Fallout Equestria: Clockwork Precision

By Quillsy

Chapter 17: Nesting Behavior

As Gearing and Swift stand inside of the sky wagon service station and watch the floor return to it’s normal look by hiding the stairs down to the Stable 68 entrance, he asks, “You’ve got a bit more experience out here than I have, where do you want to go from here?”

Swift heads over and opens the door into the rest of the service station. “The town we’d heard about previously was called something like Megamac. It’s further north, but I want to make a bit of a detour. If we go a bit northwest first, we might be able to get some meat for the stable.”

Gearing shrugs. “Well, let me know if something’s edible and I’ll see what I can do.”

They head out of the service station, carefully closing the door behind themselves, then quickly scamper across the road. The desolation of Equestria just becomes more apparent to Gearing the further they travel along the path Swift is leading them on. An aerial view provided a pretty heart-wrenching picture as it was. But here, where the hoof meets the radioactive mud, the details painfully play across his vision with merciless quality. Buildings ranging in conditions from ‘legally condemnable’ to ‘pile of rubble’ and everything in between dot the landscape. Both in clusters and some in solitary defiance against gravity. A random skywagon imbedded in the ground. Skeleton of the pegasus driver still in the harness, sort of, and half buried in mud. A couple other skeletons in and around the wagon pay witness to the sudden fate of the flyer mid flight.

All too small skeletons.

After a couple hours, and heading into even more open hilly areas, Swift starts running around and looking at the ground. Gearing approaches by trotting up near her as he keeps an eye on the horizon and asks, “What ya find?”

Swift points a hoof at a couple sets of ground disturbances. “Radhog tracks. Several big ones judging by the prints.”

Gearing looks down at one of the imprints in the muddy soil for a moment before he asks, “You guys eat those?”

Swift looks at him and grins. “Ohh yeaaaah… They’re good alright!”

Gearing grins and waves ahead with a wing. “Well, let’s see if we can spot some. I’d like to get this rifle sighted in properly.”

Swift frowns as she eyeballs his weapon. “Shooting them’s just a cop out. I’d really rather just bash their face in with my hoof I find it much more…” She waves a hoof and lets out a soft sigh as she smiles lightly and finishes, “Satisfying.”

They continue on, with Swift in the lead following the tracks and Gearing keeping look out as they quickly cover distance. As they are cresting a hill, Swift jumps to the ground and crawls up behind a ratty bush as she waves for Gearing to get down. Which, thanks to his history, he does quickly without even asking why.

Until he’s already taken cover that is.

She points through the brush with a wing and says quietly, “They’re down in that gully area a bit to the left.”

Gearing crawls up to the bush and peeks through it as he looks around. Sure enough, there, a distance away, was a group of creatures rooting around in the lower section of where the small hills converged at their lowest points. Gearing looks the creatures over, and the slight movements he can notice through the shrubbery near them that betrays even further numbers of their kind. Unlike radroaches and mantises, these things didn’t simply get bigger from the radiation. They got ugly too. A whole lot uglier.

It’s like they took a swine dive off the great ugly tree of life, and hit every porking branch on the way down. The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head points out with a wrinkled muzzle of disgust and confusion.

A couple of the branches seemingly got stuck in their faces judging by the massive tusks. If they look this messed up, what’s going to happen to anypony that actually eats it? He’s not sure how anypony would be willing, or able, to eat this mutated bastardization of swine life, but if that’s what they want, why not.

Gearing pulls out his rifle and starts looking over the scope as he asks softly, “How many were you thinking?”

Swift looks at them and licks her lips as she wiggles her shoulders in anticipation. “I’m sure we can get at least two.”

Pafft.

Her ear’s twitch and her eyes widen as she sees a pair of radhogs, one quite large, slump to the ground. The smaller one falling sideways as part of it’s head opens up suddenly. Her eyes jump to their widest as she looks over at Gearing. “Nice shot!”

Gearing frowns. “Dammit… sights were off… thought so.”

She tilts her head and closes her mouth as she regards him, but notices the next two quick shots as he fires, chambers a new round smoothly, and fires again in rapid succession.

Pafft, pafft.

She looks back through the bushes and sees the radhogs have, at this point, realized that something is wrong, and have gone running away over the next hill squealing. One of which being potentially traumatized as its flank is spattered with what remained of one of the other radhog’s heads. She looks over at Gearing and rolls her eyes as she punches the ground. “Dammit, Gearing, I wanted to get some frustrations out.”

“Really?” Gearing looks at her as he’s grabbing his brass off the ground and smirks. “I thought you were wanting some mutated hog meat for you and the kids?”

She frowns and partially pouts, “Could have done both!”

They trot down into the dirt bowl and survey the damage.

Four radhogs lay on the ground motionless, three of them quite large and another one looking only a bit smaller than the others. Swift pulls out a knife and happily trots up to one of them as she looks it over and starts licking her lips.

“Hey…” Gearing calls out as he’s walking up. “We probably want to wait until we get back to the stable for that.” She looks at him like he’s crazy and he adds, “You can throw the parts you’re not going to eat into the recycler.”

She frowns as she waves the knife around at the corpses with her wing. “I wasn’t planning on carrying this much back… We’re going to have to go straight back to the stable. Carrying around a bunch of bloody meat has a habit of attracting problems out here...”

Gearing looks over at the smaller one as he’s stowing his rifle. “Think you can carry that one?”

She looks at it and shrugs. “Yeah. Sure… no problem, why-“ She stops talking mid sentence with her mouth hanging open. Gearing uses his wings, picks them up, and quickly piles all three of them on his back, then folds his wings up and over, holding the porcine pyramid in place, as he turns back towards the stable.

They stare at each other for a few moments before he rolls his eyes. “You do realize I weigh more than these three things combined, right?”

Swift looks at him and blinks a few times before grabbing the remaining, smaller, carcass and throwing it over herself. She already feels the need for a shower as the gooey blood runs down her sides, but she tries to focus on how delicious it is going to be once they get back home.

They head back as quickly as possible while being careful of their surroundings, with Swift continuing on at her much faster standard pace than Gearing’s capable of. He pauses at the crest of one of the hills, looking off to the side for a moment, before continuing on after her. By the time Gearing gets to the stable, Swift has already opened the door, entered, and is coming back to the door with a couple protectaponies to help cart off the soon-to-be food stuffs.

After passing over the bodies Gearing points back upstairs with his wing. “Go ahead and get to making your snacks. I saw a building I wanted to go check out. I’ll be back as soon as I can. By time I get back you should be done, then we can just go hit up Megamac or whatever it is.”

Swift looks at him for a moment before saying, “Don’t take forever,” and then starts shutting the door to the stable as they all retreat back further inside with their fleshy prizes.

Before the door’s even shut Gearing’s already headed back upstairs and left. He heads as quickly as he can towards the area where they had been hunting. He’d seen something familiar from one of those hills, and he wanted to see if it held anything remotely close to what they’d need.

After getting back to the general area where he was sure he’d seen the building in question, he starts cresting the hills to look in the direction he thinks it is. Sure enough, he sees the familiar shape of a Fixit Bro’s Hardware store on the near side of a collection of smaller buildings that seem to make up either a small stretch of shops for a smaller town, or possibly they are actually the entire ‘town’ in the sense of smaller rural towns composed of little more than a post office.

He zips up to the back door, and finds it already open. He steps in, and right onto a radroach that for once seemed to be trying to mind its own business, as he starts looking around. Unlike what he had hoped, this building has indeed mostly been looted. The shelves of the shopping area are entirely empty, except for random trash and signs that at some point somepony used this place to sleep with piles of filthy cloths and blankets set around as makeshift bedding. The cash register has even been broken into already and all of the money’s been removed.

Discarded in the hallway to the back office he finds a metal toolbox sitting in a puddle. Rusted beyond all sense. But, it’s still closed, so he works to get it open anyway. Eventually he gives up trying to pick the lock, and realizes that the locks been corroded shut. So, he goes the high-tech ultra-smooth Ministry of Awesome approved method for opening it.

He tilts it on its side and steps on it, caving it in and popping it open under his bulk.

A few of the tools inside are pretty much useless thanks to mismanagement. The toolbox had done its job and, while the box itself was rusted beyond belief on the outside, the inside had remained intact and dry enough. All of the damage the tools on the inside had sustained was probably caused before they were even put into the box.

The few things he does find worth scavenging are limited to the wire cutters, a trio of razor blades, a small box of electrical wire caps, and a spool of high tensile strength wire that still has its shine.

He heads up the stairs to the second floor, and finds that half the roof is missing, exposing that portion of the second floor to the elements and open sky. A few of the boards he has to avoid, and walk on the joists. Even some joists he has to avoid as they seem to give just a bit too much, even with him stepping on them gingerly, to risk it.

As he’s going through a dresser and looking for anything hidden among the random clothing his ears twitch. He looks over at the window as the sound of screaming gets louder then, unmistakably, the sound of various gunfire erupts not far away. He pulls out his rifle and hops over to the spot where the window had once been, as even the frame and some of the surrounding wall is missing, and looks further down the road to the opposite side of ‘town’ he’d come in.

At the end of the street, in a three story brick building, someone has taken cover inside and is putting up a pretty effective defense against a group of attackers. He looks through his scope and takes in the scene from his position. He can’t make out who is trying to keep the others out of the building, but the ones gathering out front certainly don’t look friendly.

The filthy ponies, at least he’s sure all of them are ponies, have a variety of spikes and studs all over their barding. He’s not sure how much protection the bits of chains would provide, but is sure that it functions well enough for them in the intimidation department. Assuming this isn’t some troop of BDSM kinkers. But he’s sure the shotguns and pistols aren’t part of that kind of troop’s typical uniform.

One of them bum rushes the door to the building, and proves just how worthless some of that armor is as they get knocked sideways and back out into the street. Missing a good portion of their head for their attempt.

Gearing takes to the air and, as he’s gaining altitude and swinging wide to try and come into the building from the side, he can see a group of ponies running away from the scene from the back of the building. Whoever is causing the ruckus up front is doing a fabulous job of giving the others time to get away. He decides that, if nothing else, he’d like to meet this individual holding the line.

As he’s flying in through a missing third floor window he can hear the random screaming from the front filled with profanity and promises of mutilation and gang rape.

He can’t help but smile as he thanks the universe for idiots who like to run their mouths. That makes things so much simpler.

He hops down and quickly heads to the second floor, but, as he’s opening the door that leads to the stairwell to the first floor he hears the noise increase downstairs. Apparently they had gotten in, possibly through a side door or maybe they all just rushed through the front, but the fight comes to a climactic end as many guns open fire simultaneously, and the screams of multiple voices yell out and are suddenly silenced.

He stands there looking at the stairwell as he listens to the argument taking place on the first floor.

“Caravaner bitch is finally dead!” a mare yells out with sadistic satisfaction.

“Why’d you kill her!? Dead can’t suffer!” a buck curses.

“Fuck you, there’s only six of us left now!” she screams back.

Thanks for the headcount, Gearing thinks. He shuts the door enough to leave it cracked as he decides to have a little fun with this group. He can’t save her. It’s too late for that. But he can at least avenge her or his ass ain’t shiny.

After arguing for a while longer, the group of raiders decide to split up and look for the rest of her caravan, with a couple hurrying up the stairs hoping to catch them and finally get some of their frustrations out.

Two raiders open the door from the stairwell into the second floor hallway that functions as one of the storage areas for this business. The first looks back and forth with a pistol gripped in his mouth, the other steps behind the first with a double shotgun as he slowly advances. These aren’t the yellow-eyed madmen that feast on the fallen. This pair of earth pony stallions are far more dangerous. For they actually have some sense of self-preservation. And at least enough sense to know they should be worried and wary.

The room they walk into is mostly a long hallway with shelves and cabinets on both sides of the hall leading to a set of stairs going up to the third floor. A pair of doors, one on each side, in the midway point of the hall is all that breaks the long string of shelving and cabinetry.

They look at each other then the one with the pistol points to the door on the left, and they both trot over there, side by side, as they approach the door. As they are getting close to the door, a twinkle of silver light shimmers in front of them, then suddenly they are jerked up by their necks like a kitten being grabbed by the scruff.

Simultaneously Gearing flops down from the above exposed metal rafters to the floor where they had just been standing. Giving just enough wing power to reduce his impact to a soft plop in the process.

The pistol goes clattering across the floor, and the shotgun fires off both barrels, trashing a metal cabinet near the door as he’d fired in surprise more than anything, before likewise falling to the ground as they silently scream and clutch at their necks.

Gearing wraps the pair of wires he has bunched on his left hoof around the support frame where a fire extinguisher would normally be stationed by the left door and tests it for stability before directing his eyes to his two pony piñatas. “Hang around for a while.”

They thrash and kick around as the wire bites deep into their neck, blood trailing down from both of them from the sudden force of being strung up by the high tensile strength wire by Gearing’s over abundant mass.

“Not exactly piano wire… but it’ll do… ouuu presents!” He grabs a sword, from its position attached to the shotgun wielding stallion’s barding, that looks in horrendous repair but might be serviceable with some special Gearing tender loving care. Gearing continues to the end of the hall with the sword held in his wing, and up the concrete steps as their thrashing slows into involuntarily twitching.

A moment later the door at the end of the hall opens up again and another raider pokes his head in, he quickly shuts the door and, after a bit of muffled muttering, the door opens again with the three raiders coming into the hall and walking down looking in every direction as they advance.

They walk over to examine their comrades and find them already limp and lifeless, staring off into space with their eyes bugging out and tongue hanging limply to the side with blood covering a good portion of their torsos and dripping from their hind legs. The first checks the door in front of the pair of bodies on the left side of the hall, and it opens smoothly. Revealing just another small storage closet with an oversized vacuum and shelves of cleaning supplies.

They turn and stack up at the door on the right, with the unicorn mare holding up a rifle pointed at the stairwell while the other two focus on the right door. The earth pony mare in the lead opens the door to the right slowly, which again, slides open smoothly.

And, just as smoothly, comes off its hinges as the trap detonates and fills that area of the hallway with fire and shrapnel. The two at the door are killed instantly, turning into chunky masses that get stuck in the shelving across the hallway. The unicorn, having been furthest from the blast, flops around on the ground, rolling side to side as she tries to hold her throat with both hooves and tries to keep herself from arterial spraying. She grabs her bag and smacks out a healing potion in her panic as she holds one hoof to the gaping wound. As she’s bringing it to her mouth to pull the top off with her levitation field, it gets taken from her by a blur of green and gold.

Gearing looks at it and bobs his head around as he holds it aloft with his wing. “Hmm. Yeah, I don’t think so.” He stabs her with his new-to-him sword through the chest, as he stows the potion in his bag. After she’s gone still, he flicks off the blood and continues on towards the stairwell where all five had entered through as he hums to himself.

“Where or where has my little dog gooooone… Oh where oh where can he beeee...”

The raider in the office looks up and his eyes go wide as his ears twitch and he hears, and feels, the explosion on the second floor. “Dammit guys, we can’t salvage the shit if you burn the place down.” He continues stripping the equipment off the dead caravanner, before picking her up and throwing her bare body into the bathroom across the hall. “Such a mess. Should have just coughed up the goods, filly.”

“Expect her to bend over and present flank for you while she was at it?”

The raider’s head zips to the source of the voice and looks just in time to catch a brass hoof to the jaw, the earth pony spins around horizontally smashing into the door frame for the office before starting to fall back towards Gearing. He catches another brass hoof, and his head is driven down into the ground where he twitches a few times before he starts shaking and convulsing violently as the stun rod goes to work crackling over the stallion’s body.

When the raider next wakes up, he’s been stripped of all of his equipment, and his stash of pilfered goods has been removed from the office. He groggily starts picking himself up, but then gets forced to the ground as Gearing, no longer wearing his own equipment, steps on him. “Good, you’re awake. I need your help with something,” Gearing says from near his ear.

“Go fuck yourself with Celestia’s hindhooves,” the stallion grunts at him from the tile floor.

“Ruuuude.” Gearing jabs a small dart into the raider’s neck.

“Ow! What the fuck!? You think that’s enough to torture me into helping you, you’ve got another thing coming. You’re dead!”

“Actually…” Gearing turns and bucks the raider further into the room, slamming the door shut and using a steel rod to make sure it won’t open again. “Torturing you is how you’re going to help me.”

The stallion jumps up and starts beating on the metal door as he looks through the small wire reinforced security glass window and starts screaming at Gearing, “Wait till I get out of here, I’m going to gut you and wear your intestines like a fucking scarf, you Steel Ranger prick!”

Gearing actually smirks, having conflicting feelings on taking that as a compliment, given the usual protectapony nonsense he gets so regularly. “Don’t think so. You’re infected.” Gearing holds up the tiny dart with his wing so the stallion can see through the glass.

The raiders eyes go wide a second before his hoof jumps up to hold his neck. His voice comes out a bit higher pitched as he screams, “The fuck ya do to me?!”

Gearing carefully sets the dart on a metal crate nearby before he sits down primly. “Just a little prick… I need to know how quickly this batch of Blood Hunger takes to set in.” He holds up his pipbuck and checks the time as he says, “Once you start eating yourself, I’ll know.”

The stallion wavers on his hind hooves as he looks around. “Y- you infected me with Raider Disease?!” He starts beating on the door more. “I’m not a fucking cannibal, this ain’t right!”

“You will be soon enough.” Gearing shrugs. “But, don’t worry. Once I get what I need, I’ll make sure it doesn’t spread. I’ll burn the corpse.”

The stallion beats on the door rapidly and screams with shrill tones, “You can’t fucking do this! This is fucked up!”

“I already have… ohhh don’t look at me like that.” Gearing waves a hoof then steps to the side and points into the bathroom at the corpse of the caravanner. “You murder for profit and sport. Capital punishment’s a bitch. And so is Karma.”

The stallion beats on the metal door with both forehooves, together, as he screams, “Why don’t you just fucking kill me then!?”

Gearing sits staring at him as he says flatly, “I need to know how dangerous this is. Who better to use it on than someone I’m gonna kill anyway?”

The raider starts chuckling and leans on the glass. “Aawww... you going to stay here and be my foalsitter until it finally drives me loony?” He scratches at himself and chuckles. “What’s the meal schedule?”

Gearing stares at him and chuckles. “You are you’re last meal…”

The raider starts beating on the door again as he snarls, “You have any idea how long this shit takes?!”

Gearing nods. “Actually. I do.” He holds up a large piece of mirror to the security glass in front of the raider so they can see themselves and says flatly, “You’re eyes are already yellowing.”

“N- no!” The raider gapes at the mirror then starts shaking. “No way! This can’t be happening!”

“Oh… it’s happening.” Gearing nods and sets the mirror to the side.

The raider starts giggling and biting at the door. “Ooohhh my friends are going to enjoy fucking you to death. Tin can armor or no…”

Gearing stares at him then points up with a wing. “They’re already dead.” He points at the raider behind the glass and Gearing’s eyes enlarge, as does his grin. “You drew the short straw.”

Gearing watches as, over the scant course of an hour, the raider’s mental faculties quickly erode and he becomes increasingly more erratic. He keeps notes in his pipbuck, keeping his ears alert to his surroundings as he watches the raider quickly go through the stages of madness until he does start biting on himself. After the raider’s put repeated pockmarks on both forelegs, Gearing decides it’s been long enough and he doesn’t want to have a bigger mess of infected blood than he is already going to have to clean.

He removes the steel rod, and the raider doesn’t pay him much mind until the door swings open. The raider looks at him, as he’s pulling off a mouthful of his own flesh from a foreleg and giggles in glee before he jumps at Gearing and screams, “Canned meat!”

Gearing silences him by thrusting the pointed end of the steel rod forward and using the raider’s own momentum, and madness, to skewer the stallion’s brain. Gearing stares the raider in the eyes, watching as, even in this dead and dying state, the madness is still present. Etched into his features and yellow eyes for all time.

He slides a metal box over, and uses the rod to pick the stallion up and stick the body into the metal crate like so much refuse. Gearing carefully picks it up and carries it through the building to the back loading area, where the loading bay door stands wide open. He drags out one of the metal containers from the loading bay with the warning symbols on the side barely visible. He carefully pumps out some of the liquid into another large container. He slides and drags the barrel further away from the building, and then dumps the body of the raider into it from the crate, sending a large splash of the chemical over the edges as it overflows, causing him to jump back. He drops the metal crate next to it, and dumps a bucketful of the chemical into the crate he’d brought the body out with.

He trots over to a bathtub nearby and jumps into his already prepared bath of fizzling chemicals. The fumes are, putting it mildly, unpleasant. But, he can handle it. He can’t risk this getting out and infecting anyone. Especially with what he knows now. So him getting a little bleach bath is more than a fair price to pay. He stays in the water for a while: splashing around and looking rather ridiculous in his personal oversized bird bath as he keeps dipping down to coat his wings and back. After being satisfied anything that was alive on him is dead, he jumps out, shakes off, and heads back into the loading bay.

Using his stun rod and a metal frame to cause a spark, he ignites a hoofful of ancient paperwork, and chucks it at the barrel, causing a massive fireball before the barrel and metal crate both begin hotly burning like oversized lamps. He grabs the large bucket he’d reserved some liquid in, and splashes it into the office where the raider had been, before using the stun rod on the handle to ignite that room as well. Ducking back and away from the fiery back blast.

As the fires burn and send smoke billowing higher into the sky, Gearing puts on his gear, grabs all of the things he’d salvaged from the building and the raiders, and the body of the olive-maned caravanner. Who is now respectfully dressed again.

Gearing stays low to the ground near some rubble as he peers into the gloom towards where a small fire is burning in an alcove of a crumbling building. It took him a bit to track them down, and he’s really hoping he’d judged the situation right, otherwise this night is going to start sucking pretty soon. His eyes trail up to the second floor of the mostly collapsed building and stares into the dark corner up above the apparent camping area. A glint of light from that shadow is the only indication of movement as he looks at that dark patch. He puts a hoof to his mouth and yells out loudly, “Hey! Caravaners!”

Sounds of hooves hitting the ground and various metallic noises greet him almost instantly in response as the caravanners scramble for cover and take up defensive positions.

“Who’s out there! Show yerself!” a stallion yells from the lower level.

“I’m a friend, don’t shoot!” Gearing calls out before he slinks around and starts coming from a different direction.

“Well, come on out and let us see for ourselves, then,” the stallion responds.

Gearing pokes his combat helmeted head cautiously around a wall and looks in at them before he says, “Ullo!” cheerfully.

Five weapons turn to point at him and he ducks back behind the wall.

“If I was going to start shooting at you, I already would have! I’m not a raider!” Gearing yells from behind the wall as he ducks down.

“Well, what do ya want?” the crotchety stallion yells back.

Gearing lets out a long sigh as he looks around. “It’d be easier for me to show you. If ya just give me a minute.” He pokes around the corner again and sees them all appraising each other and the older stallion motions Gearing in with a rifle.

“Alright, come on in… but don’t try any funny business.”

Gearing walks around slowly, with his back loaded and covered with a large canvas bundle. He walks over near the fire, and gently starts tilting sideways, lowering his burden to the ground with his wings. He looks them over and frowns as he puts a forehoof on the bundle at his hooves.

The earth pony stallion steps into the light and looks at the canvas a moment then at Gearing and asks softly as he motions towards the bundle at Gearing’s hooves, “What’s that there?”

Gearing shakes his head lightly and lets out a sigh. “I didn’t know what else to do with her. Didn’t feel right just leaving her back there.” He pulls the fabric back and shows the bloodstained worn traveling jacket with the olive mane spilling out.

A peach unicorn mare jumps over a pile of rubble as her magic holding up her shotgun implodes and she screams, “Sugarbell!” She runs over and slides across the ground towards the body, uncovering the earth pony mare’s head and cradling it in her forelegs.

Gearing sits down, looks at her, and says softly, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

The peach unicorn pulls back the rest of the canvass with her magic and starts drawing Sugarbell up into herself as she wails, “You stupid idiot! You were just supposed to just keep them busy a couple minutes then run!” She starts rocking, holding the body, as she buries her face into Sugarbell’s mane and blubbers, “You- you jackass… How could you do this to me?!”

The crotchety stallion walks over and asks Gearing quietly, “Did- … Did they? You know?” He hangs his head and sighs. “Raiders don’t kill ya quickly sometimes…”

Gearing looks at him for a moment then shakes his head. “No, she died fighting.”

The crying peach unicorn looks up at him with waterlogged eyes and asks with a sniffle, “And the raiders?”

“Oh, them?” Gearing gives a wide grin as his eyes go wide. “They just died.”

The older stallion sits down as he looks at Sugarbell. “Well… thank you for bringing her back to us. She at least deserves a proper burial.”

The peach unicorn feels around Sugarbell’s neck and peeks under her jacket. She looks up at Gearing and asks softly, “I… I know this might sound stupid… but… did you find a locket on the raiders? By any chance?”

Gearing pulls up his inventory sorter on his Pipbuck and starts looking through his items. “Let me see, they had a lot of crap.” He zips through the list then grins. “Hey, this might be it!” He grabs the item off the top of his saddlebag, where his sorter enchantment had so lovingly placed it, and holds the metallic necklace with the ivy motif aloft by it’s chain with one of his green wings. “Is this it?”

She nods and stares at it as she asks, “W- what do you want for it? I’ll pay you, name your price.”

Gearing stretches out his wing and sets it on Sugarbell’s still chest. “Keep your caps... but I could use some information.”

She nods and picks it up with a pained smile in her yellow magic field. It opens up and she shows the image inside as she says with a choke, “I had a friend paint it for us… I always thought she looked adorable in this picture.”

Gearing looks at it and his heart aches just that much more. Inside is a delicately painted headshot picture of the peach mare, giving a kiss to the cheek of a very surprised, shocked, and all together embarrassed looking Sugarbell as they’d posed for some camera. He smiles lightly and nods. “Yeah. I agree.”

The peach mare closes the locket, stows it in one of her pockets, then sits there rocking side to side with Sugarbell in her forehooves as she mutters and talks about things quietly to her lost lover.

The crotchety stallion pulls Gearing aside, to the other side of the fire to give them a moment of privacy as he asks, “You said you were looking for some information? What you need to know? We’ll help all we can.” He motions over towards Sugarbell and says softly, “That was a damned decent thing of you to do, friend.”

“Oh I’m not done yet…” Gearing sits down and grins widely. “I think you’re gonna love this, actually.”

The stallion looks him over, feeling a bit uneasy suddenly, but asks, “What ya mean?” As he tilts his head the firelight shifts across his face revealing a number of old scars across his straw yellow muzzle. And discerning brown eye of someone who’s lived on the trail much longer most.

Gearing waves a hoof around. “I wanna know where more of those bastards are. I want to start cleaning up the wastes. One cesspit at a time.” He waves a wing off to the side as he leans over towards, and grins at, the stallion. “You just set’em up, and I’ll knock’em down.” He sits there as primly as possible as he chuckles, “Hell, spread the word, get your friends involved. Traders seem to be one of their favorite targets. You guys get around a lot too. So just pass around the information, as I’m sure you already do, and I’ll check on whatever I hear.”

The stallion tilts his head and asks, “And… just what do you get out of it?”

Gearing puts a hoof to his chest and grins. “Well... as corny as it sounds, it is my job, actually… ” He looks over at Sugarbell and motions towards the pair with the same hoof as he says softly, “But, I really don’t want to see that anymore.”

The peach unicorn hops over from her side of the fire and asks softly, “Did I hear that right? You going after slavers too, or just raiders?”

Gearing looks at her a second, and can see the scowl on her face. She’s past the pain, at least for the moment, this is about vengeance. He shrugs and gives her a grin. “Same difference in my book. Both of them enjoy profiting and getting off on the misery of others.”

She steps closer and looks him in the eye almost point blank as she says, “I know where a group of slavers are. Bastards got Sugarbell’s pa a little while ago.” She closes her eyes and looks over at the tenderly cared for corpse tucked into the canvas sheet. “We already know he’s been sold off to Red Eye already, and he’s most likely dead.” She turns back to Gearing and scowls. “But if you’d kill those fucks. You’d not only be doing right by a lot of folks, but I’d consider it a personal favor to me and Sugarbell.”

Gearing starts chuckling as he looks over at the older stallion. He swings back towards her with his Pipbuck opened to his map and grins at the peach mare. “Gimmie some cords, and I’ll give you some corpses.”

She looks from the Pipbuck to his eyes and asks, “That’s it?”

Gearing nods and grins widely, enough the fire light actually shines off his teeth and so wide his eyes close. “Thank you for your patronage; don’t forget to tell your friends and family.”

She quickly taps on a couple areas and Gearing sets a marker, she nods her thanks as the tears resume and she scurries back over to be with her love one last time.

The straw yellow stallion leans over and says softly, “If you’re really looking for a list… go check out MegaMart around Hoofington… Bottlecap keeps a board of jobs on it, and she might know of a few others that could be handled.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Gearing looks over at him and nods slowly. “But, if that’s the case, try to get that info spread around. I’m going to be traveling quite a bit and having to travel all the way back to a single spot to get my next pit stop would be problematic.”

The caravanner takes off his travel worn wide-brimmed hat and rubs a hoof through his earthy brown mane, disturbing some of the duller streaks that betray his age, before replacing it. “I can see that being a problem…” He looks up at Gearing and gives a mostly toothy smile. “My name’s Short Road. Friends call me Roadie.” He tilts his head as he looks Gearing over in the dim light, noticing a few twinkles of reflected light off the side of Gearing’s muzzle from the campfire. “That is one interesting suit of armor… You aren’t one of those Steel Rangers, they don’t give a shit about anypony. Who are you?”

“No one special.” Gearing shrugs and waves a hoof lightly. “Just a traveling repairpony.” He lowers his head as he snickers, then tilts his head so his helmet blocks the majority of the light on his face as he grins. “And it seems to me Equestria’s just one big fixer-upper.”

The caravanner starts chuckling as he shakes his head. As he slows down he looks up and regards Gearing for a few moments. “Listen here, young buck. I know there’s been a few out there inspiring others to make Equestria better… But don’t let all of that foolishness make you charge off and get yourself killed. I’m not telln’ ya to stop… But just realize Equestria’s mighty big… and you’re just one pony.”

Gearing grins at him and tilts his head the other way. “Don’t worry. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid. And… Equestria might be big, but…” He flares his wings up, for the first time giving a clear view of them as his grin just gets bigger and they reflect and refract the light around himself. “I can get around pretty quick when I need to.” He settles down and starts looking at his Pipbuck as he mutters to himself, “Speaking of which…”

The caravanner tilts side to side trying to look at the map that Gearing’s perusing on his Pipbuck. “Do I even want to know?”

Gearing closes out of it and grins at the older stallion. “Nothing major. Equestria’s apparently got a few leaky pipes…. There’s muck positively everywhere that needs raking…” He starts turning as he chuckles. “And I think I have enough night left to swing by one more.”

The caravanner waves with a chuckle as Gearing hops over the rubble pile and quickly disappears into the darkness beyond.

Under the cover of night, and an intentionally overcast sky, Gearing has no problems taking flight and making the trip to the little marker on his map. During the day it’s a bit problematic to fly as he’s more than a bit conspicuous. An understandable side effect of being composed of metal and crystal. But the night gives him a perfect opportunity to fly to, and around, the compound with impunity.

He’s pretty sure if he just started a fight, even from the air, the occupants would be more than willing to look up and shoot back. However, with the apparent lack of pegasi in the modern Equestrian wasteland, the ones on watch are doing so from comfortable positions, but all looking out around the horizon. As he’s passing over, his Pipbuck chimes with a location marker, old or new he can’t tell: Tower’s Towing.

Which would probably explain the large number of wrecked wagons in this fenced in area. Not that much of the original chain link fence was still standing. And most of what constituted the barrier around the compound was stacked wagons and large pieces of scrap. A bus of some kind has been set vertical near the front entrance and seems to be used as some sort of watch tower. Judging by the pony with the rifle looking out the back window and standing on the backside of one of the seats.

Most of the rest of the ‘compound’ is little more than rusted out vehicles being used as rooms or storage. A metal covered wagon with its wheels removed seems to be the central hub of the group. They probably used the office trailer that actually is in the dead center of everything, before it was burnt down in some fire that still looks relatively recent.

Mixed in with the red markers on his EFS are a variety of blue. Most of which are crammed into little pockets. One such pocket Gearing clearly notices is a familiar style cage with filthy ponies wearing rags. At least for those that do have anything on. The only hold out of the blue sort is notably in the metal wagon without its wheels resting on the ground. And there is a red marker with them. He can image what’s going on in there and none of it has to do with afternoon crumpets and mint tea.

But, he needs to do this smart. Which means paying the red marker in that six story building not far away a visit first.

He’s not sure how this earth pony stallion even got all the way up here. He’d been up here for a while, judging by the fresh muck pile on the floor below. And repeatedly, judging by the not so fresh piles in the same general area and the piles of empty food cartons and bottles in the room he’s in. The building, that looks like it was an apartment complex at one point, has mostly collapsed. A few of the rooms are still standing on this side as the one outer wall seems to stubbornly refuse to fall. But the ‘sixth floor’ is really little more than half of two side by side apartments, with the rest having fallen down into rubble long ago.

To the earth pony stallion’s credit, he never took his eyes off the approaching road towards the slaver encampment. Not even when the silenced end of Gearing’s rifle is brought up inches from his head and whispers out an introduction to Luna.

Pafft.

Though that’s easy to do when you literally don’t hear it coming.

Gearing shoves the sniper over and takes over his position. He looks the rifle already laid out over, and decides to set it aside. As much karma might be unleashed by getting to work using their own rifles on them, this isn’t a time to use unproven equipment. What’s worse, the ammo type isn’t even the same. So he just clears the area as he lies down on the provided pile of debris, so lovingly placed by the sniper when he was making his nest, and starts looking around the area with his own scope.

This really was an excellently placed and prepared location. He mentally tips his hat to the dead stallion to his side in a sense of professional respect. He was a real piece of work that’s going to, before the night is out, begin to spend the rest of eternity basting and rotting in his own fecal matter. But, Gearing can still give credit where credit is due.

And this stallion had made it his business to be able to see almost the entire encampment, with clear lines of sight, along with most of the road and areas beyond. So much the better to take out any approaching threats. Or runners. Or being the final arbitrator if a deal for pony flesh goes sour. And, the ever popular, putting an end to any heroic types that thought sneaking in and rescuing anypony was a good idea.

Gearing goes through his head as he remembers the locations of the red dots he’d seen before. He quickly looks through the encampment, trying to pick out where they had gone. The nights still relatively young, so there’s no reason for them all to be in bed yet. Some of them even seem to still be celebrating, or partying.

No time like the present, because you never know when you’re times going to come and you’ve seen your last day. Especially in the Equestrian Wasteland.

Pafft.

Like that fellow that had been taking a long pull from a liquor bottle, only to drop it and slump backwards off his stool against a wooden crate that becomes just a bit shinier in the lamp light. And redder. His companion stands up and leans across the table, pointing a hoof and looking like she’s laughing at the stallion who’d fallen off their seat in an apparently drunken stupor. Is it a she? Kind of hard to tell from these distances sometimes.

Pafft.

No matter. She twitches mid laugh then flops down onto the table, not to move as the shot convinced her to take a short nap.

Gearing’s scope zips over to the left side, which is actually the back end of the encampment, as he smiles and says softly to himself, “There’s just something about nights like this… Nice and quiet... Feeling the cool breeze flowing over yo- Ello there!”

A buck walking around one of the wagons nearest him heading towards the back catches his attention and he quickly lines up the shot before he can get to the corner and around it.

Pafft.

He didn’t make it to the corner and instead crumples into a barely visible heap.

Movement catches his eye in the scope and he slides it over a bit more to the left as the crosshairs show a mare coming around the other side of the wagon.

Pafft.

She had enough time to come around the corner towards the one that had just fallen and open her mouth, but that was it before she fell as well.

“You know… I wonder if they’d ever considered a different line of work?”

Pafft.

An earth pony opens a metal door from the back of a wagon and closes it, managing to get a few steps away from the door before kissing dirt.

He loads in another magazine as he comments, “I mean really, danger aside, at what point of depravity do you decide selling your fellow ponies is a good idea?” He chambers a round and quickly looks where he’d just seen a light twinkle.

Pafft.

A unicorn had entered a minibus and gotten near the end before crumpling in the middle of the aisle from a shot through an already shattered window.

He slowly moves the rifle scope around as he sighs, “At least the yellow eyed raiders had a mind eating disease as an excuse… what’s this nonsense?” He stops and follows a buck, waiting for him to get passed and away from a pair that are walking a different direction.

Pafft.

The stallion falls forward and slides down the slight embankment he was heading for, head first into the latrine and Gearing watches through the scope as the head completely disappears under the surface of the cesspit.

“Shity way to go,” he starts chuckling as he moves the scope back to find the two that had just walked by the last one. “Oh, those two are kissing… well… damn.”

Pafft.

“Thanks for saving me the ammo,” he comments as he chambers another round and the two mares slump to the ground in an eternal embrace. “Not a horrible way to go, probably better than they deserved…”

Reload.

Pafft. Pafft. Pafft. Pafft.

“And then there were two…”

Pafft.

He watches as the pony that had been in the improvised watchtower at the tail end of the bus crumples and falls down through the inside of the bus and all the way down to ground level. He puts in another magazine, and picks up all of his brass, with his wings, counting them out dutifully.

He walks back towards the gaping hole where most of the building has collapsed and dips his head towards the dead slaver sniper. “Thanks for letting me borrow your spot. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He jumps out into the night sky, flying around and again does a pass over of the slaver compound. This time, the compound is far more still than it was previously, and the only red marker coming up in his vision inside of the town is the one with the blue marker in the wheel-less wagon.

He lands at the back end, and ever so carefully opens the door. His ears twitch at the sound of grunting and flank slapping and not even the overcast night sky can hide his scowl as he very slowly, and carefully, slips in.

He steps up behind the dirty red stallion rutting away against some kind of table with somepony’s hindhooves shackled to the table legs.

The next moment the stallion is on his knees, as Gearing has pulled him backwards and down by stepping on the back of one of his knees and using his substantial weight to force them to the ground. But the startled scream is muffled, and rather quiet, as Gearing executes his own variety of a headlock by using his right foreleg as a bit and has it crammed into the stallion’s mouth hard enough to press the back of his head into Gearing’s chest.

Gearing takes in the scene, and looks over at the vacant eyed stare of the green mare with a very noticeable device around her neck. She’s been gagged and, apparently, beaten repeatedly. Judging by her disheveled filthy state, and the various fluids on and around the makeshift bed, this isn’t a new occurrence and the individual struggling to get Gearing’s brass arm out of his mouth quite probably wasn’t the original red dot that had been in here before Gearing got comfortable in his nest.

Gearing whistles over at her, and keeps trying to get her attention. Finally he just yells at her, “Hey! … Should I pull the trigger or not?” Sometimes it’s best to get outside verification. EFS can be wrong at times. It’s been known to happen.

This seems to startle her enough back to reality to look wide-eyed in fright at him. But then her eyes narrow as she sees Gearing’s wing holding a pistol to the stallion’s head.

The stallion, to his credit, finally realized his full peril and started trying to fight and get away as he finally notices Butter Churn’s 10mm pistol an inch from his temple. Even as futile as it was given his body’s twisted position and the brass monstrosity holding him firmly in place.

The green mare locks eyes with Gearing, then at the stallion, and the scowl grows on her face as she starts nodding, ever faster, and doesn’t even stop after Gearing has already pulled the trigger and thrown the stallion’s limp body to the side.

Gearing holsters his pistol and pulls out some tools, her eyes keep jumping to the door behind him as she tries to say something, but is muffled. He quickly unlocks her hind legs, which she quickly retracts towards herself as she tries to turn sideways. He uses his wings to remove her mouth gag, as he starts undoing her remaining hoof restraints. As he gets the last one undone, she wraps her hooves around him and sobs. She tries to speak, but can’t and nothing intelligible makes sense. He pulls back to look at her with a smile, to tell her it’s going to be okay, but notices the true reason she’s not talking, and his words are likewise stolen from him.

As her tongue had already been stolen from her.

He has her sit still, and then quickly removes the bomb collar. He’s really starting to hate whoever invented this despicable device. He has her show him where the rest of the slaves have been held and, as they are stepping out, she looks around warily.

Gearing jumps out of the wagon noisily, causing her to jump in the air in shock as she stares at him with her mouth hanging open. He looks at her then points a wing to where they were going. “I wouldn’t have asked you to show me… if any of them were still alive.” She tilts her head and her ears twitch around as she tries to determine how this could possibly be. Gearing points into the wagon and grins. “He was the last one here.”

She grins widely and begins crying again as she nods, and then she starts quickly leading the way around the encampment. The slavers had three separate cages for holding ponies. Two were full of bucks and the third one was positively crammed with mares. All of them wearing bomb collars.

He zips around, unlocking and disarming all of their restraints and holding cells, going one at a time, and letting them out to do whatever they want. The desperation and fear in their eyes quickly gets replaced by confusion. Pure. Distilled. Confusion.

As he’s removing the last bomb collar, from the neck of an aquamarine mare, a few of the others watch in amazement at his quick work. One of the other mares, a brown earth pony who refuses to leave her side even with the possibility of the bomb going off and harming her as well, asks, “Not that I’m not grateful… but… why are you doing this?”

“Group of caravanners told me about this place.” Gearing grins, then pulls off the collar as he shrugs. “Said a family member of the group had been taken. Sugarbell’s father. I was heading this way anyway so thought I’d pop in and lend a hoof.”

He stands up and starts walking towards the door.

She stands up and calls after him, “What are we going to do now?”

Gearing looks over his shoulder at her and grins. “Well… If I were you, I’d loot this town for all it’s worth, there’s going to be a good store of weapons and ammo here at the least. Then I’d go home or wherever else that might be safe. Or, you could stay here and try and make a real community out of this scrap heap.” He points a wing at her. “But don’t get into raiding or slaving.” He gives her a wide grin as he says flatly, “Otherwise I might just pay a visit.” He turns towards the door and lets out a sigh. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a freezer to check on.”

“Freezer?” every one of the individuals looking at Gearing asks in unison.

Gearing waves a hoof as he opens the door to leave. “Yup. Like I said, I was just in the area. Job’s never done for a repairpony. Got a lot of things needing fixing in Equestria…” He waves with one wing over his shoulder without looking as he says, “Stay safe out there, everypony. Good luck.”

As soon as he’s outside he takes flight and zips straight up until he disappears into the night sky again. But, before he heads back to the stable, he pays his respects to the earth pony sniper. In a manner of speaking. As he takes everything of even minute value, strips the stallion down completely, adds it to his own pile, and then dumps his body down into the cesspit caused by repeated calls of nature. You can admire and recognize someone’s skill and tenacity, but still despise them with every fiber of your being.

He would love to have taken all of them with him to the stable. To give them a safe place. But, that’s just not feasible. He’d pushed his luck with the sixteen children. A group of adults this large? Including stallions? Not going to happen. He hopes they’ll be okay, but there’s little else he can do for them at the moment. Today freedom, tomorrow a real life?

One can only hope.

He zips back towards the stable, using the cover of darkness, and lands a distance away from the service station. After checking his EFS, and making sure nothing and noone followed him, he proceeds back into the service station.

As he’s walking up to the control for the Stable 68 front door a speaker overhead chirps on.

“Where the hell have you been?” Nettlekiss’s voice asks. “I’ve been having to listen to Sable fret and worry and complain about how you came back and left without even saying anything.” There’s a pause before she asks, “Why are you all bloody?”

Gearing looks at his right foreleg and chest and sighs. He sits down and shrugs as he grins widely at her. “I met some new ponies. Some of them good ponies. Some of them not… The bad ones I had a bit of a disagreement with.”

“What kind of disagreement? About what?” she asks with edging concern.

Gearing looks at one of the cameras and gives a crooked grin. “Well they thought selling and gang raping ponies was a good way to live.” His grin gets wider. “I had a very strong dissenting opinion on the matter.” He closes his eyes and sits up primly as he puts a hoof to his chest. “I’m a very good negotiator, as you know… I bought their freedom for the amazingly low price of about twenty rounds of ammunition and an understandable need for a bath…” He looks at his bulging saddlebags then grins wider. “Also got some weapons and food in bargain too!”

“Alright you stupid stallion. Quite bragging. What, you want someone to pat your head and call you a good pony?” Nettlekiss asks with a snicker.

Gearing points his hoof into the stable. “I’d settle for a bath… really… I got that one guy’s brain matter in places-“

The automated message starts playing as Nettlekiss has decided she really doesn’t want any further details.

Gearing grins and blows a kiss at the camera as he giggles. “Thanks, Nettlekiss!” As the door slides open his grin turns crooked as he asks, “Couldn’t even warn a clockwork, could you?”

A message pops up on his pipbuck from Nettlekiss. [Nope, where’s the fun in that?]

Gearing walks towards the door and waves a wing as he enters. But it does nothing to remove the scathing scowl being stared at him by Sable. She stands her ground, not moving, from the end of the entry planks. And, worst of all, not saying anything.

At least until he gets within a few paces of her.

“Where have you been? I was worried! Subject Swift said you were going to check on something and would be right back, but you’ve been gone most of the night. Why did you not say anything to me when you came back and relinquished the swine corpses? Do you not enjoy my company, Gearing? Have I offended you somehow? Do you not wish to be with me any long-“ Sable asks in rapid fire succession and only goes silent when he grabs her face with his wings and gives her a deep-tongued kiss.

She trots happily in place as she starts moving forward to escalate their interaction, but Gearing uses a hoof on her chest to keep her back as he breaks their lip lock just enough to say, “I need a shower, bad, and to offload my finds.” He gives her a crooked grin as he tilts his head. “And then I’ll show you just how silly you’re being if you think I’ve suddenly stopped loving you.”

She looks off to the side and says softly, “I thought you had become angry with me because of our teasing when you left…”

He rolls his eyes and starts walking by her, keeping hard eye contact as he does, then quickly leaning over, stretching out his neck, and planting a soft kiss on her flank. A smile explodes across her face and he nods towards the inside of the stable. “Coming with me or going to make me go clean up all on my lonesome?”

She trots in place happily again then follows behind and providing his flank escort the entire way to the R&D department. He sets everything down once inside of R&D, and stores the metal Mint-als tin in the R&D’s freezer, before heading back into the decontamination chamber with his combat armor still on. She quickly starts helping him remove his armor as the sequence starts.

As she’s removing the last piece of the combat armor from his body Gearing asks softly, “Did you really think I was mad at you, and no longer loved you?”

Sable pauses a moment as she’s turns to the side to set the piece down with the rest of it. She avoids eye contact for a few long seconds before dropping the piece of equipment and saying softly, “That is what I was concerned with. Yes.”

She turns to say something to him but, as her mouth is opened, her muzzle gets filled with a deep-tongued kiss as he steps up to her and begins caressing her sides and body with his wings. Gearing pauses with their muzzles still touching each other as he looks into her eyes and says softly, “That’s not going to happen, Sable.” He gives her a soft kiss and adds, “It’d take a lot more than that to make me stop loving you.”

She starts caressing him with her restraining cables as she asks, “What is it that would cause my darling Gearing to no longer love me? I will make sure I never make that mistake!”

Gearing nuzzles her neck and starts trailing kisses down her neck and shoulder. “A balefire blast couldn’t change my mind… If anything ever gets invented that might… I’ll let you know.” She lets out a soft whimpering moan and wraps her forelegs around his neck as she starts trailing kisses up and down his neck, face, and muzzle.

He pulls back a bit and grins at her with his eyes partially closed. “I suppose I need to make it up to you for the scare?”

She shakes her head lightly and smiles. “That will not be necessary. I know my darling Gearing loves me now. That is all that is important.”

Gearing grins widely and asks, “Oh? So you don’t want me to spend the rest of the night apologizing with…” He leans in, licks her neck up to her ear, and gives it a slight bite before he whispers something audible only to Sable into her ear.

Sable’s eyes go wide as her jaw drops and she blurts out, "It has now become necessary!”

Footnote: Internal component 01 not responding. . .

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This chapter is on the cusp of the areas that were causing problems for me timeline wise. However, progress, like time, marches on. This chapter has a couple of Gearing's first major interactions with others in the Equestrian wasteland. There's also a few things getting hinted at regarding his methods and personality. But, as usual, more will be revealed later.

-Quillsy