The littlest and newest member of Stormfront, Gearing, comes trotting through the hallways of Stormfront’s main complex in his strap tied-to-him oversized flight suit. Though unlike previous adventures through here, he has his goggles off, hanging down from around his neck, now that he’s in an area he feels comfortable with doing so.

He walks into one of the side rooms built into the cavernous structure and finds Cross, working away at some achano-tech gadget that just simply doesn’t want to come to life. And she’s exceedingly frustrated by its noncompliance.

And, before Gearing can actually say anything, Cross’s nose starts jumping around as she gets the first whiff of what Gearing is carrying in front of himself with his wings. Her nose has a near micro seizure as she slowly turns and raises her head to try and follow the scent in its alluring arc up, over, and behind her. And, a moment later she has her face inches from the square box Gearing is holding aloft in front of himself.

She takes in a few long deep breaths as she closes her eyes and basks in the aroma. “Oh god… sweet ambrosia…” She snorts a few times, with such force, and so close, that the cardboard top actually lifts a bit from the pressure vacuum. “Is that a BakeBuck’s Best pizza?”

Gearing sways it side to side, giggling as her nose seems nearly wonder glued to the surface of the cardboard as he moves it around and her face stays in the same position relative to the box top. “That it is!”

She looks up from the cardboard and asks as a hint of drool emerges from the edge of her mouth. “Please tell me you’re willing to share… Please?” She gives him a sweet smile as she asks, “Just one slice?”

Gearing turns around the box and opens it up as he says, “Actually… I got the whole thing just for you.”

Her eyes go wide and, the moment the words are out of his mouth, they jump from the golden brown ambrosia just inches from her nose up to Gearing’s eyes. “What?”

Gearing closes the box and holds it up for her. “You’ve been helping me so much, that I thought I’d do something nice for you too.”

Her eyes grow even wider open as they practically sparkle at the statement. “You got this just for me?!” He nods and grins even wider at her. She leans down and snuffs at the box a few more times as she asks, “An Extra Triple Layer Cheesy Three Cheese Pizza?”

Gearing shrugs and nods. “I figured you’d like it.”

She stares at him for a moment with a growing intensity on her face for a few moments, then points at her eyes with a hoof, then at his as she gets a massively serious look on her face. “Me and you… we’re like this… Seeing eye to eye for sure… This is exactly what the doctor ordered!”

She floats the box away and happily trots over to an open weapons locker chest that she slams shut and uses as a makeshift table to set the box on. The box flips open with a flash from her horn and she looks it over as she tries to figure out just where she should start this particular journey. Her magic pinches a bit of the crust, and starts lifting it up and away from the rest of the cheesy pie. Instantly lines form where the pizza had already been cut, but hidden under the mountain of steaming cheese. Her magic over glow carefully grows along the bottom of the slice as she slowly pulls it up and away from the box, causing a long streamer of cheese to connect the slice to the rest of it. And, the further away it gets from the box, the more her magical glow crawls along the length of the cheesy streamer. She carefully pulls it back and away, stretching out the cheese and using her levitation field to support it as she draws out a ridiculously long strand of mostly melted cheese. A strand that winds and curls in the air in front of her like a ball of yarn that a kitten was in the middle of playing with.

Her combat knife zips out of its shoulder holster, surrounded in more of her over glow, and deftly slices the end of the cheese that’s at the exact point of connecting it to the pizza. After completing the ritualistic incision she drops the blade next to the box as the magical glow of her field finally encompasses the end of the streamer as well. She looks up at this cheesy ball of wonder in front of her with her eyes sparkling, and, after a few moments of appreciation, brings the exact end of the cheese where she’d cut it loose and pops it into her mouth. She slowly chews, making unabashedly loud slurping noises as she slowly, and with delicious purpose, sucks up the meters long strand of cheese as if it were a simple spaghetti noodle. When the long trail has finally disappeared down her muzzle, but the slice she’d withdrawn has of yet to be bitten into, she finally takes her first bite of actual pizza, instead of just cheese, with a big chomp: eating the remaining bits of the cheesy streamer as she munches off the end of the pizza slice.

She stands there with her eyes closed, a forehoof pressed to the side of her cheek as she moans in pleasure, and enjoys thoroughly masticating the cheesy goodness.

Gearing giggles as she’s taking so long to savor the one bite, albeit that was a rather lengthy bite, in both terms of time and physical measurements. As she’s finishing the last of the slice, Gearing asks, “Hey… Cross?” She looks over at him and he can’t help but giggle as he sees she has the remaining crust hanging out of her mouth like a cigar as she mumbles an affirmative of her attention around the bread. He looks around at the room that functions as her lab as he asks, “I know we all have our reasons for being here… but… with your magical ability… you could probably work anywhere.” He shrugs as he asks, “I was just wondering… Why are you here playing combat medic, instead of working in the Ministry of Arcane Science?” He waves a forehoof dismissively. “I’m not judging. Just curious.” He shrugs. “I can’t do any magic obviously, but considering how much guff I get, I’m pretty sure you get hassled for ‘wasting your talents’ too.”

Cross nods as she looks over at the pizza and withdraws another slice. This time with far less ceremony as she uses her knife to cut off the strands of cheese instead of dragging them out to play with them again. “Yeah, you’re right… I do.”

He raises an eyebrow as he waves towards her. “So… ?”

She looks him in the eyes for a few moments before rolling her eyes as she says with disgust oozing from her muzzle, “Uhg… Twilight Sparkle!” Then she takes a rather angry bite of triple cheesy pizza goodness and chomps on it viciously as she looks at him.

His eyes go wide. “You don’t like Twilight Sparkle?! But… she’s like one of the most talented unicorns in the field of magic there is, isn’t she? Like supposed to be super smart and able to do any spell I hear. What wasn’t to like about her?” He frowns as he narrows his eyes and asks, “Is she a real jerk in person? Snobby like an uppity noble? That it?”

Cross chews on another bite of pizza as she shakes her head. She replies with her mouth still half full of a glob of cheese, “Oh no… MAS has a lot of opportunities and promised me a lot… and she was great and all, nicer than you’d expect… we coulda even been friends, maybe… but… it’s just…” She takes another chomp out of the pizza before even swallowing the first one and looks away as she blurts out with her mouth completely full of food. “Uhg!”

Gearing leans over to look at her as he asks, “What?”

She spins her head towards him and blurts out, sending spatters of pizza bits everywhere in the process, “She hated Quesadillas! And cheesy stuff in general!” She whips out another piece of pizza and flails it around in her magical aura in front of him as she says, “Like there’s such as thing as too much cheese!” She recoils and puts a hoof to her chest as she says softly, “I just don’t need that kind of turophobic negativity in my life!” Then demurely takes another, more reserved, bite of pizza with her eyes closed as she tries to drown the sour memory in cheesy goodness.

Gearing’s ears twitch as he slowly starts looking around in the dark corners of the room. Suddenly Skip’s soft musical voice echoes out from above, “Is that a BakeBuck’s Best pizza?”

Both Gearing and Cross look up to see Skip hanging down above them with a grin across his muzzle as his nose twitches.

Cross stuffs the slice she was working on in her mouth as she uses her magic and slams the box shut as she scowls at him and yells around the pizza in her mouth, “Ith mahn!”

He disappears in a puff of black smoke and reappears near the box outstretching his hoof. “Awww come on, just a slice, don’t be so stingy!”

Cross’s horn glows and a large translucent folded paper fan appears and smacks Skip’s hooves as she simultaneously yanks the box away with her levitation field. “Get your own!”

Skip pops away again and appears next to her, grabbing the pizza box and quickly flies away with it in his outstretched hooves as he says, “You’ve already eaten half of it anyway!”

Cross chases after him as she yells, “Get back here you little shit!” And the magical paper fan keeps swiping at him as he’s zipping around and heading out into the main area.

He looks back at her and grins. “I just want one slice! That’s all!” And as he’s flying away he starts opening the box.

“The hell you are!” she bellows and a flash of light appears from her horn, and next to Gearing.

With the cardboard box being lifted Skip didn’t even have a chance to see the steel tool tray that Cross teleported right in front of him that he crashes into face first.

As he’s falling out of the air, Cross teleports the box of pizza back to herself, wraps both of her forehooves around it, and actually hisses at Skip. “I said it’s mine!”

Hammer pokes around from the side of a shipping container with grease covering half her face as she yells, “What the hay’s going on over there?!”

Skip pulls himself up to a seated position and shakes his head as he points a hoof at Cross. “She ordered BakeBuck’s Best and won’t even share a slice!”

Equine heads start poking out of nearly every crevice and behind all of the equipment as one pony after another gives the conversation their undivided attention.

Cross’s eyes go wide as she holds the box closer to herself and zips her eyes from one smirking face to another.

Tower steps out from around the vertibuck the repair ponies were working on as he says with a slightly reproachful tone to his voice, “Now come on, Cross. You know the rules… No ordering BakeBuck’s Best without letting everypony else in on the order or there won’t be enough for everyone…”

As his grin turns wider, she jumps around, throwing the box in the air, as she screams, “The cheese is mine! Mine I say!” She grabs it in her mouth, to prevent further shadow jumping shenanigans, and runs at full speed past Gearing and towards the side room where she’d been working previously. Slamming the door shut behind herself with a loud metallic clang.

Tower takes a few steps further as he takes in a deep breath before bellowing out with his deep rich voice, “Stooormfront! We got a runner!”

The various members and personnel start pouring in the direction like a tidal wave as Tower starts barking out orders, “Jitterbug and Lightning, I want aerial surveillance!” The two pegasi mares salute and zip off and up towards the ceiling as they start providing over watch. “Hammer and Static, get that damn door open, and I mean like yesterday!” The two mechanics run over to the door and pop open the manual access hatch to the override as the other members run around grabbing one piece of equipment after another. “Mouse and Snake, you’re on surveillance! Keep an eye out in case she pops up elsewhere.” The two in the biohazard suits snap to attention and salute. The next moment they both burst into green flame as they turn into a pair of black birds and fly off to find a spot to spy from.

As everyone is running around to get ready for the breech of the door Tower yells, “A reminder folks, this mare’s got talent! If you find the target do not, I repeat do not engage directly without backup!”

The door pops open and Hammer yells as she peeks inside. “Tower, the room’s empty, no sign of the runner!”

Static yells out in dismay as she jumps into the room and forms a shield around herself with her magic, “The box is here, but the contents are missing! Repeat! No joy on the package!”

Tower nods and smirks. “That doesn’t mean anything. She couldn’t have finished the whole thing that quickly. She probably left the box as a decoy and took the package with her when she teleported away… But this place is only so big she’s gotta be hiding somewhere.”

Hard Hat comes running in from a side tunnel as he yells at Tower, “What the hell’s going on in here?!”

Tower looks over at him and grins as he replies, “Sir, we got a full on Bee Three on site.”

Hard Hat’s eyes go wide as he looks around. “Who the hell went and got an order without telling me?!”

Skip pops near him and salutes as he puts a stern expression on his face. “That traitor Cross! Wouldn’t even give me a slice! Not one!”

Hard Hat lets out a sigh as he shakes his head. He looks over to the side, behind Skip, and says, “Hey, Nitro…”

Gearing gives him a crooked grin as he asks, “Uh… yes, sir?”

Hard Hat looks around as noises and clangs echo out across the cavernous structure. “You willing to do what it takes to help keep this place from getting destroyed?”

Gearing salutes as he nods his head. “Yes, sir!”

Hard Hat lets out a sigh as he brings his gaze back to Gearing. “I’m going to need you to run an errand… It’s going to sound stupid. Even trivial… but there’s no such thing as a trivial order in this unit… You understand me?”

Gearing looks at him and gives a sheepish grin in response before he asks softly, “You want me to go fetch an order of BakeBuck’s Best for everyone else?”

Hard Hat’s eyes shoot wide as he looks around. “Holy shit you are a quick study! I won’t even ask how you’ve managed to acquire that kinda intel so soon after getting here.” He points off to the side and says, “Go talk to the Canaries and tell them we got a Bee Three. They’ll give you the proper list and get you up top.”

Gearing snaps to attention as he puts his goggles back on. “Yes, sir!” He turns and zips off as fast as his wings can carry him as he mutters to himself, “Who knew food could be so dangerous!”

Gearing and Dandy snake through a small warehouse building for a local distribution company. The place has been thoroughly looted of anything easily used, but the large plastic barrels of some unknown hazardous chemicals seem to have been left behind. Gearing’s eyes trail over them quickly as they are passing, taking note of the various warnings about poisoning and caustic nature of the barrels’ contents. Then there’s the ever present generic little campfire that looks so cutesy it doesn’t seem like it fits in among such serious warnings, except it’s generally understood to represent some level of flammability. But, unknown chemicals are not what he’s after. They might have a use. To somecreature. Sometime. But not to him. And not to Dandy.

Not currently.

They walk through the building slowly, checking their surroundings continuously, as they know, at any moment, things are going to go from quiet and still, to loud and dangerous soon. And it’s going to happen very quickly once they actually find their goal.

They creep up to the office front where the reception desk still has fliers toting their ability to make rapid deliveries to both retail stores or contractors. On the cover of the pamphlet a pony in coveralls, pushing a dolly with a large blue container on it, and staring out at the viewer with an overly enthusiastic open mouthed grin on their face has a speech bubble promising door to door same day delivery of various painting supplies, or you don’t pay delivery. The asterisks at the end of the statement makes Gearing’s eyes jump to the bottom of the flier where he smirks as he sees the micro print at the bottom that says:

*Only on orders placed same day and before 10:00am Monday through Friday. Orders placed outside specified window will be filled in the order they are received and will arrive in 7 to 10 business days. Not responsible for acts of nature, government, war, or industrial espionage that causes delays. Deposit non-refundable.

Gearing snickers as he shakes his head and continues over to the partially intact window storefront on the far side of the welcome area. He stands next to the small section of brick wall, that functions as the window’s frame on the far left side, as he peeks around the brick and above a set of fallen over wooden shelves towards the building across the street. Dandy stays low as she trots over. After she gets next to him, she squats down and practically lays on the floor as she looks under the tipped over sideways bookcase Gearing is looking over. Through the narrow gap between the brick foundation of the building they are taking refuge in and the cockeyed bookcase she can see the multistory stone building across the street pretty easily.

She looks up at him with just her eyes as she asks quietly, “You think that’s it?”

Gearing slowly nods his head, before he juts his chin out towards the building across the way. “Yeah… take a second look at that ponnequin decorating the far right corner of the building’s face.”

She raises an eyebrow, then turns and looks. She pulls out a small scope from a rifle she’d confiscated recently and starts looking through it towards where he’s directing her.

Across the street, on the far right side, is a ponnequin with a large plastic pumpkin as a helmeted head with a goofy paint job of a smile on it. An overly large creepy smile at that. The overalls and stuffing sticking out of the various cusps and limbs give it a vary scarecrow-esque feel to it. She is about to say something to ask what he’s referring too, when she looks at the base of where the ponnequin’s chest would be. She stares at it for a while, letting her eyes focus. And, after a few moments, she can see the problem.

And the truth.

The ponnequin is no ponnequin, but a pony that’s been mutilated and eviscerated. Around the base where the shirt tucks down into the overalls, a rotting ropey material hangs out. And, likewise, the hind legs seem to have bits of their entrails hanging down and out of the overalls, mixed in with the various plant materials.

Dandy puts the scope away as she looks up at Gearing and smiles. “So… How are we doing this one? You going to run out there and poke the hornet’s nest again, and let lil’ ol’ me sit back and pick them off while the idiots chase you around… Or we want to try something different this time?” She reaches over and points to his foreleg as she asks, “What’s that fancy PipBuck of yours telling you?”

Gearing looks down at her and smirks as he says, “Give me a second.” He kicks on his EFS then starts looking around where they are before focusing on the building across the street and smirking as he says, “That there’s a lot of red out there…”

“Red is dead, right?” she asks with a grin.

Gearing bobs his head around. “Sometimes… yeah… but not always.”

She tilts her head for a moment as she scrunches her mouth to the side. She waves a hoof between them as she says, “One of these days, you’re going to have to explain all of this bat shit crazy logic of yours… You got a device that literally tells you who wants to hurt and kill you, yet you don’t use it…” She goes back to looking across the street with a scowl as she says, “If it were me, I’d be using it all the time and kill any asshole that’d popped up.”

Gearing rolls his eyes as he says, “Well, first off… there’s legal issues… then there’s the fact that if I did…” he reaches over and taps her on the shoulder to get her attention before he finishes, “Half the bounty hunters in front of Megamart would be dead right now… A large portion of them want me dead, but most of them are smart enough not to try anything.”

She smirks then gives him a sweet smile as she asks, “Like those eight bozos that tried to ambush us? Didn’t turn out to well for them, did it?”

He reaches out a hoof towards her, and she dutifully bumps it with one of her own and grins as he adds, “No, it damn sure didn’t.” He looks across the street again as he says, “Okay, that building is pretty seriously fortified. Probably a local government distribution hub or something.” He frowns as he says, “As over engineered as most of the things in this part of the country… Understandably so, but still.”

His statement wasn’t an over exaggeration. On top of the building apparently being hardened during construction, considering how little damage it’s received from the climactic end of the war and the years of neglect since, every single one of the windows has been boarded up or otherwise secured. But not with simple wood. It looks like on most of the windows there were already, built-in as part of the original construction, windows with wire running through the glass, and thick wire mesh on the outside of it. Then other windows had metal cages built around the windows. Still others, that haven’t managed to keep the previous two, have been resealed up with sheet metal, barbed wire, and other improvised materials where they’d been previously breached before.

She looks at him as she asks softly, “Okay, now I’m a bit worried. If you’re worried before shit even starts, that’s gotta be a bad sign.”

Gearing looks over at her and gives her an easy smile. “I’m always worried… It helps keep me on my pinions. If shit goes bad, there could be far worse consequences than just me getting shot.”

She flushes as she avoids eye contact. “Th- this better not be you getting all protective again…” She swats her hoof blindly in his direction, smacking his shoulder and foreleg a few times as she says, “That was a one time thing… so don’t go thinking…” She swats him a few more times, faster, as she says, “I can take care of myself!”

He snickers as he says, “Dandy, yeah. You can. But it doesn’t mean you should run into an area to get shot intentionally. I’m far more bullet resistant than you. Me taking point and drawing agro makes far more sense.”

She frowns as she says, “You still get hurt, so don’t try that. I’ve seen it. Besides, you already let it slip, not all of your implants are working right any more. So you’re already behind the eight-ball. So what’s the difference between you and me getting hurt?”

Gearing leans over and looks her in the eyes as he reaches up and taps on his head. “A lucky shot from them that hits me in the head, is likely to just give me a headache, and piss me off…” He reaches over and gently taps the top of her black mane as he says softly, “A lucky shot that hits you in the head… means no more Dandy… understand?”

Hey eyes grow wide and she flushes harder as she swats his hoof away blindly. “H- hey! Don’t get fresh! This ain’t the time for that nonsense!”

Gearing goes back to looking out the window as he says, “So, how about we swing around the buildings, taking out anyone outside, together, and then we head inside through one of the entrances? Then we go floor by floor and clear them out. Sound good?”

Dandy looks him over for a moment before she calls out, “Gearing.” After he turns to look at her she stares him in the eye as she says, “When we went after Cookie, you’d said that you only left me behind because you trusted me to keep myself safe and take care of myself…” She closes her eyes and lets out a sigh, “And that if you didn’t think I could do that… you’d make me come with you, so you could keep an eye on me…” She opens an eye as she tilts her head and looks at him as she asks, “Is that what’s going on here? Come on, level with me, you owe me that much after all we’ve been through already.”

Gearing leans over and grins as he gives her a wink and asks, “Ohh… Now who’s getting possessive? Didn’t you say that was only a one time thing? Now who’s getting fresh bringing that up at a time like this?”

Her eyes go wide as she flushes more. She reaches over and starts rapidly tapping him on top of the head with a hoof as she says, “Oh my goddesses! Shut up! That’s not what I meant!” She hits him a few more times. “And you know it!”

Gearing chuckles a few times before he lets out a sigh. He looks over at the building across the way as he says, “I’ve learned to trust my gut over the years... And though some think I’m simply being paranoid, a pessimist, or a nihilist… I’m usually fucking right.”

She looks over at him and gives and uneasy smirk as she asks quietly, “Well what’s that say about this fucking world then, eh?”

Gearing looks her over then motions with his head towards the building across the street. “From what your contacts said about these bandits, they’re a bad piece of work. Horrible even. And something’s not sitting well with me about this.” He motions with his hoof towards her as he says, “So I want us to stick together. EFS has a tendency of clogging up my vision with way too much data that may or may not even be useful at the moment. So, with both of us together we can watch each others backs.”

Dandy stands up and grins at him as she asks, “So… what you’re saying is… you want me to protect you?”

Gearing looks her over, taking in the especially pleased smirk across her muzzle, then shrugs as he says, “Well, you took down all of those moron bounty hunters, when they had me surrounded, so you should be able to handle it.”

The grin falls off her face as she hangs her head by letting it flop down as she groans. “Oh shit… I see what you’re doing … ” She tilts her head as she asks softly, “You’re gonna make yourself a decoy and have me shoot them off you, right?”

Gearing’s smile grows wider as he says, “Well… if it works, why try and change it?”

She stomps her hooves a few times. “Ouuuu this is so pissing me off! And you know what the most frustrating part of all of it is?!”

Gearing shrugs as he asks, “Not getting to go in first?”

She leans in and glares at him eye to eye as she says, “Nooooooo… That what you’re saying actually makes sense and there’s not a damn thing I can say about it, against it, because you’re right!”

Gearing nods his head a few times before he gives her a sly smile. “Have you met me yet?” He flares out his wings and starts angling them over himself as he chuckles. “That happens a lot.”

She scowls and reaches over, tapping him on the chest with a hoof as she says, “Alright, you egotistical bastard… I’d shoot you for your dumb ass jokes, but you’re about to get shot up enough anyway, and I don’t want to waste the potions on it.”

Gearing lowers his wings before he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

She glares at him as she replies, “You better be. I’m not going to even try and haul your ass back to Megamart just to get patched up.”

They share a giggle as they sneak around and get back out into the street. Gearing, as advertised, takes point. His EFS has a large concentration of red bars inside of the stone building with the morbid corpse nailed to it. So much so that he can’t really keep track of their numbers. And one of the annoying drawbacks about the EFS rears its ugly head as he can’t tell if they are on the ground floor or up above him. Or below him for that matter. He walks towards the solid stone wall, on the other side of the capsized and burnt out wagons, and sneaks up to the front entrance as he waves for Dandy to hang back. He peeks around the decorative columns into the main front door, that’s more of a simple entryway now that the double doors that were once here have been removed, either intentionally or through damage, and there’s nothing but a short tunnel before you enter the first room of the structure. This first area is rather dark, but beyond that, in a back room, he can see the flickering glow cast on the wall of a low burning fire. But nopony at present. The inside looks absolutely trashed with garbage thrown everywhere and a variety of profanities written along the walls and ceiling. A couple of which actually draw a smirk from him as he thinks he might have to remember one of those for later use.

Not having any immediate targets, he pulls back outside and starts walking towards Dandy. Then right past her. He leads the way around the building clockwise, trying to see if there’s another point of entry that could be utilized. The side has no door at all, and is solid brick and large hunks of stone held together by carefully curated mortar. Coming around the next corner his head turns the other way as a few of the red dots on his EFS actually separate from the others.

He looks around himself quickly, and up to the windows above just to make sure, but then sneaks across the small alley to look around the edge of the adjacent building.

Sure enough, two mares stand not far away from the corner, with their backs to them. And it’s at this point that he realizes he really didn’t need the EFS to locate these two. Their smell is beyond compare, and not in a positive way. Sweat. Old Sweat. Booze Sweats. Dirt. Grime. Filth. Any of it. All of it. He’s not sure. But they reek. And need to learn proper bathroom hygiene because they smell like they took turns shitting on each other.

I’m glad our noses don’t work like a normal pony’s, or we’d have given our position away by puking by now. The little dark blue pegasus in Gearing’s head comments as he looks at them with his muzzle twisted in disgust.

They’re not wearing any armor, and instead seem to be wearing cloth that’s been wrapped around them in various strips, or twisted into pseudo ropes and wrapped around them that way. Bits of rubber here and there are held together with nuts, bolts, and chains. And, after a bit, the noise he’s been hearing makes sense, as the two sit there giggling, and thrusting down at the ground in front of them. One of them has a spear of some kind. Although calling it that would be an insult to real spears. This thing is nothing more than a length of street sign pole that’s been cut at an angle to make a point. The other has a shovel.

That’s right. A shovel. Although it must be very sharp by the way they keep stabbing whatever poor creature they are in the process of mutilating.

Gearing looks over at Dandy then nods towards them as he steps around and pulls out the improvised axe made from the tire iron and sharpened metal he acquired from Cookie’s gang the day before. After giving it some tender loving Gearing care, the thing actually seemed rather useful. Especially after he added some extra weight to the back side to give it a bit more oomph. He jumps over towards them, fluttering up in the air for a moment, before coming down and at an angle with the axe held tight between his jaws and aimed at the back of the neck of the mare with the shovel.

Her head practically falls off and forward as the muscles are severed at the base of her skull, and he’s actually a bit thrown off balance as he wasn’t expecting it to go through that easy. The other mare looks over at the corpse that slumps next to her, and then looks up at Gearing.

They stare at each other for a moment as her giggling increases and she pulls the spear out of the ground. Her head, in its entirety, is hidden inside of a sack. Like a walking scarecrow herself. Except for the small holes cut into the fibrous brown bag for her to look out of. She lunges at him with the spear, aiming right for his middle as her giggle takes on a high pitched fervor.

Gearing steps to the side, using his foreleg to direct the small tip over and to the side, causing it to just barely miss him. And as the pointed end is passing him, rendering the weapon temporarily harmless to him, he steps in and swings with the axe. Aiming right at the base of her neck and the shoulder.

And she doesn’t move. Not at all. Not to avoid the blow. Not to try to block the blow. Nothing.

And as it sinks into her neck she lets out a loud squeal as the bones break and she hits the ground as her foreleg is no longer holding her up properly. But, despite the strike, his EFS still reads a red chevron in front of him. So he swings again. And Again. And Again. And the chevron doesn’t actually fade out until he’s sunk the axe straight into the back of her skull.

The area between his shoulders starts feeling cold and bothersome as his eyes dart around quickly and things, as a whole, feel off. And the little blue pegaus in his head is zipping around in a panic about something but not giving him any helpful information at the moment. The whole thing seems more than a little unsettling to him as he looks around the pair quickly then back at Dandy.

Dandy stares at him for a moment before asking quietly, “Are you okay?”

The fact that what he’d done seemed like overkill probably has a lot to do with the question he realizes, so he gives her a quick nod before walking past her again and continuing their circuit around the targeted stone building. This whole thing is just eating at him more. And he’s not quite sure why. Around the back side of the building, they do indeed find the rear entrance. A service door that was probably used for deliveries and the like. But, not anymore. There’s a knocked over piece of equipment, against a dumpster, that has likewise been knocked off of its wheels and pushed up against the door. And, to make matters even worse, he can tell from what little of the inside of the dumpster he can see around the overturned piece of equipment, that someone had run thick bolts through the bottom of the dumpster, into the door. Effectively barricading it from the inside as well. Coming around the last side, again, they find no entrance. Which causes him to look up at the roof and wonder if the roof access would be open. But for now they are going to try the front door.

And as they are coming around the corner headed towards the front door, they find out that they are most certainly not alone this time as a group of the bandits are walking out of the door together. All giggling and chuckling about some joke neither Dandy nor Gearing are privy to. All of the exiting ponies have the same kind of bags over their heads the last two had. But, despite how one would think, it doesn’t seem to affect their vision at all. As they all immediately look over at Gearing and Dandy and just start laughing louder.

Maybe it’s the smell. The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head chimes in. Because they smell like shit. No, they smell worse than shit. They smell like whatever it is a pile of steaming shit would say something smells like when they are comparatively trying to say something smells like shit. They smell like the shit of shits… there we go. With extra mud butt and a side of vomit!

Dandy instantly wishes she had already put on her bandana and cast her air freshener spell on it when they ran across the first one, as she reflexively vomits a little in her mouth as the force of the stench hits her. A bit of bile to get the fight started off right. She’s very unhappy with them at the moment and quickly starts pulling out one pistol after another as the sack headed ponies turn and charge the pair.

“Get the pretty, get the pretty!” one of the mares cries out with glee as she jumps after Dandy with a crowbar that’s had large bits of metal welded along it’s long handle.

Dandy gives her a pair of parting gifts from the first two pistol boxes out of her coat as she jumps back and onto a guardrail that separates the sidewalk from the ancient road. As she’s jumping up and onto the overturned wagon, to avoid a couple of sharp improvised spears being thrown at her, she starts shooting down at the ones trying to skewer her as well.

Gearing uses the shaft of his improvised axe, and knocks two of the ponies’ forelegs out from under them with a forward swipe, more to knock them off balance than cause any actual damage, then he brings the axe up towards the mare swinging at him with what looks like a sword made out of a piece of guardrail. But, no matter. As much as that thing must weigh, Gearing’s mass is far greater. Which he brings to bear by disabling his gravity assist matrix, and putting it all into the swing of the axe. The guardrail sword gets forced back with the blow, causing the blade of his axe to slice down the front of the sack and cut deep into the mare’s muzzle underneath. But even though part of her muzzle literally falls away and out of the bag, along with an exorbitant amount of blood, she spins around and swings again the other way with a wildly reckless strike as it is taking way longer than any sensible pony would be willing to do in such close proximity to someone that just took an axe to their face. As they spin around the centrifugal force gets added to and applied to the guardrail sword. And as she’s bringing it across, towards Gearing’s side, her head rocks sideways, and she loses her grip on the blade as she goes limp. The weapon goes sailing and spinning around like a mower blade, hitting the brick wall and bouncing down the street a bit.

And as the weapon goes sparking down the street the mare with part of her muzzle missing gets hit in the head again. And again. And as she’s hitting the ground, another pair of rounds enter the back of her head.

Gearing looks over and notices the two he’d felled never got back up. And the reason why becomes clear as he notices the single shot boxes near their heads. As he’s turning around to smile and grin at Dandy, and maybe even pay her a compliment on well executed teamwork, another buck jumps out of the door and onto Gearing as he laughs through the sack on his head. Gearing rears up with the buck as the buck apparently keeps trying to head butt him. Gearing starts walking forward, pushing and driving the buck backwards with his hindlegs as he screams, “I’m so sick of you fucks!” He holds them back with one forehoof as he reaches up and grabs the sack on the buck’s head with his other and rips it off of them as he yells, “What the hell is wrong with you!?”

The sack comes off with a shredding tearing noise, and instantly the smell gets worse as the gray buck’s pelt is reintroduced to fresh air. And the festering wounds along his face are made plain to see.

The buck screams and screeches as he says, “Face! Mah face! Gimmie mah face! Face is mine!” He starts snapping his jaws at Gearing as he giggles. “Your face! Your face is mine! Tasty tasty face!” He snaps and leans in further, with a strength that Gearing just can’t comprehend for the buck’s size. “Gemmie, gimmie! I just want a taste, just a little one!”

Gearing’s eyes slowly start growing in size as he looks into the pinprick sized green irises, surrounded by a sea of yellow, of the gray buck trying to bite him. He holds the buck to the wall with the one hoof, not even trying to be gentle anymore as the desire and need for information has entirely been trumped by what’s before him. “Blood hunger…” Gearing says with a soft gasp. He looks over at Dandy and screams, “They’re infected with blood hunger!”

Dandy quickly shoots the buck in the head as she asks, “What the hell’s that? Looks like they’ve gone raider to me.”

Gearing holds the suddenly limp body up as he looks at it. “Y- yeah… that’s another thing they’re calling it… but it’s actually called Blood Hunger… It started in the zebra lands.”

Dandy’s eyes go wide as she asks, “You mean they didn’t just balefire bomb us, they sent this shit after us too?!”

Gearing shakes his head. “No… I- I don’t know how it got here… How it got out…” He looks up at the building as his eyes quickly dart around it’s surface. “We can’t leave this here.” He lets go of the body and lets it slump to the ground into a seated position against the wall before watching it slowly flop over sideways.

Dandy rolls her eyes as she says, “Well, no shit. That’s what we’re here for, right?”

Gearing looks over at her and asks, “Can you cover this door? I need to go check on something. Make sure nopony gets out, understand? But keep an eye on your surroundings too.”

Dandy hops over and down into the overturned wagon. She peeks through a rusted hole in it at him as she starts magically dropping a few of her special pistols on the ground around the front door. “Sure thing!” She pulls the ones she’d used back and starts reloading them as she says, “Don’t be gone too long. Raiders give me the creeps!”

Gearing takes off his cloak and jacket, tossing them over onto the guard rail before turning and heading over to the entrance. He advances much slower than before, not only to try and minimize any noise he might make, but to keep an ear out for any trouble coming this way. And to give him time to pay more attention to his environment in case there are any more unexpected surprises. The first thing he notices, now that he’s being hyper critical of everything, is that the entrance to the building actually, at one time, had a vestibule with not one but two sets of double doors. The ones on the outside had been so thoroughly removed that even the frame was gone. Somepony, some time, managed to rip it right out of the stone work, which is why he’d only thought it had one set of doors originally. But, no, upon closer inspection he can see the tapping holes in the stone work where the outer doors and their frame had originally been installed. The other frame is still intact, but as he’s entering the vestibule and looking it over he can see where the frame had been warped. Damage left over when the doors were ripped right off their hinges some time in the past.

Just beyond the void where the inner set of doors had once been, starts an area that looks like it had been some sort of diner. A long counter along the wall on Gearing’s right forms a giant ‘L’ shape, separating the work space behind it from where the customers would order and eat from. On both ends are little trot through counter high swinging doors where the staff could bring out items to anyone sitting at the tables and booths around the room’s perimeter. But, it seems that most of the counter space against the wall behind the dining counter is dedicated to trash and ancient small appliances. A couple waffle makers. A double sided grill for making grilled cheese, panini, or other quick grilled sandwiches. Although both of them have been stuffed full with various garbage. One of the double sided grills has had some sort of fleshy material crammed into it and smashed until it’s bulging out of it. He’s not sure, and not interested in knowing, the specifics of what kind of viscera it is. But he’s seen enough in his life time to get a general idea for what ‘mutilated guts’ look like. The waffle maker has been desecrated in its own way. With a doll of some kind being smashed in it and partially burned. Semi-melting and semi-scorching the doll’s dress and plastic head to the point that it’s far out of proportion from what it was originally.

He looks around but doesn’t see any hide nor hair of movement around the dining area. The whole time he’s advancing he keeps his eyes trained on the faintly flickering yellow glow through the door behind the counter to what he presumes is the actual kitchen of the diner. Especially since this front area doesn’t actually have a sink large enough to do the dishes such an operation would require. As he’s turning his head while slowly looking around, his eyes settle on the still lit cooler next to the counter where a variety of items would sit on shelves for purchase.

The worn signs across the glass front promise a two for one special on cold sandwiches. There’s a list advertising the diner’s daily lunch specials for drinks and wraps. Fresh made salads two for one on Tuesday. Truly some pretty good deals that probably kept the stock in the cooler rotating so quickly that nothing in there had the time to be anything other than fresh and delicious.

At least back when the establishment was still operating.

The current residents have turned it into a trophy case of some kind. A few random skulls, picked so clean that they are almost bleached white. Most of them are equine in origin. But one looks like a radhog. Maybe. It’s hard to tell with how it’s been decorated with filth. A few random toys placed in weird and lewd positions that would definitely make this anything other than a wholesome family establishment. Then there was the jar full of some kind of mix between congealed blood and maple syrup. Gearing’s not sure if the contents were poured in carefully to make the swirling and layering effects, or if that’s what’s become of it from the natural process of settling and being left alone.

Gearing continues down this side of the counter towards a little alcove in the wall opposite of the entry door and along the same wall that the glow from the back kitchen escapes through. He pauses as he notices the thick metal door with the reinforced security glass that leads to a set of stairs upwards. He peeks in, and sees yet another door at the top of the stairs beyond this first one. The one here has a lock and a keypad, but the keypad’s been destroyed, leaving no other choice but to unlock or lock the door with a key instead. He gently grabs the handle and gives it a slow turn.

And, to his surprise, it easily complies. He pushes the door open just a bit, and listens carefully as he peeks in around the door. His EFS is practically a wall of red at the moment. So many above him, or below him, it’s impossible to keep track. And, unlike other situations, he’s pretty damn sure it’s not just radroaches this time. He slowly closes the door, silently shutting it before easing off the handle and letting it secure itself again.

Turning to his left he slowly looks back and forth between the two bathroom doors that are set into the alcove. He tries the closest one marked ‘Fillies’ and it easily swings open.

Inside is nothing short of an abomination to equinity.

A bathroom that has been desecrated and violated in every way imaginable. The fumes are so concentrated that Gearing’s quite sure if he lit a match, the whole area would blow from the methane alone. He slowly closes the door. Staring at it for a moment, he gives silent thanks for not picking a steady career in plumbing. He might be a clockwork. And not have the same kind of problems most ponies would have from being exposed to such toxicity. But even he can only handle so much. He turns to the right and eases open the door to the ‘Colt’s’ bathroom with a wing, expecting to find yet another crime against Equus.

Instead there are actually a couple candles burning along the sink, with a pony taking position to unleash a blast from their back cannon. But, like the ‘ponnequin’ out front, this too is more than a simple scarecrow. They’re being propped up and held aloft with various rebar jutting out of the walls where it was jammed into and through the tile work. Held up like a full sized marionette. Oddly enough, the smell is not nearly as bad as the door he’d just closed. Which may be at least in part because of the low burning candles. But, even if they are being helpful, Gearing would prefer the building didn’t start burning down around his ears while he’s in it, so he uses his crystalline pinions and pinches off all of the small flames until the bathroom’s cast into darkness before he leaves it.

Gearing slowly turns around to head towards the kitchen, and comes face to face with a brown earth pony buck with a huge chest. So big that it’s stretching out his Equestrian Defense Force dress uniform. He glares out at Gearing from under his peaked service cap as he slowly chews on a massive unlit cigar. His eyes and focus trail around the diner slowly as he says in a deep drawling voice, “Well shit, son… They got themselves locked up tighter ‘n a virgin gnat’s pussy… Hell of a fortification here…”

Gearing blinks a few times before he asks softly, “Master Sergeant Rocky?”

The brown buck looks up, causing his tan mane to slide across his shoulders, as he stares at the ceiling above them. “If it was up to me, I’d get them damn cannon cockers on the line…” He lowers his head and looks at Gearing as he grins around his cigar. “And make Equestria a brand new parking lot…”

Gearing rolls his eyes and shakes his head as he walks past Rocky and starts heading towards the back kitchen as he says, “Yeah… not really an option right now, Sergeant…”

They both walk around the counter and towards the back, neither one making a sound as they walk back into the employee section of the diner and start heading into the kitchen. With Rocky staying just on the edge of Gearing’s peripheral vision the entire time.

Gearing steps through the threshold, and is hit by another wave of smells, and these are accompanied by heat. Not nearly as bad as the bathroom. But not exactly meadow flower fresh either. The kitchen has been absolutely destroyed, by any standard of measurement. He can’t help but chuckle thinking that all he’d have to do to wipe out this entire group, is let Cookie see what they’d done to this kitchen. But, of course, that buck’s already dead.

And good riddance to him. The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head chimes in.

But using an enemy to take out another enemy is always an oddly satisfying tactic. Gearing retorts.

And the little blue pegasus can’t help but agree with the sentiment.

He slowly moves his focus around the kitchen as he takes in the view. The floor is covered in a variety of sticky rotting materials. Blood? Viscera? Simple mud? No way to really identify any particular part of it at the moment. Pots are full of various things, most of which don’t even make a bit of sense. Someone has a pot on the old destroyed stove with a traffic cone set into it upside down. There’s a fluid inside that once was water but has had a lot of other things added to it. Random twigs. There’s a can.

What kind of fucked up traffic soup is this? The little blue pegasus in his head asks with disgust twisting across his muzzle.

There’s a pot nearby with a lot of feathers around it and bits of meat on the inside. He’s not sure if it’s chicken, or what. But those feathers look awfully small. Maybe from an owl or pigeon or something? He’s not sure. The color of them doesn’t really help with identification either.

He turns his head and looks at the slowly burning low fire and takes in the view of the weird ingenuity of somepony. They’ve taken the industrial strength mixer, knocked it over onto its side, and hooked it up with a giant rod of some kind. Then messed with the power systems to the point that it’s barely getting any power at all. But, apparently enough to function for what their purposes were. As the rod continuously rotates along the length of its central axis right over the fire that’s illuminating the kitchen.

The fire in question has been built in a bathtub that is being used as an improvised fire pit. But, it seems to work well enough as the pile of coals and low fire continuously roasts the sizzling thing that’s being rotated by the mixer.

Gearing walks over and looks the small creature over as he tries to figure out what it is or was at one point. It’s too small to be a radhog. Wrong shape too as far as he can figure out. It’s kind of hard to tell without the head, it being skinned and splayed out, and it’s limbs having been cut off somewhere at the knee, leaving the paws, claws, or whatever it had for feet, no longer around to help with identification.

Gearing continues walking around the burning bathtub until he gets to the other side where a flickering electric lamp lays on the ground near a table in the dark corner. He reaches down and grabs it, picking it up and looking at it as he debates on keeping the battery operated device for his own purposes.

But his eyes jump from it, to what the light revealed when he lifted it up over the perpetration table. There on the table is an array of butchery equipment, all bloody and disgusting with congealed blood and signs that this station has been getting used for quite a while, with nary a thought turned towards any kind of cleanup. Many feathers, of various colors, lay scattered across it and the floor at his hooves. And there, in the center of the table, but pushed far back near the wall, is the head of a unicorn mare. Her face has had many pockmarks administered by bites that look equine in nature. Her eyes have been plucked out, somehow, and replaced with a cue ball in one socket and a black ‘8’ ball in the other. Her tongue has been removed and her mouth is currently being held open with a metal four-sided cheese grater.

But as bad as that is to uncover, what’s worse is the horn adorning her head. Or, more specifically, what is adorning her horn.

There in plain sight, is another head. Far smaller, and unquestionably pony in origin. So small that it actually is being held aloft by being forced down and skewered on the mare’s horn. Such a little equine head. Gearing’s eyes steadily grow wider as he looks it over and many things run stampeding through his mind’s eye.

Tick.

Tick.

CLICK.

Gearing slowly turns his head, and looks at the bathtub fire again. At the little creature slowly rotating and roasting on the industrial mixing spit. He quickly mentally transposes the tiny filly’s head onto the rotating corpse, and fumes start coming from his nostrils as he can do nothing else besides mentally acknowledging the size ratio. He quickly starts grabbing the pots full of ‘soup’ and brackish water and chucks them into the improvised fire pit. Gearing grabs a sheet that had been used to keep various bloody chunks together, sending the bits flying across the room without any care, and dunks it into the last cooking pot that still is full of liquid, before throwing the now soaking wet cloth on top of the fire pit as well. He uses his wings to spread the wet cloth across the coals’ surface, smothering the entire thing before grabbing what was left in the final pot and dumping that on top as well. The entire exercise causes a hissing steam to rise up out of the bathtub from the drowned fire. With his hooves still slick with disgusting filth, he rests his forehooves on the edge of the tub as he bows his head and tries to think of what he should do.

“Well,” Rocky says from the darkness on the other side of the smothered fire. Gearing raises his head and makes eye contact with him as Rocky stares back from under his pitched service cap with that oppressive glare of his. “Ya know what they say about relying on single point entry…”

Gearing’s lip curls into a malicious smirk as he says, “Yeah… I do, Sergeant…” He starts quickly making his way out of the kitchen as he grumbles, “Only one way out too…”

Gearing hurries out of the kitchen and out of the building entirely. As he’s coming out he yells over to Dandy, “I’m going to go check on something. Do not let anyone out of this door, understand me?”

Dandy pokes her head up out of the overturned wagon and tilts her head. “Uhhh… okay?” She looks back and forth before she asks, “Is that fancy PipBuck of yours telling you anyone is anything other than red?”

Gearing shakes his head as he turns around and looks up to the roof. “Nope. All red.” He looks over at her and says with a scowl, “And forget what I said earlier… In this case: red is dead, and don’t bother to ask questions afterwards.”

Dandy grins widely as she nods and ducks down into the wagon. “Hot damn! I love easy jobs!”

Gearing flies up to the roof and finds that it’s been pretty much abandoned except for the various trash and debris that’s been put out there. There is a roof door access. But it’s been sealed up pretty thoroughly. The door opens outwards, and he’s pretty sure this is the only other way out. He grabs a refrigerator that’s had its door removed, and is tilted on its side. He sets it in front of the door, sideways, and quickly starts loading it with the various debris from the roof. Bricks. Cinder blocks. Bucket full of dirty water. Wait. No. That’s diarrhea. Excellent. All of it gets set in front of the door to provide as much weight as possible. After finishing the refuse barricade, he takes off and flies across the street, dropping in through the back door of the distribution company they snooped through earlier and making his way into the shipping department. He starts slowly examining the various large plastic barrels, then testing their weight with a hoof as he rocks them side to side. It doesn’t take him long to find a couple barrels that are sufficient for his goal and he starts grabbing them one at a time. Gearing activates his Gravity Assist matrix then begins a route where he runs a barrel across the street and places them along the side of the stone building before zipping back for another.

A series of pop sounds divert his route after dropping off the second barrel, causing him to jump around the corner with his rifle drawn.

“You okay, Dandy?!”

“Yeah, no problem, two more down!”

“Great, I’ll be done in a minute!”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but hurry it up please!”

“Right!” Gearing turns and zips back to the building. After grabbing the final barrel he doesn’t simply return to the side of the building with the others, he takes it straight to the roof. After depositing that one, he grabs the remaining barrels from the staging area at the side of the building, and flies straight up to store them on the roof. Even with his normal strength, this would usually be a slow task as he knows he wouldn’t gain nearly as much altitude as quickly as he’d like. But with his implant taking over the work of carrying the vast majority of his own weight, this becomes a far more manageable task. One at a time he carries the heavy duty plastic containers up to the roof. After finishing that quick relay and getting his supplies up top, he slowly explores the roof as he tries to find the maintenance access section he’s looking for.

He actually has to clean up parts of the roof to even find it, as the cage containing the utility access had been turned into a makeshift shrine to scarecrows and dolls, all laid out over sheets of cloth and rotting hide. All centered around a rubber traffic cone that has a doll’s head resting on the top, with the other dolls circling around it like they are worshiping it. He throws the coverings aside, grabs the padlock for the door labeled ‘Fire Marshal’, and rips it right off. Though the lock itself proves stronger than the metal cage as the attachment points alone gave way instead of the lock simply breaking.

Gearing looks at the lock in his fetlock, then at the cage, then back and forth a few times before shrugging and throwing the lock over his shoulder. Not what he was trying to do. But it’ll do.

He starts running down the various pipes, until he finds the shut off, overflow, and main access. He begins working through the system, and triggers the purge cycle, and can’t help but smile as he sees a hatch pop open not far away along the pipe and water starts gushing out across the roof. It’s disgusting and has been sitting and festering in the pipes and pressure charging reservoir for centuries. But after a while the pipes entirely empty and he can hear the pumps trying to work to push out nothing.

After evacuating the pipes of a good portion of the water, and reducing it’s pressure, he closes it back off. Gearing quickly opens up the much smaller pipe access where maintenance ponies apply dyes for tracking down leaks or chemicals to winterize the plumbing if and when they aren’t going to use it for an extended period of time.

He digs around in the debris from the shrine and pulls out the rubber traffic cone. Lopping off the very tip of it with his axe, Gearing looks through the inside and decides the filth level is acceptable enough before he crams it’s narrow end into the pipe access and forces it into place. One by one, he rips open the screw tops of the large plastic barrels, where a pump would normally be installed to gain access to the fluid, and starts pouring the clear liquid contents into the traffic cone. It takes him a bit of finagling as he has to hold the heavy plastic container aloft, and control its flow, as he directs it into the improvised funnel. To make matters worse, even the heavy duty plastic has a habit of bowing and warping under its own weight. The added weight of it’s contents just exacerbates the problem and causes more headaches by the moment. But he’s determined to see this through. And Gearing’s not going to let a little thing like uncooperative chemicals get in his way.

A few more pops come from down stairs. A couple at first, followed by a rapid fire chain sounding almost like a firing squad or a low caliber machine gun. Gearing runs over to the side and looks down to see a new group of bodies in front of the door. Dandy looks up at him and gives him a salute with a wide grin across her muzzle from her hiding place within the wagon wreck out front.

He knows he’s running out of time and runs back. After getting the last barrel into the system, with a good portion of it pouring out along the roof, he recloses the system and then jumps off the edge of the building. He doesn’t even bother opening his wings until he’s nearly at ground level. But, as he’s about to reach the ground, he does fan his wings and banks hard to the right, towards the door, and the corpses in front of it.

Dandy smirks at him for his aerial display, then raises an eyebrow and scrunches her muzzle as she sees him grab two of the corpses and run into the building with them. As he’s coming back out he points over to the delivery warehouse across the street as he says, “Grab my stuff and fall back over there. You need to be away from what’s coming down.” Then he grabs another pair of corpses and goes back in.

Her eyes bug out and she quickly looks around for immediate threats before she jumps out of the wagon. She keeps her eyes on the sky as she zips over the collection of weapons she’d had laid out along the ground and, the moment the last one is in her pocket, she grabs his blanket and jacket off the guardrail with her telekinetic field and runs across the street as she says, “I’ll cover from over here!”

As she’s running across the street she tosses out a couple of her single shots across the crumbling road way before she bolts back into the office area. She takes up position where Gearing had originally, hiding behind the bit of wall while peeking out over the catty corner tilted bookcase.

As Dandy’s running away, Gearing runs over to the stairwell and starts looking the security door that leads upstairs over again. It’s been propped open by somepony with an empty snack cakes box, probably one of the ones that had just exited. He takes a peek at the other side of the door, and finds that the lock is a double sided keyed entry. Why they would do something like this, he’s not sure. He’s not even sure what kind of building would need to have so much physical security to it. But, that’s a mystery for another day. Right now there’s something he needs, and this is the first option available to him.

He closes the door securely again, knocking the trash, that had been kicked down the stairs and had been keeping the door partially open, out of the way to do so. He takes a look at the lock, then pulls out a few of his tools. Most ponies doing nefarious things with unlawful entry simply use their tools to unlock doors. But, that’s not all that’s possible.

The little blue pegasus in his head grins as his ears practically turn into horns, Because the true masters know how to clean up behind themselves… and lock the door back when they’re done!

Gearing fiddles with the lock a bit longer, and then hears a satisfying click and a deep kerthunk. With the tools still in his mouth he reaches up and tries the handle. Turning it, and jiggling it, and pushing on the door. He shakes it vigorously with the handle turned, and can’t help but smiling widely around the tools in his mouth as the door stays firmly sealed.

He runs back into the kitchen and starts examining along the walls. In the pantry section, that’s been turned into a collection of broken bottles, and empty wooden boxes, he finds the breaker box. He moves the shelves out of the way until he finds what he’s looking for.

Authorized personnel only, violators can be punished in accordance with Equestrian legal-

Most of the rest of the paper on the outside of the panel had been ripped off long ago. Whether that was done intentionally or just collateral damage from everything being thrown around over the years is impossible to tell. Though he doesn’t even see the rest of the paper anywhere in the room. He has a slight pang of worry as he opens up the access panel and hopes the missing paper doesn’t have some information that he really needs. He checks the panel’s contents over, and then pulls out a cable from his tool pouch and connects the control panel to his PipBuck. His eyes dart back and forth from his PipBuck screen to the panel as his ears constantly turn and twist to try and catch any glimmer of sound that might be a hint from somepony that they’d discovered the stairwell door has been locked.

He scowls and starts moving around wires within the control box, but nothing seems to be working. In a moment of immature frustration, he smacks the box a few times with a wing tip. After a few sparks come out of the control panel a feed of information starts appearing on his PipBuck.

The little pegasus in his head floats around with his hindlegs crossed like he’s sitting causally midair as he nods sagely. Ahhh… yes… the percussive maintenance method of troubleshooting and problem solving… truly a tool of the masters…

Gearing quickly starts cycling through the various menus and control aspects of the box. Then, after finding the override subsection, he quickly starts tapping in some commands of his own.

A smile slowly grows across his muzzle as he double checks the time and inputs it.

>> Hoofington Fire Department Public Safety Test

>> Initiate Full System Check, Fire Marshall?: Y/N

>> Y

>> Confirm.

>> Duration of Test? ( Input Time in Minutes, Use ‘0’ to Run Until Manually Discontinued):

>> 0

>> Confirm.

>> Ready to Initiate Fire Suppression System Test. Begin Test?: Y/N

>> Y

>> Confirm.

>> Initiating Test of the full Fire Suppression system. Test will continue to run until the test is manually canceled.

>> Test will begin in 60 Seconds…

>> 59

>> 58

Gearing quickly disconnects from the system and runs back out the front door. As he’s grabbing the corpses of those that they had killed out front, he starts chucking them in through the entry doorway roughly. Causing them to crash over the dining countertop and quickly making the diner look like the aftermath of a college dorm party as the bodies are lazily hanging over various pieces of furniture. In awkward positions that they would be sure to feel tomorrow.

If they weren’t already dead.

Gearing yells across the street as he’s still hefting the bodies through the air with indifferent tosses, “Dandy! You still got that special ammo that that black buck had?”

Dandy pops her head out enough that he can see her clearly as she replies, “Yeah. Haven’t sold it. Figured it would be worth more using it than selling it for less than I’d have to buy it back for later!”

“Got anything that’ll shoot one of the orange or reds on you?”

Before she can reply a mare’s pleasant voice comes over the speakers both inside of the diner and outside.

“Attention employees and customers! This is your friendly local Hoofington Fire Department service assistant. In a moment we will be beginning a test of this building’s fire management system. Please remain calm, you are in no danger, this is only a test. Thank you for your cooperation, and have a great day!”

Dandy looks over at the building with an eyebrow raised as she asks quietly, “What the hell?” then she shakes her head. “Yeah, I got one of their rifles. Figured the ammo wouldn’t be worth a lick of salt without something to shoot it with.”

Gearing starts sidestepping as he’s pointing at the front door. “Okay, load one up, and get ready to fire, but only when I tell you to.” Then he turns and zips off around the side of the building.

Inside the building, one by one, the above fire sprinklers being going off. At first a few of them simply sputter and spit, but most of them begin spraying out their charge into tiny droplets in every direction. Just as they were designed. And just as they were intended to do, when they were built and installed over two hundred years ago. A testament to earth pony engineering and manufacture.

Again the voice of the mare comes over the speakers throughout the building:

“Attention employees and customers! This is your friendly local Hoofington Fire Department service assistant. We have begun the test of this building’s fire management system. Please remain calm, you are in no danger, this is only a test. Though, if you feel the desire to do so, please make your way to the nearest exit in a calm and orderly fashion, and use this opportunity to practice your company’s emergency exit procedures. Thank you for your cooperation, and have a great day!”

As he’s coming back with the pair of mares he’d killed earlier with the axe, the final of the corpses, he whips them in through the door into the dining area with such gusto they travel most of the way to the stairwell up. He looks in and watches as the liquid continuously mists down and sprays over everything. But, over the hissing sound of that, he starts hearing a banging and thumping coming from the security door as the ponies in the upper floors have apparently came down to try and get out of the indoor rain. Only to discover that the door had been locked on them. Even from his position in the vestibule he can hear them beating on the door and trying to line up kicks to knock the door open. A difficult feat, considering they are going against the swing of the door, but not impossible given enough time.

He’s not sure how much force it took to rip out the front doors, frame and all, nor the inner doors. But he doesn’t fool himself into thinking that door will hold forever. Eventually they are going to figure out a way of putting a hole through it, breaking the lock, or, possibly, unleash something with enough explosive force that the door does indeed come off its hinges. Gearing flies back by the overturned wagon, pulling out his rifle and getting on the other side of it as he sights down his rifle at the doorway.

“So, what’s the big deal? When you want me to start shooting?” Dandy yells from her position on the other side of the street.

Gearing looks at her over his shoulder, and yells back, “Get ready!”

She pulls the rifle up with her magic and the requested ammunition already locked and loaded as she yells, “What do you want me to shoot?! I don’t see anypony; are they coming?”

Gearing points in the door with a wing and yells back without looking, “Anything inside of those doors. Just get the round inside the building. You’ll hit what you need, trust me.”

She rolls her eyes and mutters, “Assholes think just because I’m a unicorn that I have magical aim… well… We’ll see.” She looks around a bit before she asks, “Well, how about when?!”

Gearing chuckles and keeps his eyes on the growing puddles inside of the building that are spreading out so far they’re actually starting to come out of the door. As a familiar sweet scent greets his nose he yells back with a smile, “Anytime you’re ready! But the sooner the better!”

Dandy scowls at him as she mutters, “Ask me to do something and being all vague about it. I don’t see what a single round is going to do. Even one of these explosive rounds… But, whatever.” She hovers the rifle up and starts aiming through the sights.

As she’s still trying to aim Gearing yells, “And make sure to duck after ya shoot!”

She scrunches up her muzzle to the side, and then steps to the side as she uses more of the wall to block herself as she keeps looking at the main door. She fires blindly, with a frown on her muzzle at wasting such expensive rounds, right into the doorway.

The round goes sailing right through the doorway, and she’s about to say something snotty about telling her to do vague things and expecting results, but doesn’t. And, even if she did, nopony would hear her anyway.

Because a moment after the round entered the diner, it struck a hard surface and, as they tend to do, the explosive round detonated, blowing apart the piece of furniture that, at one time, had been a booth where ponies sat to eat, drink, and socialize. But as heated of topics as might have been brought to fruition there before, they pale in comparison to the heat that’s unleashed with the round’s burst.

Dandy’s eyes go wide as the flash of light inside of the doorway only precedes a much bigger flash by a microsecond. Just enough to perceive, before a fireball erupts and flashes out into the street. In front of the blast, a pressure wake creates a wave strong enough that her short black hair goes whipping backwards as she stands there agape at what she’s just done. But, as she sees the fireball coming across the street following after the pressure wave, she quickly ducks down and cowers behind the brick wall and debris in the office as she tries to avoid getting burnt.

But, the fireball didn’t reach that far, as the fumes from what had been released hadn’t traveled far either.

After the noise dies down, and the air’s stilled, she sits up and looks outside to see the building across the street has turned into a towering inferno. Throughout every level of the structure, fire spews out around the cracks of one window or another, with the intense flames quickly burning off all of the advertisements and other prewar memorabilia that had been adorning the building. Her eyes dart along the roadway for a moment, but then she sees that Gearing had already gotten up and walked over to the side of the building. And he’s currently looking up at the windows where a couple of them had been more recently fortified, with lesser materials, as he keeps an eye on the front and right sides of the building simultaneously.

Dandy walks over towards, him holding her rifle in the air with her telekinetic field, as she giggles, “Holy shit, I take it back! These rounds are amazing! Why didn’t you tell me it could do something like that? I could have accidentally killed myself!”

Gearing keeps his eyes straight ahead on the corner of the building. As he watches his EFS, the various red indicators in his view range run around quickly in one direction than the other. While others simply fade from existence. One after another. His vision starts clearing as one by one the occupants succumb to the smoke, flame, and heat. “It can’t… All that did was ignite the Benzene.”

She looks over at him and asks, “Benzene?” Her eyes go wide as she asks, “You flooded the place with Benzene!?”

Gearing slowly nods as he sits watching the various colors of the chemical fire, along with everything else that’s being consumed, as the building steadily burns down with it.

Dandy looks back and forth slowly as she asks, “Soooo… on a scale of ‘Zero’ to ‘Burn Their Fucking House Down’ … exactly how pissed off are you right now?”

A moment later, a window on the second floor that had been reinforced with metal and wood, one of the newer modifications replacing the older better securements, gets knocked outwards by something large and heavy being thrown at, and through, it. A burnt corpse of a pony hits the ground with the scattered metal and burning wood. A split second later a mare comes jumping through the window to escape the fire herself. Her tail and mane is quickly burning, along with most of the rubber armor over her body, and her fur and hide is likewise smoking as she hits the ground. The audible snap and awkward twisting of her right foreleg is a clear indicator that she broke her leg in the fall. But she has greater concerns at the moment as she starts thrashing around on the ground. She rolls over the ground one way after another as she bellows out in pain and fear as she tries desperately to put herself out in the radioactive mud puddles and dirt.

Until a round from Gearing’s 10mm pistol stops her screaming mid note and puts an end to her thrashing.

Gearing gets up and walks over as he keeps looking up at the building and taking note of the quickly declining number of red chevrons on his EFS display. He trots up, picks up her fresh corpse, and then spins around in a circle as he hops up with his wings and throws her right back through the window from where she came and into the multistory inferno. Then he doesn’t even touch down as he does the same maneuver with the charred corpse that had been used as an organic battering ram to clear the mare’s way to freedom and supposed safety. After returning them to the flame’s embrace, he lands and sits calmly right back where he had been a moment before. Staring at the building. Watching it burn. All while keeping a close eye on the few red chevrons somehow still left standing.

Dandy looks between the building and Gearing a few times before raising a hoof in the air and giving it a bit of a foreleg pump. “Right. Good talk.” Then she turns and leaves him to himself as he sits watching as the building seems to try it’s best to burn straight down to its foundations.

A few minutes after Dandy had left, Rocky walks out of the shadows to Gearing’s right and sits down next to him, watching the fire as he slowly chews on his cigar. After a few moments of silence, Rocky tilts his head to look at Gearing sideways as he asks, “You a’right?”

“No,” Gearing responds flatly without even looking at the brown buck in the EDF uniform next to him.

“Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you want, and you can’t do what you’d prefer.”

“I know…”

“Sometimes you gotta do the things you really don’t wanna do,” Rocky turns his head and leans towards Gearing as he says, “an we both know that.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier,” Gearing replies flatly while staring at the fire in front of them.

“No… no it doesn't…” Rocky agrees with a firm shake of his head. “An if it ever does get easy… that’s when you got yourself a real problem”

“I guess it means I’m not there yet, cuz it still hurts,” Gearing mutters.

“Yup. If you can still feel pain, it means you’re still alive, and not dead yet.”

“Feel dead inside sometimes though, like what’s even the point of it all?”

“And what’d you just say?” Rocky asks as he leans towards Gearing again.

“…It still hurts…”

“Which means?”

“Not dead yet.”

“That’s right…” Rocky confirms with a slow nod. “Not dead yet… and what’s that mean?”

“That I can keep moving,” Gearing says softly as he hangs his head and closes his eyes.

“That’s right… so just keep movin’.”

“Towards what end though?”

“Shiiiit… why the hell you asking me?” Rocky gets up and starts walking away as he adds, “Go talk to some officer… big shit like that’s above my pay grade… That’s what they keep tellin’ me anyway…”

Footnote: ‘credential matrix’, sync failure. Retrying. . . please stand by. . .

‘credential matrix’, sync failure. Retrying. . . please stand by. . .

Secondary components reinitializing, please stand by. . .

A quick note. The sudden appearance of a character here is not an oversight, and don't worry, you haven't missed anything if you've read the chapters in order. This was intentional.