creepy shit, of course.” He paused, looked somewhere above and behind me, and scrunching his face continued. “Actually, those ponies are creepy too, I mean – no normal magic can make a pony live for centuries. Even she was a bit creepy.” He chuckled and shook his head. “And don’t ask me the names, nopony knows who are they, in fact, almost all of them have completely gone nuts, can’t remember even their own names, and those who still can – prefer not to tell anypony… hmph.”

Scuff Gear paused and after a few moments of grunting with a loud clunk something fell on the floor – my old hydraulic pump, I presume. While I still had a lot of questions, I did not dare to interrupt the old mechanic. He would just ignore my questions and continue to tell his story, anyway, but I didn’t want to be rude. With another grunt Scuff Gear picked up the “new” pump from the floor and put it into my body to replace the old one. After a sigh Scuff Gear began to talk again.

“I once worked with the mare from The Great War times, and, damn, your old kind is different, could make anything done, no matter what, unlike ponies these days. She needed a mechanic who won’t ask questions and does the job good. And I needed money back then. Needed it bad. Being very young and living near the Deep Tunnels does that to a pony.” Scuff Gear shoved his muzzle into my side, his head almost completely disappearing from my view. As the elder pony withdrew his head, now covered in the fresh wet splotches, he commented. “Hmph… gonna change a couple of tubes while I’m at it.”

With those words Scuff Gear once again departed to the shelves, looking for the spare plastic and resin tubes, leaving me still paralyzed with my thoughts alone.

Unbelievable – almost twenty ponies who had managed to make it through half of a millennium, and it’s only according to the full of holes memory of this old pony, who didn’t even spend all his life in the city. I was certain, there could be more. However, according to my memory, in my times, there was none, the Princesses didn’t count, obviously. Apparently, the corrupted government and the lousy law enforcement lead to either a leak of the knowledge from the restricted part of The Royal Archives or to a promulgation of Sombra’s and his Coven’s dark magic after the war. It explains why most of those ponies went insane – such magic always comes with a high price. Also, I vaguely remembered something about the ancient obscure rituals and the rare alchemical potions from Zebrica which could prolong an equine life, and again, such transgressions against the nature come with a dire cost – this is why practices like those were uncommon even amongst zebras, who invented them. And who know what other dark secrets could have been unearthed in the last five centuries…

His exoskeleton rattling with each step, Scuff Gear got back to me with the coils of colorful tubes hanging from his mouth. Spitting them on the floor under me, he returned to fixing the core of the pneumatic system inside my body. Just like the last time, all of sudden he decided to continue his tale.

“”The Magician” she called herself.” As Scuff Gear talked in a raspy and melancholic voice, his muzzle dissolved in a smile and eyes half closed in the recollection of the passed youth. “That an amazing mare she was – body made a pure arcanium, if I close my eyes I still can see that shiny bu… ahem… her magic – it’s not like from the lame hornheads these days… every time she cast a spell – it was a show to remember for the rest of the life. Heh…” The elder stallion chuckled, shaking his head. “We had quite an adventure together at the lowest levels of The Tunnels…” Smile faded from Scuff Gear’s muzzle upon the next words. ”Haven’t seen her since then…” The elder stallion directed his sorrowful gaze somewhere out of the window, as if he was expecting to see “The Magician” once again. The old mechanic looked at the floor, chuckling, still reviving the pleasant memories in his mind. “Heard a lot of stories from her about the past, about how the things were.” Scuff Gear turned his head to me and looked me directly in the eyes. ”Heard even about you – Twilight Sparkle, one the greatest heroes and scientists, who met a miserable and cruel end. Though, I’m not amazed to see you, feels logical somehow, she spoke very highly of you, after all.”

If I hadn’t been already paralyzed, I’m sure would be upon hearing that. Even vague and quite expected, the fact that I was dead still was shocking. How did it happen? Did I die in that accident?

“Wha… What happened to… me?” Was the only question I managed to squeeze out, though I had much more, as usual, but this time I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to know the answers.

Scuff Gear shook his head with a crooked sad smile on the chapped lips and returned to tinkering with my innards once more. A few moments later a quiet reply came from him:

“Wish I could tell you more, but my memory is not as it was, sorry.”

My mind was racing – if this mare remembered me, the others could remember me too… they could know what happened to me and my friends…

“I should find those ponies… Find out what happened to me…” I said my thoughts aloud. I didn’t know what to do next, or what my final goal was, but this sounded like a solid start to getting back on the track. Scuff Gear, however, didn’t think so – dashing in front of my face he looked me directly in the eyes, his muzzle bearing a serious and concerned expression:

“Twilight, listen to me now, it is the past and you can’t change it, and I seriously doubt knowing how you died is going to help.” There was a point in his words, though, he wasn’t “dead” yet, so he couldn’t understand. Before I could retort, Scuff Gear’s expression darkened and he hastily added. “But here, in the present, ponies need you once more, the instant you help Mercury, she will get rid of you and the girls, mark my words.”

Now he didn’t make much sense again. Didn’t Pepper Mercury want to help the Edge dwellers?

“Why? She seems nice and genuine,” Came my response. The young pegasus was a bit gritty, but a good mare. She even reminded me of Rainbow Dash.

“Argh, it’s all a mask – I’ve seen shadows lurking in her eyes, believe or not, but Orange Grime is better than this crazy filly. She wasn’t the same after she lost her wings, the poor thing.” Scuff Gear scowled at my words. Now he didn’t make any sense at all – according to what I learned, Orange Grime was a death sentence for this sector with his food distribution policy. Nor it sounded like a convincing argument. As the old mechanic returned to fixing my hydraulic system, he continued to talk.

“As soon as her gang attacks the warehouse, grab the girls and get the fuck out of the Edge and go to the City.” Scuff Gear paused and pointed his slightly shaking hoof at me. “But don’t stop there for long – Canterlot doesn’t have much time left for it.” The elder stallion grimly finished.

Scuff Gear’s statements were becoming more and more confusing – either he knew something very fundamental that nopony else did, or he was simply making things up.

“What do you mean?” I demanded clarification for his words, deciding to not jump to conclusions and give him a chance to explain the situation.

“The city is dying, in a couple of decades the Edge is going to run out of steel to send to the city – the crap we recycle crumbles in hooves already. And before you ask – I’ve talked to Nebula’s mechanics, well, before they left her, – the mines are already dry. The same can be said about almost anything, including food and… even your precious magic,” Scuff Gear said in sad and tired voice.

Now he was making things up.

“Magic? How is it even possible? That’s not how it works!” Magic is not some kind of a resource that can be depleted – it is a vast thaumagical field existing in the underlying plane of space and time next to ours, reflecting Equestria and beyond, thus being as great as the whole world. Saying that magic is being lost is saying that the fundamentals of our world, or even the whole universe are crumbling. He wasn’t talking about the “death” of Canterlot, but about the apocalypse, and I seriously doubted it.

“Tell it to all the ponies who died that winter a couple of years ago!” Scuff Gear barked back at me.

“But the girls told me that it were Pink Butterflies!” I snapped at him, becoming agitated with his crazy sounding theories.

“Agh, they dunno know nuffing!” Scuff Gear threw the wrench on the floor in a bout of anger. “There never was an attack, the shield failed because the damned horns didn’t have enough power, and I’m sure it wasn’t the last time. Get the fuck out of here, nopony is going to survive it again when it happens!” The old mechanic raspily yelled at me in exasperation, flailing his hoof, the exoskeleton rattling with the each motion.

“Then where can we go? I’ve seen with my own eyes… sensors… the lands beyond Canterlot…” I began to shoot back at Scuff Gear, but couldn’t finish my sentence, being interrupted by the elder stallion.

“You take them girls and go to Stalliongrad,” He stated calmly, yet firmly, making a little sense once again.

“What?” Scuff Gear must be joking. “Isn’t Canterlot the last city? The girls told me...” I tried to argue with an another of his contradictory statements, and was interrupted over again, this time more rudely:

“They. Don’t. Know. Shit!” Scuff Gear angrily punctuated very words and pointed somewhere outside with his hoof, shouting at me: “They are just two kids, for fucks sake!”

He sat on his haunches and took a deep sigh before continuing in a much more composed manner this time:

“Listen here, I’m old and for sure sound crazy, but if there is a city that will stand in Equestria until the end of the world it is Stalliongrad… I maybe sit on my old wrinkled ass in this fucking junkyard all the time, but even I have heard the rumors… it still stands proud. And if you still don’t believe my words, The Magician told me herself. One of her friends, another mare from The War times left for it. You should remember that city, you know how it was – ‘Stalliongrad falls the last’ they always said.”

At this moment I had almost began to doubt even the story about that “The Magician” mare, but his last words actually made a lick of a sense. I indeed remembered Stalliongrad – The City of The Unbroken as some said, or as the others called it… The City of The Traitors. An impenetrable fortress of an enchanted stone standing proud and on its own amongst the frozen cliffs of the Luna Bay, on the very edge of the world, marking the northern border, while not being inside it. And from the moment of its foundation almost in the same time as Equestria itself was founded, Stalliongrad was in the state of an eternal war – with Yakyakistan, the rams’ septs, the sea serpents… even Equestria itself. During Nightmare Moon’s uprising, Stalliongrad’s ponies were the first to pledge loyalty to the possessed goddess, seeking her help and guidance to put an end to their never ending struggle. After the defeat of Nightmare Moon, Stalliongrad refused to bow to Princess Celesia’s army and stood defiantly under the siege for more than a decade until the Sun Goddess had to recognize its independence and sign a peace treaty to save her army from freezing to death. Since then the relationship between Stalliongrad and Equestria improved greatly – they even sent a regiment of soldiers to help during the war with Sombra, but the proud city still stands by itself morosely, fighting its own war with the restless north. Scuff Gear was right – Stalliongrad is the last city in Equestria to fall, its ponies are just too stubborn to die.

Unaware of my trip to the depths of my memory, Scuff Gear continued to talk, this time sounding no more angry or crazy, but more defeated and desperate.

“I don’t want Flower and Wire to slowly die in here… To be honest, I’m proud of them – the girls, they are something, both got the incredible talents… the incredible hearts…” Did he just sniff? “You will never find a filly who can make an equinoid…” He chuckled. “And she can’t even properly read. And Geode Gleam can be just as much a barbed wire as she can be Red Wire, but she deserves all of her names.” He paused composing himself, and looked me in the eyes. “It is sad that only you, the old ponies, are still capable of changing world, unlike me or most of us.”

I didn’t know what to say or what to believe, how to react to his words. Should I really go to Stalliongrad? Can it be better there than in Canterlot? How long it will take to get to Stalliongrad by hoof? Is it even possible?

My train of thoughts was stopped by a bit more jovially sounding Scuff Gear. With a knock on my side, pleased with himself, the elder stallion said:

“Well, I’ve changed the pump, it’s not new but better than the piece of junk you had. Flower is a smart kid, but she should learn how to steal stuff one day. And maybe how to read.”

Hey, I can move again! I tried to flex my limbs and they indeed moved more smoothly and faster than before – I didn’t feel like I was wading through syrup anymore. I turned to Scuff Gear to express my gratitude.

“Thanks.”

The elder pony only nodded to my words, and looking me in the eyes with unreadable expression added:

“Now go and do what you should. It’s not my place to order around a mare like you, but keep my words in your mind – you are running of time, Twilight Sparkle.” Scuff Gear turned away from me and limped away to his mattress in the corner, not waiting for my answer. I guess, it means I should go back to Pepper Mercury. As I was at the door, Scuff Gear who climbed in the depths of his “rat nest”, covering himself with a glistening piece of thermal insulation croaked:

“We are all due…”

It was a lot of knowledge to consider. With that thought I left the workshop to find Tin Flower and Red Wire. The old stallion was definitely right about one thing – I was running out of time, there was no telling when Orange Grime decides to retaliate. I had to find the girls and go back to Mercury.

There was no need to look for Red Wire, because as soon as I exited the workshop I noticed her sitting near the hospital doors, forlornly looking in the distance. She had no signs of medical help being received – the red marks on her neck were just as evident. Maybe her wounds were not worth the attention or the medical supplies by the standards of the Edge, but most probably she didn’t actually seek medical help and just used it as an excuse to avoid Scuff Gear. Red Wire noticed me as well and rose to meet me with the question:

“Where is Flower? Is she still chatting with Scuff Gear? We have no time for this.” Inquired the little unicorn sounding impatiently. Apparently, she had to sit outside, waiting for me and Tin Flower almost the whole time.

“Scuff Gear send her to the “shed outside”. Do you know where it is?” I asked her in return. Red Wire answered only with the motion of her head, inviting me to follow.

A narrow path between the hospital and the workshop lead us to a half-ruined shack surrounded by a various junk – most of it looked like remains of the equinoinds, stripped almost of all of their limbs. The quietly muttered curses and a racket of metal coming from that shack gave me an obvious clue to where to look for Tin Flower.

Through the open door I saw her rummaging through the contents of the shelves in the vain attempts to find the hydraulic pump.

“Hey, Flower,” I called her, but the little filly was too busy to hear me.

“Flower, damn it!” Impatiently yelled Wire much louder.

“Huh?” Finally Tin Flower reacted, but resumed her search for the no more needed spare part. “I’ve almost found it! Just a one more minute.”

Red Wire rolled her eye, and before she could come out with some unnecessarily harsh response I decided to speak first.

“It’s me, Twilight. Scuff Gear has fixed my pump. We should go now.” After those words the little mechanic finally emerged from the shed, covered in fresh dust and flakes of rust.

“Oh, come on!” Flower whined, and after being met with my glare and the raised eyebrow from Wire added. “I mean, it’s great, but he could have told me he had a spare one in the workshop. I made the hay of this shed looking for it!”

“Why am I not surprised? The old stallion lost his marbles long ago. Anyway, let’s go already, Mercury must be tired of waiting for us!” Barked at her Red Wire and without waiting for an answer trotted away, leaving us to catch up with her.

Just as before we spend our trip back to Mercury’s (and Dross Rain’s for that matter) hut in silence, mostly because of the very brisk pace dictated by the long legged unicorn filly.

Pepper Mercury was already waiting for us outside, checking her rifle. A few hooves away from her Dross Rain and the mare from the smelters – Ashes, had been discussing something over the map laid out on the crate between them.

“Not a minute too soon.” The steel winged pegasus mare was the only pony to greet us – both adults were too engrossed in their activity to even notice us. “What took you so long?”

“We needed to change her hydraulic pump, I told you,” Tin Flower answered in a disgruntled tone. As we were approaching the pegasi’s dwelling, her expression became more and more sour, and now she was visibly dissatisfied with the whole situation once again. However, it was unnoticed by Mercury who put her rifle into the harness and walked toward us.

“Whatever. So, can it walk properly now?” She asked, giving me a measuring look and making Tin Flower almost growling.

“She. And her name is…” Tin Flower began to talk, but was interrupted by Dross Rain.

“Ah, you are finally back!” He approached us from the makeshift table and turning to the fuming filly asked. “So, can your equinoid do what is needed, Flower?”

I couldn’t really decide if I should be irritated by being treated like a machine and not a pony. I had yet to meet the other equinoids and see if they had the level of sentience comparable of that of the living beings. Maybe, they were actually just the mindless automatons and thus it was justified for Pepper Mercury and Dross Rain to treat me this way – after all, they could not know about my predicament.

Anyway, I dared to speak for myself to avoid Tin Flower arguing with pegasi, both young and adult.

“Yes, I can.” Came my answer. Ashes rose her head from the map and gave me a wary glance. Dross Rain gave me a neutral, yet long look. Finally, he said:

“Excellent.” Turning in place, so he would be facing me the stallion asked directly. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, of course.” That wasn’t a very flattering question, to be honest, but again, I didn’t know his expectations of me, so the best I could do now is to keep my head down and just follow the flow of the conversation.

“Good.” He nodded and motioned me to follow him to the makeshift table. “Come over here.”

We both approached the overturned plastic crate used to lay out the map, which I almost instantly recognized – it was the same map from the wall above Dross Rain’s table in the hut, although, a few fresh marks and lines were added to it since then.

Ashes, the mare on the opposite side of the table, gave me an another wary look as we came nearer. Up close, I was able to take a better look of her.

Ashes reminded me of the workponies from Ponyville construction crew – sturdy, simple and a bit rough at the edges, all of that was only emphasized by her being an earth pony. An unkempt hair of grey color and a pelt of a bit lighter hue were perfectly matching her name, even her eyes were of a steel color. I doubted that this coloration was caused by the age – Ashes looked like an young adult, although, it was hard to determine an age of a pony in the Edge. Her body was almost entirely covered in a dark dirty working robe – and there was a reason for it. Parts of her skin, which were not protected by the cloth beared the pockmarks of little burns – a price of being showered by slag on daily basis. In the corner of her mouth sat a dead cigarette, and judging by how chewed on it was – it was the same cigarette she was smoking when we first met her at the smelter.

Dross Rain brought my attention to the map, pointing with the primaries of his wing at the thick red line.

“Your order is to enter this maintenance tunnel.” He moved his feather from the start of the line to the big square outline at the end. “And to reach the power converter room and shut it down.” Raising his head, he glanced at me. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I curtly answered, thinking about choice of his words. An order. I indeed was treated like a machine. I wondered if the other equinoids were treated the same, or it was just the local, or, maybe, the pegasi thing – they do have a habit of ordering around.

I looked at the map scanning it with my eyes. Apparently, Dross Rain noticed it and commented:

“The tunnel is straight as an arrow, you won’t be lost,” He said once again tracing the line with his wing.

Maybe it was a good thing that I couldn’t roll my eyes. Such an attitude, even considering all the reasons, was becoming a bit tiring. But it wasn’t what really bothered me.

“What about the magic radiation?” I asked the question which was troubling me since the beginning.

Dross Rain glanced at me, a bit surprised. He furrowed his brows, searching for an answer, but apparently it was beyond his field of knowledge, so he looked at Ashes, who heard the whole exchange, prompting her to help.

She thought for a moment, cleared her throat and began explaining in a raspy voice:

“The converter uses the crystals charged at the Thunderspires to power up the food storage. This asshole, Orange Grime, decided to crank up the power a while ago, and the crystal cracked. The magic energy leaking from it fries everything in the room, it is too hot for the living ponies, even in the protection suits.”

An outflux of a raw magic energy… it wasn’t something new for me, actually, far from it – the leakages of magic were a common issue we experienced in the RCRC during our experiments with the prototypes. However, it was never that bad. The amount of energy stored in that crystal must be astounding if it had been leaking for so long with such dire consequences.

I didn’t know how much my current body was susceptible to heat, though I was sure the enchanted crystals inside me should withstand high temperatures with no trouble. I wish I could say the same about the plastic details and rubber tubes…

“After you turn off the power, we are going to strike. Just stay put in the room and we will retrieve you after.” Not waiting a reply for me Dross Rain summarized our conversation. “Your orders are: go through the tunnel, enter the converter room, turn it off and wait.” He emphasized each action by holding his primaries one by one.

Was he in the military before or something? And especially considering the fact that his daughter makes weaponry…

My thoughts were disrupted by the sudden question for Tin Flower:

“What is going to happen to her after that?” She asked the older pegasus anxiously.

Dross Rain and Ashes turned to her and gave the little filly almost a disappointed look, before the pegasus gave a short and simple answer:

“We can’t keep an equinoid here.” His words were accompanied by the hard, almost menacing glare which implied that no arguing is going to take a place and the decision is final.

Tin Flowers ears dropped, but she herself said nothing. Turning away from the defeated filly, Dross Rain addressed his daughter:

“Curie, show her the tunnel and join us at the fairway to the storage as we discussed, we can’t lose anymore time.” He took the map from the crate and tucked it under his wing, motioning with the another: “Ashes, let’s go.”

At the same time Pepper Mercury rose from there she was sitting the whole time and wordlessly motioned with her hoof to follow. I couldn’t tell if it was addressed to only me or the girls too, but they began to move too – Red Wire, who was silent all the time, giving wary looks to Tin Flower, who looked like she was on the verge of crying. Before our two groups parted ways, Ashes and Mercury exchanged the looks and gave each other almost imperceptible nods.

Of course, I didn’t expect the entrance to the maintenance tunnel to be a golden gate with glowing signs pointing at it, but I certainly expected more than just a rusty small hatch in the earth completely blending with the surroundings. I wondered how many of such entrances I could have passed today already, because I certainly would have missed this one.

Pepper Mercury stopped at the trapdoor and looked around. She dashed to the nearest heap of scrap and fished out a metal pole which she proceed to use as a lever to open the corroded hatch. With an infernal screech, the door opened, releasing a cloud of dust flakes from the underground depths. The pegasus wrinkled her nose and commented:

“Ugh, smells like an ass…”

We all stood in an indecision near the gaping with darkness opening in the earth surface until Mercury broke the silence:

“Well, you know what to do tinhead, and I have to go – can’t miss the chance to shoot more of Orange Grime’s bastards. Don’t make us wait.” With these words she launched herself in the sky, leaving me and the girls to our fates.

Tin Flower was the first one to speak, her eyes watering:

“Please, be careful. And as soon as you finish, head right back here, we are going to wait for you. And then we are going to the city. Together,” She told me, holding my hoof and sniffed.

“Good luck.” Wished Red Wire with a curt nod.

I turned to the tunnel entrance – the steep stairs were dissolving in the pitch black darkness after a few steps, there my path laid. Did anypony bring a light? Fine… Bracing myself, I began my descent.

As soon as I reached the menacing darkness, I realized that something on my muzzle emits a steady, but not faint glow – strong enough to see just a bit more than outlines, but too weak to make details or anything at all beyond a two meters away.

I turned back and saw the two fillies peeking inside. I nodded to them, hoping that they will notice this light, and continued to move forward.

The tunnel was as cramped and nondescript as it could be expected from the utility passage between the place with purely a technical designation and the hatch... in the middle of nowhere. The only remarkable thing was a cluster of glowing mushrooms growing from the crack in the wall. Well, huge flakes of dust could had been outstanding, but not after all that dirt, rust and grime I had already seen today.

As I walked, my thoughts returned to Scuff Gear’s words, about Stalliongrad and the future of Canterlot. It was hard to believe, not that I wanted to, but some of his words were making sense… And even if he was right and I should take the girls to Stalliongrad, it is not as easy as it sounded – this city was as far from Canterlot as it was possible, literally marking the furthest northern border. To journey where by hoof is no joke, it would require a significant amount of supplies – to last for months, and I doubted we could get them for free. It is not a decision to be made easily, and of course not alone. I should bring this subject up to the girls as soon as I finish my business in the Edge.

Finally, I saw a dim glow through the dark – I was nearing the converter room. After only a minute of careful trotting I reached my destination.

The glow in this room was coming from a few things. The first of them, the dominating source of light – was the converter itself. The simple looking contraption consisted of the network of wires, coils and, most importantly – crystals. A few smaller crystals, probably acting as the fuses, were only faintly glowing, while the biggest one in the heart of the power transformer was emanating the bright, but not blindingly so, light. On its surface, overflowing with the bright spots, I could see a brilliant jagged line – the crack I was told about. Every few moments a protuberance of energy would come out of it and link to metal parts of the converter in a shower of sparks.

But the enchanted stone gems weren’t the only things glowing in this room – after looking around I noticed that any metal objects near the transformer, especially on the side of the crack were glowing from the heat with a dim orange light in the haze surrounding them. And then, I noticed something else in the nearly darkness of the room. Something that could have made me vomit, if I was able to.

Charred bones lying in the heaps scattered around the power converter. In horror I realized that it wasn’t the dust in the tunnel, but the ashes of these unfortunate ponies, who, apparently, were working in this room when the crystal cracked.

As I stood, unable to avert my eyes from the burnt remains, I heard something drop on the floor very close to me with a wet plop sound. I turned to look what on Equestria could it be and saw a little puddle of the thick liquid on the concrete floor almost right under me. Turning my head even further I realised that one of my sides were lacking a plastic protection plate, which just melted off my body. It wouldn’t take me long to become another source of the glow in this room.

I better hurry, if I didn’t want to half of my body become a simmering liquid on the floor.

The sudden motion of my body made a few more drops of plastic to fall on the floor. And the steps I made felt slightly different – the heat was affecting my metal limbs and most probably the oil in hydraulic system.

I glanced at the power converter once again and what I supposed was a master switch – I could only guess – any words once painted on the hot metal either burned away or peeled off long ago, leaving no trace. As I neared closer to the source of the heat, the lense of my left eye cracked with a loud plink, my vision becoming distorted with a horizontal split. I madly dashed to the switch, doing my best to avoid disturbing the laying bones and pulled the switch handle down. Fortunately, I met no resistance, and with a loud whining noise the transformer was turned off, its glowing crystals winking out one by one.

I waited for something – I didn’t know what, in the complete darkness, watching how even my metal limbs, red-hot a moment ago, faded away. However it didn’t took me long before I heard the loud curses at first, followed then by the screams of panic and sounds of gunshots from somewhere on the other side of the room. I guess, the tunnel isn’t the only way inside this room, and there must be a door, which I didn’t see at first.

With the all light gone, I couldn’t see a thing. When my left eye cracked, it had lost its glow, and now I could barely orient in the absolute darkness enveloping me. Of course, I could try and find the door by the feel, but it might take a while. It was a bit dangerous, but there was an another option. After a few minutes of indecision I finally made up my mind.

Carefully, I moved in the direction of the sounds of the fight. My plan was to open the door and let some light in so it will be easier to find the entrance to the maintenance tunnel. As I slowly moved I heard something crunch under my metal hoof. I winced, but continued to move forward. Finally I saw a flat surface of the door in the very dim green glow, but as I reached for the doorknob, my another hoof was caught up in the cable or some sort of a rope, so instead of carefully opening the door just a little, I widely threw it open in the attempt to keep my balance.

It was a bloody massacre. I never saw the overthrow of a leader – such a thing was alien for Equestria, but I knew, that it is not how it should be done. The crimson blood was everywhere, so much of it. Mangled bodies of the dead ponies lay strewn on the floor with their broken weapons and parts of the armor in between them. So many maimed corpses. But it wasn’t as bad as the scene before my very eyes.

Pepper Mercury, her smiling face smeared with blood and the steel wings dripping with the scarlet liquid, her rifle dropped on the floor near, was viciously beating a stallion with her bare hoofs. The floor under his body was crimson red, his limbs and wings broken, the feathers soaked in blood lying amongst his teeth. And then I froze in my place – this stallion… it was Dross Rain.

I don’t know how long lasted this moment of a utter shock, when Mercury looked at me and our eyes met. Once shining with the calm determination, now they were gleaming with the bloodthirst and violence. She stopped beating her father and quickly reached out for the gun. It took me mere moment to realise what is going to happen next.

As I quickly stepped back to face the blackness of the converter room, I heard an inequine growl behind me as a bullet bounced from the transformer just above my head. The light from the door was merely enough to see an another doorway, leading to the maintenance tunnel. I dashed madly to the door, not bothering to open it, hoping that my metal body would be enough to just smash through it. As I hoped, I rammed through the door and in a shower of the splitters entered the tunnel.

And then, I ran.

Author's Notes:

Here we go – another chapter. As usual, I appreciate any feedback, and if you notice any mistakes sneaked in through the editing, let me know. Special thanks to IAmApe for doing so in the previous chapter!

A few news – writing process is going relatively smoothly – I have the 4th chapter ready for editing and began to work on the 5th. There is a little sidestory coming soon – it's almost ready for editing as well. The prologue and 1st chapter are going to be edited once again to hopefully get rid of all mistakes.
Oh, and please do join Aftersound discord server (link below)

Also, Gekasso made a special blog for the illustrations:
https://aftersoundproject.tumblr.com/
Don't be shy and check it out!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this story so far.

And the last:
I invite you to join Aftersound Project discord server where you can chat with Geka and I, discuss the story, get to see announcements, little snippets of the future chapters and new illustrations.
https://discord.gg/R5Ky8K4