Gearing and Handy return upstairs and continue walking the same path as Gearing heads to his next highest priority repair target. They start splitting up at the decontamination chamber to the medical bay, but pause as Swift exits out with Apple Armor close at her side in mid conversation.

The sight of the light orange colt puts a smile on Gearing’s face. Since being brought in he’s obviously had a bath and been treated by either Cure or the medical pod. His ocher mane and tail, no longer matted with filth, practically shine with health. The rags he’d been wearing have been replaced with an oversized Stable 68 jumpsuit. Presumably for the pockets judging by a few bulges and an extra pouched belt that’s being used to tighten it to himself across his chest. As they are passing Gearing can make out clearly, for the first time, the red apple on a white shield on Apple Armor’s haunches, now that it’s not covered with filthy rags and grime.

“Nuh uh! I’m better, the best, you’ll see!” Apple Armor declares.

Swift smiles and gently shakes her head. “Oh, well, we’ll just see now won’t we? And remember what happens when you lose!”

Apple Armor hop-trots for a bit of extra speed before coming down on all four hooves hard and spread out wide a bit in front of her. “Not going to happen!” The grin on his face explodes as his green eyes practically sparkle in joy.

Swift continues smiling and tilts her head away as she says coyly, “Well, I hope a big strong buck like you will keep up your end of the bargain, if not.”

Apple Armor looks off to the side and says a bit indignantly with his mouth pursed to one side, “I’d never lose a hunting contest with some filly.”

Handy looks between the two and asks, “What’s going on here?”

Swift continues past, and pauses a moment to regard Handy. “We’re going outside to hunt. Algae chips are fine for now, but I want some meat.”

Handy and Swift continue on their little conversation while Gearing stands and stares. In a mix of curiosity, and confusion.

Since when do ponies eat meat? Gearing wonders. He’d always had a certain fascination with eating. Morbidly so. While he doesn’t need to eat, or drink anything for that matter, he’s always been interested in ponies’ fixation on food. Yes, they need it for their very survival. But there’s more to it, and even he, with his miniscule world view on the matter, can tell. To him, most food is pretty much the same. Textures come in very few categories for him. Liquid. Soft. Hard. And the ever popular ‘I probably shouldn’t be trying to eat this’ level of tough.

But in his various lines of work, pony watching had become a given. The pony life experience as it were. And he’d had lots of practice doing it, mainly out of curiosity, before even signing up. All of the various conversations on topics that he simply couldn’t understand were an oddity for him to contemplate on. Something called the ‘tinglingly softness’ of certain sheer fabrics that mares had discussed. Many, many, many conversations talking about subtleties in flavor and texture of food. ‘Pleasant crunches.’ ‘After taste.’ ‘Bite.’ ‘Tartness.’ ‘Sweetness.’

The terms were pretty alien to him.

He could feel and taste. But apparently he just didn’t have the ability to detect these subtle differences. He’d come to the conclusion, bitterly so at that, that this curse has dulled his senses. Not in a way that would hamper him doing anything. He has great dexterity, and his hearing is good enough that he can discern a range of tones that would make professional lounge singers jealous. He can feel everything. Especially pain. But as far as any other sensations they don’t have much control range. It’s practically binary in its signals: yes, or no.

Except one particular area of his anatomy, even if it is completely useless for its intended biological function, which gives him the distinct impression that his general sensations are just toned down. Not just that they are turned off entirely. Such as when he’s shedding a part, and it just aggravates him until he knocks it off. The best organic related term he can use is ‘an itch’ which seems to work well enough given other pony’s reactions and commiserations on the situation.

Gearing blinks a few times, and asks as Handy is stepping into the decontamination chamber, now that Swift and Apple Armor have made good on their escape, “Are they going to be okay out there on their own? Should I go with them and provide some support?”

Handy turns around and looks at Gearing through the clear face shield on his suit. “Nah. She’ll be fine. She knows what she’s doing. And, if she needs any help, she’ll ask for it. She has her pipbuck.”

Gearing nods, then turns to head down to his chosen path as the medical door closes, and the decontamination sequence starts. He pauses, and looks down at his pipbuck. He sits down on the floor and sends a message to Handy. A few minutes later the quarantine door opens, and Handy’s already removed his suit, having left it inside the medical bay to dry. Handy looks both directions then walks over to Gearing and sits down.

“What’d you want to talk about, Gearing?”

Gearing scuffs at the floor plates a bit before he asks, “How much do you know about stables?”

Handy waves his hoof around. “Probably more than most ponies. Why?”

Gearing looks at him and asks, “Well you know about the fucked up experiment they ran here, right?”

Handy takes in a deep breath and nods. Then lets out the air in a long disgusted sigh, “Yeeahhh… why?”

Gearing taps Handy to get his attention then says, “I used to work for Stable-Tec. Handy… you only know a part of it. I don’t even know everything. But what I do know, is nightmare fuel.”

Handy raises an eyebrow and asks softly, “And why are you telling me this?”

Gearing points a hoof deeper into the stable. “Because I know Stable-Tec. At least. What certain individuals were capable of. Ethics were nothing more than ink to be looped around… Handy. I’m worried about what’s in this stable. You haven’t cleared out the R&D section yet, right?”

“No, no we haven’t.” Handy shakes his head and asks with more than a slight bit of concern in his voice, “Why? What do you know, Gearing? This isn’t the time for secrets.”

Gearing slaps a hoof over his eyes. “I don’t know anything. That’s the problem… I just… highly suspect… or, more accurately, know there is a possibility…” He looks at Handy and says with a sigh, “Handy. They weren’t above experimenting with chemicals and diseases. I don’t know what could be down there. But, I do know it needs to be checked.” He points a hoof at Handy and pushes him slightly. “And I’m going to have to be one of the ones to do it. Me and Sarge. I don’t even trust a hazmat suit down there… If any of you got infected, we could have a pandemic on our hands before we knew what was happening.”

Handy stares at him for a moment, but says nothing as he mulls it over.

“Worst case scenario is everyone in the stable dies from contamination,” Gearing offers, unkindly. “I can’t be affected by any of that. I’m the best choice.”

Handy runs a hoof through his mane as he looks down. This is potentially a large can of worms to open up and he’s in no big hurry to mess with it. He looks at Gearing and nods. “Okay, we’ll get on that once I get Sarge up and running again. Wait till then. Okay?”

Gearing nods. “Given how we got jumped by those bugs the last time going into the lower levels, I wouldn’t feel comfortable otherwise.” He looks at his pipbuck, then shows Handy a section of the map. “There’s a lot that needs to be fixed in this section… How about I go pick a room over there, and I can work in that area while everyone else sleeps? I’ll be able to open up more of the stable for use and give the kids somewhere else to be instead of the medical bay beds.”

“Sure.” Handy nods and pats him on the shoulder. “Go ahead and get to that while I go to maintenance and start working on Sarge.”

The two split off, and Gearing heads down a darker section of the stable’s upper floor. This area had been cleared out apparently, or at least checked for hostiles. The debris moved around and the various doors recently sealed lets Gearing know that someone’s already done a pretty good job of doing a security sweep of this sector. He does likewise, going down the entire hallway, checking all of the doors, and making sure they are sealed, before picking a random door on the left side of the hall to start. He pulls out his stun rod, and uses his maintenance authorization code to unlock the door. The light inside flickers on, but only one of the lights stays on as he sweeps his eyes back and forth.

He enters slowly, stun rod at the ready, and taps on his pipbuck’s light. He walks carefully, checking the entire area. And, just to be sure, clicks on his E.F.S. which glitters across in front of his eyes. It comes back entirely clear. In all directions. In fact, he doesn’t even see the other ponies he already knows are in the stable with him, and figures he must be far enough away with enough material between them that it can’t detect them.

That’s one of the reasons he never really liked the damn thing. Ponies got killed from relying on it too much. It had it’s usage, but he’s learned through experience and training to not rely too heavily on technology or magic. His instincts have served him far better. After checking the room, and deciding its safe ‘enough’ he goes ahead and closes the door to the hallway.

But doesn’t lock it.

If anything comes, they’ll have to get through the door first. Opening it or otherwise, and that’ll give him time to react. And, if anything is already in here with him, it’ll let him get the hell out of there lickety-split without having to wait for his authorization override to work on the lock.

This room seems like many others he’d seen before in various diagrams. He remembers working on similar rooms. Usually during his ‘down hours’ when waiting on someone he was supposed to meet to wake the hell up. It’s a standard room for a single occupant with a bed, and bathroom and very minimal furnishings.

The mattress seems serviceable, if old and musty. At least no one’s died on it. That’d cause all kinds of problems. He starts by cleaning out the various debris in the room. The old packaging and scraps and out right dirt get scooped and placed in a metal crate that he sets by the door. Maybe he can do something with that later. At the minimum he can sneak it outside the stable and scatter it to the wind. Not like anyone would notice a little more dirt in the dump yard known as Equestria.

He flinches. That thought hurt.

He busies himself by cleaning and organizing the room as he vows that at the earliest opportunity he’s going to find out what the hell happened. Of the various recyclables, or general items that he doesn’t add to the dump box, he gets a pile of glass, metal, and other various dishes and items that he doesn’t quite know what to do with. But wants to double check with somepony more experienced with the current economy before he starts breaking them down into spare parts or scrapping them. The coffee cups in particular would make excellent resistance wafers for electronics and electrical work. Crude, but functional. He’s even pleasantly surprised, and amused, when he finds a small collection of bottle caps in the trash, and mixed in with the variety of other debris. He can’t help but be happy in the knowledge that, obviously, he wasn’t the only one that this idea was new to. He wonders how long after the war did this catch on. It must have been a relatively new thing. Maybe a wasteland agreement somewhere? Stable dwellers obviously gave no shits about the caps.

As evident by this stallion’s creative uses of them by apparently throwing them at every wall or other object in the room. Judging by how they seemed to be wedged in a variety of crevices and under every piece of furniture.

How the hell did they even get this much bottled sparkle in here? Or booze for that matter? Gearing couldn’t understand how that’d be such a high priority. Although he wonders if that was part of the experiment too.

After cleaning out the room in general, he moves on to another room and begins expanding out his little cleaning odyssey. In the room he’s dubbed as his he starts gathering a variety of shelves, tables, and work space by taking the furniture from some of the other rooms. His piles of ‘goods’ grows to the point that he uses the room across the hall as an expanded storage, with the intention of keeping the working space in his room.

It might seem presumptuous of him to basically lay claim to this entire sector, but not like anyone else is going to want any of this anyway. Plus, he’s going to need a good portion of these items to make the parts, to make the components, to repair the equipment, to fix the stable. Yup. Makes perfect sense.

Exhausting sense.

But, ‘idle hooves are the tools of the zebras’ or at least that’s how the bigoted saying that got passed around by the Ministry of Image went.

He flips the bed on its side, and scoots it and its mattress out of the way. He doesn’t remove it. However, he’s not likely to use it often. If ever. Especially without some major overhaul of the frame to be able to handle his bulk. But, he’d like to have the option at least. Even if it is just the all-too-thin-for-him mattress on the floor. So, for now it can sit on its side and take up as little space as possible.

He starts going through the small appliances that he’d commandeered from the surrounding rooms, and starts taking inventory of their components. Taking them apart and breaking them down to components will take time. Time that he certainly has, but, currently, his time is better spent elsewhere. He figures it’s better to make the list, then he’ll know where to come in case he finds he needs one of the parts. Because, if nothing else, the appliance itself may be worth far more than the sum of its parts.

The sudden very real application of the idiom strikes him, and he pauses for a moment to appreciate that fact before he goes back to working on cleaning a circuit board that had been ripped out of some computer and left in a debris pile in an adjacent room. His ear twitches, and he looks up at the air ducts’ vent directly above him as dread starts creeping across his gears in a cold breeze.

A high pitched wail greets his twisting ears. A scream. But from far away. Carried through and bounced around inside of the duct. One like that of a young foal. While it takes him a while to process the exact source of that kind of scream, the sound that clicks true far sooner is one that’s far closer.

That of scraping metal and multi-legged skittering.

A moment later the air duct vent cover comes flying down as a large, huge even, six-legged brown insect comes crashing through the breach. He used to poke fun at a filly he knew that was terrified of roaches. How she’d screech. And her hair would stand on end, and she’d flee in an unabashed stampede for the nearest exit. Every. Time. And how he’d laugh and laugh and laugh. Good times. Good times.

This was not good times and now he suddenly found himself silently apologizing to the long dead filly.

These roaches were massive; he’s seen foals smaller than these things. And they were angry, and, apparently, very, very hungry.

The first one was relatively easy. It didn’t even know what was going on; it just fell through the ceiling. And, thanks to the slight warning courtesy of the noise, Gearing had already drawn his stun rod. The giant radroach had been zapped repeatedly, with high voltage, and cooked in its own shell, before even hitting the ground.

The others weren’t so easily surprised.

Seeing, and more likely smelling, their comrade fall into a roasted (and possibly delicious?) heap caused the others to start concentrating and pouring out of the vent. Heading straight for Gearing.

Now it was his turn to scream like a little filly.

Gearing spins, bucking and stomping, while swinging around his stun rod as fast as he can, knocking a slew of them off of himself, and sending others flying in the process. One that falls at his hooves has a flank load of whoop ass dropped on it as Gearing stomps down and causes it to explode in a disgusting sloppy mess in every direction. He taps the coms button on his pipbuck as he’s fighting, hoping to at least warn everyone else of what’s coming.

“Stable-Tec!! Priority One Alert, hostiles have infiltrated the stable! My location. Need help!”

Despite them being bugs, the incisors start biting into Gearing’s sides, trying to find purchase. In some instances, they do. The metal breaking, bending, and coming apart in small cleaves as if the roaches are using a pair of tin snips. He slams sideways into a wall as he screams in pain, squashing two on that side, and having more bite at his legs, neck and back. He steps into an open area, near where his bed had been, and shakes the monstrous roaches off with a quick spin, then he springs back and takes up a two hind legged pose that looks more fitting for a ballerina on stage. When the roaches charge at him in their next attack wave, he jumps at them, angling his wings and hitting several of them repeatedly with wing and hoof. One of the roaches gets hit just right, and gets cut in half cleanly by one of Gearing’s wings. The other wing gets a jagged splashing of roach meat from him going at the roaches the wrong way with his wings.

He aches. He hurts. And he’s not sure he’s going to get out of this.

He snorts, and stomps a hoof. He refuses to have survived the apocalypse, just to die to a bunch of overgrown pests! Getting swarmed is no excuse, dying that way would be just plain embarrassing.

He jumps at them again, actually tucking his wings in and using his weight and momentum for once, smashing several of them as they tried to grab him and hang on with his roll, but couldn’t handle his weight pressing them into the ground plating. He hops up and bucks one, zaps a second one with his stun rod, sending it flying near the door, then comes smashing down on two others as he turns to look at the roach that he’d zapped, but wasn’t quite dead yet. It rolls upright off its side, smoking from the shock, and starts scrambling after him. Gearing repositions his hooves, stomping down on the head of one that hadn’t quite entirely died yet as he stares at this worthy foe and growls, “Come and get it you greedy-“

A figure jumps through the opening door as a light gray mare comes flying into the room. She springs off one of the walls, with one hind hoof on the wall and the other three on the desk she’d landed on just inside the door, the mare’s head had already picked its next jumping target before she’d landed, and springs for it, going up enough to kick off the ceiling and punch the smoking roach with a metal object on her hoof. She hops around, taking in the seen quickly, and stares at Gearing.

She straightens up a bit and asks, “You that metal fuck Handy told me to come save?”

Gearing stands there, covered in roach mush, and grumbles, “I suppose… Thanks for the help…?”

She trots around in place and grins. “Yeah. I’m great… now it’s time for my reward!” She heads out the door, flicking off the goop from the roach as she sings to herself. “Gonna get me some of that tasty, yeah. Yeah. So sweet and delish, it’s my favorite dish oh yeah. Some Naaaahlah for me, just you wait and see, oh yeaaaahh.” As she trots out with a swaying dance, her rust colored mane swings back and forth opposite her apparent barbwire wreath of flowers for a cutie mark on her haunches.

Gearing watches her, with his ear raised and twitching slightly. He looks up at the air duct and points at his eyes, then at the air duct with a wing tip. “I see you mother fucker. This is some government funded lowest bidding contractor shit right here.” He looks around the room, and grabs up some of the roaches. They were talking about eating meat before, maybe this’ll work. He doesn’t know. Organics confuse him on so many levels. And, while old roaches might have been too small to consider it before, these things could make a massive meal… assuming they were edible. He stuffs them in a sack, and set it outside the door.

He turns around and locks the door behind himself, then has Stable-Tec lock all of the doors in that sector until further notice. Gearing opens a communications channel then starts walking down the hall with the sack over his shoulder. He’s extremely paranoid, and is keeping the stun rod in his mouth as he trudges down the hall, pulling it out with a wing just long enough to send his message. “Stable-Tec, this is Gearing. Stand down from alert. Hostiles have been eliminated. I’m heading to the infirmary to get patched up.”

“Affirmative, Technician Gearing,” the voice replies happily and the sirens over head instantly turn off.

Gearing continues down the hallway, feeling absolutely horrible. The roach goop has gotten into every crevice of his body. He’s even discovered what they taste like. Thankfully, his sense of taste isn’t nearly as sensitive as for a normal pony’s, so they simply taste ‘slimy’ to him.

That’s still more than most ponies would want to endure.

His eye twitches as he looks around, and highly suspicious of every air duct and access panel as he makes his way to the medical ward. When he finally gets to the door he takes in a deep breath, and lets it out in a huff as he tries to calm down. He steps into the decontamination chamber and sighs, thankful to be away from that hell and glad to be receiving some loving care very soon.

Not soon enough.

“Unknown contaminants detected. Subject Gearing detected. Authorization for Organic Cleansing granted. Decontamination sequence beginning.”

Gearings eyes go to their widest as he screams, “Wait! No! No- Aaahhhhggggg!”

From the inside of the medical bay, and even though they can’t actually see through the sealed door to the decontamination chamber, the group of children look over at the door in horror at the blood curdling scream that comes from the decontamination room.

Through the thick metal door.

The auto decontamination protocol voice cheerfully says, “Decontamination completed, you may now enter.” A ding later the door opens.

A wave of heat pours out of the decontamination portal. The children recoil, and stare, wide eyed and full of fear that only gets worse by the second. Even more so as Gearing steps through the doorway, one slow hoof step at a time. The massive waves of heat coming off of him and distorting the air around and behind him gives him this aura of some kind of demon that had just stepped out of the void and is on a murderous rampage. He scans the room from right to left, until his eyes settle on the group of children. His stun rod is crackling lightly with energy, having been held in his mouth the entire time and him currently biting down on it nearly as hard as he can out of pure frustrated pain-induced fury. His eye twitches, and they can see trails of smoke coming from a variety of places on his body. They could almost swear that fires spontaneously popped into existence and just as quickly disappeared at the ends of a few of his frazzled mane and tail hairs.

To make matters worse, the roach goop that had been all over, and partially inside him, has been scored to practical carbon. The flash burn has turned his entire exterior into a charred being with bits of pieces flaking off, some of which actually floating away on the super heated air currents. The bag that had been at his side is gone except for some carbonized fibers, and the radroach hunks look like blackened pods that might have something remotely edible in the very center.

He looks at the gawking foals, and his eye twitches randomly. He asks with a grin, that gets twisted into something horrible by the stun rod in his mouth and the pain coursing over his body, “Whoooo’s hungry?!” He half growls out the words as he bites even harder on the stun rod.

And, that was it.

The children, all of them, faint from the pure fright of this scene. From all they had witnessed in their life. And all they had endured. Nothing had prepared them for some bastardization of Nightmare Moon wreaking havoc on them in the middle of the enclosed space of a medical ward. So, despite the care and attention they’ve received that has put some in fresh clean clothes and all of them through a pleasant bath, they fainted.

And soiled themselves.

Gearing tosses the scorch fused pile of roach meat on a table nearby and grumbles as he forces the stun rod out of his mouth. “Just fucking great… I’ll clean that up in a moment… I’m still contaminated and have this goop all over me.”

He looks over at the other medical bed, and sees Nahlah, clutching the baby to herself as she stares at Gearing wide eyed. He looks over at the kids, then back at her, and nods towards them. “Sorry about that.”

She flinches at first, and her eyes zip back and forth before she swallows hard and waves it away with a paw and a forced smile. “Are- are you okay?” She looks him over then says quietly, “You don’t look okay.”

Gearing hangs his head and starts toward the back corner, hoping he can program this medical pod to actually function for him. “No. No I’m not. I’m about to fall over actually. Fucking thing thought I was some kind of robot.” He looks over at the table and comments with a morbid smirk, “At least the roach meat should be nice and roasted to perfection now.” He continues back over towards the pod as he says, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m in need of some serious medical attention.”

Nahlah puts a paw to her muzzle then waves him towards the pod. “Sure! No problem! Let me know if you need anything.”

Gearing starts working with the auto doc, and it powers up and encourages him to step in for an evaluation. He spends some time going through all of the data files on the machine, and eventually gets too tired standing there. He connects the cable from his pipbuck to the pod, then climbs in after activating the subroutine of programs on his pipbuck. The pod closes its door, having sensed the presence of someone entering it, and secures Gearing inside.

However, it does nothing.

It takes quite a while for the subroutine to run and reprogram a subsection for clockworks. The medical pod’s voice comes across slightly distorted as it uses patched in code that didn’t quite fit the flow of the original voice recordings. “Greetings Gearing! Anatomy confirmed as clockwork pegasus. Beginning examination protocols of clockwork, please standby.” A few moments later it screeches out an alarm. “Warning! Subject Gearing’s vital signs are outside of suggested range. Immediate attention is required!”

Gearing grumbles and simply lays back, feeling the heat dissipate into the pod from his body as fresh air is pumped into the pod through some bit of arcano-technology.

The voice says cheerfully, “Proper protocols have been received and acknowledge, beginning treatment regimen.”

All of the gizmos inside retract, to a starting position, but then the entire pod begins filling with a mist. A moment later the machine kicks on again and begins the process of healing Gearing.

While Gearing is in the tube, several messages pop up onto his pipbuck, but he’s unable to respond. He can’t move for one, and two his pipbuck has currently taken over the medical pod in order to tell it how to properly treat him. While he’s stuck in the machine, and it spends all the time doing the best it can to heal him, the foal that had been suckling from Nahlah gets a whiff of the smell that’s permeating the entire medical bay, and starts crying. Loudly. And, a moment later, it actually vomits, all over Nahlah, and itself, which makes it cry even louder.

Gearing’s eyes jump open to their fullest as he has a realization of what the scream was earlier. The foal. Nettlekiss’s foal. It was probably hungry. Or something. The roaches of the damned must have been trying to get to the noise. Judging by their reaction of biting anything and everything they’d come across, even his metal ass, their intentions were pretty clear: eat the baby.

His eyes close again with a slight smile. Okay. This was worth it then. He’s already helped her foal. Who knows what kind of problems would have happened had they managed to sneak this far in. Though, that does pose a variety of questions to Gearing that he’s going to have to run past Handy the moment he’s free of the confines of this claustrophobia inducing pod.

The multi-armed hover bot that’s been serving as the stable’s nurse, and Nahlah’s personal handmaid, helps Nahlah clean herself and the baby, then goes about cleaning up the children. It had held its ground, having had Nettlekiss’s foal’s welfare as the highest priority. But, given the change in situation, the care of the other children now come well within its area of responsibility. The white, yellow, and pink bot floats around, picking up a child at a time, removing their clothes, cleaning them, and setting them on examining beds as it clears the area methodically. It puts all of the clothing in a washing cycle, at once, and puts a spare sheet over each of the children, and groups of children in some cases, as it tidies up the medical bay.

Gearing looks around as the pod opens, and notices that the air is especially fresh. The smell of cleaner and air freshener tingles his nose as he disconnects his pipbuck from the autodoc. As he’s closing it he looks over at Nahlah and says with a sheepish smile, “Sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.” He looks at himself and can’t help but feel a bit relieved that the overall treatment had also managed to get rid of the carbonized particulates that were scorched onto his gears and clogging up his movement.

Nahlah waves it off with a paw. “You’re not the one that did it.” She looks over at the kids and frowns lightly. “Poor things have been through a lot. Look. They’re still sleeping.” She looks over at Gearing and shrugs as she shakes her head. “I wonder when the last time they actually had a bed? Ever?”

Gearing walks quietly over to the group of children, and stops near one of the beds. He stoops down and gently brushes the exceedingly floofy mane of the violet unicorn. He looks over at Nahlah and says, “Well, that can’t be helped, but we can make sure they have one from here on out.” He drops down a bit and looks at where he’s pretty sure the face of the filly unicorn is as he asks point blank, “Ain’t that right?”

There’s a long pause, then the sheet covering her slightly moves, just enough to reveal her midnight blue eyes, and she stares at him with eyes wide and full of fright. She examines him a bit before asking softly, “You’re not mad at us?”

Gearing shakes his head. “Why would I be mad at you?”

She pulls the fabric close to herself and says with a choke, “You were so scary. You yelled at us…”

Gearing slowly reaches out a hoof, she recoils a bit, but watches him as he slowly closes the distance and ruffles her dark purple mane on the top of her head. “I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t mad at you. Honest.” She hides under the sheet again, but he pulls it back to look her in the eyes again as he repeats, “Honest.”

She pulls it tightly to herself before replying, “What then?”

He sits down and rests his chin on the bed so he can look her in the eye as he says with a smile, “A buncha badun’s wanted to hurt the ponies in the stable… They wanted to eat you foals…” Her eyes get wide again. He tilts his head as he asks, “Remember what I said I’d do if anyone tried to hurt little foals?”

One of the other children, a colt almost the filly’s age, peeks out from under a sheet on a bed nearby and asks from his hiding place. “Kill’em? You said you’d kill them?”

Gearing looks over at the colt and nods. “MMhmm!”

The violet foal purses her lips to the side and asks, “So?”

Gearing looks at her and ruffles her mane again. “Sooo, I killed them. They try and hurt foals on my watch, that’s what’s going to happen.”

The colt stands up out of the sheet and asks, “That’s why you were mad? Because they wanted to hurt us?”

Gearing stands up straight and stamps a hoof before striking a pose with his wings fully extended straight in the air. “Of course. No one hurts foals and gets away with it.”

The kids all jump up from their hiding places and look at him, having been still cowering and acting like they were sleeping to curb his wrath. The violet unicorn jumps on Gearing and hangs from his neck. “Oh! Okay! Thank yoouuuu!”

He brings up one hoof and holds her to him as she nuzzles his cheek. Then he looks around at the others and says with a grin, “Well. Rest easy. I’ve got some more work to do before your rooms are ready.”

They look at each other and the colt from before asks, “Rooms? Our rooms?”

“Yeah.” Gearing shakes his head. “You didn’t expect us to just keep you all cramped in the medical bay, did you? Once I get the other areas cleaned up, you can start staying there instead.”

The violet filly flops down on her rear and looks up at him. “Our own room?!”

Gearing looks down at her and grins. “Yup.”

A couple of the children bounce around and start chattering. A couple of the older ones scurry over and ask how they can help. The violet unicorn chimes in, “Yeah! We can help clean! Let us help you clean!”

Gearing sits down and raises a hoof. “When it’s safe… okay? I need to make sure there’s no more baddies hiding and that no more can get in. Once I’m sure you can help safely… I’ll let you know… okay?”

There are groans of disappointment, but they agree.

Gearing looks at his pipbuck and adds, “I need to have a conversation with Handy. He’s worried. I’ll be back when I can.” He waves at them and heads over to the exit door. The door slides open and, before he walks through, he pauses and looks inside the decontamination chamber from the safety of the medical bay. He opens a channel on his pipbuck and asks, “Stable-Tec… what type of entity is Subject Gearing classified for purposes of decontamination protocols?”

The voice comes from the speaker above the chamber. “Subject Gearing has been allocated to status of Mechanized Automoton due to lack of organic signature.”

Gearing grinds his hoof into the floor plating as he snorts. Then he says as sweetly as possible, “Stable-Tec… Kindly change Subject Gearing’s status to ‘Organic’ for any and all decontamination protocols, until further notice or prior clearance is granted.” He looks up at the speaker and adds, “Use any and all of my credentials to make the necessary correction…”

“Request confirmed. Subject Gearing will, from here on, use parameter ‘desired organic’ for the purposes of choosing decontamination protocols,” the voice replies happily.

Gearing looks at the speaker, raises an eyebrow, then heads into the decontamination chamber with a hint of anxiety. The doors close, then a gush of air whirls around him. A moment later the chime rings, declaring safe for travel, and lets Gearing out into the hall. He stands off to the side, and tries to open a channel to Handy. It takes a while, and after some annoying waiting he realizes that the communications have to be approved by Handy himself.

“When I send you a message, I’d appreciate you give me a prompt reply,” Handy’s voice comes across highly annoyed.

Gearing looks at his pipbuck and turns his head. “I was a little busy trying not to die, jackass. I barely made it to med bay as it is!”

“I sent help!” Handy replies defensively.

Gearing frowns and narrows his eyes at his pipbuck. “Yeah, thanks for that. Though I guess it’s the thought that counts. By time she actually got there she got one swing in on a roach that was already half dead.”

There’s a long silence before Handy replies, “Sorry about that.”

Gearing grumbles and looks at the pipbuck. “’Sorry’? The hell man, you were in the Maintenance bay, right? Why’d you have to call someone and send them instead of, oh, I don’t know, walking down the hall?!”

“I wasn’t in Maintenance. I had something else I had to take care of.”

Gearing slaps a hoof over his eyes then waves it around angrily. “Fine. Whatever. Okay. Let’s just drop it. We don’t have time for this, we got other shit to worry about now.”

“What’s wrong?”

Gearing looks around, then says into his pipbuck, “The things came out of the ventilation shaft… I think they were drawn by the foal’s crying… Handy, something’s wrong with the entire ventilation system if something that big could get through without some kind of warning…”

“Let me look into something… gimmie a minute.”

Gearing looks at his pipbuck, then around in the hall, and starts wondering how many vents he’d actually need to take care of. Welding them in place might work. But that’s only a stop gap measure. They could eventually chew their way through, if the bite marks they’d put on his ass were any indication.

“Gearing,” Handy’s voice comes back a bit shakily. “According to the system, there’s large holes in the detection net. Entire areas worth of sensors are down. They didn’t detect anything, because the sensors themselves aren’t there to tell anyone anything!”

Gearing looks at the pipbuck and the implications are getting to him very quickly. He stomps a hoof and asks with disgust, “And, let me guess, the lower levels are entirely down and a nice big hole in Sector C level one?”

“And the entire network in Research & Development… among others,” Handy confirms.

Footnote: Secondary Node Not Responding. . .

Alerting local intranet for assistance, please stand by. . .

Local intranet not responding, seeking alternate reboot procedure. . .

Chapter 6 and some of the stables secrets are starting to come out to haunt the occupants.

Again I'd like to thank everyone that's helped me with the story. This is certainly becoming a beast and I'm probably going to need all the help I can get. So, thank you all again!

-Quillsy