Handy quickly turns off the security feed shortly after it starts on his pipbuck.

“That’s your solution?!” Nettlekiss’s voice asks completely flabbergasted. “You’re going to just let this continue?”

Handy rubs a hoof through his mane. “Well… they seem happy together, and it’s obviously consensual so… Who am I to get in the way of their relationship?”

The overmare’s voice comes back thoroughly exasperated at the turn of events. “Uhg. I guess. Fine. At least the stable’s working like it should now that that stupid stallion isn’t fucking it into overload.”

Handy chuckles as the channel with Nettlekiss closes. That has to be, without a doubt, the weirdest problem he has ever had to handle. What was even weirder about it, was that he could actually come up with a solution. True. His grandfather didn’t really have this in mind when he made the plans. He obviously had a massive crush on a particular mare and simply wanted to use a mindless sex bot to blow off some steam. There was never any intention for fully aware AI. He’s not even sure how this is going to change things. He hopes the chassis can handle it. Otherwise it might cause an even bigger problem later.

But that’s a bridge to be crossed whenever they get to it.

For now, he has more repairs to make. Specifically assessing and working through the damage that had been caused by Sarge’s weaponry. The first stage is chiseling off all the solidified puddles of metal. Afterwards they can start patching the holes. Thankfully none of the damage is too structurally compromising. The roof one was his biggest worry, but it didn’t breach the outer hull. Just punched a hole into the over head maintenance access areas. Still, it needs to be closed up.

He uses this bit of time to occupy himself as he tries to figure out what to do. This would probably be the perfect time to call in a favor from a certain pony. Now that they were A: exceedingly happy, and B: indebted to him.

But he’s not stupid. He’s going to give them some time to burn off their energy before heading down there and talking about the problem at hoof.

A few hours later, he reaches a point where he feels the protectapony platoon can carry on his work, and he’s sure he won’t be interrupting the couple again. He double checks his pipbuck to confirm Gearing’s location, and heads off to the R&D department.

He comes through the decontamination chamber and looks around. They weren’t exactly hard to spot, but he can’t help but stare at the pair. Gearing, with his ultra shiny golden surface practically glittering, with the robotic mare leaning up next to him, tucked in under his crystalline wing, as they slowly nuzzle each other in a very obvious postcoital glow.

He stares for a moment, then looks at his pipbucks time with his jaw quickly falling to the floor. They JUST got done? It’s been hours!

Handy coughs into a hoof to announce his presence, but Gearing asks as he keeps his attention on a piece of equipment he’s fiddling with on a table in front of himself, “Yeah, Handy?” His head doesn’t move at all and Handy wonders if his previous point of actually looking at people was unnecessary. He’s certainly an advanced model; he probably has all kinds of sensors.

Judging from their actions currently, his assessment that they just wanted to be together, alone, seems to be verified.

Handy’s sure he can work with this.

As he’s walking in Gearing’s general direction, Gearing sets down the object he was just working on and turns to face him. Gearing gives Handy a crooked smile and rubs a hoof through his brassy mane. “Hey, Handy… Before you start, I just wanted to say thank you for your help with… us.” He lifts his wing as he feels his loving companion coming up next to him and she nuzzles into him again as he returns to holding her to himself.

Gearing can’t help his grin getting wider as he waves a hoof. “I’m sorry for the problems it caused. That wasn’t my intention! I didn’t realize it… And… well…” He sheepishly grinds a forehoof into the ground. “Things just kind of steam rolled and got out of hoof.” He sits back and raises both forehooves in the air in a shrug with a stupid grin on his face. “I have no idea how things turned out the way they are. It’s really confusing to be honest and a bit overwhelming. I’m really sorry for the trouble.”

She pulls back from under his wing to look him in his face, and explores his features. “Gearing? My love? Are you not happy with the way things have turned out? Did I overstep? It was not my intention to cause you any distress.”

Gearing turns to face her, grabs one of her forehooves, and holds it to his chest with his own. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean it like that at all! I’m happy with the way things turned out.” He brushes her mane behind her ear with a wing and smiles. “Ecstatic even. It’s just…” He shakes his head and leans towards her. “It’s just I can’t believe how lucky I am… Normally I’m not. The universe hates me and seems to like to prove it on a daily basis.” He shrugs and gives her hoof a light kiss before he says softly, “I just find myself in some really unfamiliar waters here. Believe me. I’m reeaaallly happy about it, but…” He lets out a sigh and looks to the side. “I- I don’t really know what to do from here.”

She reaches out her hoof and directs him to look at her by his chin and cheek. They exchange eye contact for a moment as she steps closer to him. “Oh. That’s okay. There’s plenty of ways for us to figure out our next… course.” She gives him a kiss as she steps up flush with him, sliding her forehooves up his face and wrapping them around his neck.

Gearing returns the gesture by sitting back and wrapping his forehooves around her back and kissing in-kind. However, his eyes go wide and his forelegs and wings zip out to the side at fullest extension as he tries to keep his balance, but she continues pushing him over and climbs over him. Causing him to topple backwards onto his back.

Gearing’s ears start whistling as he looks over at Handy with an expression of pure mortification.

Handy’s eyes go to their widest as he exchanges very awkward eye contact with Gearing as her metallic flank starts grinding along Gearing’s length. Handy claps a hoof over his eyes and turns his head as he says with disbelief, “Hey! Knock it off already! We’re busy here Stable-Tec, you need to stop!”

She pauses her actions, turning slowly to look at him, but in the process sitting upright into a straddling position on Gearing with her forehooves on Gearing’s chest. “Do I really have to?”

Handy, keeping his eyes averted to the ground, lets out a groan then says, “Yeah. You do. Consider it an order. Get. Off!”

She looks at him for a few moments, not moving a single servo as she regards him. Then, in a show of pure defiance, begins rocking on Gearing under her, grinding her flank into his underside as she looks dead pan at Handy and says flatly, “No.”

Handy drops his hoof enough to look at her, and can’t help but staring her in her eyes, even as she continues trying to use Gearing to buff the floor plates. “What do you mean ‘No’?! You can’t refuse me! I’m the one in charge. I made you, I have full authorization!”

“Well,” she says plainly. “You’ve already interrupted us once before. And that was cruel and mean and you are a bad pony for making poor Gearing wait like that. Besides, I don’t want to … So there!” And she actually sticks her tongue out at him.

Handy looks at her and blinks repeatedly as the world seems to have lost all sense. “How is that even possible? It’s in your programming…” His ears perk up as he looks at the ceiling momentarily as a thought crosses his mind. “How has your programming changed?”

She stretches forward, running her hooves up Gearing’s chest and setting them on either side of his head as she shimmies her flank happily. “My love, Gearing, has made modifications to me. And I. Don’t. Have. To. Listen. To. You. Any more.”

Gearing, having been in the middle of throes of death from pure embarrassment, laughs out loud. Very loud. Like a maniac. The kind of laugh that Pinkie Pie herself always wanted to elicit from the citizens of Equestria. As he’s being partially pinned to the floor by the metallic mare on top of him he finds humor in a sudden thought that has crossed his mind.

He had thought about working on her AI programming. He did. He wasn’t stupid. She explained to him why he’d spent so much time stuck to the machine, and didn’t like the idea of her being forced to do anything Handy demanded of her. It would be a very efficient way to control him. Or at least Handy might be thinking that. In reality it would be a very efficient way for him to have an accident in a maintenance tunnel, as Gearing likes to play games with an even playing field at the worst of it. Aside from that, as important as true freedom of action and expression is, he wanted to make sure her programming was capable of growth.

Sentience was his primary concern.

It was entirely possible. He was sure that, given enough time, they could do it. True sentience. Not just her doing whatever she can to please him. He didn’t want a sex bot. He wanted a partner. A companion. An equal. Sentient AI programming had been achieved before the war really ramped up. A few times. Though, most of the attempts at duplicating it had failed without using some sort of pony’s brain scan. Even those were mere copies and fake facsimiles of life. The successes seemed to happen randomly. And there were many theories why. Their only real consensus was a constant state of learning and exposures of new stimuli seemed to have some level of impact. But, then again, given they hadn’t really been able to reliably duplicate it, maybe that was horseapples as well. But, still, it was worth a try. Although he’d yet to get to it. But, then, there’s the thought that’s going through his head that’s causing him to laugh so hard, bred from her own declaration.

I fucked the stable into sentience! Our own Big BANG theory!

Handy’s eyes slowly settle on Gearing’s and he swallows hard. This could be a major problem. He may have made a mistake by giving him access to one of the chassis. There’s no telling how many different ways he’s figured out how to disable them. He’s already figured out how to twist them out of Handy’s control. “Gearing?” he asks evenly. “Have you been tampering with her programming?”

Gearing waves his hooves and shakes his head as his laughter lowers to a giggle from his previous ridiculous thought. “No, I mean. Not intentionally anyway…” He reaches up a hoof and brushes her cheek as she stares into his eyes with a wide grin on her face. “She’s got a kind of forceful personality, and a strong will, if you haven’t noticed…”

She nuzzles into it, closing her eyes as she smiles even more before turning and kissing his hoof on her cheek.

Handy returns to covering his eyes as he asks with a sigh, “Could- Could you ask her to stop, then, please? This is distracting and I need to talk to you.”

Gearing leans up and whispers in her ear opposite the hoof he’s caressing her cheek with, “Could you give me five minutes to take care of this? I promise to take care of you properly afterwards.” Then gives her a kiss on the cheek.

She slides off of Gearing as she lets out a disgruntled sigh, “Fiiiiine…” Then sits back on the ground staring at him before she says with a grin, “Time until I wreck that flank: 4 minutes 55 seconds and counting…”

Gearing hurries up and gets to his hooves, using his wings and legs to try and modestly cover his current predicament up. He grins sheepishly at Handy and, knowing that he can’t squelch on this promise and that, no, she’s not joking about the count down he chuckles. “Well we got about four and a half minutes, what d’ya need?”

Handy, despite having many questions in his head he would personally like to find out about this situation, realizes it’s not the best time and decides to use whatever time he has on the overall real threat. This needs to be done before the protectapony decides to crash the conversation, literally. “Gearing, first, thank you for saving my life. Swift let me know everything that happened and… I wouldn’t be here without you… I wouldn’t be here for my foals. So, thank you. But I could use your input into the stable.”

Gearing waves it off. “I fix things. It’s what I do. Though, honestly, I’m better at fixing machines and equipment. That’s my specialty. That’s what I’m good at. Ponies are more of a… morbid hobby of mine. Swift would have been devastated if you died. And your foals deserve better.”

Having gotten past the rather shallow pleasantries, Gearing gets into the nitty-gritty of what he’d found in the R&D department. Explains how it was practically a ticking time bomb. It’s safe now. And he can start getting it up and running to start producing for the stable, but he’s going to need more equipment. He’s done a full inventory, short of everything in the lowest levels, but, from everything he’s been able to gather, what they need isn’t in the stable anymore. At least not in the currently accessible part. There are parts and components that they are going to have to get elsewhere.

“Which means going outside,” Handy says with a sigh after Gearing’s finished.

Gearing points down. “I’m good. We can probably get by for quite a while by salvaging from the lower levels and patch our needs that way. But, yes, the obvious course of action is we need to leave the stable to get supplies.” He raises a hoof and points it at Handy, “But, before we can do that, we have to check the rest of the stable to make sure there’s not a bunch of nasty surprises waiting on everyone. Or, worse, waiting for a time for us to leave to attack the children and others left behind.”

“One minute and thirty seconds,” the metallic mare informs from her seated position and reminds them of the count down until all limits are off.

Handy looks over at her and lays his ears back. “Geeze, okay, let me just get out of here.” He spins around and trots back to the decontamination doorway.

Gearing looks at her and gets a stupid grin on his face as he takes her patient visage in. But then he tilts his head and the smile falls off his face. “She needs a name, a real name. Something so she knows we’re referring to her and not the system. ‘Stable-Tec’ is just… awkward… Stable tech… Stable… Able… Bell… Bella? How about Bella?”

Handy offers as he’s stepping into the decontamination room, “Sable?”

Gearing tilts his head the other way as he purses his lips and asks, “Well, what do you think?”

“Gearing’s bitch?” she offers dead serious.

Gearing replies flatly, “No.”

“Best piece of ass?” she asks with a smile and wiggle of her flank.

He crosses his forelegs in front of himself. “Neg.”

She tilts her head. “Applebot? Though Sable’s nice too.”

Gearing cocks his head slightly. “Which do you prefer?”

She shakes her head lightly and points a forehoof at her chest. “No preference, darling. I just want to hear you say my name.”

Gearing gets a stupid grin on his face again as he scrunches down his head into his shoulders for a moment. But it dissolves as he thinks about it. Applebot would sound almost normal, to most ponies anyway. It would get the point across rather aptly. But, despite not knowing its lineage, it strikes a chord with him he really doesn’t like.

Apple Bot. Sex Bot. Sex Toy.

No, the train of thought is rather linear and quickly traveled and wholly unpleasant. He’s been treated like a machine his whole life by bigots as it is. And as a mobile ‘self service’ device by at least one pony. Furthermore, at this point, he’s hoping that she’s more than just a program trying to make him happy, and has true feelings of her own. If nothing else, it would validate his own existence by validating hers. So, Apple-bot is thrown out the mental window. And, like he’s started doing regularly to try and find her own desires, the only way he can think of to test for true sentience, he asks for her own opinion, “Sable’s a nice name… May I call you ‘Sable’?”

She grins and swishes a bit. “Yes, Darling. I like the sound of that.” Then she walks over and starts nuzzling his neck and pressing into him.

Gearing starts nuzzling back as Sable, again, starts getting aggressive in her desires.

Handy yells from the decontamination room, “Hey, I got like a minute left! Let me get the hell out of here first!”

Sable giggles then sighs as she cozies up next to Gearing. “Fiiiiiine…”

Gearing looks through the glass and grins as he says, “I’ll… just move over here… behind these consoles… in case that cycle takes too long for Sable to stand.”

Sable gives him a swat on the flank as he walks by her. “Mmmhmm I’m not waiting longer than I have to!” and trots after him exaggeratedly swaying her head to the beat of Gearing’s walk.

After the doors have completely closed, and sealed, an automated message plays through the speakers in the room with Handy.

“Decontamination process in progress please stand- error. Please wait. . . Sterilization process terminated. Alternate decontamination protocol initiated, please stand by.”

Handy, very alarmed at a sudden change in plans, yells, “Delay that order! Halt process!”

The computerized voice replies, “Sorry, can not comply. Process can not be terminated mid procedure.”

Instead of the normal sprays of air and light chemicals, hot water sprays down on Handy like a shower.

Handy, instantly soaking wet like a drowned rat yells through the downpour. “Define new process!”

“Cleaning and stimulation protocols have been activated.” Is his only reply. Along with streams of soap squirting out and hitting Handy on his sides.

Handy jerks and looks at the different feeling liquid hitting him now that the water’s temporarily cut off. “What’s tha-“ before he can get the phrase out, hands, similar to griffin or feline paws, from the floor and walls pop out and start scrubbing him down. Hands that had, originally, been designed to wash and manipulate objects inside the decontamination chamber while ponies stayed safe outside the glass and metal chamber. One of the hands underneath him actually starts massaging and slowly manipulating Handy’s sheath causing him to whip his head around in every direction at seemingly once. He stares down momentarily, before a couple of the hands manipulate him to look forward so they can massage his mane and neck, and sees a hand pumping away at an area that makes him very nervous. His legs shake, not from fear, and it makes him even more worried that he does not hate this as much as he thinks he should.

He would, if he could, get way from it. If nothing else out of a sense of loyalty to Swift. However, the other hands are holding him relatively still as they groom him from mane to tail. But the other hand isn’t interested in hygiene apparently, and seems to be running through cycles to see how far it can push him to the edge without making him go over.

Handy screams out as loud as he can, unable to hold it in any longer, “Stable-Tec- Er Sable, Bella… Whatever! Is that you?! Don’t you have Gearing for this?!”

The computerized voice replies back, “Protocol not initiated by Stable-Tec, nor the entity referred to as ‘Sable’.”

“Then who’s running this protocol!?”

“The overmare performed an override and modification on which protocols to use.”

Handy is floored. His jaw at least almost makes it as the rest of him is being held up. Another torrent of hot water pours down all over him, then the air kicks on and dries him off in a high speed cyclone of very pleasantly warm air.

The door on the far end opens and he hurries through it, completely clean, extra fluffy, and generally looking fabulous. He’s also extremely frustrated at the moment and sporting a more-than-half-boner awkwardly as he walks down the hall.

On his pipbuck he gets a message from the overmare:
[Calm the hell down, I’m just trying to help you out after all you’ve been through. Swift’s waiting on you.]

“By getting me laid?” Handy asks out loud as he trots down the hallway.

His pipbuck replies back. “Well I’m damn sure not doing it,” Nettlekiss’s voice replies.

Handy’s not exactly thinking straight at the moment, an intentional side effect of the previous treatment and hampered blood flow. “Okay, sure, why not. Where’s Swift? Let her know I’m on my way. Have Cure take over foalsitting duty.”

As he’s trotting he taps out a few commands and, as he’s turning down the hall by maintenance, his squad of protectaponies joins him, playing vanguard as he makes his way to his room.

Cure zips into Swift and Handy’s room, and picks up a very startled Swift, and plops her down right outside the door of her own room. As Swift spins around to look at her with confused horror etched across her face Cure responds, “Beginning foalsitting duties, ma’am.” Then shuts and locks the door in Swift’s face as she just sits there staring at the door with unabridged confusion marching across her features.

Her pipbuck chimes and she reads the message:

[Hey, filly, I got Handy all raring to go, he’s on his way. The security room down the hall is free, Have fuuuun!]

Swift taps out a furious response. [What the hay? Are you trying to get me laid? That doesn’t make sense, you hate Stallions.]

The voice of Nettlekiss comes softly from her pipbuck, “Hey, I’m doing it for you… You almost lost him and I could tell you’re upset and I could see where you two were going earlier, but that brass bastard of a stallion started dicking my systems and dragged Handy away. So, I lent a hoof and now he can’t possibly be thinking of anything else but that flank of yours.”

Swift looks around with just her eyes. Zipping back and forth. Highly conflicted.

Handy rolls up with his posse, and the two start play fighting in the hallway, with Handy having a rope and bridle and her acting like she’s resisting arrest resulting in the two tangled up in a collection of restraining cables, pinned together, as they kiss and run their hooves over each others’ body.

As they are in the middle of their giggle fit inducing rope play, Gauge comes down as aloof as ever. He stares at the group of protectaponies from a distance away, and then starts trotting in their direction. “Hey guys, what’s going on down here? Huh?”

Handy doesn’t take his eyes off of Swift and says with a bit of annoyance in his voice, “A bit busy over here, Gauge… Come back later.”

“Oh?” He trots closer and tries to get passed the protectaponies that keep positioning themselves as physical barricades against his intrusions. “What with? What’s going on?”

Gauge continues his barrage of clop blocking questions until Handy eventually gets sick of it and has a pair of his protectaponies wrap up Gauge in their restraining cables and start carting him off to his room.

The unexpected change catches Gauge off guard as he tries to dodge the cables, but fails horribly. As he’s being wrapped up like a cannoli, he lets out a burst of gas, fouling the air with his nervousness. The protectaponies begin quickly taking him away, but before he’s out of sight, Gauge yells out before disappearing around the corner, “Secrets are bad! Mmmkay?!”

Swift mutters, “I’m going to kill him. One day, he’s going to fart in my face again, and I’m just going to kill him…”

Handy snickers and the pair head down to the security station nearby with the holding cells that haven’t been functional in decades. Handy leads Swift into one of the cells by the bridal and rope before the security door seals and the remaining protectaponies provide a two deep riot control line blocking the door.

In the R&D department, Gearing and Sable have returned to light nuzzling as he continues to work. The first task he set to after Handy had left, was using one of the containment isolation canisters to store the ‘access card’ he’d found. Handy hadn’t thought to bring it up, and it’s probably because of his literal brain damage. So Gearing stays as proactive as ever, setting it into the small cylinder and letting it sink down into the reinforced floor safe.

Afterwards he follows a lead, from one node to the next, until he gets to the maneframe room door.

As he’s walking up to the door the camera is already focused on him and Nettlekiss’s voice comes from the speaker nearby, in typically annoyed fashion, “The hell you want, stallion?”

Gearing looks at the camera, then at the door and sits down as he lets out a sigh. “Nettlekiss. I need in.”

There’s a burst of random noise coming over the speaker as she asks in an almost flushed voice, “What?! Fucking the AI into overload isn’t enough now you want to jack into my ports too!? I’ll cut your fucking dick off!”

Gearing slaps a hoof over his eyes and Sable trots up and scowls at the camera. “My darling Gearing loves me! If there’s any ports getting greased it’ll be mine!” She looks at Gearing and lets out a snort. “Right, my love?”

Gearing chuckles as he tries to keep his ears from whistling any louder than they already are. “Nettlekiss, I’ve tracked the signal that’s been breaching the stable’s security. The only place in this entire stable that has equipment capable of outside transmission, is beyond this door.” He shrugs. “We need to shut it down.” He looks at the camera and frowns. “And, unlike that idiot Handy, shutting it down doesn’t necessarily mean smash, break, or destroy it. Simply turning it off or unplugging it will most likely suffice.”

Nettlekiss grumbles as she mulls over the request.

“I’ll be as respectful as I can, Nettlekiss. But this needs to be done. We don’t know their intentions and if they have remote access there’s all kinds of things they can do to screw us over… like wait until we’ve finally repaired everything and then attacking and flushing us out.”

“I get it, stupid stallion, you don’t have to keep trying to lay on the guilt trip…” She lets out a sigh. “Fine. But stay the hell away from me. I want to keep you stallions as far away from me as possible.”

The door opens and Gearing walks in with Sable at his side. The moment they are through, the door shuts, and Gearing watches as the multiple layers of metal overlap to form the thick access door. There, in the middle of this spacious room, is a pillar that goes from the floor to ceiling with a keyboard under the glowing monitor. Around the edges of most of the room are a variety of other equipment used for supporting the stable and this central maneframe.

As he starts walking in further the monitor flickers and a scowling unicorn mare’s face appears on it as she looks right at Gearing. But, it’s more of an outline of the facial features instead of an actual picture. As the mouth moves, the speakers in the room speak with Nettlekiss’s voice in perfect sync, “That’s close enough you stallion bastard.”

Gearing stops in midstride, pausing in an obviously awkward position, before sitting down and bowing his head towards the computer. “As you wish.” He lifts his head and looks around as he asks, “Do you know which area has the external communication array?”

Nettlekiss rolls her eyes. “I’m not a repairpony. I just live here.”

Sable points off towards the right as she says, “The equipment designated for external communication should be behind that cluster of machinery.”

Gearing gets up and starts walking that direction and, as he starts getting around the corner Netltekiss’s voice comes out a bit concerned, “Hey! Dumbass!” Gearing pokes his head back around to look at the monitor, and the face closes its eyes as it sighs. “My baby’s pod is over there too… I know it sounds silly, but… be careful with it, would you?”

Gearing gives her a wide grin then nods. “Sure thing, Nettlekiss.” He turns around and heads back behind the equipment and, sure enough, finds an oversized stasis pod. A few of the lights are still blinking, and, from the surrounding metal, Gearing can tell that at some point this had a façade of sheet metal to disguise its true purpose. A façade that’s only somewhat recently been removed and set aside so the contents could be removed.

Gearing heads over to an access panel of one of the large blocks of equipment and starts running down wires and sorting out the various components as Sable watches on. After a few moments of this she starts dividing her attention, between looking at Gearing and waiting for him to ask for or say something, and the stasis pod. She extends out and connects a data cable to the stasis pod and starts looking at Gearing straight on, but going still as she processes a variety of data.

Gearing pulls himself back out of the access panel, and checks his pipbuck to double check that the frequency he was looking for is no longer present, then closes the panel back up. As he’s climbing back up and turning around he says with a sigh of relief, “That should do, at least for now. I’ll set up a relay system outside so we can still send and receive transmissions, but this time without whatever backdoor they have built into this hardware.”

He starts heading towards the door and pauses just long enough to ask, “Coming, Sable?”

She spins around as her cable retracts. “Oh. Yes. Sorry… I was just reading.”

Gearing gives her a wide grin. “No problem!” As he’s walking by, at a respectable distance, he dips his head towards the monitor where Nettlekiss is staring out from. “I’ll get out of your mane now.”

Nettlekiss frowns and stares at him for a moment before she nods away towards the door. “Just get out of here, ya filthy stallion.”

Sable follows behind and looks over her shoulder at Nettlekiss and giggles as she asks, “Should I give him another proper polishing?”

The monitor facehoofs before Nettlekiss groans and the door shuts in Sable’s face. “You too, you buck crazy filly.”

They quickly head back towards the R&D department so Gearing can get back to work on the next batch of equipment. Once back he quickly dives into another console fishing around for useable parts.

Sable comments, and in the process admits her voyeuristic activities that’s he’s still unaware of, “You know, I think I would enjoy being binded.”

Gearing, having no context for the random statement, pulls his head out of the console and looks at her quizzically.

Sable continues, “You could spank my flank with the rope and make me call you ’Daddy’.” She starts grinning and swaying her flanks lightly for emphasis.

It hadn’t been all that long ago since they had stopped their latest round, even as relatively short as it was by their standards, and Gearing wonders if they’re going to really get anything else done besides keeping their flanks polished. Then giggles and decides he doesn’t care. At all.

He runs off, rummaging through an area he’s been accumulating salvage, as she follows along, trying to remember where he put what. He hops out of the storage room with some cables and slaps her lightly on the rear with one of them when she’s looking elsewhere. Causing a slight metallic ring to echo off the walls. She turns to look at him as he holds up some of it, with a bit of the cable in his teeth, “How’d ya like this?”

She shivers lightly and partially moans, “Oh, Daddy, yes please.”

Gearing, deciding to have an extra bit of fun with it, starts dancing around her, swinging his wings in circles and trotting around her in well controlled and apparently practiced movements. She can’t help but smile as he turns into a magnificent spectacle of silver, gold, and practically fluorescent greens. After zipping around, and performing a bit of acrobatics, he stops with her wound up in the cabling and the last few meters clutched tightly. He gives her flank a light tap with the end of the cable before he spins it around with his hoof and looks off to the side in mock thought.

“Hmmm… now what am I supposed to do with you?”

She just grins at him and settles in while staring at him. Laying sideways a bit and drawing her legs closer to herself as she partially closes her eyes. She flutters the shutters in her eyes in an eye batting maneuver that no flesh pony would ever be able to duplicate and shimmies her shoulders.

They both know full well that the cable is only for show. Gearing could pretty easily get out of it, and with Sables chassis, she could burst out of it in a second, accidentally even. So, to keep up appearances and not spoil the mood, she’s being very careful and mindful of her movements.

In the detention block, while Swift and Handy are in the middle of their tussle in the hay, some of the lights seem to get ever so brighter. They don’t seem to pay much attention, as they are so focused on each other, but the stable increasingly hums more to life.

Various subsystems, ones that had been deemed too costly and unneeded, slowly come back online. One after another, as the power network itself seems to have gotten a jump start and began functioning at full capacity. The retaining fields in the stable kick on locking them in the detention cell with a wall of bluish white light.

They momentarily look at it, then shrug in unison and continue rolling around.

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

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

Reboot of Internal Monitoring component in progress, please stand by. . .

This chapters brought in a few more character dynamics and is laying ground work for later developments. On top of this, there's a couple things mentioned here that I'm wondering if readers are going to catch onto their meaning before it's fully revealed.

Progress on combined timeline is slow, but steady. Again, thank everyone that's lent time and energy towards this project. It's truly appreciated!

-Quillsy