A green pegasus wearing an emerald green long shirt, that glints in the overhead lights, hops through the front door of one of downtown Manehatten’s seedier nightclubs. The long sleeve shirt allows his mark to peek out every now and then with his movements. Revealing a simple cumulus cloud with a seedling seeming to be growing out of it with a pair of delicate leaves making a wide V-shape on his haunch. He bops along with each step as he glides through the crowd. The music blaring from the speakers is infectious. A recorded masterpiece of a live performance Vinyl Scratch did somewhere more reputable than the club he’s currently gliding through. Still. The beat has a way of getting into your bones and to ignore it would be a blasphemy. But to accept its embrace is to dance. And dance he does.

Along with nearly everyone else in the club. Not even the bartenders can keep themselves from at least swaying and hopping to the beat.

The war be damned. In here, it practically doesn’t exist. At least that’s the goal of such excessive partying.

As he’s passing by a pair of mares, the earth pony mare pulls out a very recognizable tin and pops it open for her friend to share.

The green pegasus pauses and leans toward them as one of the unicorns floats one and pops it into her mouth with a grin. “Hey, they’ve really started cracking down on the contraband. Shouldn’t have that out like that, right?”

They look at him and the earth mare frowns. “You a Pink or something? Gonna arrest me, officer?”

He chuckles and shakes his head. Then rocks with the beat to bump her hip with his. “Nah. Just a friendly update. I’m only interested in having a good time.”

She smirks at him and looks him over before offering him one. “Well, the more the merrier!”

“Oh, I better not.” He looks at it then grins as he leans in towards her, and speaks softly into her ear, “I’ve been told I’m a horrible flirt as it is. I don’t need any more... encouragement.” When he pulls back she has a massive smirk on her face, and he just gives her a wink then continues on through the crowd.

He keeps looking back and forth, looking over everyone. And, when an area opens up a bit, he actually hops up onto his hindlegs and starts stepping and hopping to the beat. He flares out his wings here and there as he spins around to the beat, with the flashing lights hitting him and giving viewers practical still images of his various poses. He starts getting a bit of a crowd around him as he keeps spinning and twirling around. After several minutes of playing with the lights he decides one plane just isn’t enough, and jumps into the air to flit around above the crowd. Him and the other two pegasi in the club, one purple mare and one peach, dance around mid air. And they eventually start a mid air dance off with each other.

As he starts his next round, by mimicking the purple mare’s moves, except while flying entirely upside down, the front door to the club bursts open and five ponies run in wearing guard riot gear.

The unicorn in the lead waves around a baton with his magic as he yells out, “This is a raid! Shut off that damn music!”

The two pegasi mares bolt off to a corner near the ceiling to hide as they try to get one of the windows open near the roof to escape. The green pegasus flutters over the crowd and folds his forelegs in front of his chest as he scowls. “Nothing like ruining my damn night off.”

The normal overhead lights turn on and the music shuts off abruptly as everyone stares on with wide eyes and uncertainty stretched across every feature.

The officers split up, with two staying at the entrance. The other three disperse through the crowd making everyone line up and back towards the bar counter as they start going through and checking everyone.

The fluttering green pegasus enjoys his bird’s eye view as he watches as one of the guards confronts the earth mare from earlier, and takes the tin of mint-als from her. But, then just turns and goes down the line. The mare looks positively relieved. The green pegasus heads over and lands near a vanilla earth pony stallion as he asks, “Hey, Buck?”

Buck turns and looks at him with his eyes widening then looks around as he asks, “Cloud Seed? What are you doing here?”

Cloud Seed leans towards him then nods towards the guards. “You know anything about this?”

Buck shakes his head. “No, and… honestly… this seems off.”

Cloud Seed nods and looks around. “They’re just taking stuff from patrons.”

Buck frowns as he looks over at the two at the door. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.” Cloud Seed nods but says nothing else as he looks around and steps back towards a few other members of the crowd. Buck walks up to the unicorn that led the group of guardsponies in.

The unicorn spins towards him and points his baton at Buck as he yells, “The hell you think you’re going?!”

Buck stares at him and asks, “Who authorized this raid?”

“Don’t need authorization to perform a raid. Now back up or I’ll crack your skull!” he yells back.

Buck looks back and forth between the two, then at the third one that has turned and come back to flank him. “Where’s your warrant?”

The third one holds their shotgun up in the air with his own levitation field and glares at him. “You keep running your mouth and I’m gonna give you a kiss with the butt of Thunder here. Just cough up all the contraband or we’ll send your ass straight to Hightower.”

Buck glares at him. “The problem with that, would be you’d need a warrant to perform a raid… Which you don’t seem to have…”

A fourth one returns and comes up to Buck’s other side waving around his baton. “I think this dumb ass needs a lesson in how things work.”

Cloud Seed lands next to Buck, looking straight at the newest buck as he grins. “Oh… I think he already knows… Unlike your dumbass, we actually know how MoM works.”

The fifth one comes out of the crowd of patrons and screams, “It’s a fucking Pink!” before he pulls out a pistol on Cloud Seed. Cloud Seed rocks sideways, shoving Buck over onto the ground as the fifth earth pony fires twice. Into Cloud Seed’s chest.

The crowd drops to the ground and screams as they recoil from the shots.

Cloud Seed jumps over, bringing his wing around and slapping the pistol right out of the earth stallion’s mouth. His next revolution increases in speed with a snap of his wings, to grab the stallion by their helmet. He follows through by throwing them across the room to cause them to crash into, and knock over, two of the other officers.

The one with the shotgun lowers the barrel to point it at Cloud Seed, but, before it gets there, Buck kicks upwords with both hind legs and sends the gun sailing up and through the air as he knocks it clear out of their magical field. He spins around, hitting them in the back of their legs with his own, causing them to fall forward on their face with him, as he’s getting up.

The apparent leader jumps over and puts the baton across Bucks neck and starts pulling him up and backwards as he screams, “You’ve done it now, pink!”

Cloud Seed crashes into him from the side, bulldozing him over and into the other three as they were just about to recuperate from getting knocked over by their comrade being thrown at them. Cloud Seed picks one of them up with his forelegs, and arcs backwards, dropping them on their helmeted head and sending the face shield scattering into a bunch of pieces.

One of the earth ponies jumps onto Cloud Seed’s back and brings their baton around his neck, using his fetlocks to hold the baton across Cloud Seed’s throat. He keeps pulling it back as he tries to strangle Cloud Seed.

Buck jumps over, planting his forehooves and using his momentum to spin around as he applebucks the earth pony clear off of Cloud Seed and into the pile of battered policeponies.

The crowd looks on with shock, and amazement, as Cloud Seed and Buck barehoofedly pummel the fully armored guards, by keeping them down and against the wall, as they kick and punt them. In one case they actually punt one stallion’s head back and forth between them in a weird version of volleyball before knocking his unconscious body into the wall.

When they are on the ground, and unable to get up again, Cloud Seed and Buck quickly go between them. They use the policeponies’ own hoofcuffs on them as they remove their weapons and store them in a saddlebag to keep the unicorns from using them.

Buck sits down and spits out a tooth, and some blood, to the side as he looks at Cloud Seed. “Cloud, you going to be okay?”

Cloud Seed uses a hoof and holds onto his upper shoulder as he groans, “Yea, I’ll live, Buck. Was only 10mm. Dammit, I liked this shirt too.”

Buck shakes his head as he chuckles. “‘Only 10mm’ he says. Do you go anywhere without a vest?” Cloud Seed just shrugs and grins at him. Buck frowns as he shakes his head then looks around at the crowd. “Everypony else okay? Is there anypony else hurt?”

The crowd murmurs but the injuries do indeed seem to be contained only to those seven involved.

Buck lets out a sigh and smiles. “Well. Thank goodness for small favors.” He looks over at the bartender and yells, “Hey, barkeep. Call the local MoM hub. Tell them Buck said to get a team over here now.”

The bartender nods his head quickly and picks up the phone.

Several members of the crowd look around anxiously as they try to assess the situation.

Cloud Seed looks over at Buck and asks with a smirk, “Mind plugging your ears for a minute?” Buck looks at him with a raised eyebrow, then rolls his eyes as he chuckles and puts his hooves to his ears as he starts loudly humming to himself. Cloud Seed grins, then looks back to the crowd. “I’m sure there’s more than enough witnesses… so… if you have any particular reason not to want to be involved with a Ministry of Morale investigation…” He looks right at the mare that had the tin of mint-als and catches her eye contact before he points to a back exit sign. “I’d say you’d…. probably want to not be here…” They don’t move at all and then Cloud Seed says with a grin, “Don’t forget, Ministry of Peace is available for all of your physical and mental health needs, so feel free to stop by any of their wonderful locations to get an evaluation… like… now.”

A bunch of them quickly turn and clammer out of a side door with the earth pony mare blowing him a kiss before scurrying away.

Cloud Seed starts heading towards the front door as he waves at Buck. Buck pulls his hooves away and Cloud Seed says with a groan, “I’ll make a call. Get MoI to spin this…” He sits down and swipes the hoof across the empty space in front of himself. “Cunning MoM agent foils corruption and robbery!”

Buck shakes his head and chuckles. “And… you’re going to make my ass have to deal with all that press, aren’t you?”

Cloud Seed gives him a grin. “Enjoy the pay bonus!”

Buck waves him away with a hoof as he chuckles. “Get out of here already, Cloud Seed.” As Cloud Seed is heading out the door Buck yells after him, “And get those damn gunshots looked at!”

Cloud Seed gives an over the shoulder wing wave, but takes flight as soon as he’s through the doors.

Gearing wakes up with Sable still cradling his head with her forelegs. He opens his eyes and looks up at Sable, as she gently rubs and caresses his muzzle with a cable. He lets out a bit of a groan before he asks, “Something wrong, Sable?”

“You had asked to be informed when Swift had returned.” She smiles and nods over to the side as she says, “They have just returned.” Gearing lifts his head up a bit and looks over at Handy and Swift as they slowly approach.

But Handy notably stops first, and keeps his distance from them, as he looks Gearing over and comments, “He really is alive.” He shakes his head and flops down on his rear as he starts looking over everyone, as they stare at him. Even Swift. He points a hoof at Gearing and says defensively, “This is impossible. Nopony could have survived that explosion. This makes no sense!” Handy tilts side to side, taking in the vast damage of Gearing’s form and still not believing what’s before his very eyes. “How the hell did you survive that?!” he finally blurts out.

“I didn’t. That’s how,” Gearing mutters.

They all turn their focus to him, with Swift’s very slowly turning as her eyes go wide.

“What do you mean, you ‘didn’t’, Gearing?” Swift asks with a soft voice.

Gearing groans and asks, “You say something, Swift?”

“Subject Swift asked you to clarify your previous statement,” Sable offers near his ears.

“I wasn’t connected to the wagon when it blew. I managed to get some distance before it went up, but the explosion dropped a fucking floor on my head,” Gearing continues with a grumble.

“You mean ‘ceiling’ right, Gearing?” Handy asks a bit louder than normal in surprise as he tilts his head.

Gearing glares over at him with his good eye as he points at his head. “No, Handy, I meant floor. As in half of the fucking eleventh floor.” He points towards the building across the street as he continues grumbling, “The inside of the building has a couple centuries’ worth of water damage, and the entire place is honeycombed with structural failures. It was already so damaged that the blast apparently took enough of the remaining support structure and caused half of the eleventh floor to come down on top of me.” He points at his mangled helmet. “On my fucking head.”

He nuzzles into Sable’s forelegs as he mutters. “It’s a good thing the concrete I was running across was so screwed up already. The impact knocked me through the floor.” He shrugs lightly, and winces at the unnecessary movement. “Otherwise I’d probably be a clockwork sardine, instead of a pegasus at the moment…”

“Well… how-” Handy begins, but cuts off instantly as he’s talked over and interrupted.

“Head of Maintenance Subject Handy Hooves,” Sable says loudly, drowning out any other conversation and earning everyone’s attention.

Handy takes a couple steps backwards, for good measure, as he looks at her.

“Gearing has sustained massive trauma, and is in need of immediate medical attention. Treatment was only delayed long enough for the party to rally. Now that everyone is here, we need to locate a proper area and begin necessary treatment procedures,” Sable comments as she stares at Handy. Her stare is intense and, as he had previously learned, the look is one of pure determination that will flat refuse any alternatives to exist.

“What do we need to do?” Swift walks around and sits next to Gearing and Sable as she slowly takes in his injured form. Now that he’s completely still and neither fighting nor walking away from her.

Sable directs her attention to Swift and replies, “We need a safe, and secure, location. With a variety of tools. Primarily metal working. We need to get his armor off before we can begin proper treatment. Some of it will need to be surgically removed.”

“This whole area’s an industrial complex for manufacturing. Even if they don’t have the equipment we need to do their manufacturing, they’d have to have a maintenance wing for the upkeep of the equipment. That should have everything you’d need,” Handy observes as he looks around with a hoof to his chin as he mindlessly talks allowed and thinks things through.

“Subject Handy Hooves,” Sable says flatly. Handy jumps and looks over at her wide-eyed as he wonders if he’d said something off while he was rambling. But, he relaxes as Sable smiles and dips her head. “Thank you for your analysis. That is a useful solution.”

“Uh, yeah… sure,” Handy mutters as he rubs his hoof on the back of his head. He looks over and sees Swift looking at him, and gives her a sheepish smile. She smiles broadly and nods at him before turning her attention back towards Sable.

“The Freight Cars have taken over this whole area. They’ve extended their territory by a few blocks,” Swift adds. “If we’re looking for some machinery to use close by, I bet that building we flew through would be a good place to start.” She looks over at Handy. “How about we go take a look, and make sure, while they climb down?”

Handy nods as he starts walking back over towards the roof access hatch. “Sounds like a plan. I’d like to get off the roof as quickly as possible. Being up this high is unnatural…”

Swift zips over, wraps her legs around his chest, and giggles into his ear, “If you insist…”

“Swift?! What?! Wait!” he starts flailing around as she starts lifting off with him. “That’s not what I meant! Swift! Swwiiiiiift!” Handy bellows as Swift promptly, and quickly, zips over and drops over the edge. With her flailing earth pony bundle securely held in her forelegs.

Sable watches them, then slowly turns to look at Gearing. “My love?” Gearing looks up at her and she continues, “Is it a pegasi fetish to tease earthbound creatures with heights?”

Gearing grins. “Not exactly a fetish… but certainly amusing…” He lets out a groan then starts picking himself back up onto his hooves. “Alright, let’s start the trip down, it’s going to take us a bit using the stairs.”

Sable watches as parts of his mangled wings scrape and grind against the concrete floor. “I do not think it would be appropriate for you to carry anything in your condition.” She looks over at Gauge and says as she’s standing up, “Subject Gauge.”

He looks at her from his position sitting near the cache of supplies. “Yeah, Sable?”

Sable points next to him with a cable as she extends a few others. “Please load up as much of our supplies as you can. Prioritize tools first, then medical supplies, then judge by relative value.”

Gauge waves his forehooves and asks as he scowls, “Why I gotta play pack brahmin, mmkay?!”

Sable lifts up the minigun and holds it out in his direction with her restraining cables. “Would Subject Gauge prefer to take on the task of forward combat security duty instead? I am more than capable, and willing, to trade duties if that is your wish.”

Gauge’s eyes go wide and he asks while staring at the massive minigun. “What about Nahlah?”

“Subject Nahlah is recovering from grievous injuries, and it would not be appropriate for her to take on security tasks… furthermore, Subject Nahlah has already voluntarily laden herself with various medical supplies,” Sable replies.

Gauge looks over and sees, sure enough, Nahlah’s already sitting over there with a pair of saddle bags loaded down. She gives Gauge a smug grin then gives him a thumbs up as she casually swishes her tail.

“Well, Subject Gauge?” Sable prods as she holds the minigun closer to him. “Would you prefer to deal with any hostiles we come across?”

Gauge lets out a long dust disturbing gas emission at the thought of it. He hops up to his hooves and points over to the side.” No… no, no, no… that’s okay… I’ll…. I’ll be right over here, mmkay? Right behind you…” He grins and salutes sloppily as he gives an unconvincing grin. “Pack brahmin reporting for duty! Mmkay?!”

Sable stares at him for a few moments, and doesn’t stop until he turns and actually starts slinging bags over his back. After confirming that he’s not going to skip out on doing at least some work, she turns and starts walking towards the access hatch with the minigun held aloft at the ready.

Gearing smirks as he watches her walk towards him. He asks as she’s walking alongside him, “Sable… since when do you have a minigun?”

“Since some inconsiderate son-of-a-mule decided to use it to hurt my love,” Sable quips as her eyes momentarily go from their soothing blue color to a menacing red.

“And… where is this pony?” Gearing asks with a raised eyebrow.

Sable doesn’t even look at him as she asks, loud enough for him to actually hear, “Which piece of them are you referring to? Or, are you asking for the general grouping?”

Gearing starts chuckling as he shakes his head slowly. “Never mind. That lets me know all I need to know.”

She looks at him sideways over her shoulder. “Oh?”

Gearing walks by her, and nuzzles her shoulder gently before heading down the steps. “That you’d already taken care of it. Yup.”

Sable grins as she watches him go down the stairs. Feeling giddy at being praised. Even more so at the angle he provides her. She reaches out a spare cable with a growing grin and prepares to give his flank a playful smack. But stops.

She takes in the damage along his entire body, and how mangled his wings are. She sees the effort each step is taking him as he goes down. The smile falls off her muzzle.

She retracts the cable without making contact of any kind and asks, “If you need any assistance, I am here for you. Always, my love. Is there anyway I can help you?”

Gearing slowly shakes his head and leads the way down to ground level. “Not until we get to the workshop. But, thank you, Sable.”

She smiles and nods as she follows closely. “Always glad to assist my love.”

It takes them a while to get to ground level, as they have to walk through all eight floors of the building before they make it to ground level. Gauge had been bringing up the rear at quite a distance. But, as they passed one group of carnage after another, he got closer and closer to the rest of the group. Closer to the relative safety of their improvised herd.

Closer to the pair of trotting death machines that, if nothing else, will draw far more agro than his meek self.

By the time they make it to ground level, and get back around the building to the back side where the large open manufacturing building had been, Swift has already started hauling down the rest of their supplies. She passes off a pair of bags to Handy, who’s standing in a gaping hole in the side of the building. She looks over at Sable and nods into the hole. “Follow Handy. We found the maintenance wing, and it looks mostly intact.” Then she turns and zips up to the rooftop again for another load.

The procession follows Handy into the building, then take an immediate turn behind the wreckage of a large cargo hauling machine. Along the entire path, the signs of the recent fighting is evident by spent cartridges, blood, and corpses. Handy leads them through a large hallway, that dead ends with a ramp that leads up to a massive sliding shutter. To the left of the massive shutter is a more sensible sized door for normal pony hoof traffic.

Handy leads the way into the room, and starts setting down the bags on a growing pile in the office area. He points off towards a side door that leads where the shutter is closed off. “The repair bay is through that door. Besides that main door for the cargo loaders, and this door, it looks like it doesn’t have any other way in or out. So, this should be as secure as it will get.”

Sable grabs one of the metal desks with her cables, spins it around, and lays the minigun on it, pointed at the door, as she comments, “Here. Use this if it becomes necessary to defend our position.

Gearing heads into the bay, and tries the lights. But grumbles as nothing seems to be working right. “Lights are blown. I don’t have time to fix that right now…”

Sable pulls out a small emergency light from her saddle bag and holds it up as she offers, “We do not require much light to do what is necessary. This should suffice for the two of us.”

Gearing nods and starts heading inside as he says, “I’ll do a quick tally of what all’s here. Hopefully with what we already have it’ll be enough.”

Sable follows along, and pauses long enough to extend out her cables and point all of them around Gauge. He stands there with his eyes wide as he sees the various points aiming at him. “Subject Gauge, which bags contain tools or medical supplies?” Gauge promptly points at three, then practically gets lifted in the air as Sable quickly grabs and removes them from his person. “Thank you for your assistance.” As she’s heading inside she turns her head awkwardly and comments, “I am unsure of the procedures that will be needed. Please do not enter unless your presence is requested. Or hostiles are attacking.”

As Sable is closing the door behind herself, Swift flies in with the last load of supplies. Swift looks around and asks, “Well, what should we do while we wait?”

Nahlah hops up and grins as she looks at Swift. “I don’t know about you, but I know what I’m going to do!”

They all look at her and Swift raises an eyebrow as she sees the mischievous grin across her friend’s muzzle. “And what’s that?”

Nahlah pulls out a cooking pot from the supplies, hops over behind the metal desk with the minigun, and puts the pot on her head like a helmet as she grins. “I got dibs on the machine gun!” She wraps her paws around the handle and trigger grip and rubs her cheek against it as she, quite literally, purrs.

Swift starts laughing and points at it with a hoof as she asks, “Can you even lift that thing?”

Nahlah shrugs as she continuously caresses the large weapon. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It’s already on the desk.”

“You know how to use it?” Swift prods.

Nahlah points at the door. “Hot lead goes in bad guys?”

Swift snickers as she shakes her head. “Close enough… watch out for the kick though. It’s bound to have some serious recoil.”

“Ooohhh don’t worry… I love a good pounding.” She gives Swift a coy grin as she makes some very lewd pelvic thrusts against the desk and gun.

Swift slaps a hoof over her eyes as she groans. “Again… no shame…”

It doesn’t take long before the sounds of various power equipment begin spilling out of the maintenance bay. Various saws whir and screech out as they cut though unknown materials. A few drills ramp up here and there. Various bits are punctuated with metallic hammer blows. The noise increases as multiple tools start getting used simultaneously.

The rest, not sure what else to do, take the time to rest up and take stock of everything that’s happened. Swift can only handle so much of the waiting before she leaves the room and heads out on her own again. A lot has happened that she needs to think about. To process. Most of it not anything easily handled. And being in such close proximity to the sounds coming out of the maintenance bay is just making matters worse. So she excuses herself and sets out to provide a bit of perimeter scouting to keep anyone from sneaking up on them while everyone is so vulnerable.

Especially Gearing.

After some time, the mechanical noises coming out of the repair bay stop. The others look expectantly at the door. Expecting some quick emergence. Like a doctor coming out to announce the baby’s been delivered or, more accurately, how a surgery went.

But they are left waiting, and wanting.

A few noises escape the door here and there, but nothing really descriptive. Nothing to give them a clue to what’s really going on. Most of it is muffled and rather quieted. Almost intentionally so.

Nahlah’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she takes her improvised helmet off as she slinks over to the door. She leans up near it, tilting her head, and listening carefully.

“What’re you doing, mmkay?” Gauge asks from his spot in the far corner between some filing cabinets and an overturned desk.

“Sshhhh.” She glares at him as she puts a single toe to her lips. She whispers in his general direction as she leans towards the door and her ears twitch, “I’m just seeing what’s going on.”

Her eyes zip back and forth as she tries to mentally picture what could be making the sounds. She leans in close, putting her ear to the door, and resting both paws on it, as she focuses on the sounds coming through the door.

Her eyes go wide, and she leans in against the door harder as she gets a goofy grin on her muzzle.

Handy walks up next to her and asks quietly, “What is it?”

“Well… I’m not sure… but... I think they’re done fixing him, and started some ummm.” She looks at Handy and grins widely. “Started some ‘quality’ time... together…”

“What?” Handy asks with a tilt of his head.

Nahlah narrows her eyes at him and says flatly, as he’s taken all the fun out of it, “Fucking… I think they’re fucking.”

Handy’s eyes go wide as he zips his head back and forth from looking at her to the door. “What?!”

Nahlah presses her ear to the door and looks around as she listens carefully. “There’s a lot of grunting and bumping… and… some of the things I can hear them say… yeah… that’s what it sounds like.”

Handy slaps a hoof over his eyes. “Just great, we’re stuck out here and those two are in there snogging it up.” He starts for the door and grumbles, “We don’t have time for this.”

Nahlah bats his hooves away and starts trying to keep him away from the door as she giggles, “Ohhh let them have their fun. She just got him back from the dead, she deserves a little flank slapping if that’s what she wants!”

Their struggles with the door escalate as Nahlah playfully keeps him away from the door. But, eventually, the door handle is pressed sufficiently enough that the door pops open and the pair stumble into the dark room beyond.

Gearing, with all of his equipment removed, stands on top of a few heavy steel shipping crates with his head practically laying sideways against the tongs of the cargo carrier. The only thing he seems to still be wearing, is a piece of helmet. On the left side of his head. As the rest of it has been cut away. Except for the piece around his left ear. A variety of metal strips and wire has been slipped under the piece of the helmet, and tightly bind it to the tongs of the cargo lifter.

As Nahlah and Handy pour into the room, their entrance is masked by a much louder noise that echoes out from the maintenance wing.

Gearing hits the ground, hard, after practically throwing himself away from the cargo bot with his forelegs in a gravity assisted plummet. But it’s not the impact he makes into the concrete floor of the repair bay that echoes throughout the industrial complex. Though the impact was substantial.

Gearing’s blood curdling and heart wrenching scream bellows out from his muzzle as he thrashes around on the ground and holds the left side of his face with his forehooves. He rolls back and forth, cradling his head as he struggles to try and both get control of himself, and onto his hooves.

“Hurry! Get it free! We don’t have long before it goes inert!” he yells out towards Sable as he’s still trashing around holding his head.

Neither of them notice the intrusion.

Sable, promptly, uses her cables to not only remove the piece of helmet from the cabling, but start cutting off what it was attached to with a dedicated fervor.

From their angle, and with the light almost directly below it, Nahlah and Handy can see the exceptionally shiny brass attached to the underside of the helmet fragment. As it shines with an otherworldly polish.

And slowly drips with some nearly transparent fluid in such a matter that it turns both of their stomachs just to see it.

Gearing climbs to his hooves slowly, by propping himself up with his hindlegs, and forelegs’ elbows, before getting entirely upright. “Sable, don’t worry about cutting it too much. Just get it separated.” He stands there holding the left side of his face and head with his left forehoof as he looks at her. “It’ll heal with treatment. But only if we get it back in place in time.”

He groans and lowers his left forehoof to walk slowly, even slower than before, towards Sable and more into the light. “We should have enough time.” He turns his head and looks towards the door, where he’s just now noticing the light pouring in.

And the two standing just inside of it. With the others huddled behind and peering through the doorway, having been drawn by his heart wrenching screams. And all of them are speechless as they stare with muzzles uniformly agape.

Given Gearing’s previous chemical treatment, most of his body had darkened considerably. In the current light setting he’s standing in, he blends in spectacularly. By design. Except for the places where he’s been scratched, gouged, or shot.

But none of the other injuries, not even his wings, are anything like what is being displayed, and practically highlighted, on the left side of his face. Instead of the dark chemical treatment there is a bright golden metallic color. Brass in its purest untainted form. All coated in an oily residue that continues to run down his face and drip onto the floor under him. But that’s not the shocking part.

Various gears, of many sizes, poke and prod out of his face. Plates set like small scales have been twisted and bent and pulled away like a failed attempt at scaling a fish. And his left eye glares out at them abnormally wide. Impossibly wide.

Except for someone that’s had their eyelids removed.

Even with their complete lack of understanding of his physiology, it becomes clear, on an instinctual level, that Gearing’s just had another massive injury. And has had practically half of his face ripped off himself. Leaving behind what they can only assume to be the clockwork version of bone and flesh. Fully exposed.

Gearing’s eyes zip back and forth across them as he asks quickly, “What do you want?”

No one responds.

Gearing begins shifting uneasily as he looks them over, and can’t break their unblinking line of sight. “Stop…” he says softly. “Stop looking at me.”

No one moves so much as a tail hair.

He backs away from them and turns his body to try and blend more into the shadows as he screeches out, “Stop looking at me!” He covers the side of his head with his forehoove as he huddles down and groans out. “Don’t look at me… please…”

Footnote: Connection reestablished, User Online, running diagnostic… please stand by. . .

Diagnostic in progress… please stand by. . .

This chapter reveals a bit of information about the resident clockworks internal workings. More of that will be revealed as time goes along. But, for now, they have a lot to recuperate from.

Thanks again to my beta readers for helping me with this project and helping keep me on track!

As always, questions, comments, and critiques welcome and encouraged.

-Quillsy

**EDIT: Sorry about that! I was in such a rush to get the post out in time that part of the post didn't copy/paste correctly. Good thing I tend to check on it regularly. Sorry for the inconvenience!**