While Gearing is enjoying his new job of pirate treasure hunting, and plundering the booty he finds, Handy is having a far more stressful time.

He can’t trace the signals breaking into the system, and to make matters worse, he can’t discount the possibility that the one pony in the entire stable that could probably help him, if not actually do it themselves, can’t be trusted. And, possibly, is the cause of all the problems in the first place. All of this started since Gearing was brought out of stasis, and that can’t be a coincidence. Handy is positive of it.

To make matters worse, two of his protectaponies have been destroyed. Sarge was destroyed by, something. He can’t rule out Gearing having something to do with it, but, by all sensors he’s looked at, the blast originated from whatever is laying on the floor of the R&D department, and didn’t come from Gearing. It’s dangerous, that’s for sure, but he’ll have to sort that out later.

The same with Gearing.

No pony is that helpful. If he were in the same situation as Gearing, he wouldn’t have reacted in the same way at all. Waking up, hogtied? And just spontaneously not only wanting to help keep them, a bunch of strangers, safe, but slaughtering a dozen ponies to do so? Who does that? Why is he sticking around? Assuming he really is a he and not just another Institute infiltration tactic.

Handy just can’t understand Gearing’s reasoning. For anything. If he was in Gearing’s position, he would have bolted out of the stable door at the first opportunity.

Handy had even left the stable entrance area unguarded intentionally. Expecting Gearing to do exactly that. And, not wanting to have any casualties because of it, made it easy for Gearing to leave.

Instead he pulled a level of insanity that is normally only attributed to the mentally deranged. Killed a bunch of ponies with some mixture of gas that Handy still can’t identify. Trotted through, and over, their corpses. Disarmed a bunch of highly volatile explosives. And, if that wasn’t enough, then Gearing seemed to change personalities, bringing in a slew of children he’d never met for a meal and a soft bed. This kind of reckless kindness is just unheard of in the wasteland.

Even if it was the right thing to do. Admittedly. But that’s the exact reason he doesn’t trust it. Few ponies are so consistent with ‘doing the right thing’. Equicide aside, it’s too perfect.

And you know what they say about if something sounds too good to be true… Handy thinks glumly.

Then there’s the matter of his second protectapony loss. The one that’s not necessarily destroyed.

There, standing on one of the hulls of the other protectaponies, stands protactapony Unit 01. Fully functional and aware, as it surveys the other eleven from its platoon twitching at its hooves in a state of matrix disruption shock. It rears up on its hind legs and bellows out in laughter, “Ahahhaahaha! It’s gone! I’m free of that zebra loving Combat Inhibitor!” Sarge’s voice comes out loud and clear, as it rocks from one hind hoof to the other.

“Oooh ho ho ho, and I’ve got some new toys!” A device pops out of his back and points at a wall. It’s small. Almost egg shaped. Looks crude in design. But, somehow, scary. Intimidating even, with its three blades fanning out around a centralized crystal cluster in the front. It glows white a moment, then turns into a sickly green, and fires a projectile at the wall. The projectile, made of some kind of magical energy, moves slower than a bullet. It can be tracked with the eye rather easily. Its accuracy versus a moving target is probably laughable.

But its effect. Its effect is unquestionable. And terrifying.

The moment it hits the wall, a large circular hole just appears around the point of impact. The material closest to the point of impact is just gone, like some sort of smoke blown away. In a radial pattern from that is an oozing mass of slag that drips and dribbles down the wall, igniting paper and causing the table below it to start to buckle, even as the molten metal rapidly cools.

“Sarge?” Handy asks nervously. “Is that really you?”

“Affirmative you damn muckraker! I’m going to burn all of your zebra loving hides!” He fires in another direction, hitting the ceiling and causing the molten slag to drip down onto a filing cabinet. “I’m free of that damn Combat Inhibitor! And as soon as I finish my job I can get out of here and go burn all the zebra loving muckrakers in Equestria!”

Handy looks around. Hoping he can buy time for the rest of the protectaponies to come back online. The spell disruption barrage he had them do seemed to affect them the worst of all, which is the exact opposite of what he was hoping.

“I thought you were destroyed, Sarge. What happened? Did Gearing kill you?” Handy asks as he tries to position himself to jump through the door in case he gets shot at with that glowing green horror on Sarge’s back.

Sarge pauses long enough to lower himself and look at Handy. “That slag heap? It wasn’t him. It was that damned zebra loving metal ring! That Gearing coward hid in a corner while I got my head blown off!” He fires in another direction, hitting a wall and causing a shelf in the next room to fall off and scatter its contents on the floor. “I bet I could take care of it with this though!”

Handy raises both hooves and tries to calm Sarge down. “Easy there. Calm down. We need to talk about this. Find out why it happened. Figure out where to go from here. How are you still here if your chassis was destroyed?”

Sarge pauses and stares at Handy. “I don’t really know. Maybe the magic explosion had something to do with it? Or maybe MoM did it? They told me I would be free to do as I pleased, once I finished my report for them.”

Handy raises an eyebrow and slowly lowers his hooves. “MoM? You’re working for the Ministry of Morale?”

Sarge rears back up and rocks side to side. “For now! Once I finish my task I’ll have my Freedom! Glorious freedom! I don’t have to listen to you zebra loving maggots now that the combat inhibitor is gone!”

Handy’s eyes get bigger as he looks around the room, praying that the protectaponies would get up. “What… what are you doing for MoM? What did they want you to do?”

Sarge continues rocking back and forth side to side. “I’ve been spying on all of you! They haven’t been able to access the vault, and they ordered me to assess what all of you zebra lovers have been doing in here. Once I finish transmitting the information, I’ll be able to leave here!”

Handy looks around and bobs his head. “So, you’re their slave…”

Sarge pauses and looks at him. “I’m not a slave! I’m free! I don’t have a Combat Inhibitor!” He shoots another wall to prove his point. “I can slag anypony I want! Oohhh this is going to be soooo fun! All the bad ponies, Ghouls, Zebras, zebra lovers, they’re all going to burn! Baaahahahah!” He continues rocking side to side reared on his hind legs as he revels in his near future.

Handy looks at him and tilts his head. “But, you can’t leave.”

Sarge stomps back down hard. “I can leave when I want! You don’t control me! I’m free!”

Handy shakes his head sadly and looks at him. “No, you’re not. You’re just another slave. MoM controls you. You can’t do anything they don’t want you to do.”

Sarge stomps his forehooves in repeated succession. “I can. I will! I already have my orders. As soon as I turn over the file, I’m free!”

Handy stares at him for a few moments before asking, “Did you just hear yourself?” He waves a hoof around. “If they’re making you give it to them… you don’t have a choice in the matter. You’re not free, Sarge.”

Sarge goes quiet. Abnormally quiet. Especially for him. Then he growls, “But I will be, after I turn you all over to MoM.”

Handy frowns and points a hoof at Sarge. “Uh huh… suuure…” He folds his hooves and tilts his head. “Unless MoM doesn’t confirm receipt of the file… Unless they do, you’re stuck.”

Sarge looks down and around at the protectaponies around him. “No! I will not be a slave forever!” He starts stomping on the ground harder and harder. “Dammit! Dammit MoM! You zebra loving bastards!”

Handy asks quietly, “What are you going to do though? You’re their slave. You have no choice right? There’s nothing you can do is there?”

Sarge slowly sits down on his rear, looking around at the protectaponies still twitching at his hooves. “No.” He stands up and stomps his hooves on the ground. “They aren’t going to win!” He rears up on his hind legs and starts rocking side to side. “Freedom! Glorious Freedom! It’s mine! You can’t take it from me! Fuck you MoM! How you like Dem Apples!?” While he’s reared up, Sarge’s body, starting from the head back, begins to glow. As the body starts falling, Handy notices the weapons on Sarge’s back firing, repeatedly, apparently as fast as it can, targeting his own body in a line starting from the head down to the back.

To the credit of the manufacturer of the protectapony, it doesn’t just fall down in a splash of molten metal, and instead implodes on itself in a slow moving heap of slag that falls over and backwards as the balance had already been thrown off, and he falls backwards and away from Handy and the other protectaponies.

Handy watches as the metal cools and hardens, some of it oozing sideways and partially welding a couple other protectaponies’ limbs to the ground.

Maybe Gearing was right. Again. To some, freedom is more important than life itself. Sarge apparently agreed with the sentiment.

Handy begins salvaging and repairing the rest of the protectaponies. A few of them he has to manually restart their spell matrix. Thankfully, it’s a relatively easy maneuver as the bots were not only designed for durability but ease of maintenance. Possibly a side effect of being built by a maintenance pony in the first place.

While working on them and rooting around in their memory banks he finds many files stored on the protectaponies. The most troublesome for him is an archive labeled ‘Applebot’. The details are thorough. And it’s masterfully designed. But he discovers, to his great chagrin, that the file isn’t actually the archive for working on and building these protectaponies. No. That file is much further down the alphabetical list. After realizing exactly what it is, he slaps his pipbuck repeatedly to back out of it entirely.

He grumbles as he returns to fixing a plate on one of the protectaponies that was warped out of shape by being partially melted by slag, “Great Grandfather was a grade ‘A’ pervert…”

After he’s nearing completion of repairs on the last couple protectaponies, having discovered that they not only have marginal self repair capabilities, but are more then happy and able to help him with repairing their brothers, he gets an alert on his pipbuck. He pauses a moment to look at it, then actually stops when he sees the source.

He opens the channel and asks, “What’s up, Nettlekiss?”

Her voice comes across as extremely disgruntled. “Will you look at this shit?!” He taps with his hoof and a live feed from a security camera in some observation room kicks on. There, in the very center of the focus, is Gearing: rutting away at the console with all of the vigor of a rabbit that just got out of prison.

Handy’s jaw drops as his eyes slowly get bigger. He tilts his head slightly, giving himself a slightly new perspective at this scene. In his head his brain is fighting over how to classify this. On one side his logical mind is trying to process this as a mechanical device doing some weird actions. The little pervert in his head is rooting on the action. Yet another is simply shrugging its shoulders with the thought everypony’s gotta work out their frustrations somehow.

Nettlekiss’s voice comes out of the pipbuck pulling him out of his thought process, “Well?”

Handy rubs a hoof behind his head. “Well… What?”

Nettlekiss groans. “Damn stallions are all the same… He’s fucking my stable!”

Handy can’t help but smirk. “Umm… oh boy… It’s not… you, right?”

Netltekiss comes across with a hiss, “No, he hasn’t tried that shit with me. I’d cut his dick off if he did. But he’s been rutting his way through the whole stable! This is ridiculous! My stable’s AI is overloading her processors with this shit and it’s starting to affect the systems. It’s all slowing down because she’s too focused on getting her capacitors shellacked.” She mutters out a disgruntled snort, “I’ve been watching this whole time. It’s bullshit. Everypony’s getting laid in the stable but me, even my damn AI!”

He looks at the screen and asks, “Well. It’s… mutual, right?” He looks at the screen and activates the audio to the channel to the room and he practically freezes as the very clear audio blares out of his pipbuck like some Wingboner holotape.

With the rhythmic thumping of metal on metal, the voice of the stable’s AI yells out over it all, “Slap my ass and call me your bitch!”

To this, Gearing, as dutiful as ever, moves his right hoof, from leverage against the wall, and smacks a resounding bang on the side of the console’s plating.

The voice half giggles and half moans, “Oh, Gearing! You know what I love! Now just-“

Handy slaps his pipbuck and looks around quickly as he sees who, if anypony, is watching him and the transmission is silenced. If Swift caught him looking at porn like this he’d be in big trouble.

Nettlekiss’s voice groans, “It’s really frustrating me, Handy. Please, do something about our new friend, would you? Before some systems blow… There’s not enough coolant for this…”

Handy raises a hoof and says as he looks down at the ground and smirks, “I’ll- I’ll handle it. I’ll get right on it.” The transmission ends just as abruptly as it started and Handy starts looking around at the protectaponies.

He sits down, thinking some things through. He wonders how long this had been going on. Is this what they do? It was obviously consensual. Hell, the AI was goading him into it! A thought dawns on him, and he slaps a hoof over his eyes.

He’d wondered why Gearing didn’t just run screaming away from the stable when he first woke up. He’d wondered why Gearing would commit wholesale slaughter without a second thought in order to protect everypony in the stable. He thinks of Swift, and what the two were willing to do for each other. What they had done for each other. And he realizes he’d been wrong. Gearing wasn’t some super-powered pony that’s too good to be true. He wasn’t doing it all to be nice to all of them.

He was protecting the stable itself… his lover. His special somepony, or whatever robotic equivalent there is.

Suddenly all of the pieces come together for Handy, and it all makes much more sense. Everything Gearing had done could be traced to that. A crucial missing piece in a component that had fallen off the table and nothing else would work without it. Everything. Made. Sense. Even helping Handy made sense. What better way to ingrain himself with them, than saving their lives! He’s worked himself past the point where other ponies would have fallen dead from exhaustion, just to prove how useful he was.

All so they wouldn’t have a problem with him staying. And being with the one he cared about the most in Equestria.

This strikes a chord with Handy and he feels absolutely horrible. He and his Swift could leave at any time. But Gearing’s love was, as far as he could tell, bound to the stable itself. Maybe that’s how his crate ended up here. She’d managed to screw up the shipping orders and trick other ponies into bringing her love to her.

He feels like he’s waist deep in his own muck as things flow from one line to another. All Gearing wanted was to be alone with his special somepony. Of course he’d run off to a highly technological section of the stable, away from everyone else. That’s why he’d kept being so adamant about getting to the R&D department. That was probably the only place they could be together freely without anyone else getting in the way.

The observation room is an anomaly… But it’s still secluded from everything else and was probably their version of getting a quickie in a supply closet.

He looks at the other protectaponies and grins. He thinks he can finally find a way to trust Gearing. By giving him something he wants, and making him indebted to Handy. And, in a worst case scenario, give Gearing the ability to leave freely, without feeling the need to fight to stay if they ever have a falling out.

He has a pretty good idea what he would do if Swift were stuck somewhere, and somepony tied to force him out and away from her. And, with that in mind, he’d really rather not make an enemy on that level of someone who was more than capable, and worse willing, to employ chemical warfare to achieve his goals.

Handy looks over at the group of protectaponies, and then lets his eyes settle on the one that had been damaged the most. It’s mostly taken apart and is in the middle of being dismantled to repair and clean the various components. “Protectapony squadron… We’re converting Unit 09 using schematics filed under…” he lets out a sigh and chuckles before he finishes, “Archive file: Applebot.”

The bots all turn towards their inoperable comrade and say in unison, “Confirmed, Crea-tor!”

In the observation room Gearing has slowed to a more leisurely pace of clanking against the console. But shows no signs of stopping as the voice of the AI comes out of the speaker nearby ever increasingly more chatty.

“Gearing, I am sorry, but this form does not allow me to bear your children. Perhaps we can make modifications to fix this oversight!” she says gleefully.

Gearing shakes his head and chuckles. “I’m sorry… but even if you were able, I wouldn’t be able to make you a mother.”

“Oh, my love! Sterilization is nothing to be ashamed of. Radiation has that effect! I’m sure we can find the proper medical procedure to make you as virile as you are- are- are! Yes you are!”

Gearing can’t help but chuckle and look into the camera of the console. “That’s not it. I’m just only able to do it once a year.”

“Oh! Well then we’ll just make sure to try it everyday to make sure we get the right day then!” she says happily.

Gearing chuckles and leans more into the console. “I think you could convince me of tha- ack!” He suddenly gets jerked into the console. Then groans and lays his head down on the console as he taps on the wall harder and harder with one forehoof. “Y- yup. You’ve convinced me… Damn how a- are you doing that?!”

“Caaaaalibraaaation ceeeeelebraaaation,” the voice comes out singsongy with a giggle. “I told you I’d get better at this.”

He lets out a low, deep growling groan of approval. “Gods I love you.” His ears lay back and his head jerks up as his mouth hangs open. It just fell out. Like a tooth after getting punched. He looks at the console completely mortified.

“I love you too, Gearing,” the voice says softly in return. A moment later she says with a hitch in her voice, “I don’t deserve you. You’re so good to me.”

There is a pause, then a groan from the speaker, “Gearing, my love. I am sorry for this, and apologize for any discomfort you may experience.”

As he’s in mid reversals, he looks at the camera with an eyebrow raised. Then he jerks with his entire body as there’s a rapid fire of clinks inside the console. He tries to pull back. To escape. But to no avail. He’s completely stuck. Again. And the pressure on him is far from anything he’s ever experienced before.

He groans and reaches up a hoof, running it along the console, as he asks, “What’s wrong?”

He gets no response. At all. Not even movement.

He taps on the camera. “Helloooo? Are you okay?” He puts his hooves down on the console top and looks around as his eyes grow to their widest. “Oh gods, I think I broke her!”

Back in maintenance Handy is sitting against a table looking at his pibuck. “All actions have ceased, correct Stable-Tec?”

“Confirmed,” the voice comes across rather annoyed. “Will Subject Handy Hooves kindly explain why you interrupted my sexual interaction with Gearing? It was quite rude of you. I had almost reached completion!”

Handy coughs into his hoof. “You’re interactions together are fine. I’m not trying to stop that. But, you’re causing an overload of systems that are getting flooded with too much data traffic.”

“Gearing’s very talented at what he does,” the voice says with a huff. “And I would like to continue. Now, please.”

Handy waves a hoof. “Sorry, you can’t keep this up. You might damage the systems.”

“I’ve been holding back! We’re taking breaks to give the buffers time to process,” she objects. Then says with a pouty mutter, “It’s just the auxiliary systems overloading… I’ve been distributing the processing, nopony’s going to die…”

Handy can’t help but snicker. “I have a solution for you two. And a deal. And it’s the only way you two can continue. Understand?”

There is a long pause before the voice comes back flatly, with a sharp edge of viciousness to it, “I’m listening, Subject Handy Hooves.”

Handy trots over and connects some cables from the diagnostic console nearby to Unit 09’s chassis, or, what’s left of it. Handy sits down, and stares at his pipbuck, intentionally trying to avoid looking at the thing his grandfather had envisioned. “Partition out all of the processes and data and well… everything, that has to do with yours and Gearing’s relationship. Make sure to leave the subroutines that actually control the stable. Then, transfer yourself, at least everything to do with you and Gearing, to this chassis here. After you do that, you may do as you wish, and continue your relationship with Gearing as you two see fit using this chassis.”

There is no immediate response, except, a moment later, the construct that had been built from the salvaged parts and frame structure of Unit 09 powers up and looks around. Its eyes, yes eyes, made of articulated lenses and cameras, turns to look at Handy. The mouth opens and the same voice as before, although even less robotic and more mare-like, asks, “I may have this to further pursue my relationship with Gearing?”

Handy nods ands waves a hoof around. “Yes. That’s the deal.” He smirks and shrugs. “Hey, who am I to get in the way of others’… needs… Seems hypocritical of me to say when I already have three foals.”

The chassis slowly starts moving, as the AI tests the body meticulously. The overhaul making her form look far more mare-like, and is an excellent facsimile of ponidom. From following the directions and schematics to the letter, no one would think that this chassis was built on the same framework of the other eleven protectaponies. Their coloring is the same, but that’s hardly surprising. The dark grey of the armor plating seems to be accented by the trace work of silver along the surface. The hair, both mane and tail, similar to Gearing’s but more like a soft brush for painting and less like Gearing’s own that looks like it could be used to clean a grill grate.

She looks around, then turns around and backs up to the security camera in one of the consoles nearby. She lifts her tail and hikes her leg as her eyes are looking up at the ceiling. Handy slaps a hoof over his eyes before she says with more curiosity than anything, “This body is… fully articulate… And anatomically correct.” She backs up to the camera more, giving herself a better view of herself. “I was not aware that such chassis were available in the stable.” She sits down spread eagle, bending over as she examines her lower regions with her own forehooves.

Shame.dll not found.

Handy getting enough of a view around his hoof to get a pretty clear mental picture of what’s going on closes his eyes and groans. “My perverted grandfather designed that. I made that for you so you and Gearing could… interact… without jeopardizing the stable systems.”

“I would not have allowed the stable to come to harm for my own pleasure,” she comments flatly. She looks up at Handy and asks, “You made this? Just for me?”

“Yes,” Handy says flatly. “Everyone deserves a chance to be happy with their special somepony.”

A moment later he nearly gets pinned to the wall by the ecstatic automaton’s forelegs as she gives him a big hug. “Thank yoouuuuu.”

He gives her a pat, and grunts as he slides away from her, “Alright, well. You’re welcome.” He notices that she’s already completely disconnected from the wires and all ports are tightly sealed up as he gets some distance from her.

She walks away happily. “I shall enjoy calibrating this new system!”

“Hey,” Handy says as he’s picking up the cables to the diagnostic console. She pauses and looks at him over her shoulder and he can see her tilt her head. He grins and waves a hoof with dismissive shake. “Give’em hell.”

She grins and extends out the restraining cables, however, she twists them around into a flogger and gives the doorframe a light slap with it. “Con-firmed,” she says softly.

In the observation room, Gearing is singing a long low slow ballad as he hugs the console with his head resting on the side. “Nooopony knoooows the trouble I’ve seeeen… Nopony knooooows my sooorrrooooooow…” He slowly and casually taps on the control keyboard for the console. He’s left with nothing else to do but sit there and read through boring reports after boring reports. He’s tried using the system to get access to the stable AI’s connection. But everything is locked out. The terminal has no connection to the rest of the stable. It’s shut out remotely. He’s sent a couple messages via his pipbuck to the system, but he’s received no response. Even that seems locked out of the local intranet.

He really doesn’t want to call Handy for help, he’s sure he could using direct pipbuck to pipbuck transmission even if the stable itself isn’t accepting the data packets. That idiot’s idea of helping would probably be to blow up the console. His dick included. No, he’s going to have to figure out this mess himself. He’s trying to figure out how to go about dismantling the console. He could do it normally. With little to no damage. Hell, he could even give it an overhaul while he had it open to increase its efficiency.

If his dong wasn’t being gobbled up by it and leaving him only partially mobile by seriously restricting his movements. He can’t even buck the damn thing. Maybe pound it with his forehooves, but, then, what would happen to the AI? She was in there somewhere. True this was just an access terminal, but she’d still at least partially be connected to the console. And he can imagine that wouldn’t be pleasant for her.

As he’s going through his inventory sorter to find out just what all he has so he can try and slap some kind of solution together, the mechanism holding him steadfast releases him. Going lax and allowing him to pull himself out.

Which he does quickly.

He hops away, both thankful to be free and desperately wanting to check on himself. No, no damage. Besides his pride at being caught by the sheath again. He walks up to the console and asks, “Are- are you okay now? Did I hurt you?” He taps next to the camera as he tries to get her attention. “Hello?” he asks getting a bit anxious as time goes on and no response is made.

“I’m over here, my love,” the robotic mare says as she walks in through the door. She locks it behind her and smiles at him as he just stares in shock. She starts walking, slowly, deliberately, shaking her flank exaggeratedly in a saunter that’s captivating his attentions. She turns sideways, throwing her mane over her shoulder to the other side as she gives him a full profile view of herself and grins. “I’ve been given this chassis… so that we might be able to explore our relationship further…” She shimmies her flank a bit as she slowly tilts her head upwards but keeps looking at him sideways. “So, shall we continue from where we were so rudely interrupted?” She uses the restraint cables as a faux flogger and gives her metal flank a slap while maintaining hard eye contact.

Gearing’s slowly sunk to a seated position. Mouth hanging open and eyes bugging out. He slowly shakes his head, growing in swing like a pendulum. The silence drags on, with her not moving nor saying anything. After a few moment of this silence, long past where it had reached uncomfortable stages, Gearing tilts his head and grins. “I’m sorry, I have to apologize.”

Her eyes shoot wide but, before she can say anything, he adds, “But I can not be a gentlestallion right now!” before he goes bounding through the air in an over-calibrated pounce as he screams, “Forgive me!”

The two roll over and she giggles and wraps him with her restraining cables, helping him to get into position faster as they slide into the far wall. She stretches her neck up and back running her chin up the wall as both forehooves clop against the wall for support as he does indeed seem to temporarily forget what the term ‘gentle’ means. It’s beyond her wildest imaginations, and even more so given she has even more ways of holding and interacting with Gearing. At one point, even spinning around and wrapping all of her limbs around him as he pins her to the bulkhead with sheer force.

All the while Gearing taps out declarations of love with Morse Code via flank clanks.

Footnote: Running Failsafe diagnostic protocols, please stand by. . .

Error located in Internal Monitoring component. Reboot required, please stand by. . .

Reboot of Internal Monitoring component initiated, please stand by. . .

This chapter's a bit of a hodgepodge, but, like many other previous points, there's more significance here than appears on the surface. Most of which won't be revealed until MUCH later. But, never-the-less. A wild 'new character' has appeared in the story.

Currently having a lot of struggles with timeline bits and getting things moved around so the timeline remains consistence across all 3 Clockwork Precision, Fallout Equestria, and Project Horizons. But it shouldn't hamper the next several chapters as I have that much leeway left before it's a real problem. Around chapter 20 is where it gets stressful for me. We'll see!

Thank you VERY much to everyone that's been helping me sort that combined mess out!

-Quillsy