While Swift and Handy spin around in a complete 180 to face their uninvited guest, Dandy simply shifts to present her side with a graceful simultaneous set of steps. The act of turning sideways so abruptly makes her white coat flutter and trail behind her, bringing it up from the sheer force of it. However, it also lets her bring out several of her pistol boxes from that side, letting her focus on them and their movements instead of having to worry about keeping her coat out of the way.

In short order Dandy has used her well practiced maneuver to bring five of her pistols to bear, all pointed at the unknown pony’s helmeted head. With both Swift and Handy taking defensive stances as they try to assess what’s going on and who this pony is.

The pony standing not far from them unnerves them for a variety of reasons. A good portion of it has to do with the nonchalant attitude of the buck, or mare, it’s impossible to tell through all of that equipment. Another is the armor itself. As a whole, it’s nothing like anything any of them have seen before.

On top of their head seems to be a standard combat helmet that’s maybe a bit too large for them, and covers the entire side and back of their head like it is trying to sink down, but can’t quite make it. It’s perfectly smooth and even entirely envelopes the ears of the one wearing it. And it still retains its original dirty dark green color scheme from during the war. The rest of the helmet though, as the whole contraption fully envelopes their head in complete protection, is an entirely different color. The face and muzzle guard of it sticks out with an external respirator port that’s currently being occupied by some form of filtration unit. All of it has the same dark metallic gray that would normally be associated with a suit of Steel Ranger power armor. Indeed the mix up looks like someone took a power helmet and welded the face portion to the combat helmet. But, despite that being the only visible piece of power armor on them, the helmet is very much active.

Judging by the faintly glowing red eyes.

The eye sockets of the mask have irregularly shaped lenses with sharp abrupt edges instead of smooth curve-sided pieces that they’ve seen before. And it would be easy to spot this individual, even in the darkest of conditions, just by those glowing eyes. But judging by how the faint red glow is unnerving them, and demanding their attention, they can only imagine what the effect would be like if those eyes were all that could be seen. Glowing. Disembodied and floating in the darkness.

The rest of their armor is just as curious, as most of their body is covered by some form of modified combat armor. The original purpose of which is hinted at by the repaired gouges that peek out from under the large dark brown trench coat they are wearing. From what the group can see of the main set of armor, as the individual seems to be wearing several sets simultaneously, the olive green Kevlar-like fabric seems to make up the under layer of the barding, with earthy toned thick rigid plates over all of that. The set of barding covers every inch of the pony, even without the massive trench coat. Except for their hooves, which have some rough looking combat boots poking out from under the barding and trench coat.

Not even their tail has escaped armored confinement. But, unlike the rest of them, their tail has been bound up and hangs out the back in some sort of protective sack. And, at the moment, and inside of the dark blue cloth, it looks more like a thick baton and less like a normal pony’s tail.

The trench coat is another oddity in and of itself. There have been several modifications where pieces of combat armor have been added to supplement the defensive capabilities of the jacket. With large pieces being attached over each shoulder area, and around the neck and shoulders like some type of armored yolk, making for a massive support structure that’s capable of sustaining a large amount of fire, before the underlying base barding even needs to get involved. Along the outside of the trench coat, on each leg, and across the hips, are more combat armor pieces that have been attached through unknown means to make it seem even bulkier. If that wasn’t bad enough, there are points along the entire trench coat where it’s clear that other pieces have been attached to its entire surface.

On the interior lining of it.

In short the pony in the chimera armor looks like they’ve come prepared to take a beating, but has every expectation, and rightly so, of making it back out. However, they do seem to be lacking any serious weapons as there are none exposed. They aren’t wielding any. And they are completely lacking a battle saddle.

This fact, along with the fact that their strange red glowing eyes aren’t even looking at them, but instead seem to be focused up and behind them at the building across the street, gives Swift and company cause for pause and contemplation.

The same modulated breathy voice comes out of the small speaker on the side of the muzzle of the unknown pony as they say, “Appear to be a lot of hostiles…”

Handy hefts his pneumatic sledge a few times as he trails his eyes over the newcomer’s body. He pauses and stares at the faded lettering on their chest as they shift and reveal HPD RIOT across the composite armor plate across their right breast. He brings his eyes up towards the red glow and, even though they are still focused up and towards the distance behind him, he asks, “Can we help you? It’s not polite to sneak up on ponies like that.”

There’s a snort that comes through the air filter like a pressure relief valve before the modulated voice says with a scoff, “So you do know how to check your targets first…? I really expected you to try and weld my helmet to my head with that hammer of yours.”

Dandy taps the side of their helmet with one of her pistol boxes as she scowls and says, “Hey… he’s trying to be polite, but the question stands… who the hell are you and what do you want?”

They turn their head and unquestioningly look directly at her, with undivided attention, before their voice comes out in a gasp, “Lodestar… of course.”

Handy’s eyes go wide as he looks them over again. “You’re Lodestar?!”

Swift rolls her eyes as she glances at Handy momentarily then back at the newcomer. “No, Handy, I’m sure he means he’s here for Lodestar.”

Dandy frowns as she says, “Hey, that’s fucked up, I already picked up the contract… Why’d she send someone new?”

“And what about a name, or should we just make up something for you?” Handy asks as he looks them over again and tries to figure out how they are even walking in that apparently non powered armor.

“Call me whatever you want, I really don’t care,” they say with a deep rolling grumble.

“Okay, ‘Shithead’ it is then,” Swift says with a grin. But it slowly fades off her muzzle as it seems to get zero reaction out of them.

“What’s the situation? Have any of you been inside yet?” they ask as they turn and stare at the building across the street.

“Uh… no… not yet… We were just trying to figure out how to go about doing it,” Handy adds as he turns sideways to look at the building out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, we’re dealing with raiders, so that’s probably for the best… None of you are equipped to handle that… We should limit exposure to prevent infection and letting it spread,” they respond with irritation coming through, even with the heavy voice modulation.

“I’m not exactly helpless here,” Dandy says with a frown as she taps on his helmet a few more times with the same pistol box that he genuinely doesn’t seem worried about. Which just irritates her even more.

The oversized helmet turns to look at her again before they reply, “I’m aware of that, Dandy, but no amount of money is worth getting infected and dying as a result.”

Her eyes grow a bit wider open as she asks quietly, “Wait… how’d you know my…”

Handy twirls his sledge hammer as he says, “We can take care of ourselves. We’re not going to just rush into this.”

“Good, because that’d be stupid,” the modulated voice quips back. “Besides… you’re probably more vulnerable to it than anyone else here… so you really shouldn’t be going in there.” Turning their glowing red eyes back on the building they add, “It’d probably be best if I just go in there myself, get Lodestar and any other survivors, and bring them out to you so you can escort them back.”

Handy raises an eyebrow as he asks with a huff, “Who the hell died and put you in charge?”

Their glowing red eyes turn to look at Handy, causing Handy to flinch momentarily, before they ask with a wheezing sounding suck of the respirator, “Always want a committee, don’t you, Handy? None of you are heavily armored, two of you are wearing no armor at all, without so much as even wearing a biohazard suit. And it only takes one. Single. Drop. To get infected.” They lean toward Handy as they say with a growl, “You of all people should know that, Handy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not that stupid, Handy. Don’t even act like it. That’s one of the things that pisses me off about you. You know better, but act like you don’t, and do dumb shit anyway when you’re better then that,” the voice comes out in a rapid gush before taking in a deep sucking breath. “That serum stopped the infection. And brought you back. There’s no telling what would happen if you get infected again.” He reaches over with a hoof and points it at the top of Handy’s head. “There’s already been damage, that can’t be reversed… if you get infected again, you’re screwed. Even if we had more of the serum, which we don’t, there’s no telling if it’d even work on you again. Hell, the virus might just pick right back up where it left off: with you being a slathering psychotic cannibal. Is that what you want?!” They pull back and practically snarl through the modulation, “Use what’s left of your damn brain for a change, while you still have it!”

Swift’s eyes had gone wide at the start of the beratement, but her mouth drops in the middle of the modulated rant as something clicks for her. “Gearing?!” After the red eyes focus on her she asks, “That is you, isn’t it?”

“Who else would it be?”

“Why the hell didn’t you just say so instead of the long line of bullshit?” Handy asks with his eyes narrowed at Gearing.

“We already agreed I’d meet up with you all once I got my armor situation sorted out. Who else could find you so easily in this concrete death trap? Besides, you both have PipBucks and could obviously tell I was a friendly. It shoulda been common sense and basic deduction.”

“Well… that’s…” Handy starts as he lowers his eyes and starts looking around.

KLANG.

Gearing’s head shifts to the side as a glowing piece of rebar floats next to his head.

He looks over at Dandy and asks with a groan, “What the hell was that for?!”

Swift puts a hoof over her eyes as she partially giggles, “Oh boy… Now might not be the time for this…”

Dandy waves the rebar in his face as she says, “To get your hard headed ass’s attention!” She pokes the end of his mask’s snoot with the tip of the rebar as she says, “That is entirely unfair! To everyone! And especially Handy!” Handy looks over at her and raises an eyebrow at the unexpected support.

Dandy pops Gearing on the side of the head a couple more times, lighter, but still enough to cause a light chiming noise from his helmet. “No one could have just automatically assumed it was you. You’ve never worn that armor. You don’t sound like yourself. And given where we are it could literally be anyone out here… so expecting any of us, Handy included, to just know it’s you, is complete and utter crap!”

Handy stares at her for a moment, and then nods a single solid bob of his head in agreement.

Gearing continues to stare at her in silence for a few moments before he finally says flatly, “You’re right.”

Handy’s eyebrows nearly jump off his head in surprise.

Gearing looks over at Handy and says, flatly, “I’m sorry.”

Handy’s eyes jump open to their max size as he blurts out, “What?”

“I’m sorry, Handy… Dandy is right… given the entire situation, it was unreasonable of me to expect you to know who I am just because I happened to show up around where we were going to meet. So, I’m sorry.”

They stare at him, with Handy entirely dumbfounded and his jaw on the floor.

Gearing looks them in the eye one at a time before he looks back to Handy and says, “I’m a grown enough buck to admit when I make a mistake. And I have the integrity to do so… So I’m sorry for the confusion, Handy.”

Handy slowly sits down as he nods his head. “Uh… yeah… sure… no problem… apology accepted, thanks.”

Gearing looks them over again before stepping closer and looking through the window out at the building across the street. “So, if you’re not keen about me going in on my own, even though I’m the only one among us that’s immune, what plans were you thinking?”

“Uh… plan?” Handy asks in a haze as he tries to process what just happened.

Gearing looks over at him and nods towards the building across the street. “How we’re going to deal with this? How we’re going to see if Lodestar’s in there, and how we’re going to get him out if he is…” he stares at him for a few moments before he asks, “You okay, Handy?”

Dandy grins as she’s putting her pistols away. “Yeah, we really need to sort that out; we just got here so we haven’t really talked about it much yet.” She points over to the building and asks, “What do you know about the building? Anything from your pre war days?” As soon as Gearing’s head is focused back across the street, Dandy’s horn comes to life with her overglow and the words ‘TOLD YA SO’ pop up in glowing sparkles between her and Handy as she grins.

Gearing bobs his head around before he says, “Well, this looks like a local Police Department’s Headquarters. Not simply a precinct branch. Bigger. The building’s at least as deep as it is wide. The upper levels would be mostly administrative officers and where the detectives work on various cases. The first floor is mostly for public interaction and for booking, at least on the front side.” He points under the building as he says, “If this is like most others, there will be a set of holding cells in the basement under the front half, for easier access to anywhere the prisoners would need to be brought, and the back half is mainly dedicated to their motor pool and service vehicle parking.” He looks over at Dandy as he says, “Mainly for rapid deployment out the back if they need it, and to transport prisoners. The cells here aren’t really meant for long term incarceration. Only short term stuff, or to be held before getting transferred out to one of the prisons or whatever. Like Hightower on the other side of Hoofington.”

Dandy looks at him and tilts her head as she asks, “Why would there be a local headquarters? I thought headquarters were the ‘central’ of everything?”

Gearing shakes his head. “Population size and density kind of demanded it. Also it was a method for redundancy, in case an attack took out one, the others would be able to keep the peace and pick up the slack. Last I checked, Hoofington had three: East, West, where we apparently are now, and Central, which is inside of The Core.” He nods towards the building across the street. “They’ve also got a court room in there for petty crimes… drunk and disorderly… petty theft… basically misdemeanors and things that don’t really need a full blown trial and only carry either short jail sentences or a fine. Anything else gets forwarded on to the rest of the court system.” After a short pause he adds quietly, “Well… did.”

Swift looks at the building and asks, “Well, where would you think would be the most logical place to hold Lodestar? The jail cells?”

Gearing lets out a disgruntled huff that seems to get magnified by the gush of air through the respirator and the modulator. “If we were trying to base this on logic, yes. That would make the most sense…” He looks over at her and adds, “But we’re dealing with half brain dead raiders. There’s no telling what ‘makes sense’ to them, so he really could be anywhere.”

Swift nods her head as she looks over at him. “That’s fair.” She stares at him for a few moments before asking, “Hey, Gearing… what’s with the creepy voice modulator and gas mask sounds, I thought you don’t need to breathe?”

Gearing looks over at her and says with a tone of annoyance that even the voice modulator can’t cover up, “I might not require oxygen to survive, but I still need air to talk, you know. I have a voice box, not a speaker system… and that requires air to function…”

Dandy waves both forelegs in the air as she says in a hissing not-quite yell, “We can chat about Gearing’s funky new armor later… for now we need to figure out how we’re going to take out Raider H.Q.”

Gearing nods as he turns and faces the others. “I’m all ears. What did you have in mind?” He reaches up with his right forehoof and taps the side of his helmet near the relative location of where his temple should be. Instantly the faint red glow of his helmet disappears and he stares at them through the cold dark glassy material that becomes visible once the power is cut.

The arguments start almost instantly among the group as they try to sort out the best way to go about doing it. Gearing has a pretty solid stance of not wanting anyone else to go into the building. And doesn’t want to budge from it. But the others don’t want to sit idly by while he basically does everything. There’s many concerns brought up that he can’t simply be everywhere at once, and searching the whole thing is going to take time. Splitting up completely into individuals and searching the entire building, to save time, was shot down the instant it was brought up, with the general consensus being that it’s just asking for trouble with the number of hostile markers in the building.

The compromises continue to sway back and forth, and it’s generally agreed to go in groups of two, but Gearing has another sticking point on it.

He brings up that, in general, they have two close quarters melee specialists, and two that are better at a distance. That the typical set up of Handy and Swift being together puts them at a disadvantage of being vulnerable to weapons fire, especially since Swift refuses to use guns at all and Handy only has his pistol. Handy’s also the only one besides Gearing that’s wearing any type of armor, even if it is rather beat up and abused at the moment. So he tries to push that, at the minimum, Handy should additionally go with them, which would leave him by himself, and he’s okay with that.

But they aren’t.

Eventually Swift is so annoyed by the circular arguments that she finally belts out in exasperation, “Fine! Then how about me and Dandy team up, and you two thick headed bucks go do your thing together. That way there’s guns for both teams, and Gearing’s not simply out by himself walking into one disaster after another.”

Dandy looks over at her and bobs her head side to side as she says, “That makes sense, but Gearing seems to like playing decoy and luring idiots out into killzones we set up.”

“I have no intention of simply being a distraction during this operation,” Gearing’s modulated voice comments as he looks over at Dandy.

She frowns as she waves a hoof at him. “Well what about your weapons? You don’t look like you’re really carrying anything. Do you even have any firearms with you?”

Handy waves it away with a hoof as he says, “I’ve got it covered if nothing else. I have plenty of ammo as well.”

“Handy, are you talking about the rounds you got from those Wild Ones freaks?” Gearing asks as he tilts his head to look over at him.

“Uh, yeah, why?”

“That ammo’s shit… you’re going to need a lot of it to do anything to anypony… What’s worse is it’s going to gunk up your weapon more and require maintenance on it more often.”

“How do you know? You didn’t even take any of it I thought?”

Gearing stares at him and says flatly, “I’d been raked with it. Repeatedly. By their SMGs. The impacts were lower than they should have been if they’d been standard rounds. So I checked.” He tilts his head. “Didn’t you notice that they’re listed as ‘surplus rounds’ in your inventory sorter? That means they’ve been cheaply reloaded, have less powder, and or use inferior powder. Resulting in more residue when it’s fired. They’ll be fine against unarmored targets, but against anything with some real armor, you better not even try it or you’ll annoy them with the noise.”

Swift bobs her head around as she says, “Well, probably good enough for raiders then at least.”

“Probably,” Gearing concedes, “But I ran into two gangers that wore metal armor, even more than Handy is currently wearing, when we went to take down Cookie. So just keep it in mind.”

Handy raises an eyebrow as he asks, “Well, what about you? Do you got anything? As Dandy’s pointed out, you’re carrying far less than you normally would.”

Gearing nods as he says, “I needed to make good enough time, and couldn’t risk getting bogged down… and I have something with far more punch than that 12.7mm you tote around…” he tilts his head and slides the cheek of his helmet under the trench coat and slaps his head against something under the shoulder guard of his right side that makes a soft, but audible, click. He uses his forehoof to hold the edge of the trench coat out of the way as he turns back to face them.

With a massive revolver attached to the side of his muzzle like he’s holding it in a mouth grip.

Dandy’s eyes jump to their widest possible as she grins widely and asks excitedly, “What the hell is that?!”

The monster of a pistol revolver has a long barrel that seems more fit to be put on a smaller rifle than on a pistol variety of firearm. The cylinder is likewise much larger than normal but, according to the pattern, and the size of the individual chambers, there are only five rounds available. Which, given how big the gun is already, and the individual rounds are so large that the cylinder didn’t have enough space for any more to be added, it really exemplifies the weapon’s potential destructive capabilities.

Handy raises a hoof and limply waves it at the gun as he asks softly, “How- how do you even fire it? With that helmet on I mean?”

“Tension cable. That’s why I have to holster it under my shoulder guard.”

Dandy hops over and entirely invades Gearing’s personal space as she gets her eyes mere inches from the firearm and asks, “How big are those fucking cartridges?! They look like rifle rounds!”

“That’s because they are rifle rounds… forty-five caliber rifle rounds with a seventy grain custom powder charge.”

Handy’s mouth hangs open for a moment before he asks, “The hell you plan on shooting with something like that?!”

Gearing looks over at him, making Dandy have to duck to avoid accidentally getting pistol whipped by the protruding long barrel. “Whatever the fuck is stupid enough to get in my way… I can’t use my rifles in this getup and need something with enough stopping power to compensate for it.”

Dandy reaches up with a hoof and points at it as she grins. “H- hey… Gearing… not to get fresh or anything… but… can I play with your gun later? Just want to see what it’d be like to shoot some kind of monster like that.”

Swift snickers as she says with her eyes partially closed, “Isn’t playing with his gun how you ended up the way you are?”

Dandy looks over at her and flushes as she grumbles, “Oh shut up about that already!” She hangs her head a bit as she obviously starts thinking things through.

“Sure, I’ll let you squeeze off a round. Might give you an idea about switching out from your current pistol boxes. Although it might be too much for your magic to keep control of with the recoil. But only after we get all of this sorted,” Gearing replies nonchalantly while notably apparently ignoring the obvious innuendo potential.

Dandy reaches up and taps him on the shoulder guard as she says softly, “Uhm… Gearing… there’s… there’s something we need to… Something I need to tell... you…” She looks up at him and flushes more as she squeaks out, “We needa talk…”

Swift grins widely as she sits down, leans into Handy, and says quietly, “Oh this is gonna be good…”

Gearing stows his monster pistol as he says, “Is it about getting Lodestar?”

“Well… no… nothing about this trip at all really…”

“Then we can talk about it later, after we get this squared away.” He turns his attention toward her as he says, “Business before pleasure and all of that…”

She closes her eyes and groans as she hangs her head and mumbles, “That’s part of the problem…”

“What?”

She waves a hoof quickly. “Nothing. Never mind. Yeah, we’ll talk later.”

Swift frowns as she kicks the ground with a forehoof and knocks up some dirt from the dust covered rubble they’re standing on. “Well, shit… no entertainment for now I suppose.”

Gearing looks over at her and cocks his head to the side for a moment, earning a sheepish grin from Swift in return. But, because she says nothing, Gearing asks, “Could you do a quick fly over around the building? See what the roof’s like, and see if you notice any turrets up there, or just any other surprises in general? It’ll give us an idea of what we’re dealing with.”

Swift nods as she stands up. “Sure. I can be back in a flash. But, honestly, surprised you didn’t just say you were going to do it and take off.”

Gearing waves a hoof towards her and says flatly, “You’re unquestionably the faster flyer. And, in my current armor, it’s not a great idea to try and fly. There’d be nothing subtle about it.” Swift gives Gearing a beaming grin of pride at his otherwise obvious admission before she zips off and out the large hole in the back corner of the room where the corner of the building had fallen down.

Handy had opened his mouth to say something to her, but Swift already zipped off before he got the chance and left him confused and irritated. And before he can say anything to voice said irritation, Gearing asks, “Do you need tools to fix your armor, or why are the metal plates still jacked up, Handy?” Which just adds to Handy’s confused state.

More so because the question, through a voice modulated respirator or not, comes across as genuine concern for his well being.

He raises an eyebrow for a moment before shaking his head. “Well, I fixed what I could with what I had. But I need a loaded workbench to be able to really get it where it needs to be. And I’m not sure how much they would have wanted to charge me to fix it, but I do know that we need every cap we can get our hooves on for the supplies we need.”

Gearing reaches over with a hoof and trails the edge of his combat boot along a few of the gouged lines, and connects the dots with a few of the holes in it, all without actually touching Handy, as he says, “Well, it should hold up well enough as long as we don’t get into anything too serious. But, with all the holes already in it, they’re more likely to get lucky and do some real damage to you…” He tilts his head side to side a few times before he adds, “When we get back to Megamart, we’ll need to either get your gear fixed up, or get you something new. That’s not going to be good enough to last much longer the way it is.”

Handy lets out a sigh before he tilts his head and raises an eyebrow as he asks, “And just what do you have planned that’s going to need me to have a fresh set of armor? I’d really wish you’d ask me before you go volunteering me for something…”

“You want to get home, don’t you?”

“What kind of question is that?”

Gearing rolls his entire head on his shoulders before he says flatly, “Handy… do you realize how far away we are? And, without the skywagon, we’re going to have to hoof it the whole way. Considering the number of things we’d run into with having the skywagon most of the way here, do you really think the trip back is going to be any easier? Because, honestly, I think the trip back is going to be far worse. Especially with my luck.”

Handy stares at him for a moment before saying quietly, “That’s… an excellent point.”

Gearing nods. “And, depending on how things go with Lodestar, we might be carrying back a lot more on the way back as well… making us even bigger targets…”

Handy frowns as he looks out the window towards the police station HQ across the street. “Yeah, that’s been bothering me too. I don’t really see how we can get around it though.”

“I have a few ideas… but it’d require you actually trusting me a bit,” Gearing says with a sigh.

Handy’s head whips over to look at him and he narrows his eyes as he says, “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”

“What do you like the sound of?” Dandy asks with a grin.

Gearing rolls his head on his neck again before shaking his head. “I can haul a lot on my own. Even in flight. So, by myself, I can fly back with quite a bit. It would take a while, maybe longer over all, but I could make enough back and forth trips to get everything down there, or at minimum enough that we won’t be so overburdened on the trip back.”

Handy frowns as he says, “And I suppose besides trust, it would require me sitting back here babysitting the supplies while you fly back and forth? Being away from my family even longer?”

Gearing shrugs. “Well, you and Swift could head back as soon as we make the trades with whatever you can comfortably carry. And I just keep making the round trips. We’ll just come to some sort of arrangement that they’ll hold it for me while I make the deliveries. Though, to be honest, and I know you two can generally take care of yourself, I’d feel better if I went with you on that return trip. Don’t want you guys getting ambushed in your sleep again by moron bounty hunters or whoever else might be around.”

Dandy stays back behind and off to the side of Gearing as he’s talking with Handy, and decides this is a great moment to pseudo chime in. In her own way. Again she summons up a few faintly glowing letters in the air and grins at Handy as she keeps nodding towards Gearing while Gearing can’t see her or her illusions.

Handy glances at it for only a moment before bobbing his head around and looking at the ground as Dandy’s message winks out of existence before Gearing can notice it. After a moment’s consideration he looks up at Gearing and asks, “Well, how about we cross that bridge when we get to it? And all three of us can figure out how we want to go about it when we actually know what we’re going to have to haul and we’re not looking at a building full of crazies. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds like a great idea. One thing at a time,” Gearing says with an over exaggerated nod of his head.

“What is?” Swift asks as she’s flying back in through the hole in the wall.

Dandy looks over at her and grins as she nods towards Gearing and Handy. “Oh they’re just chatting and making plans for your trip back home…” She grins even wider as she says, “And Gearing was just complimenting Handy on his idea of discussing the matter in full, later, when all three of you can sit down and chat freely.”

Gearing turns his head to look at Dandy before his modulatedly grumbly voice comments, “That’s a bit of an unnecessary recap, isn’t it?”

Swift lands near Handy as she looks at Dandy and asks, “Oh? So you’re saying they were playing nice for a change?” She looks back and forth between Gearing and Handy before she adds with a grin, “Maybe I should have you foalsit more often!” When Handy turns his head to shoot her a dirty look, she quickly leans in and kisses him right on the end of his nose, startling the grumpy look right off his face in the process.

Gearing’s modulated voice lets out a stuttered snort-like sound that, after a moment of reverberating, comes across as a bit of a snicker as he shakes his head. He looks over at Swift and asks, while she’s still staring at the startled Handy, “See anything?”

Swift looks over at him and blinks for a moment, as she’d temporarily forgotten all about all of that in her fun of teasing Handy. “Oh!” Her eyes zip back and forth a moment as she mentally double checks before she says, “Not really, no. Nothing more than we can already see or guess from here. Well, except for the large skylight set into the front half of the building’s roof… Could drop in from there maybe if we’re trying to go in loud.”

“Not without being very loud, with explosives or something,” Gearing chimes in. “That glass is going to be some form of reinforced bullet or blast resistant glass. And that’s assuming it doesn’t have some kind of spell matrix on it.”

“At least there’s also no signs of any turrets outside. At all, actually. And the roof’s entirely abandoned, which is probably a good thing considering that rampart that circles the entire roof would provide anyone up there good cover as they shoot down at anyone in the streets,” Swift adds. She turns and starts waving towards the far side of the building with a wing as she says, “Judging by the set up, it looks like they use the primary front door, and the back ramp that must lead down to the motor pool to get in and out. But the motor pool’s shuttered and I didn’t see a way to open it from the outside.”

Gearing looks down as he bobs his head around. “It probably either opens from the inside, or has some kind of card reader to get in. If we’re lucky it’d have a terminal that controls the gate on the outside, but I won’t hold my breath on that.”

Dandy looks between the other members of the group as she asks, “So, what? Are we going to try one of the smaller emergency exit doors that are normally on the side or back of these types of buildings?” She looks over at Gearing and tilts her head as she asks, “Or do you have something more covert in mind?”

“Right through the front door?” Gearing asks as he stares straight ahead at apparently nothing in particular.

Dandy squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head before she asks, “What?”

“Through the front door,” Gearing repeats. He looks over at her and adds, “Me and Handy go in first, and you two follow in shortly after. We’re the most heavily armored of the group, so it’d make sense for us to be the first ones through the door. Just make sure to stay near Swift.” He looks over at Swift and adds, “If you guys need help, send a message, and we’ll meet up with you as soon as we can.”

Dandy smirks and turns her head as she waves a hoof dismissively at him. “Yeah, yeah… and don’t forget to message us if you are the one that needs some backup.” She whips out several of her pistol boxes with her levitation field so quickly her white coat flicks up as she points them at his head and grins at him. “I’m not some tender hoof, here, you know. I can more than take care of myself.”

Gearing turns his head to look at her, and actually pushes a couple of the pistol boxes back, before he says in his modulatedly grumbly voice, “I hear that.” She grins and, just as quickly, stows her pistols back into their individual holsters. Gearing looks around at the group and asks, “Well, are we going to do this or not?”

Swift nods and waves him away with a forehoof as she says with a giggle, “Yeah, yeah… go ahead and go introduce yourselves… we’ll be hanging back and, if you don’t message sooner, we’ll follow in after a few minutes.”

Handy nods, leans over, and gives Swift a kiss on the cheek before he turns and starts heading for a missing window out to the side of the building. “Come on, Gearing, the sooner we get this started, the sooner we can get done and get out of here.”

“Finally,” Gearing grumbles as he follows Handy out through the gap and into a small walkway between the buildings that leads to the street out front.

After they’ve left, Dandy looks over at Swift and asks, “Did something seem off with Gearing to you, or was that just me?” Swift looks over at Dandy and frowns, causing Dandy to nod and look out the front window as she says softly, “Yeah, that’s what I thought…”

After getting away from the building, Gearing and Handy run across the street, with Gearing quickly taking the lead. As they are climbing the massive stairs that lead up to the police headquarters portico they keep looking around for anyone that might be looking for a fight. Unlike many similar porticos for the other government buildings, this one’s roof does not extend all the way to the top of the building’s roof. Instead it only goes up to what would be the point between the second and third floor.

And, as they get closer, Gearing’s focus jumps from one roughly semi-circle of scrap to the next on top of the portico’s roof before he says, “The turrets that were out front have already been destroyed.” Then he scurries into the darker cover provided by the sets of large stone columns that are supporting the portico’s roof.

The pair pauses on the portico, and uses the pillars to hide behind as they take in the scene at the front doors.

The entire portico is littered with trash. Various things discarded from the current occupants who have simply dropped it and left it to rot where it fell. A good portion of which is doing so merrily as there are bloody globules scattered around, and more than a few freshly gnawed bones. On the left of the set of doors is a trash can that’s been filled with one flammable material or another, and is constantly burning. Currently there’s a piece of a tire in it that continuously belches out black smoke. All the while roasting and charring a porcelain doll that’s inside of a shopping cart that was capsized and placed on top of the burning trash can to act as an improvised grill. From the remnants on the porcelain doll, it’s pretty easy to see that at one time, it had a nice set of doll’s clothes on it, and the mane and tail was some kind of faux hair plastic that’d melted down to charred stubs.

To the right of the doors is an overturned trash can, with the bones of some pony arranged to make it look like the pony was trying to grab hold of the long vertical bars that run the length of the mesh trash can. If it wasn’t for the fact that the majority of the bones are missing, especially spinal bones, it would give concern that somepony had been left to die in there like a personal prison until they completely wasted away.

But, even as old as the bones are, whoever had done this had obviously wanted to bring that sort of twisted scenario to the mind’s eye of any who’d seen it. Whether as a warning or for their own perverse kicks there’s no telling.

Handy peeks in through the grimy glass and metal doors as he says quietly, “So… through the front door, huh?”

Gearing grunts through the respirator before he says, “Yeah… straight up the middle.”

Handy looks over at him and asks, “So do we draw straws on who has to go in first or-” Gearing throws open the door he was looking through and starts stepping through before Handy even finishes speaking. “Tag, your it I guess?” Handy pulls his own door open and starts walking in as Gearing starts walking straight towards the center of the foyer of the building.

It becomes abundantly clear that the foyer area where those coming in first interact with the building’s occupants is actually a massive atrium. The skylight that Swift had mentioned is visible high above, and provides more than enough light to make the entire first level around the ovaloid welcome desk completely visible. And, with the overhead skylight, and the open floor plan, they can look up and see the above three floors of doors peeking out around the railing that encompasses the atrium on every level except the first.

The ovaloid desk in the center has multiple terminals set on its surface all the way around, and a couple of them seem to still work, given their faint glow. Others are nothing more than fancy trash, a perfect partner for the rest of the refuse that’s scattered everywhere.

As Handy is trailing behind Gearing, who’s heading straight for the desk, he notices that Gearing ducks his head down and to the side, under the inside right edge of his trench coat pseudo armor. He’s about to ask Gearing where they should go next, When Gearing jumps up and lands on top of the nearest edge of the welcome desk, before jumping clear over to the opposite side. In the process he kicks a tin can that goes skittering across the police headquarters’ stone tiled floor. But the noise is entirely drowned out by something far louder.

As Gearing fires off two rounds from his massive revolver.

Bahdoom. Bahdoom.

Handy stutter steps and reaches up with a hoof to hold his ear as he recoils from the sound. “What the hell, Gearing?! What did you load that with, balefire bombs?!” As his eyes focus he can see pieces of red bits fall and settle on the other side of the table as Gearing looks back and forth at the results of his decision.

Handy runs around the desk and looks down, to find three ponies sprawled out on the ground. Each of them are covered from nose to flank with pockmarks from very equine looking bites. Of the one mare’s eyes he can see, he notices the tell tale sign of the yellowed eyed madness that he’d suffered through himself.

Although, in this moment, he can’t help but be glad that Gearing had chosen, and had the ability, to shoot him in the head with something that helped him. Instead of with that cannon he’s toting around. One of the shots entirely ripped off the top part of one mare’s head, with the bullet passing through and blowing out the back portion of the mare next to hers neck. Resulting in exposed vertebrae being revealed in such a way that they look like oversized teeth of a mouth that’s formed on the back of the mare’s head. The buck that was with them, and apparently was given a bullet all his own, was shot down and at an angle that put the bullet through his head, then through his own torso, which continued on until it made a massive hole out his underside and splattered viscera across the stone tile.

The leather like armor that looks like it came from office furniture that they are wearing, did nothing at all to stop the devastation unleashed upon them. It couldn’t even keep the buck’s insides from bursting out of himself from the inside like an overfilled water balloon.

Handy looks up at Gearing and points a hoof at the fresh corpses. “So we’re just going to walk in, and shoot the place up. That’s your plan?”

Gearing looks over at Handy, causing him to flinch as he momentarily stares down the massive bore of the revolver Gearing is wielding. He stares at Handy for a few moments before his modulated voice replies back, “Yes. I don’t feel like hunting them down.”

As he’s jumping off the desk to the stone floor, Swift and Dandy run in through the front door. They look around the atrium and slowly trail their eyes over to Gearing as he swaps out new cartridges into his revolver.

Swift looks around again before asking, “I thought I heard a bomb go off?”

Handy points at Gearing and replies with his eyes narrowed and his ears laid back, “He fired that big fucking gun of his.”

Gearing looks over at them and nods towards the left, then the right. “Which way you want to go? We’ll go the other.”

Swift and Dandy look back and forth as they look at the two primary hallways that lead off from the atrium welcome and information desk. Swift points towards the left as she says, “We’ll go this way, you guys go the other way. If you find Lodestar, let us know.”

Gearing nods and starts walking towards the right as he says, “I’m all over it.”

Swift looks around at the welcome desk, the computers, and everything left out and untouched, including a random partial box of fancy buck cakes, and calls after Gearing, “You’re not going to look in the terminals? Or take anything with you?”

“No,” his modulated voice comes back as he opens up the first door in the hallway and looks in before closing it and continuing down the hallway.

“Not even a smart ass comment about using your gun to introduce yourself, and saying it was my suggestion?” Swift prods.

Gearing doesn’t even react as he heads into the hallway that breaks off from the main area on the right side of the massive atrium. Swift looks over at Dandy, sharing eye contact for a moment before saying, “Yeah… you thought right…”

Handy follows after Gearing, walking sideways as he looks at her, “What?”

Swift waves him off with a hoof and turns to head towards the left. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it… you two take care.”

“And watch where you’re going! Let Gearing go first! You’re eyes are shit,” Dandy adds before heading off with Swift.

As Handy catches up to Gearing, he takes in the sights of the various decorations of the ancient government building. Along the walls are the typical propaganda posters put out by the wonderful ponies at the Ministry of Image. Requests for recruits for the various branches of the military. Warnings of incursions by zebra infiltrators and assassins. There’s even a token poster featuring the pink maned head of the Ministry of Peace pleading for everyone to do better. All of them worn and faded by time and various violence that has taken place in the last two centuries.

But they aren’t the only decorations in the long hallway.

In between the various official Ministry of Image posters, and far greater in number, are various pieces put out by the Hoofington Police Department. Various news articles about things the police have done to curb not only local crime, but help with the war effort by helping to sniff out spies and saboteurs even in their local areas. Among them are various busts of ponies, mares and bucks alike, set upon pedestals along the sides of the hallway and made from various materials. Stone. Brass. Copper. A couple even look like they were made of fired terracotta clay.

Almost all of them have some sort of damage from one form of vandalism or another, and a few of them have even been knocked over or outright smashed.

As Gearing is opening up a door on the right to peek in, just as Handy catches up to him, Handy’s eyes get drawn to a group of gold lettering just past the door set into some type of black stone that has been polished to a near mirror finish. Gearing pokes his head in the room, and sways side to side, before he pulls his front half back out and starts across the hall to the door behind Handy.

Handy points at the black polished stone, and asks, “Any idea what this is all about?”

Gearing pauses opening the door, long enough to look over at the wall. He stares at it for a moment before returning his focus to the door he was about to open, and heading in again. “Yeah.”

Handy looks back at him, obviously expecting more of an answer, and frowns at Gearing as he reemerges from the apparently empty room. “Well?”

Gearing looks at him, at the wall again, then turns and continues down the hallway as he says, “Those are the names of the officers that lost their lives in the line of duty…”

Handy’s head whips back and forth quickly before he asks, “What makes you think that? There’s a lot of names here.”

Gearing turns, walks over, and runs a hoof in a straight line, underlining the line of dates under the names. “Name. Rank. And a date…” he turns and quickly opens the next door as he says, “I know a memorial when I see one.” He moves across the hall and pulls the next door open and looks in as he grumbles, “The country was full of them before it turned into a giant one itself.” He doesn’t lean in this time and simply turns his head before he shuts the door again.

Handy watches as Gearing takes a few steps, but stops and looks to his left. As Handy watches him. Gearing moves some of the various rubble and debris out of the way with a forehoof before he grabs a long tarnished brass pole.

Gearing looks side to side, and turns sideways, using a hind leg to kick off the heavier bits of stone and masonry from the cloth he’s trying to uncover. He grabs the pole in his armored fetlock and carefully lifts it up. And as he’s tilting and uprighting it, the Equestrian flag dangles down from the end and waves with the air for the first time in centuries. Although it’s from Gearing moving it, and not some wind this time.

The flag is damaged and stained. With many holes of various sizes in it from different abuses and out right age. But, miraculously, it’s still mostly intact. Gearing stands there gently brushing off more of the dust and dirt as he looks the old flag over. “Like this flag, the country was once something new, brilliant, and amazing…” he aggressively brushes off a few stubborn pieces of stone that are practically glued to the fabric with dried mud as he adds, “And then somepony went and fucked it all up…”

Handy walks towards him a bit as he looks at the ancient cloth. “It’s just a bit of fabric. It’s nothing important.” He looks at Gearing and raises an eyebrow. “Why do you care about it so much?”

Gearing looks over at him and sucks in air through the respirator before he grumbles. “It’s not about a piece of cloth. It’s about what it represented.”

“The princesses?”

“Fuck no! A country isn’t about its leaders. And damn sure not about those two. It’s not about the land either. A country is about its people. The people are what matter. And, as long as the people endure, the country remains. Even if the land is destroyed or taken from them.” He turns to look at the flag again as he says, a bit quieter, “A country’s job is to protect its people, and of them all it’s the job of the leaders to make sure it gets done. And done correctly.”

Handy looks around, and starts batting at a second brass pole on the ground with a forehoof mindlessly as he says, “Yeah, well, looking around… I’d say somepony dropped the ball…”

“Ain’t that the fucking truth…” Gearing gushes with a snort as he looks down at the ground around their hooves.

“You look sweet, give us a taste!” a mare’s voice joyfully cackles out.

Before either of them can react a mare with an old ripped Hoofington Police Department uniform, with many chains and bits of rubber wrapped around the outside in spiky streamers, has jumped over and tackled Handy from behind.

Handy rolls with her, and the blow, to the side, losing his grip on his mallet as he tumbles with her across the hallway. The mare’s face is covered in a variety of scars, and around her brilliant green eyes is a sea of diseased yellow. Eyes that are gleaming with excitement as she leans in and starts snapping at Handy’s face with audible clicks of her teeth as she just misses him with each rapid fire nip. He keeps her up and away from himself with his forehooves, and kicks at her with his hind hooves, as he grabs the grip of his pistol from its holster and starts bringing it around to shoot her.

He dodges a few more snaps, and quickly jerks his head around to point his Proditor’s Gladius at the crazed mare. But before he clicks the safety off and fires, one of her eyes explodes and is replaced with a golden shine that lengthens out of his peripheral vision.

Her thrashing stops instantly and her body quickly goes limp as it’s held aloft by the protrusion coming out of her face, until her body is flicked to the side with all of the force emanating from the golden glow.

Handy follows it over and to the side, and after a moment of staring he finally recognizes one of the flag poles. A flag pole that had been used as a spear and skewered the mare right through the eye with its supposedly decorative pointed end. Handy looks around quickly as he’s rolling over onto his side and sees Gearing standing right next to, and practically over, him.

After stowing his pistol, Handy asks with a gasp of breath, “Where’d the hell she come from!?”

Gearing points off to the side, drawing Handy’s attention to the now wide open door that they had just passed. “There.”

Handy looks up at him with his eyes wide with surprise. “I thought you checked it?!”

“Apparently not well enough…”

“Apparently!”

Gearing looks at Handy and asks, “You okay?”

Handy quickly jumps back up onto his hooves as he nods. “Yeah. I’ll- I’ll be fine. She just startled me, that’s all.”

“You really should keep the safety off when you’re in the thick of it.”

“I… just don’t wanna shoot somepony I don’t mean to accidentally.”

“Fair.”

Handy looks him over and raises an eyebrow as he asks, “How’d you not see her? You checked the room, didn’t you?”

Gearing gives a single shake of his head before his modulated voice replies, “I only looked in to see if the red indicators were in the room. She may have been in a storage closet in there. I don’t know. I did not enter and clear it. We don’t have time to clear each and every room in this building before we find Lodestar. He’s the priority.”

Handy looks around with a frown as he picks up his pneumatic hammer. “Yeah, it’s hard to tell which floor these jackasses are on, ain’t it?”

A gust of wind comes from the direction of the entry atrium and disturbs the dirt and lighter debris around them as it causes Handy’s tail and mane to dance about. Both of them turn to look in the direction of the gush of air as various noises start to greet them ranging from metallic clangs to equine murmurs. The ghostly sounds are traveling a distance and it’s only because of the breeze coming from that direction that they can hear it at all, even as faint as it is.

“A door must have opened somewhere and caused a difference in pressure,” Gearing muses aloud as he looks back and forth between where the noise is coming from and where they are heading. He looks over at Handy and, noticing the concerned look on his face, asks, “You can head back that way and help them if you’re worried. Do not concern yourself with me.”

Handy looks over at him for a moment before shaking his head and actually laughing. A long, loud, nearly obnoxious laugh, but genuine nevertheless. “If I did something like that, my wife would have my hide.” He changes his voice a bit, in a horrible imitation of Swift’s, as he mocks, “What are you doing here?! I can take care of myself!” He waves his forehoof towards a fallen bit of masonry along the side of the hallway and grins as he continues, “You stay right there and watch, I’ll show you, then I’ll kick your ass all the way back to where I told you to go in the first place!” He shrugs and shakes his head as he continues in the same mocking tone. “Why do I have to do everything around here, you jackass!” He giggles some more then looks at Gearing with a near twinkle in his eye.

After staring at Handy for a few moments in silence. Measuring him up and his strange, for him, reaction, Gearing asks, “Really enjoying that married life, aren’t ya?”

Handy twirls his hammer by its handle before nodding and starting back down the hallway the way they are going. “Wouldn’t trade it for the world!” Not far from their ambusher a hallway that crosses this one creates a perpendicular intersection to their path. Before he reaches it, Handy’s eyes are drawn to a dark poster on the right side of the hall. He walks over and quickly his face morphs into the bitterest scowl Gearing has ever seen on Handy’s face.

Handy sets the hammer down, head down with the handle leaning against the wall, as he stares at the ancient piece of propaganda. A changeling mare with half of her body and face in the image of a yellow mare earth pony, with a bit of green glowing fire at the divide, smiles out at the viewer deviously as they have one hoof pulling out a box labeled ’Top Secret’ from a safe along the right side of the poster.

The word at the top declares with text that resembles some kind of slimy ooze: BEWARE!

At the bottom it adds, They can be anywhere. Report suspected Changeling sightings. See something: Say something!

Handy grabs the poster’s top left corner with his left forehoof and yanks it off the wall. He quickly chomps down on the right corner and starts ripping the poster to shreds with both his hooves and teeth. In short order the poster has been reduced to nearly unidentifiable confetti. He snorts and kicks the pieces away, but freezes as his eyes go wide at a sudden realization brought by booted hooffalls.

Gearing walks by him, heading towards the intersection, but says nothing at all to him, nor about the display. He doesn’t even give any indication if he’d seen it at all as his head looks back and forth along the two possible ways they could go that break off from the hallway they’ve found themselves in. As Handy is quickly shooing away pieces of the poster with a hind hoof, Gearing looks back at him and says, while pointing towards the right path, “There’s a set of stairs leading up right here. Let’s head up and see if there’s any places they might be trying to hide Lodestar up there.”

Handy gives one last kick at a bit of shredded slimy green text as he’s picking his hammer back up. “Sure. Sounds good. Let’s go,” he adds rapidly as he looks around to see if anyone had actually been paying attention.

They quickly climb up to the second floor, only to find that the second floor hallway has been barricaded and blocked up with various debris and trash. At least in the direction that they are wanting to go. The only way available to go from that stairwell, without tearing through the blockade, would be back towards the entry atrium. They opt to head up another floor instead, and try their luck on the third floor.

The third floor, while not clean by any measure, is not nearly as clogged up. Although the entire hallway, in every conceivable direction, has had one piece of furniture or another tossed around haphazardly. It doesn’t take them long to discover where most of the furniture had come from, as they find a large wide open office area that seems to be where some officers and detectives anchored their work from in the communal space. At least those that didn’t have their own offices. A few of the desks are still around, and in roughly the same place they were intended to be two centuries before, but most of the contents of the open floor plan have been tossed aside, if not actually removed. As the pair walk through the space heading towards the back end of the administration section, they take note of the various evidence of the current inhabitants.

Especially the many places that have obviously been used for sleeping arrangements. And a couple of them seem to be circled up like little camps of their own within the bigger space. Complete with improvised cooking equipment made of cans, bricks, and wire mesh.

The decorative ‘improvements’ along the walls with various equine bones and body parts gives them a very clear picture of who claimed this space as their home.

“Should we be concerned about the number of bodies that this room can fit? And obviously live here?” Handy asks as he stares at a pile of bloody cloth that has been piled up with couch cushions to make a disgusting looking bed in the nook of a tipped over metal desk.

“If you mean ‘Where are they all?’ then… yes… you should be,” Gearing’s grumbling modulated voice replies as he looks back and forth at their surroundings instead of actually looking at him. “I don’t hear them either…”

“Like in a ‘Nopony’s home’ kind of way, or a ‘We’re walking into an ambush’ kinda way?”

Gearing actually stops walking and turns his head to look at Handy before he replies, “Like we just missed them, and they’re somewhere else kinda way…”

Handy checks his PipBuck as a message comes in, and quickly starts looking around as he says with a gush, “Swift’s in trouble, we need to get to them!”

Gearing looks around then points off to the back corner as he starts running that way. “What’d she say?! Where are they?”

Handy runs after him as he says, “It’s not what she said but how she said it. Message is screwed up like she had trouble tapping it out and sending it.” As they reach the door, Gearing doesn’t even bother opening it as he simply jumps up and at the door with his normal stride. But the door instantly yields and bursts into many wooden fragments from his considerable bulk. Handy adds as he jumps through the new opening and into another hallway after Gearing, “Only reason she’d do something like that is if she was in the middle of some trouble and needed help.”

“Not just fat-hooved the dials?” Gearing asks as he keeps running straight down this new hallway that is flanked by a near endless line of wooden doors with various brass plaques on them.

“I know my wife!” Handy bellows. “She doesn’t like asking or accepting help, so if she’s asking…”

“It’s bad…” Gearing finishes for him as he looks both ways down an intersecting hallway that they are set to cross, only to instantly change directions and jump back and to the right to redirect himself down the new short hallway.

“Do you even know where you’re going?!”

After a few more full paces Gearing jumps to the side and shoulder rams a metal door to his left as he yells, “Not really!”

But beyond the door is a stairwell with stairs going both up and down. However, the stairs down only take them to the second floor and they quickly emerge into a section of hallway that is different than the others. With the hallways not being perfectly in line with the one above it for some reason. He continues running down the hallways, jumping over various furniture and taking one sharp turn after another with Handy hot on his tail.

“Then why are we just running this way?!”

“Shortest distance is a straight line!” Gearing replies as he jumps at the door at the end of the hallway and crashes through it, knocking the fragments clear across the rather wide room. He stops inside and spins around in a circle as he quickly looks around himself and then downward.

Handy runs into the room, and looks around, quickly swinging his pneumatic hammer around to gain momentum as he tries to size up the room. But, is left more confused than ever. “Gearing, no one’s here…”

The room looks like an old classroom of sorts, with a podium at the very front, and a collection of white boards and cork bulletin pin boards at the far end to their right. Even after all this time a few various notices with duty rosters, general warnings about various areas around The Hoof, and strings of wanted posters hang from their pins. The rest of the space seems to have been dedicated to seats. Though the majority of the seats have been thrown against the various walls to make room for whoever chose this room as their personal quarters.

Gearing points down and towards the back wall below the cork boards. “There. They’re down there.”

Handy looks over and shifts side to side as he tries to make out anything through the sea of red showing up on his EFS. But, there, as indicated, was a blue indicator zipping around and barely being visible among all of the red. “Shit! We got to get down there!” He looks around quickly as he asks, “Did your mapping feature find a stairwell we could use?” He quickly looks at his PipBuck and starts going over his local surroundings as he says, “Mine’s not being helpful.”

Both of their heads jump up to an air vent set low in the wall where sounds of various gunfire and unintelligible screaming steadily pours out from somewhere nearby.

Gearing shakes his head. “No, but we can get there if we just keep going straight.”

Handy rolls his eyes and turns towards the door they’d just come through. “We could be running in circles all day like that. They need help, and now.” He starts back out the door they came through as he adds, “I at least know where that one stairwell is; I’ll just go use that one.”

“I got a faster way,” Gearing yells after him.

“Great, meet you there, then!” Handy yells with a tone that clearly gets across his annoyance and disbelief.

“This would be so much easier if you’d get off your high wagon and pick up a fucking gun!” Dandy yells as she hides behind an overturned metal desk on top of the raised stage where, in the distant past, medals and commendations were bestowed and news conferences were held to answer questions from the media and update the public at large.

The once proud hall, with three large doors set into the middle of the three walls that aren’t blocked by the raised stage, has turned into a war zone of its own. Blood and bodies are strewn around everywhere as fresher versions are thrown around to add to the mosaic of death.

Swift spins around, dodging a spear that was thrown at her by spiraling in a circle, before she comes back with the same spear and drops down straight onto a blood soaked mare in a Hoofington Police Department uniform. Skewering her and pinning her to the ground like she were some sort of insect display. But the crazed brown mare doesn’t stop moving. Instead she flails around, showing little regard for the hunk of steel protruding from her chest, as she throws various bits of sharp metal and glass in Swift’s general direction.

The mare cackles as she keeps whipping her head in various directions in search of Swift, “Turkey for my tummy. Turkey for my tummy. Turkey for my tummy!”

The seat portion of a metal chair zips up in a magical glow, and blunts another makeshift spear that was chucked at Swift, as she is busy dancing around another pair of mares that are trying their best to catch Swift with a set of spiked and bladed chains. Swift quickly looks in the direction of the blood coming from her side as she winces, with the tip of the spear still making it through the chair, and quickly moves out of the way as more blades are thrown in her direction.

Swift stays in the center of the room, as much as she can, as more of the uniform wearing crazed ponies stream in from the three doors. She feels someone start making contact from her right, and rolls up and over them to avoid getting caught, before snapping her wings and coming back down on top of them with her powerhoof. Though she only manages a single strike with it before having to snap away from the encroaching horde.

But, given the satisfying crunch sound released, she’s pretty sure the one blow to the back of the buck’s head was all it was going to take anyway. So she’s not too disappointed.

“A single gun isn’t going to help with this; we need to take care of the group as a whole. Drop a building on them or something!” She swerves side to side as she avoids a few knives being thrown at her by the group of earth ponies coming in the right side door. “Where are they all coming from? Tartarus?!” She flies backwards, towards Dandy, as she tries to avoid a shower of broken glass hurled at her and is only marginally successful.

The room starts shaking as the sound of a thundercloud rumbling echoes throughout the room and crescendos into something similar to a high caliber autocannon unleashing it’s payload on some unsuspecting individual. In the middle of the growing, roaring sound, bits of the ceiling start flying down in clouds of dust, and the noise gets louder as more of the ceiling is reduced to flying debris. Swift and Dandy look up in time to watch something tearing through the ceiling in a line that roughly resembles a circular pattern as the loud noise threatens to bring down the house.

But then it does. Part of it at least.

The center of the room’s ceiling drops down as the strain of the weight becomes too much for the remaining bits to hold it up any longer with all of the destruction being unleashed on it.

Swift dives backwards, ponypiling onto Dandy as the room fills with a cloud of smoke as a large hunk of the concrete ceiling crashes down, as a solid mass, onto the group of crazed ponies she’d just been trying to deal with.

“Oh what the fuck is it now?!” Dandy cries out in dismay as she peeks up just enough to try and look at the devastation that’s been unleashed in the room.

As the dust is settling, and fragments of the roof are still coming down, an augmented voice replies from the cloud of smoke, “You called down the thunder…”

With the room having become even harder to traverse with a massive hunk of the ceiling blocking up the middle of the room, the groups of yellow eyed assailants have a hard time getting around at all. But, even in their crazed state, the noise and disruption is too much for even them to ignore, and draws their attention as they try to figure out what to do next. Although, their contemplation is practically nonexistent as they are already converging on the spot of the ceiling collapse before they can even see what all came down with the ceiling. As, if nothing else, they see a faint red glow in the cloud of dust.

“...Now reap the whirlwind!” the same synthetic voice yells out as Gearing, with his helmet’s red lenses turned on, jumps out of the cloud of smoke with his outer jacket thrown back and folded between his wings on his back. His wings are covered with a flexible, almost rubbery, material that has been reinforced with a variety of ridged strips for supports. But, as weird as his wings look, they provide enough thrust for him to move forward at a decent speed.

Enough to land on a group of the assailants and not even stop as two of them are ground into paste under his outstretched hooves. As he tumbles with the strike, he kicks off a wall and changes direction, causing massive chunks to break away as he jumps onto another group of raiders.

Swift hovers over the barricade that Dandy is hiding behind as she yells, “I thought you said you can’t fly in that?!”

He summarily tramples a trio of raiders, whose ‘armor’ and outfit do nothing at all to slow the massive bulk that gets dropped on them. Gearing snorts as he yells back, “Crashing.” He crushes one’s head. “Is not.” A buck jumps on him from behind and starts trying to gnaw on his neck, but doing nothing even around the massive shoulder and neck protector, until Gearing scrapes him off with a foreleg and throws him down to the ground at his hooves. “Flying!” He grabs a concrete bust set next to the wall and smashes it down onto the buck’s head, instantly painting the floor with more bloody material.

Swift zips over and intercepts a mare that was in mid air from a leap that would have taken her, and her spear, onto Gearing’s back. She spins around in mid air and slams her into the ground, before taking her powerhoof to the back of the mare’s head. She hits her a few more times as she looks over at Gearing and asks, “Where the hell’s Handy?!”

Gearing points up with a hoof as he says, “He decided to take the long way.” He kicks up a piece of stone that had fallen from the ceiling and bucks it with a hind leg, sending it soaring and hitting a mare in the side of the head as she was charging Swift. The now even more bloody faced mare’s front legs give out from the impact, and cause her to tumble end over and before crashing to a halt right next to Swift. Just in time for Swift to share her powerhoof with her as well.

More of the raiders start pouring in from the various doors as Gearing and Swift turn and start backing towards the raised stage as they welcome the new arrivals with lethal intent of their own.

“Dandy, how are you on ammo?” Gearing yells as he ducks under a buck that had jumped at him, and bucks the over zealous raider clear across the room and causes him to crash into the ones that were coming in from the right door.

“Low! Real fucking low! Like criminally low! Like there oughta be a law against it kind of low!” Dandy replies as she carefully shoots one target after another. But, by her selective fire, and the amount of time between her shots, it’s painfully obvious she’s trying to make each shot count.

Gearing jumps over to the barricade in front of Dandy, grabs the desk she’s hiding behind, and throws it at the door to the right.

Dandy’s eyes go wide as she’s suddenly revealed and asks, “The hell you do that for?!”

“Cover’s not going to help if we can’t slow them down enough to handle them,” Gearing retorts before he grabs a folding metal chair and chucks it towards the center of the middle door, causing a couple of the raiders to stumble over it as they are coming in.

“What the fuck?! Where’d this hole come from!?” Handy yells from above as he looks down.

Gearing looks up at him and yells back, “I told you I had a shorter way!”

“Oh shit!” both Swift and Handy yell out simultaneously before the room is filled with the sound of a roaring machine gun.

Gearing looks to the side, and simultaneously spins around and gently bucks Dandy further back across the raised stage as he jumps to the side, and more out into the open.

A mare trots in from the door on the left with a battle saddle that has a pair of smaller caliber machine guns mounted to each side. The battered SWAT gear she’s wearing tells a long story of pain and misery unleashed on many individuals. And the way she opens up with the machine guns, indiscriminately, and not caring if most of the bullets are hitting, wounding, and killing, those on her own side makes it no wonder on how it got that way. Nor leaves any question about her current mental state.

Gearing gets stabbed by a buck that’d charged him with a spear, but grabs the buck and turns with him, and his spear, and uses his body as a shield to try and deaden the stream of lead getting focused on him by the twin machine guns.

Apparently Gearing being the slowest and easier to shoot makes him this mare’s preferred target.

As bullets are ripping through the raider buck’s body, long after he’s dead, Gearing keeps shying away from the stream of fire as various bullets impact and bounce off of his armor. He quickly drops the jacket back to its normal hanging position after the sound of crunching glass greets everyone’s ears.

Dandy hops up and unleashes her own version of a lead storm at the approaching mare. Only to have the majority of the bullets bounce harmlessly off the heavily armored mare’s SWAT barding.

A couple of the spiky chains leap up from the ground, where they had been dropped by their previous owners, and tangle up Swift’s wings as she’d been focusing on the mare with the dual machine guns.

Swift hits the ground hard as her wings are bit into by the razors and spikes and the chains just bind tighter by the second. She looks at them, and notices the faint glow, before she looks up at the middle door and sees a trio of unicorns walking towards her with knives in their mouths. They are drooling excessively around the mouth grips and their horns uniformly glow as they control the chains binding her. “Fucking unicorns! Cheating fucks!” Swift yells as she struggles against the chains that are cutting and biting into her along most of her body and wings.

“Dandy, save your ammo for unarmored targets!” Gearing yells as he turns his head and aims his large revolver, having used the time the dead buck’s body bought him to draw it, at the mare with the machine guns. He fires two quick rounds, and both of them tear right through the mare’s breast plate. But, they apparently do nothing to slow her down as she rotates side to side and sprays the room with hot lead.

Gearing stands up entirely, aiming carefully, and fires one successive shot after another at the mare. Plugging one overcharged round after another into a tight cluster in the center of her chest. But, after clicking empty, all he’s really succeeded in doing is putting a tight grouping of bleeding holes in her chest, and she doesn’t seem to be slowing at all. But she is focusing her fire on Gearing now as he’s earned her undivided attention with his love taps.

The unicorns controlling the chains around Swift start falling over as they’re getting close to her. And, as each one dies, the chains become less problematic, until she manages to leap at the last one herself. She unleashes her pain and rage on the mare with one powerhoof strike after another. All while the mare keeps slashing at her with the razor chains. Another unicorn, a buck that’d come up after the first three, falls in a heap after another one of Dandy’s well placed shots finds its mark in one of his yellow eyes, and drops him as well.

As the mare in the SWAT armor crosses the center of the room, going after Gearing and forcing him towards the right side door, a blue blur comes from above.

Handy spins in mid air, swinging his pneumatic hammer as he’s coming down, and smashes the SWAT armor wearing mare right in the middle of the back, using the fall and the pneumatic action of the hammer to deliver a devastating blow that even she obviously felt.

The mare’s legs wobble and splay out as she tries to catch her footing after being struck so hard. She turns her head to look behind her, only to look right in time to catch Handy’s pneumatic hammer to the face.

Ka-ta-TSSHHH.

Blood spurts out through the cracks and gaps, both designed and created through this act of violence in equal measure, in the muzzle guard of the helmet as it’s partially caved in and her head gets knocked backwards. Even though a few fragments of the helmet get knocked loose and away, and the gush of blood testifies that he’s managed to inflict a serious wound, the armor does its creators proud by keeping its bearer alive and on her hooves.

Despite what they might have otherwise wished to the contrary if they were ever informed about this situation.

The mare lets out a gurgling cry of manic rage as she pours on the fire blindly and starts bucking around in a circle as she simply holds down the trigger on her weapon and tries to shoot anyone and everyone within range. Especially whoever just smacked her across the face with a pneumatic hammer.

Handy tumbles around and keeps spinning in a circle around her as the mare ponifies a water sprinkler attached to a bullet hose with the stream of hot lead barely missing him in some instances, and others clinking and plinking off his own armor. But, like in many instances, trying something enough times can start providing results as many bullets do find their way past Handy’s armor to draw blood from him in retaliation for his own actions.

Swift quickly took to the air to avoid the indiscriminate fire, with a smirk on her face as her ground bound assailants had no such advantage and thus were cut down by a member of their own group. But the smirk disappeared quickly as she saw Handy taking fire, and even from her perspective she can see that a few of the rounds have found their mark.

In her husband.

She zips down from above, powerhoof held wide, and connects to the top of the bullet hose mare’s helmet with a strike that knocks her down to her front knees. Mid spinning buck.

Handy takes the momentary respite of playing keep away from the hot lead to ready his weapon and comes back at the mare with another swing of his pneumatic hammer.

Swift tangles up the apparently blind mare’s legs with her own, bringing her down to the ground where the two start kicking and writhing against each other.

Handy comes in with a swing parallel to the ground and connects with the mare’s helmeted head again, on the opposite side of where he’d struck her before, causing another spurt of blood to come flying out of the muzzle guard as more of the armor is removed. Swift uses her right foreleg to pin the mare’s forelegs down as she rains one powerhoof strike after another at whatever target she can hit. All the while taking repeated kicks to her own abdomen from the mare’s hind legs.

The sounds of crinkling and crunching glass greet their ears a split second before a modulated voice screams, “This is why I like rifles!” Gearing lowers his head into the fray and starts unloading a freshly loaded cylinder into the head of the armored mare as Handy and Swift hold her down. Both of them wince and flinch as the large caliber revolver goes off in such close proximity to them. The first shot blows away large fragments of the helmet as the round is astoundingly deflected by it. But the following four rounds proceed straight through and inflict so much devastating damage that the last two actually punch through the mare’s head entirely and put bloody pock marks in the polished stone floor of the media room. “More stopping power!” Gearing roars as he turns around and looks at the center door as a couple more raiders meander into the room to join in the bloody merriment of bloodshed.

“Fuck, Gearing, couldn’t give a mare a little warning before blowing out my eardrums?!” Swift yells as she holds one of her ears with a bloody forehoof.

Handy groans as he sits and holds his side with one hoof. He shakes his head a bit before he looks over at Dandy and asks, “Hey, horn head, you use twenty twos, right?”

“Yeah, why?” Dandy asks as she fires one careful shot after another at the door on the left to drop anyone coming in through that way. Handy rummages through his bag and flicks a bloody bundle of cloth at her. She catches it midair with her levitation and quickly pulls it closer. Inside she finds a small collection of rounds and her eyes practically sparkle as she screams, “Where the hell you find these?! You been holding out on me!?”

Handy points upstairs as he says, “Found them upstairs in one of their rooms. Gearing was pretty much ignoring everything so I figured I might as well grab what I saw.”

Swift hops over to Handy and starts looking him over as she says, “You’re hit!”

“No shit,” Handy says with a scowl as he holds his abdomen.

Swift starts rummaging through his bag and quickly pulls out a dull purple potion. “We gotta get out of here, this is a dead end.”

As she’s feeding it to Handy, Gearing points up with a forehoof as he says, “There’s a way out right there. We can thin them out by making them have to hunt us down.” He nods up that way as he’s pulling out fresh rounds for his revolver. “Grab Handy and get going. Then take Dandy with you.”

“What about you?” Swift asks as she’s pulling Handy up onto his hooves.

Gearing jumps over, and starts removing one of the machine guns from the side of the mangled armored mare. “Need to thin their numbers.” He quickly pulls it off, and stands over the mare’s body on his hind legs as he holds the machine gun up with his forehooves, resting the back of it against his hind thigh. His right wing comes out from under the trench coat, in its rubbery material sleeve, making crinkling and grinding noises the entire way as the tip grabs the cable that leads to the trigger. After getting situated he turns and aims the machine gun towards the middle door and, as a group of raiders come running in, shooting a variety of firearms and throwing various bladed instruments at them, he unleashes the dead mare’s bullet hose on her crazed comrades.

Swift dodges a few of the bullets coming from the doorway, a couple hit her back right haunch and draw a scream of frustration before she grabs Handy and takes to the air. A few of the bullets zip past her in flight, and one even plinks off of Handy’s armor, as he’s quickly yanked up and over the lip of the hole blasted in the ceiling.

Gearing’s red glowing eyes change their focus from left to right as his head rotates like a slow moving turret as he keeps looking at the three different doors. As the group coming in from the left side starts getting closer to him, he pivots and aims the machine gun at them, cutting them down in fractions of a second, before starting to apply the weapons fire in alternating bursts from one to the other.

Swift hops up to the edge of the hole, and starts over and back down, but, the sudden appearance of such an attractive target proves to be too much to ignore as each and every time she tries various weapons are fired in her direction, causing her to duck back down and abandon coming back into the media room.

Gearing focuses on groups, and intentionally seems to be ignoring individuals. As, in most cases, they get cut down before they can even reach him by the weapons fire from either Dandy’s pistol boxes, or, and surprisingly for Gearing, Handy’s own Proditor’s Gladius. In the couple cases where one of the melee combatants actually make it to him, they are smacked to the side, and summarily stepped on. Although not without taking a minimally effective strike in return.

But, even so, taking the concentrated fire of the seemingly endless horde of raiders is starting to take its toll, as his trench coat is starting to look frayed from the various bullets, slashes, and stabs thrust at him.

The right side doorway suddenly becomes unblocked as a group of raiders managed to get their timing right and bucked it together hard enough to dislodge the desk that had been thrown and wedged there earlier.

Their achievement is awarded by Gearing turning the barrel of the machine gun in their direction and firing a hot burst of lead into the tightly packed hallways of yellow eyed maniacs. Gearing’s promptly rewarded with some feedback of his own.

By the silence of the machine gun as it finally clicks empty having eaten through the last of its belt like a hungry foal sucking up a spaghetti noodle.

Dandy crawls up near Gearing, using the collapsed roof rubble as cover as she yells, “Gearing, we got to get out of here!” She gets as close as she can to the hunk of ceiling, without climbing into the bloody bits that had gotten smashed out around the edges from the raiders that didn’t get out from under the falling concrete in time.

Gearing turns, and rummages through the dead armored mare’s ammo box as he yells, “Go! Get out of here. I’ll keep them busy!” After finding nothing but empty space, Gearing slams a smaller ammo box from his own stash into the mare’s saddle bag. He looks up and yells, “Swift, get Dandy out of here!” Before the words are even all the way through the modulated speakers of his helmet, he grabs the dead mare’s corpse, and starts spinning around with it. A moment later he lets it go, and hurls her body, weapons, armor, and all, across the room and into the hallway that he’d just used the last of his rounds on.

Dandy looks down as she watches pieces of green crystals fall down and out from under the trench coat from Gearing’s motions before she looks up at him and scowls. “You can’t be serious!”

The dead mare’s corpse knocks several of the other raiders back and causes a tangle as they try to get the large earth pony mare’s bulk off of them so they can continue the assault.

“Deadly!” Gearing replies before he turns and looks at her. They stare at each other for a second, which seems far longer for Dandy, before he hops forward, and on top of her.

Dandy’s eyes go wide as she rolls over with him on top of her belly to belly as she flushes and screams, “Hey! This ain’t the time for that, don’t get fresh-“

The right side of the room is engulfed in a fireball as the explosive Gearing shoved into the armored mare’s weapon storage area detonates. Thoroughly cutting off Dandy as she instinctively hunkers down more and tries to curl up to avoid the shrapnel and fire pouring out of the blast. But, with Gearing and his armored coat laying over her the exercise is unnecessary as the various pieces impact into him and ricochet off in different directions looking for something they can actually harm.

Like the other raiders that had come in through the other doors. Which the fragments are more than happy to oblige.

As the pieces flying through the air change from lethal shrapnel, to practically harmless falling debris, Gearing hops up and off of Dandy as he quickly takes stock of the change in situation. The right side door has completely collapsed as the blast caused the door supports to give out and bring the side walls in along with part of the ceiling of the hallway on that end. The other two doors still have a few raiders coming in, but all of them are looking worse for wear. And none of them are as heavily armed as the ones that were coming in from the right. Gearing grabs a rifle off the ground that the raiders on the right had been toting and starts looking it over.

Dandy rolls over, with a growing flush as she yells out loud, “Must you blow everything up?!”

Gearing ejects the magazine from the rifle, and then throws it at a raider that is shakily getting back onto their hooves. The rifle hits them in the head and knocks them back down to the ground in the process. “If it needs blowing.”

Dandy’s eyes zip side to side as she lines up her shots and steadily fires one pistol box after another. “Well, come on fly buck, gimme a lift and we can get out of here. We’ll come at them from a better angle.”

Gearing picks up an axe that had been thrown at him, and was sharp enough to actually cut the outer layer of his trench coat, with his fetlock as he shakes his head. “I’ll remain here. There’s more coming.”

Dandy zips around on him after shooting two that just came running in through the left side, adding to the practical berm of equine bodies on that side of the room, as she yells, “What the hell, Gearing?! Are you trying to get yourself killed? What in the flying fuck is wrong with you?!”

“Got a job to do.”

Dandy’s face screws up as a variety of emotions struggle to make themselves known at the same time. Frustration. Indignancy. Embarrassment. Rage. All of which swirl together as the flush on her face works its way down her neck. “Well no shit! But I need to talk to you, and I can’t do that if you get yourself killed!”

“Later,” Gearing replies as he rears up and exchanges hoof blows with a mare that had run up with a wooden spear, only for Gearing to break it with his left forehoof, and come down with the axe with his right foreleg. Her left foreleg comes off at the knee with the first swing, and the right buckles from the impact that doesn’t quite cut all the way through it. But as she’s face planting in front of Gearing, he uses his left forehoof and steps on her head before he looks back at Dandy and notices she hasn’t moved a muscle. “Later I said!”

Rage wins the mental hoof wrestle over Dandy’s other emotions as she screams, “No dammit!” She jumps on him and, surprising to her, tackles Gearing to the side as he rolls with her, but stops short as he was preparing to strike back with a hoof at whoever was jumping him, only to see her on top of him and pinning him to the ground on his back by practically laying on him. “Now! Especially if you’re gonna go and get yourself killed first!”

“This ain’t the time for this, get out of here already!” Gearing yells as he tilts his head back, and fires his revolver, upside down, at a buck that had started running in from the middle door only to catch the round in the throat and go tumbling off to the side against some other rubble as a large section of his neck’s flesh turns to nothing more than meaty confetti in the air.

“Don’t give me that shit; I’m not some tender hoof you need to protect!” Several of her pistols come out and create a circle around her head as they hover with her levitation magic. “I can take care of myself, and I’m not letting you up until you give me a straight fucking answer!”

Swift slaps a hoof over her eyes from her perch on the second floor and yells back down, “This ain’t the time for that! Really! Dandy! It’s really not!” And then starts nursing a pathetic looking healing potion of her own to start healing up the various cuts and gouges all over herself from the chains she’d been bound in and the couple bullets that had managed to strike true on her despite all of her dodging around.

Raiders come in from both of the remaining doors, scrambling over the other bodies, but as they crest the berm of the dead they simply end up adding to the pile as Dandy’s pistols shoot them dead in the forehead.

Dandy flops down on Gearing, grabs the collar of his trench coat with her forehooves and, with the flush zipping straight to her hooves, screams, “Did you lie about being sterile?!”

“Oh god…” Swift says with a groan as she gives a sheepish sidelong look at Handy. Although, he’s more focused on shooting any raiders he can see to have any time to be amused by the situation.

“What?” Gearing asks as he looks up at her.

“No beating around the bush! Answer me! Are you sterile or not?! Did you lie about it?”

“As far as I’m aware, yes! Why?” Gearing asks as he goes slack and genuinely has a hard time figuring out where this bizzaro world question came from.

“You sure you didn’t knock me up!? That you can’t knock me up? That’s what you said, right?!” Dandy yells in his face with more embarrassment than anger. Although the buck coming in through the left door receives the full brunt of her redirected anger.

In the form of two slugs to his face from a pair of her pistol boxes.

“Yes, I’m sure! If I wasn’t then I’d probably have hundreds of foals by now!”

“Whoa…” Swift says as her eyes go wide. “Get around much there, buddy?”

“Swift, Honey, Dearest, this is not the time to be focusing on their relationship drama!” Handy says as he reloads his pistol and goes back to firing down into the center doorway.

A couple raiders come in from the left doorway, charging together, and get brought down by a hail of small caliber rounds as Dandy doesn’t take her eyes off of Gearing’s. “Are you sure? Like sure sure?!” she asks with a near begging in her voice.

“Yes! I’m sure! I’m also sure I would have heard about something if that weren’t the case. Why? What’s wrong?” Dandy’s eyes droop and Gearing gently reaches up and rubs her upper foreleg as he asks, “Dandy?”

“But… what if you’re wrong? What if you knocked someone up? What would you do?”

“That’s not how biology works, Dandy…” Gearing says with a roll of his eyes and a modulated snort of disbelief.

She whips her head up and screams, “But what if?!” She reaches up and taps him on the side of his muzzle guard repeatedly as she asks, “What if you knocked someone up? Huh? Like… what if you were wrong, and things just weren’t right before, like compatibility or timing or whatever, but you like, somehow… Somehow… knocked… me… up.” She hangs her head and asks, “What if you knocked me up? What would you do?”

Gearing’s modulated breathing comes to an absolute standstill as he locks up from tip of tail to snoot. After a few seconds of saying nothing, but the fighting around them still carrying on, Gearing asks, “Besides being confused as hell? You mean… like… if it really were mine, and I knew it?”

She nods as she looks away. Though, simultaneously she shoots at a raider that’d peeked around the doorway to try to get an angle at them from his own spot, causing him to dodge, but then get knocked down from rounds coming from Handy instead. “Yeah… if you knew it was yours… no question… What would you do?”

“I never wanted to spread my genetic defect… but I’ve always liked kids…”

“So?” Dandy asks as she looks down at him.

“I’d want to keep it, and take care of it. Even if the mother didn’t want the responsibility… I’d do it myself if need be,” Gearing replies softly. He looks her over as she’s on the verge of tears and asks, “Why are you even asking this?”

She lays down on him as her pistols drop around them and groans into his ear quietly, “Gearing… you’re the only buck I’ve been with in over a year… If I am, then it’s yours. No doubt about it.”

Gearing’s modulated voice sputters and crackles as he twitches along his entire length. But, a split second later, he freezes in his micro spasm. He gingerly reaches up and pats her on the shoulders, rubbing her back tenderly, before he says, “If those are the only two options… then you’re not… because it’s not possible.” He shrugs and shakes his head. “I’m not flesh and blood. I’m sorry. But it’s just not possible.”

“But I’ve already had others commenting on my symptoms and asking if I’m pregnant…” Dandy says with a groan as she lays her head on Gearing’s chest with her muzzle pointed towards the left door. A bit of movement catches her eye, and a couple of her pistols jump up off the ground and quickly shoot at the unknown moving form before dropping back to the ground along with the fresh corpse. “I don’t know what to do…”

Gearing pats her on the shoulder and replies, “How about you get a pregnancy test? If that’ll put your mind at ease, then do it. But, I’m telling you, if the only option is me, then you’re not.”

She lifts her head up, and stares at him for a moment, before she brings her right forehoof up and starts grinding it on the side of his muzzle guard. “You’re paying for it!”

Gearing chuckles and shrugs as he says, “Fine. If it’ll give ya peace of mind, sure, why not.”

“You two done with your intervention or do we need to stay here covering your sorry asses for longer?!” Handy yells as he empties his entire clip into the center doorway at a pair of uniformed raiders with pistols of their own that are shooting at him.

“Yeah, fine we can pause the conversation until after I know for sure…” Dandy concedes as she starts climbing up and off of Gearing. But as he starts scrambling back up to his hooves, she reaches out a forehoof and grinds it into the side of his armored cheek as she says, “But if it turns out I am, you are in so much trouble buster!”

“More than you know,” Gearing quips with a chuckle as he gets to his feet. He looks her in the eye through his glowing lenses, and she can practically hear the grin in his voice, even through the speakers, as he adds, “And it’ll mean having to completely reevaluate my entire life to boot!”

“Can we get the hell out of here now, please?!” Dandy asks as she ducks back down behind the ceiling’s rubble pile to dodge a few shots aimed at her as she returns fire with her pistols.

“Yeah, I’ll get you out of here,” Gearing replies as he hops over next to her and starts scooping her up with his forelegs.

“It’s about damn ti-AAGGHHH!!” Dandy yells as Gearing quickly jerks the small statured unicorn clear up off the ground before he takes a couple steps and starts charging up across the ceiling rubble pile on three legs, with Dandy flung over his shoulder like a sack and held there with a single foreleg.

Gearing jumps up in the air with Dandy, then flaps his wings to make himself start spiraling as he screams, “Swift, catch!”

Swift’s ears perk up as she peeks over the lip of the hole to see what he’s doing now, before both hers and Dandy’s eyes go wide with surprise and shock.

As Gearing uses his circular momentum to fling Dandy up through the hole, straight at Swift.

Swift intercepts the screaming unicorn package as Dandy squeals and thrashes around in midair like a yearling throwing a tantrum, causing them both to tumble back and away form the hole’s edge as Swift successfully deadens the blow with her own acrobatic maneuvers.

But, as the pair of mares are having to deal with that, Gearing’s wings bend in unnatural shapes as if the air pressure itself is too much for it, even with the coverings. And, he quickly comes back down to the ground with a hard crash. But, while he lands on all four hooves, many small fragments of green crystal scatter down noisily around him and go clattering across the stone floor as the maneuver jars them loose from what little had been holding them in their hiding places.

Gearing’s revolver roars out four more times before Dandy manages to extract herself from Swift and make it back to the edge of the hole to look down at Gearing. She watches as he picks up a spear and plants the shaft in the ground, bracing for a crazed buck covered in pockmarks and blood to impale themselves on, as Gearing’s synthesized voice screams out, “Keep it up! I dare ya!” Which they do promptly as the buck keeps snapping their jaws at Gearing’s face. The entire time Gearing holds them back, with one foreleg on their chest, and the other holding the spear in place, until the yellow eyes seem to finally notice the closer limb and they start biting on Gearing’s armored foreleg relentlessly.

A bullet from Handy’s Proditor’s Gladius makes the raider go limp, before Gearing kicks the buck’s body off his spear, and chucks it at the next in line that’d just come in the door.

Dandy waves a hoof at him to get his attention as she screams, “Why didn’t you just fly up here with me?! Trying to get rid of me? Not so fast! Get your shiny winged ass up here so we can go already!”

“I can’t,” Gearing’s modulated voice replies flatly as he greets a jumping peach mare, or maybe she was originally white and her fur is just stained from all of the blood all over her, with his own forelegs. The pair strike at each other a few times with their forelegs as she keeps trying to stab him with the jagged improvised butcher knife she has in her jaws, and he tries to knock her away. But, after she lunges at him, stabbing into his coat with the knife, he leans with the strike, and tumbles with her.

But the number of bones that break and pop as he tumbles over her is so exceedingly disproportionate to the maneuver that Dandy realizes he must have temporarily turned off his weight implant again. She shakes her head to cast off the image of the mostly mangled mare, with the bones sticking out of her in various places, but somehow she’s still alive, and still trying to bite through one of Gearing’s forelegs even though a good portion of her jawbone has become exposed. After Gearing turns the mangled raider into just another corpse with a quick stomp to the head, Dandy’s finally able to ask, “What do you mean you can’t? You got wings, use them!”

“They’re busted and won’t support my weight. Damn machine gun’s pretty much turned them into a jigsaw puzzle. That’s why I had to throw you.” He looks up at her and grumbles as he says, “And I can’t make that jump from here. So you three go on. I’ll punch my way through and meet up with you elsewhere.” His head jerks to the side and his helmet sparks as a stop sign, with the edges crudely cut into saw teeth, smacks into him with a full swing from the metal pole that once held it aloft outside on some unknown Hoofington street. Gearing looks over at the mare assailing him with it and kicks up a hunk of ruble into her face as he screams back. “And these brain dead,” - he hops over closer to the mare with the stop sign weapon and uses his momentum to spin and buck her, knocking her into a pair of other raiders that were running up to join in on the fun with their own kitchen knives- “psychopathic,” - he grabs the sign that she’d dropped and swings it with a large arc right into a raider that’d come charging in from the left side door, opening up the buck’s neck and practically turning him into a sprinkler in the process as his head lolls unnaturally backwards and to the side now that the tissues aren’t holding it in place correctly- “monsters,” - he brings the stop sign saw down on top of another one, imbedding it in their skull and breaking the sign off of the pole in the process- “won’t give me long enough” - he uses the jagged broken sign pole and puts it through another’s eye socket as he screams, “to down a potion to do it!”

“I’ll come get you!” Swift says as she jumps over to the edge and gets ready to jump down towards him.

“Don’t!” Gearing yells as a couple Hoofington Police Department impersonators walk in firing various revolvers and mouth gripped pistols at Gearing. “If you get shot down, we’ll both get stuck down here!”

Swift and Dandy exchange frustrated and increasingly more angry glares at each other as Handy continues his cycle of emptying his weapon, only to reload it and do it again. After a few more unequine screams come from below, signaling another raider trying to gnaw off Gearing’s leg only to have Gearing step on their head for their troubles, Swift looks over the edge at Gearing and screams, “Gearing!”

“Just go already!” he screams back without even looking as he’s too busy wrestling with a pair of raiders.

“Do you trust me?” she yells as she stands up and starts tensing her muscles.

Gearing looks up at her as he jumps back from the two trying to pin him and avoids a particularly sharp spear charge at himself in the process from a third. They lock eyes and he nods as he says, “Enough, why?”

“Then fucking jump!” She extends out her PipBuck laden hoof towards him as she says, “I’ll catch you and pull you up, you can jump far enough for me to catch you. So just jump!”

Gearing groans and shakes his head. Even louder with a grunt as a spear pierces his left side, through the coat, and causes more green crystals to fall to the ground. He locks the spear to his side with his left foreleg, before spinning around and flicking the confused raider away from himself with the spear still sticking out of himself. Gearing pulls out the spear, and chucks it in the general direction of the raider that’d stabbed him, only to cause the mare to tumble and trip over it instead of doing any real damage, as he runs over towards Swift’s direction and up over the rubble pile again just like he’d done while carrying Dandy. He gets as close as he can on hoof before using some of the slightly taller rubble to jump up and off of. But, as he brings his wings out to flap and try to catch additional height, the rubbery material yields to the pressure of the air currents, instead of forcing them around, and he doesn’t get any real benefit from it.

But, as he’d taken to the air, and headed in her direction, Swift pulled out a surprise of her own, as she dropped down over the edge, and kicked off of the ceiling. She zips over at Gearing far faster than he is coming at her, and grabs his outstretched forehoof with both of hers as she starts passing him. But then she spins around and uses a similar maneuver that he’d just used on Dandy to spin him around and add her own momentum to his as she flicks him up towards the hole. Before she’s even made contact, Gearing’s lets out a disgruntled snort as he sees what she’s doing, despite his wishes. But it’s quickly replaced with wonder as his body is enveloped in an overglow.

A very familiar one at that.

As Swift is practically chucking Gearing with the form of a well practiced hammer throw, Dandy’s levitation field envelopes Gearing and not only helps to lighten him further, but helps pull and guide him up and through the hole blasted through between the first and second floors.

Although, with all of the combined umph Swift and Dandy had put into it, it was far more than necessary as he crashes into the ceiling that leads up to the third floor before smashing into, and through, the door that leads into the hallway as he tumbles off the added energy. Raining down small fragments of green glittering glass the whole way.

Swift follows him quickly, with a hail of bullets following her, as she yells, “Alright now, get a potion in your gut so we can get going!” She looks over at Handy and nods towards the hole as she says, “Keep knocking them down as much as you can. Hopefully the noise will keep drawing them into the kill zone long enough for us to really put a dent in their numbers.

Dandy helps Gearing into a seated position against the wall of the hallway as she asks, “How the hell we get that helmet off? You need to drink a potion already!”

Gearing shakes his head a bit then looks over at Swift as she’s walking up. He reaches up and starts undoing his helmet, and Dandy quickly catches on and starts helping him take it off with her own hooves and magic. As the faceplate is being pulled away, the red eyes dim and wink out as the power is cut to them and Gearing groans before he says, “Swift, you need a potion more, you’re bleeding!”

Swift rotates her shoulder to look at the outside of her upper left foreleg before she looks at Gearing and grins. “Hey, you’re not the only one that’s willing to take a bullet for a friend.” They stare at each other for a few moments, with Gearing looking truly dumbfounded for the first time since meeting each other. She reaches out the same leg that has the trail of blood running down to her hoof and asks, “So, no bullshit, how bad is it?”

Gearing groans then says with a frown as he looks down, “I literally lost count of how many times that armored bitch shot me. My implants are already working on it. So I’m not gonna die. But I’m not flying anytime soon without at least half of a decent potion. Either way, nothing permanent, and if I can get a few minutes of NOT getting shot, I’ll be fine again.” He uses a hoof and pulls back his trench coat to look at himself as he lets out an annoyed sigh. “I just got this thing together too, dammit…”

Dandy rummages in her saddle bag and quickly pulls out a pale potion. She pops the top and starts tilting it towards his mouth as she asks, “How about a whole one that’s half eaten up by enervation?”

“Better than nothing,” Gearing grumbles before he starts sucking down the potion. After he polishes off the rest of it, he looks at Dandy and asks, “Hey, wanna do me a favor?”

Dandy smirks as she’s stowing the empty bottle, “Another one? Wow you’re going to owe me a lot if you keep this up.” She giggles before she asks, “What’s up?”

Gearing slides a pair of metal apples to her from a metal container he’d had stored under him and protected from pretty much any angle except directly below him. “Here’s a couple parting gifts for those down below. Use them separately though, to help lure them in more.”

Dandy grins as she envelopes one with her levitation magic and summarily tosses it over the edge of the hole in the floor as she says, “You just love blowing shit up, don’t you?”

Handy sees the flying glowing metal apple and quickly shies away from the edge of the hole in the floor before the stem on the top pops off and the metal apple drops down below. A moment later the fragmentation grenade goes off with a blast that throws dust up onto their level. As more individuals are charging in, the second one is chucked into the media room’s left hallway by Dandy as she doesn’t even look. However, the grenade doesn’t quite make it and bounces off the wooden door frame instead. But the second blast is more than sufficient to send several of the raiders straight to Tartarus as others are heavily maimed in the process.

Gearing grins as he looks at Dandy and asks, “So… how much do I owe you?”

“Well, that depends…”

“On?”

“What Doc Bonesaw has to tell me about the situation.”

Gearing nods and throws himself forward back onto his hooves as he starts putting his helmet back on. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you the caps to cover it, don’t worry.”

“Well, depending on what he says, you’re going to owe me a lot more.”

Gearing rolls his head on his neck as he lets out an exasperated sigh. “You’ll get your caps.”

“Oh, I’m not interested in caps.”

Gearing’s head whips over to look at her, and the mischievous grin on her face just gets broader once they make eye contact.

“Yup. After all the stress and such you’ve put me through, you’re going to owe me big time depending on what he says…” She puts a hoof to her mouth and taps on her lips daintily a few times as she thinks about it for a second then shrugs and adds, “Nope, know what, either way, I know what I want, regardless of what he says.”

Gearing stares at her for a moment before asking quietly, “What?”

“Well, if not, there’s no harm in some more, and if so, can’t get anymore than I already am… so…” She walks by and grins at him as she slaps his armored flank with a forehoof and gives him a coy sideways grin. “So I think I’d like some of Doctor Gearing’s patented medically induced coma therapy instead…” She grins even wider as her eyes partially close. “Regardless of what the results are…”

Handy slowly shakes his head as he glances over at Swift and mutters, “You were right… gets around a lot…”

Movement catches their attention as something is chucked up through the hole in their general direction. Dandy’s levitation field quickly chucks it right back down the hole, where the fragmentation explosive detonates a split second later and the blast is deadened by the stone floor as the group jumps away from the hole and the shrapnel that starts bouncing off the ceiling above them.

“If you’re gonna sit and talk about stupid shit can we at least do it somewhere else?! Maybe somewhere we’re not currently getting shot at by cannibals trying to catch us for dinner?!” Handy screams as he tumbles to a stop near the door that Gearing had crashed through.

Gearing nods as he turns and leads the way down the hallway and away from the frenzied screaming coming from the hole in the floor. “Yeah, let’s go, before they decide to pile up like ants and make a pony ladder up here…”

Dandy quickly follows along off to Gearing’s right side as she asks, “Gearing, are you sure you’re okay? You sound like someone’s grinding broken glass under their hoof.”

Gearing nods. “Yeah. If the sleeves can hold the pieces in place enough, some of them will even heal back in. If not they’ll simply get pushed out and away by the new growth.”

She keeps her eye trained on him as she trots along, mindlessly reloading and reholstering one pistol box after another as she adds, “Well, you know, that helmet has a shitty design flaw. If you can’t drink anything with it on, how are you supposed to take a potion? Or anything else? It seems like a really bad idea if you have to expose yourself just to try and heal yourself. Really counter intuitive even.” She purses her lips to the side as she mumbles her continued ramble, “You could get hurt more just trying to get treatment. Why would they do something so stupid?”

Gearing shakes his head and sighs through the respirator in a massive gush of modulated sounding air. “Because the face portion came from the helmet of a suit of power armor. Those things had their own systems to take care of healing and repair in most of them. It was all handled with spells and matrix systems. And I can’t duplicate that kind of work. So I’m stuck without it.”

“Well… it’s still a glaring problem…” She reaches over and taps on the side of his armored muzzle as she says, “So… just drill a hole and like, put in a straw or something. At least then you can drink a potion without having to take it off first.”

He turns his head to look at her and she says flatly, “What? A small hole won’t hurt. Too small for a bullet to enter anyway, even with an amazing shot.”

Gearing’s modulated voice chuckles before he says, “Damn… know what… maybe you are pregnant… the way you’re mother henning over me.”

Swift had been sipping on a healing potion as she followed behind, and quickly brings a wing up to her muzzle’s end as she coughs and spits out the dull colored healing potion the moment the quip escapes through the speakers of Gearing’s mask. But she managed to clamp her mouth shut, which only served to force some of the potion out through her nose as she comes to a halt and starts half coughing, and half laughing.

A flush explodes from Dandy’s cheeks and continues half way down her neck as she stares at him wide-eyed for a moment before yelling back, “Well whose fault is that, then!?”

Handy sits down next to Swift as she coughs and sputters while watching Gearing and Dandy continue down the hallway. He nods towards them and grins as he says, “Damn, sounds just like you about that, don’t she?” Then he scrunches down and closes his eyes tightly as he prepares for the inevitable bonk on the head from Swift for his remark.

Instead he’s surprised by a slightly damp smooch on his cheek.

When he looks at her with a raised eyebrow she bats her eyelashes at him before she says, “Oh, I’m still gonna kick your ass for that later, but now’s not the time… besides…” She gives him a wink before continuing on, “I wouldn’t want it any other way.” She tosses him the bottle to put back in his bag without even looking, causing him to quickly juggle with it to keep it from crashing onto the ground, as she casually walks away.

The group quickly bids a hasty retreat as they do their best to disappear among the maze of hallways in the giant building. Even going so far as to go up through the third floor and onto the fourth via the stairwell Handy and Gearing had used to get down to the second floor not long ago. The sounds of the commotion from the lower levels distorts as the various diseased ponies disperse and try to track them down, but keep up their rampant hooting and yelling the entire time regardless of not knowing where they are going out of pure excitement.

But with three of the four members of the party having the advantage of an active EFS playing across their vision, they easily avoid any areas they even think might hold a large collection of raiders.

As the group passes through an administrative wing, easily identifiable by the still shiny brass name plates on the walls and doors made of more glass than wood that did nothing to keep anyone out that actually wanted in bad enough, the sound of a metal chair skittering across a stone floor greets their ears. They all instinctively stop as they try to pinpoint where the noise came from as it’s quite obvious that they aren’t alone in this area.

Swift walks up next to Gearing and whispers, “Think you can get to the far side of all these doors and come at them from a different angle, or want me to try it?”

Dandy waves a hoof at Gearing as she looks at Swift and scowls. “His busted wings will give him away, it’d take some kind of phantom to get through this area with that without sounding like a herd trampling over broken glass…”

Gearing stoops down a bit and his trench coat starts hanging off him just a bit looser as he tightly pulls his wings into himself. He starts slowly walking, using only his legs and not letting his back bob or move in the process. After he gets a couple paces away, without a single crunch coming from him, he looks back at Dandy and comments in a rough raspy voice through the speakers, “Ghost reportin’.” Then he continues over to an office on the right with only a fragment of the ancient door still hanging from a hinge, scans the room slowly with a single rotation of his head, and disappears inside without another word.

“Okay… now he’s off that way, which way are we going to go?” Handy asks quietly as he looks over at Swift with a raised eyebrow.

Swift points a hoof at the large set of doors straight down at the very end of the hall. “How about straight up the middle?”

“You sure that’s really wise, I mean…?,” Dandy asks, then stops mid sentence.

Gearing creeps back out of the room he’d entered, and slowly walks across the hallway, right in front of them, at the same pace he’d entered the room on the right. He pauses mid stride, looks over at them one at a time, as all three have their undivided attention on him, and replies flatly, “Dead end after a collapsed wall.” Then he continues on across the hall where he slowly opens the door on the left, what’s left of it anyway, and creeps inside that way.

The other three slowly follow his movements by turning their head, completely silent, as they watch this strange turn of events.

Dandy asks as she keeps staring at the slightly ajar damaged door, “So… uh… do we just sit here and wait for him to stop coming back… or what?”

Swift giggles then holds up her right forehoof, blocking Dandy’s line of sight to the door Gearing had just entered through, before she says, “Nah. He’s fine. I guess he found something he can work with because I can see him getting further on my EFS this time.”

They continue down the administrative hallway, with their ears turning this way and that as various sounds come to them. Distant echoes of the chaos taking place on the lower levels. The trickling sound of a stream of water that’s hidden in a wall somewhere tattling on a broken pipe of some kind. The crackling sound of a low burning fire in a metal mesh waste basket turned fire pit that they pass.

Then there are the sounds that are drawing such caution from them. Muffled sounds of metal scraping on stone, glass breaking, and some kind of unidentifiable deeper toned ‘wumpf’ sound that they can’t quite place. All of it coming from further down the hall. And very close to them.

But as they are starting to spread out, with most of their focus on a hallway junction coming up where the sound seems to be coming down, a door just in front of them and on their left labeled Maintenance bursts open as a pair of mare’s come tumbling out kicking and screaming at each other.

The raspberry red mare, who was the second one through and appeared to have opened the door by tackling the green mare right through the door, tumbles past her and spits a bloody hunk off to the side before she screams, “I’mma kill you! I swore I would if I ever got ya alone!”

The green mare springs up with an energy that baffles the mind, considering how much she’s bleeding from various wounds all over her body, as she waves around a knife in front of herself with her levitation field. “Lawbreaker, lawbreaker, lawbreaker!” She slashes at the air in between them as she cackles. “Yer onea us! You joined. Protect and serve!” She hops side to side a few times as she looks the green mare over and giggles as she bites her own tongue while trying to lick her lips. “Yes, serve, serve, serve! Tasty. Crispy. Raw! I like raw! Yes! Protect and serve raw! Hehehe.”

The raspberry mare pounces at the green mare, straight on, as she screams, “You’re gonna pay!” When the knife comes in slashing at her throat, she twists around and flings her own foreleg in the way, causing the knife to sink in deep into her foreleg. Deeper than intended.

Too deep.

The raspberry mare collides with the green unicorn, hard, and ends up yanking the knife right out of their levitation field as it’s now stuck in her foreleg. They tumble across the hall towards another office door that’d already been kicked open. The raspberry mare disappears into the room from Swift’s group’s perspective, as the green unicorn comes to a sliding halt right at the threshold.

But as the unicorn is picking herself back up, a stone white stallion’s head comes slamming down on the green mare from out of the office.

The green mare lets out a squeal and a screech as the bust of some important officer’s muzzle comes down at the right angle, and breaks the mare’s horn right off her head. Pinning the precious protrusion under the carved stone’s weight. She flails backwards, holding onto her head as even more blood gushes down her face and sends tainted blood in nearly every conceivable direction.

Dandy backs up and sympathetically winces as she watches the devastation take place on what she knows very well is an exceedingly sensitive addition to her anatomy.

“I fucking hate unicorns!” the raspberry red mare screeches as she jumps through the doorway, tackles the green mare, and pins her to the ground. All while the hornless unicorn can do little more than hold her head and scream.

And the raspberry mare makes sure the nulla-horn has plenty to scream about as she gets to work on her with her own knife, having pulled it out of her foreleg with her teeth. She uses her slight weight, and considerable positioning advantage, to stab and slash at the unicorn mare as she sits on her stomach and holds the green mare’s body and limbs down with her own forelegs.

And, either in a moment of clarity, or a fit of even further madness, the green mare entirely abandons any worry about her own body, and chomps down on one of the raspberry mare’s forelegs as she holds her down.

The raspberry mare grunts at the added pain, but takes the opportunity to plunge the knife into the other mare’s eye socket, now that the green mare’s too busy trying to eat her to try and dodge it any more.

After shaking her head like a dog casting off a Hoofington downpour from its coat, with the knife both still in her jaws and the green mare’s skull, the green mare finally goes still as the side of her face rips away with a splash of flesh and blood.

A rough, but forced, cough echoes down the hallway, drawing the raspberry mare’s attention to finally look up from the corpse of her conquest.

Handy has his pneumatic hammer at the ready, casually holding it to the side, but obviously ready to swing at any moment, as Dandy has turned sideways, and brought out a dozen of her pistol boxes, all of which are aimed at the bloody mare.

Swift lowers her forehoof from her mouth before she asks with a smile, “Sorry for interrupting… but… may I ask why you two were fighting? Or was dinner too fast for you to catch tonight?”

The blood soaked mare takes a couple steps back, as her eyes jump from one of them to the next as she seems to either prepare to fight defensively, or turn and bolt.

“You got her, Gearing?” Swift asks with a smile.

“Call the shot,” Gearing’s modulated voice comes from an office just on the other side of the hallway junction.

Both the raspberry mare, and Dandy’s focus jump over to the doorway where Gearing steps out into the hall, with his large revolver pointed at the bloody mare. The mare backs up toward the office where she’d tumbled into recently as she looks back and forth between the three in front of her, and the one behind her, and tries to figure out from which direction the biggest threat is. Stressingly, to her, and understandably given the size of the revolver Gearing is toting, she seems to not be able to answer that on her own.

Dandy leans sideways and asks softly, “Soooo is there a reason no one’s shot this bitch yet?” She sees the scowl on the mare’s face and gives her one of her own in return as she says, “Don’t get me wrong, you try that shit with me, and I’ll put so much lead in you you won’t be able to move from the weight… But they haven’t yet, so there must be a reason…”

“She’s yellow,” Gearing’s grumbling voice breaks through the temporary silence again.

“Meanniiiing?” Dandy asks as she looks between the three quickly. “Anypony care to explain to us poor souls that don’t currently have over powered ancient technology at their disposal?”

Swift snickers as she spares her a sideways look, “It means she doesn’t actually want to fight or harm us…”

“Means she’s not actively hostile,” Gearing adds.

“Which means…” Handy starts. Then he holsters his pneumatic hammer on his back, and pointedly sits down. “We may be able to talk with her, and avoid any kind of confrontation.”

“I think we’re already at the point of confrontation,” the raspberry mare quips as she dribbles blood down her mouth with her eyes constantly quickly darting around.

“Tell ya what, how about you tell us where Lodestar and his caravan is, and we’ll just be on our way,” Dandy adds with a wide smile. She waves a hoof around dismissively as she says nonchalantly, “And then you can go back to whatever it is you were doing, and we’ll go about our own business, and I won’t have to waste ammo on someone who already looks like they’re going to drop at any second… so… how about it?” The two stare at each other for a moment, before Dandy says in a nearly whining voice, “Awww come on! Ammo’s expensive, it cuts into my bottom line! Help a mare out here! Help me. Help you. I just wanna get out of here already.”

A few seconds longer and the mare asks with her head tilted slightly as if she’s trying to hear something from far away. “You… you’re here for Lodestar?”

Handy nods before he says, “Yup. And we’ll get out of your way afterwards. We’re here for Lodestar and his caravan. Do you know them?”

The raspberry mare nods as she looks over slowly at Handy.

After a few more moments of silence Handy waves for her to continue. “Would you please show us then?”

“Who sent you?”

“Happy Trails contracted us to find out what happened, and bring back any survivors if we could,” Dandy replies as she arcs a brow at the strange behavior.

“Happy Trails?”

“Yeah, she owns the caravan company. She’s friends with Lodestar and is worried about him.”

“I know Happy Trails,” the mare adds flatly.

“Where are all of Lodestar’s group?” Swift asks as she casually scrapes off bloody bits of fur from her powerhoof on a nearby brick.

“Me,” the mare replies quickly.

“Yes, I’m asking you, who else?” Swift asks annoyed as she directs a narrow eyed stare at the mare.

“No.”

“Yes, you,” Swift replies with a snort.

“No, no. Me, me,” the mare replies.

“What the hell?” Swift asks with a raised eyebrow.

Dandy frowns and says softly, “She’s not playing with a full deck, Swift… forget where we are?”

The raspberry mare casually looks from one to the other expectantly but adds nothing.

“Where’s the rest of Lodestar’s crew?” Handy asks as Swift continuously sizes up the mentally unstable raspberry mare.

“Me,” she repeats flatly.

“Yes, he’s asking you,” Swift snorts with quickly angering disgust.

Handy frowns as he looks at Swift sideways, and then asks, “Well, can you show us where Lodestar is?”

“If you do something for me, yes,” the raspberry mare replies quickly.

“Oh great, just a small favor for a mental cannibal huh?” Swift grumbles as she slaps a hoof over her own eyes.

Handy says quietly towards Swift, “Let’s at least hear her out…” to the dismissive hoof wave he gets from Swift he asks the raspberry mare, “Tell us what the condition is first.”

“Save Lodestar,” she snaps while staring Handy in the eyes. “Lodestar’s hurt. You promise to save him. I’ll take you to him.”

“But why would you-,” Dandy starts, but then her narrowed eyes jump wide in a moment of clarity before she asks with a gasp, “Wait, were you with Happy Trails Caravans? Are you one of Lodestar’s, caravanners?”

The raspberry mare looks over at her and nods a few times. “Yes.”

Dandy scowls as she asks, “Is that how they got him? You turn on them? Why didn’t you save him yourself?”

“Can’t. I’m not enough,” she replies simply. She looks over between Handy and Swift and asks, “You help Lodestar now?”

Handy trots over quickly as he’s pulling out a potion. “Yes. We’ll help Lodestar. We’re here to help you all.”

The mare looks at the dull potion bottle and shakes her head lightly, causing her ratty bloody mane to slap against her shoulders sickeningly. “Can’t help me. Lodestar needs help. Save for him.”

Gearing walks up as he grumbles, “We need you to show us the way. You’re bleeding heavily. If you die on us, we might not find him in time. If you want us to help Lodestar, drink the potion, and let’s go.”

The mare’s head whips to look over her shoulder at Gearing. Her eyes dart around his armored body, even as damaged as it is, before she nods as she turns her head around. She snags the bottle from Handy, throws her head back, downing the entire thing, then spits the empty bottle off to the side. “Okay. Go now?”

Gearing steps to the side and motions towards her, then both forward and back towards the hallway junction as he says, “Lead the way. We’ll back you up.”

The mare nods rapidly as she turns and walks right by him. “Good. This way.”

The rest fall in line and quickly start picking up pace as the mare, potion or no, is still pretty badly injured. But, at least for now, most of the bleeding has stopped and her foreleg is no longer gushing blood. Even so, she’s making incredible time as she zips through the halls, and abruptly turns into another Maintenance marked door.

As they are following her into a maintenance tunnel that has stairs down, Gearing asks, “Where are they holding him? The jell cells?”

“No. Cells for others. Other stuff. Lodestar in very tippy toppy back… wait… no… deep deep back…”

“Motor pool?” Gearing ventures a guess.

She nods her head out of sync with her steps down the stairwell giving her an odd appearance of a furry oversized mutant chicken as she says, “Yes. Wagon park. Many wagons still. Storage. Big things.” She takes a turn into a narrow hoof path flanked with various hissing pipes as she says, “Lodestar locked in judgment cage.”

“Judgment cage?” Handy asks.

“Why aren’t you in there with him?” Swift asks a split second later.

“You escape?” Dandy follows up.

“Judgment cage. Go in until you proven innocent. I survived trial. I made it out. They let me out. Made me join them.”

“Where’s everyone else of your caravan?” Handy asks and, like a binding spell, the raspberry mare stops in place.

“Gone…”

“What do you-“ Handy starts, but then takes several steps back as the mare whirls on him.

“They make us fight! Trial by right. Winner is right. Winner is innocent. Fight, innocent, live. Fight, guilty, die. Die, guilty. Live, innocent.” She hangs her head and shivers as she says, “Made me do bad things… did bad things to me… or I wouldn’t live…”

Gearing walks by and asks without actually looking at her, “They made you fight to the death, to join them, or they’d just kill you anyway?”

The mare glances at him sideways for a moment, and then hangs her head, hiding her eyes behind her bloody mane, before she nods a few times weakly.

“They… they made her kill her friends?” Dandy asks as she looks between Gearing, Swift, and Handy, vainly hoping that she’d misunderstood something. Instead the question is answered, and validated, by a sobbing choke from the raspberry mare before she nods a couple times again.

“Why’s Lodestar still alive then?” Swift asks as she looks over at the raspberry mare. “If he’s hurt, and lost the fight, why isn’t he dead like the rest?” Dandy shoots her a dirty look for the insensitivity of the question, but Swift gives no indication if she even noticed it.

“Fresh…” she chokes again before she looks up at Swift. “Keeping him fresh, kill too soon and just rot. So they are keeping them. Lodestar and the other one… Lodestar’s next though…”

“Oh that’s just sick…” Dandy says as her cheeks take on a greenish hue.

Swift urges them to continue as she says, “Well, let’s go make sure that we cancel the dinner party…”

The raspberry mare nods and turns, quickly leading the way through the maintenance access tunnels through the deeper portions.

“What’s your name?” Dandy asks as the group quickly trots along behind their new companion.

“Melon Patch,” the raspberry red mare replies.

A large commotion causes all of their ears to perk up, and Melon shushes at the others with one bloody hoof to her lips before pointing to an air vent in the wall near the ceiling. Through the grate they can clearly hear hoofs stampeding one direction or another as many voices cry out for blood and violence as they continue their search for the intruders.

After they get further down the tunnels, and the sounds coming from the vents aren’t nearly as easily distinguishable, Dandy asks quietly, “How do you know all these side ways to avoid all of the others?”

“Horned bitch dragged me in here. Chased me around. I was one of them, but also new. So she had her fun where nopony could see...” Melon replies with a snarl.

“Well, at least she got hers, right?” Handy asks with a weak smile.

“Not soon enough,” Melon quips.

A break in an air duct releases the sounds of many hooves running as the group passes it and, like last time, they stay quiet until they are well past it. Then Dandy asks while looking back at it, “You know… I wonder if that’s what we stumbled across… this ‘Trial’ that Melon’s talking about.”

“Would explain why there were so many in that one courtroom, yeah,” Swift agrees with an added nod of her head.

Melon turns her head back to look at them as she says, “Courtroom? Yes. Trial in courtroom. Courtroom to prove who’s innocent. Who’s right. Only prove who’s still alive.”

“Like war…” Gearing mutters absentmindedly as they keep taking random turns through the tunnels.

Dandy looks over at him and asks softly, “Are you okay, Gearing?”

Gearing nods and takes the turn to the right with Melon, before yelling, “Halt!”

The group comes to a stop, and Melon looks back at him. “Halt? Why Halt? Why stop?”

Gearing points ahead at the cloud of white in front of them.

Melon looks at it, then back at him and nods as she says, “Yes. Steam. Steam hurt. Just run. Hurt less.”

“I got a better idea…” Swift says with a smirk. She looks over at Gearing and nods her chin up the way towards the steam. “Feel like patching that up enough for us to get by?”

“Hey, I could fix it too!” Handy says defensively as he stares at Swift horrified that she’d ask someone else first.

“You’d just cook in your armor, Handy,” Swift says with a frown.

Dandy looks over at Swift and narrows her eyes as she says quietly, “Just because it can’t cook him, doesn’t mean it won’t hurt him… Remember?”

Gearing pays no attention to the bickering going on between the three as he trots right up and into the cloud of steam. “Yeah. I got it.” After disappearing into the cloud of steam, a few moments later the cloud starts dissipating. “Okay, hurry up, would ya?” Gearing’s modulated voice echoes out of the cloud.

The group continues on, and quickly starts passing Gearing. The heat of the area is still oppressively high, with their fur quickly gathering unpleasant levels of moisture in it, but not painfully so. But as they are passing Gearing, they each look over and see as Gearing has reared up, and used the edge of his trench coat to stop the steam from getting through using the tip of his wing.

Dandy pauses next to him just long enough to ask, “How are your wings doing now?”

“Better… Almost as good as new, now get out of here before any more of this pipe ruptures and you end up with a permanent painful full body blush.”

Dandy bids a hasty retreat, nodding in agreement absentmindedly as she quickly catches up with the others. After they’ve gotten a considerable distance up the tunnel, the area behind them fills with white smoky steam again as Gearing releases his improvised plug. As he’s walking out, his red glowing eyes are the first thing that they can see as he’s turned on his helmet again. He looks them over then waves ahead as he asks, “Shall we?”

“How’s your wing?” Dandy asks as she looks over at his trench coat where there’s a large wet spot on it.

“Fine, I just told you that,” Gearing replies with an annoyed sigh.

“No, I mean, you just stopped up the steam with your wing, which was already hurt pretty badly, didn’t burn yourself again, did you?” Dandy asks with a raised eyebrow, but, in the act darts her eyes over to Swift and Handy to see if they’re paying attention.

Which they are.

“Oh… No, thanks. It was definitely uncomfortable, but hadn’t reached that hot yet.” There’s a delay before he says with an impressed tone, “Thanks for checking though. Appreciate it.”

“Any time, partner,” Dandy says with a grin and, at the same time, puffing up just a bit out of pride and self pleasure.

Swift and Handy exchange glances, with Swift’s eyebrow arced. Through their unspoken communication Handy frowns lightly, and bobs his head around as he nods in agreement before the pair turns and continues following Melon.

Melon waves them to stop as she gets to a door. Causing the small precession to come to a halt as they try to figure out what is coming next. Melon throws the door open quickly and steps out. With not even an attempt at stealth. And from their position further in the tunnel they can see her step out into a hallway with lighting strips running along the walls. Lighting strips that blink annoyingly but still function well enough to provide suitable light.

She walks in a circle a couple times, right in the middle of the hallway, before she hops back to the door and beckons them to follow her. As they are coming out of the narrow maintenance access tunnel, she says quietly, “This way. Lodestar this way. Follow. Stay quiet. Stay back. I’ll find out how many are guarding the judgment cage.”

She turns and starts leading the way up the stone hallway littered with various debris and refuse. She doesn’t get very far before Swift’s hoof catches her shoulder, and stops her walking as she hovers above. Melon’s focus zips to the side, looking at her shoulder, then looks up at Swift with a startled wide-eyed look. Swift waves her PipBuck laden foreleg in her face and grins as she says, “That won’t be necessary… You just let us know which room, and we’ll take care of it.”

Melon nods, and then leads the way again, but this time at a casual trot.

Not far away a set of double doors come into view along the right side of the wall. A set of metal double doors smeared with various filth, and that has trails of bloody drag marks leading both to it and from in it in various directions. Marks that fan out from the door like the tail of a peacock made of blood.

Melon points at the door and whispers back to the others, “Here. Lodestar here.”

Gearing walks up and looks around the door frame. His eyes settle on some old blue paint set upon the stone wall. He uses a hoof to wipe off some of the filth splattered across it and reveals a bit more of the text underneath. “Yeah. This is the motor pool and equipment maintenance. We’re on the back side of the building, lower level.”

“I say so already,” Melon comments as she looks at him with a hurt scowl across her face.

Swift glances at the door, then through it, as she comments, “There’s not nearly as many red markers here as there were in other areas.”

“Might be hiding,” Dandy offers.

“Can’t hide from EFS without some sort of cloaking device… StealthBucks don’t last long enough to stay permanently invisible and you’re not going to find zebra cloaks in a pony police headquarters’ armory,” Gearing comments as he keeps looking at the door. “So I’m not worried about that.”

“Well let’s get this over with so we can hurry up and get home,” Swift says as she flutters over to the door, and pushes them both open quickly with her forehooves.

Instantly a damp rank reek pours out of the chamber beyond. Carrying on the foul air, various voices chatter mindlessly.

“Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!”

As a couple of the voices giggle in between their mindless chanting, Swift gags and turns her muzzle away from the disgusting flow of air. She looks down at Gearing and asks sheepishly, “After you?” Gearing nods and heads inside slowly. But Swift is shocked when Dandy starts quickly following him in. “Doesn’t this bother you? It smells like someone shat themselves, ate it, then shat it out again.”

Dandy points up to her muzzle where she’s wearing her kerchief like a facemask again, “Not with this. I’m good.” She lets her horn flash ever so slightly, and the smile showing up on her eyes just gets even bigger when Swift’s look of shock turns to blatant indignation and jealousy.

Swift looks over at Handy and whispers with her eyes watering, “This is bullshit… we need a unicorn for our group… Like… a pocket unicorn. That can cast spells for us when we need. Healing and shit.” She points a hoof at Dandy, “She’s small, think she’ll fit in your pocket?”

Dandy starts walking with an exaggerated strut as she says, “Ya couldn’t afford me…”

The rampant noise from the inside makes them not worry so much about giving their own position away as they are sneaking up on whoever is inside of the motor pool. Given it’s hard to hear anything with all of the clattering, stomping, and rampant gibberish pouring out of the current occupants.

At the end of a very short hallway, with double doors on both ends, the group finally gets a view into the motor pool area. Large pillars are set up at regular intervals that not only help hold up the ceiling, but the above floors as well. Most of the motor pool is dark and unlit, with the majority of the overhead lights being broken or nonfunctional for a long time by the looks of them. But, from what the group can see, in the back right corner is a set of metal bars that have been formed into cages, with various wires, chains, and other hardware used to secure it. A few fifty-five gallon drums have been converted to tall fire pits, for either additional light in some areas, or snack preparation, it’s impossible to tell. Several wagons, with the Hoofington Police Department logo still emblazing the sides, sit lonely and forgotten all over. Including a pair still resting in the air on wagon hoists where they were in the middle of maintenance when the war came to its destructive end.

The motor pool, despite what they had mentally pictured when they were heading in, isn’t as small and cramped as one would believe. In fact, the roof actually is nearly two stories up from the floor. Which not only helps give them room for lifting the vehicles in the air to work on them, but gives places for the large equipment hoists to have their support structures and gantries. Gantries obviously strong enough to lift and hold any of the vehicles brought in, and for long extended periods of time at that.

Even in the dim light, it’s not hard to make out the skipping shapes of the raiders who seem to be in some sort of conversation that only they can really understand. Or, maybe even they can’t, and their madness simply makes them play along with the act. But the one thing their mindless jabbering has done, is give Swift and company a great bead on their locations. Along with keeping them too busy talking about ‘Guilty ponies’ to notice the group lurking in the doorway.

But, just to be safe, Swift closes the second set of double doors, and instantly muffles the noises coming from the large chamber beyond.

Swift looks over at the group as a whole and comments, “Okay, there’s like five or six in there. Let’s get into position, and take them out as quickly as we can. So they don’t get the bright idea to try and kill Lodestar before we can rescue him and we can get out of this stink faster. So we’ll go left.” She points at Dandy and herself. “Handy, go right and use the tool chests as cover.” She points off to the right side and upwards. “Gearing, think you can get over there? By the pillar? There’s two of these bastards that we won’t have line of sight on. And if we do this right, we can take them all out in one volley.” Gearing nods, so Swift continues, “Once the shooting starts I’ll zip in and keep them away from the cages.”

“Sure thing, Cross, no problem,” Gearing grumbles as he keeps his eyes on the door, and attention on the movements of the red indicators beyond the door.

“What?” Swift asks as she was about to say something to Handy, but is thrown off.

“What?” Gearing asks as he looks over at her.

“You… good to go?” Swift asks with a raised eyebrow.

Gearing nods as he starts towards the door, leaving them with a raspy modulated reply in his wake, “I’m gone.”

They watch him enter the door and quickly turn to the right as the door is closing itself again. After a few more seconds Swift comments, “Oooookay… that was weird…”

“Ya think?” Dandy asks as she raises an eyebrow in Swift’s direction.

“What about me?” Melon asks as she looks between the other three.

Swift looks at her, then grins as she asks, “Well, if you can distract them for a moment, so they hold still long enough for us to shoot them, that’d be helpful.”

Melon gives her a wide, joyful smile, that comes across rather creepily before she nods, “Yes. I can do. Yes!” Then she hops and skips out through the double doors before anyone else can say anything.

“Shit!” Swift blurts out as she slaps a hoof over her eyes. “Okay, let’s hurry up and get into position, I wanted her to do that after we were set, but, no choice now.”

The three quickly slip into the motor pool and fan out as planned while Melon happily trots and skips along to a beat that only she can hear.

From Swift’s position near a Hoofington P.D. wagon wreck, she watches Melon walk directly towards the cages.

Not long after, the inane gabbering picks up to a feverish pace before one screams, “My watch! Snack time later! Go away!”

Melon hops around and starts bounding circles around a burning 55 gallon drum as she says, “Judgy say guilty guilty ponies in house! Guilty ponies smash Courtroom, Judgy say they guilty!”

One of the other mares runs over, grinning and drooling as she asks, “Guilty? Guilty? GUILTY?! Where are they?! Are they coming? Huh, huh, huh?”

“More guilty to watch?” another asks as they trot over to look at Melon. Then sits down and starts biting on their hooves as they giggle. “More guilty snacks, guilty pleasures? Tasty tasty?”

Melon continues to frolic around the burning fire barrel with a wide smile plastered on her face like a madmare. “Yup, yup, yup! Judgy say more coming!”

A buck with many bite marks all over him, even through his dirty HPD uniform, walks closer to them on shaky legs as he asks, “We eat?” He points a hoof towards the makeshift cages beyond and asks in a tone that gets drowned out by his own giggling, “Eat that one? Eat that one now, huh, huh, huha, hahahaha?”

“Soon, soon!” Melon promises.

The bucks rears up onto his twitchy hind legs, and starts gnawing on his foreleg as he drools, “Buh ahm ungreh NAOW!”

The large motor pool chamber echoes out with simultaneous weapons fire from multiple directions. But most of them are drowned out by one particularly unique sounding blast like a mini explosion.

The two mares that were talking with Melon go down with bullet wounds to the chest and head, and the buck catches a round that seemed too big for his head as a large portion of it explodes into chunky bits. Another shot from the same large caliber weapon causes another red indicator to disappear from their collective visions.

Melon keeps bouncing around the fire barrel as bullets fly by her and her ‘comrades’ are gunned down in short order. She giggles and starts hopping around on her hind legs as she says, “This is fun!”

Handy stands up fully from where he’d been hiding and looks up and to the side as he holds a hoof to his ear. He puts his Proditor’s Gladius back into its holster before he says, “Hey, Gearing, you gotta use that damn thing in this enclosed space? Going to make me deaf… also, how the hell did you even get up there without flying?!”

Gearing tumbles over the side of the gantry from above, holding himself up by his forehooves and dangling from it for a moment before dropping down to the floor. He looks at Handy and says flatly, “I climbed.”

Dandy and Swift step out of their hiding places on the left side, with Swift zipping over towards the cages past Melon.

Dandy looks at Swift, and then over at Gearing, and asks, “Why’s a pegasus even bother with climbing when you have wings?” She points at Swift who simply shrugs in agreement.

Handy walks over towards Gearing, stepping around the workbenches and tool chests, as he says, “You know, I’ve been meaning to say, for a pegasus, you do some weird-“ He stops mid sentence as a metallic snapping sound catches his ear, and he hears something, several somethings, fall and clatter to the ground.

“Grenade!” Gearing screams.

The next moment Handy is sailing through the air as Gearing had punted Handy with a double hind hoofed applebuck style kick right to his armored plating. As Handy is sailing through the air, and being reminded why he really hates flying, a loud metallic clang and clatter echoes through the chamber as many bits of metal and miscellaneous tools scatter across the stone floor.

But that noise is drowned out by the not so soft wumpfs and pops of fragmentation grenades that reverberate and echo throughout the motor pool chamber. The noise echoes for long after the blast as pieces of metal rain down on everyone and everything.

Handy hits one of the police wagons, on the top edge which causes him to flip end over end across it and to the other side as bits of metal rain down to pelt him and the wagon equally.

“Handy!” Swift screams as she changes direction and zips back over to him as he’s crumpled in a heap on the other side of the skywagon.

Melon lowers herself to the ground and looks back at her left haunch, where a screwdriver is sticking out of her rear, and says flatly, “Not fun no more.” Then grabs the screwdriver with her teeth and pulls it out of herself.

Swift practically lands on Handy as she turns him over so he’s not laying on his head anymore. “Handy! Come on, wake up, say something!”

“My fucking head!” Handy groans as he holds his head with both of his forehooves.

Swift chokes and smiles as she starts nuzzling him, “That’ll work…” She gives him a kiss on the cheek before she says with a half giggle, half choke, “You should be fine, it was just your head.”

“What the fuck hit me and why does my chest feel like a Ursa Major just sat on it?!” Handy groans as Swift holds him up against the side of the police wagon.

Swift looks to the side and sees a pair of easily identifiable scuff marks on the front of Handy’s chest armor. “Gearing kicked you away from the blast.”

“But where’s Gearing?!” Dandy asks as she jumps on top of the wagon they are huddled by and looks over at the center of the blast area.

“I’m here,” replies a grumbling modulated voice from the dark.

A large scraping sound accompanies the whine of metal grinding against each other as one of the large upright tool chests starts lifting up off the ground. As Dandy runs over to the moving equipment, the tool chest tilts, and gets knocked to the side as Gearing stands up and out of the debris. The lenses of his helmet glow a menacing red, with the right one flickering every so often and somehow adding to the affect. As if it was just as angry as he was about getting blown up.

Dandy hops onto the tool chest that’d just been tossed to the side as she looks at him and asks, “Are you okay?” He turns to look at her and she rolls her eyes as she says, “I mean considering… are you okay? Do you need a potion?”

Gearing starts moving his limbs around as he says, “Yeah. I’m good. The tool chest took most of it.” He looks up at her and snorts, “It was just a few fragmentation apples anyway. Nothing serious.”

Dandy sits down on the tool chest and partially closes her eyes as she grins at him. “Only you’d think a couple fragmentation grenades are no big deal.” She looks him over again. “Still going to be all in love with explosives now?”

“Yup. Still love the way they work… except when used on me at least.” Gearing quips. To the snort his comment draws from her he adds, “Hey, at least it wasn’t a couple of those green banded bastards…”

“What about them?”

“Those magic grenades can turn your flesh to green glowing goo and melt it right off your body… So, yeah, I’ll take a fragmentation grenade over one of those sludging me any day.” He reaches over and taps her on the end of her nose with a forehoof as he says, “Shit can always get worse, remember that.”

“Shit just got worse!” Handy screams as the sound of an auto shotgun echoes throughout the artificial cavern.

They scatter as an armored pony with dual auto shotguns equipped to a battle saddle trots in through the double doors, drawn by the noise and blasts, and, in typical mad raider fashion, simply starts peppering the entire area in the hope of getting somepony.

But, obviously based on their indiscriminate fire, not caring who that somepony might be at the same time.

Gearing grabs Dandy and yanks her over the toolbox, crouching down over her as the large ball bearing sized pellets plinks off the thick metal of the tool chest.

Dandy giggles as she looks up at Gearing, “You know, we really should stop meeting like this.” She bats her eyes before she asks, “Or do you just like mounting me like this?”

Gearing chuckles through his respirator before he says, “Hey, don’t get fresh.”

“Maybe later”, she quips with a wink.

They roll to the side and watch as Swift zips through the air trying to dodge the flying large pellets being hurled at her, as Handy keeps pouring on the lead of his own from his Proditor’s Gladius. But, seemingly, having little to no effect against the thick armor she’s wearing.

Gearing pulls out some new cartridges from his jacket and holds them up with a hoof as he pops open the revolvers cylinder. “Dandy. Quick reload. Please and thank you.”

Dandy looks at him, and then the rounds, and grins as her horn glows, quickly all of the brass pops out of the cylinder and then gets replaced with new rounds in quick succession. Afterwards it clicks closed and Dandy nods as she says, “You’re good to go!”

“Not really, this is my last five rounds!” Gearing groans as he hops over the tool chest and charges at the armored mare.

When he’s a couple strides away, Gearing starts firing, biting deeply into the armored mare’s body. After the fourth shot, a plate gets blown away on her shoulder, revealing the matted bloody disgusting hide underneath. And a disheartening sight.

As the wound starts closing before his very eyes.

“I don’t have the ammo for this shit!” Gearing screams as he tumbles past her, and kicks her hind legs out from under her, causing the ranting mare to start spraying the ceiling with the spheres of death.

“I got an idea!” Dandy screams as she pulls out her pistol boxes. “Get out of there!” Gearing looks over at her, but does as instructed, quickly running away and jumping behind the safety of a police wagon as metal spheres eat into his back side the whole way.

After he’s gotten over the wagon, Dandy grabs a side mirror that’d fallen off one of the wagons and hides behind one of the maintenance gantries. She peeks around the corner, and starts shooting at the armored mare with pinpoint accuracy. And all of her shots hit the mark. But, despite the accuracy, they cause no actual damage. They don’t even scrape the metal.

But what all of those shots to the exact same spot on the side of the mare’s head do accomplish, is getting her attention, and pissing her off. The armored mare turns towards Dandy and starts peppering the gantry as she’s walking towards Dandy growling through the riot face shield and mask the entire time. But she has her head tilted and down, so even shots aimed at her face only really plink off the thick metal armor.

“I hate this cheating armor bullshit!” Dandy screams as she hides behind the steel frame of the gantry and keeps shooting at the armored mare using the mirror to aim. But, quickly, she ends up having to pick up fragments to use instead as shotgun pellets have torn the original mirror to pieces.

As the armored mare is walking around the gantry to get a better angle at the pest that’s giving her such a headache, Dandy screams out, “Gearing! Gravity assist!”

Once Gearing had stopped being the focus of the mare, and knew it, he started trying to reposition himself for a better plan of attack. He knows he only has one more round left, so he has to make it count. And the only weapon that Handy has that can do any real significant damage is his hammer, but he needs to get close to use it. Just as he’s planning on tackling the mare, and holding her down for Handy to work her over with his pneumatic sledge, Dandy screams out and draws his attention. Gearing quickly looks around, then up, and her plan becomes crystal clear to him.

Gearing takes flight, and heads straight up for the ceiling. Then skirts the roof until he’s over the gantry. And, at the moment he has it lined up properly, he zips back down towards the police wagon held up for maintenance, but had come off kilter as one of the support arms had slipped off or fell away. But, regardless of why it’s set like that, the vehicle is being held up precariously on only three points, and it wouldn’t take much to knock it off.

So Gearing crashing into it from above, after turning off his Gravity Assistance implant, was overkill in terms of what was needed to break the equilibrium holding it in place.

The noise draws everyone’s attention, even the armored mare’s as the metal crunches and creaks, from the impact. Even more so as it scrapes and falls off of the gantry straight downwards.

The mare turns and tries to jump to the side, but learns the fatal flaw with wearing too much heavy armor.

It hampers speed and mobility without some serious enchantments on it.

The police wagon performs one last act of public service for the greater good, as it crashes onto the armored mare, and smashes her straight into the stone floor. The splat of blood that shoots out around it gives the impression of a dropped can of paint as the added weight and force was enough to turn her into practical pony tomato paste.

Dandy asks as she walks back up to the gantry, “Did that get her?”

Gearing extracts himself from the wagon, pushing and bending a few thin sheets of metal out of place as he climbs back out and frees himself. He looks down at the ground and says flatly, “Markers gone. She’s not getting back up after that.”

Dandy sits down and groans, “Good… because I’m short three pistol boxes, and down to my last dozen rounds.” She looks at Gearing and frowns harder. “Ten… to be precise… exactly… Ten…” She tilts her head as she asks, “I thought you were having trouble flying? Wings back to normal now?”

Gearing chuckles then shakes his head. “What, that? That wasn’t flying, that was… falling… with style!” After Dandy slows giggling at the absurdity of it, Gearing asks, “Got a healing potion?”

“Why, need one?” Dandy asks as she starts rummaging through her bag.

Gearing points at her and shakes his head. “No, but you do, some of those pellets got you.”

Dandy looks over and sees where several red holes are appearing in her white long coat. “That bitch! This thing is a pain in the ass to mend!”

Gearing shakes his head and looks over to Swift and Handy. “How are you two holding up?”

Handy looks up from his PipBuck and frowns. As he’s letting out a sigh he says softly, “We’re out of most of our supplies. I don’t see how we’re going to get back out of here if it took all of this just to get here.”

Swift lands next to him and smiles sheepishly as she says, “Maybe that’s the last of the stupid armored mares?”

Melon climbs out of the back of a police wagon and shakes her head. “No. Judgy has more. Many more.”

Gearing looks over at her and his shoulders visibly sag as he asks, “They got into the armory, didn’t they?”

Melon looks over at him for a moment before nodding a single solitary time.

Handy looks over at Swift and asks, “What are we gonna do?”

Gearing walks by them and comments before Swift gets a chance to, “Get Lodestar. Check on him. I’m going to see about securing us an exit.”

After he’s a few dozen paces away Handy screams after him, “If you’re going to blow shit up, warn us first, okay!?” Getting no answer he adds, “So I can at least get my ears covered this time!”

Melon runs over to the metal cages and says quickly, “Lodestar… Lodestar! Wake up. Time to go!”

As the others walk up to her she turns to Swift and asks, “He die?”

Swift shakes her head as she says, “No. He’s still showing up on my EFS, so he’s not dead yet.”

“Doesn’t look far from it,” Dandy comments grimly.

Melon runs around checking the corpses of the dead ponies before coming back with a key. She unlocks the padlock on the chain holding the door closed and quickly pulls it off. “Come. We go!”

Dandy walks in and kneels down next to the battered buck. She takes in the various bruises and at least one unnatural nub in the middle of a leg signaling the broken bone underneath. She checks his hooves, where both the front and back legs have pairs of hoofcuffs, and the pairs are connected to the bars keeping him on his side by additional locks. Melon walks over and uses the key on the locks keeping his hoofcuffs to the cage bars, letting his legs finally sag down the rest of the way to the floor, before stepping back.

Handy looks at her then nods towards Lodestar. “Why not take the hoofcuffs off too?”

Melon shakes her head. “Judgy has key.”

Gearing walks over to the gathered group and comments, “I got us a way out.”

“Really? So quick?” Swift asks as her head jerks over to look at him.

“Eyup.”

“Hey… if you’re making a break… mind letting me out too?” a gruff voice comes from the dark of the cage next to Lodestar’s. When they all look over at it the voice chuckles as he says, “Hey… you get me my stuff, and I’ll even roast the bastards, free of charge…” A buck walks up with burns over the right side of his face and covering his right shoulder. Old burns. But ones that have made it look like someone had gotten a heat lamp too close to a wax sculpture as it’s so warped and wavy and the hide looks positively melted.

Gearing looks over at him and asks, “We let you out. Get you your stuff. You help burn these crazy bastards? Deal?”

The buck rears up and slams his forehooves against the railing of his improvised cell. “Count on it!”

“You got yourself a deal,” Gearing replies as he turns back to Swift and the others. “Get Lodestar, we’re getting out of here.”

“Hell yeah! Let’s burn!” cries the buck in the cage giddily.

Handy looks at Gearing and frowns as he says, “I really don’t like you making decisions that affect everyone like that without even talking to anyone first… We don’t even know that buck.”

Gearing looks at him, “It’s between me and him. Nopony else.”

Handy waves a hoof at the others and scowls as he says,” But we’re standing right here!”

Gearing nods and then motions towards the back side of the motor pool, “Exactly, so do like I said, and get the hell out of here already.” He walks in, scoops up Lodestar with his sleeve covered wings, and carries him out of the cage. He looks at Handy and asks, “So you going to carry him, or make your wife do it? Because Dandy can’t.”

Handy lets out a sigh and nods. “Yeah, I’ll carry him. Swift needs her speed.” After Lodestar is carefully laid across Handy’s back he adds, “Come on, lets go.”

Gearing turns and leads the way to the back of the motor pool. “Come on, this way.”

As the group is following Gearing to the back, the burnt buck follows along as close as he can inside of the cage and yells, “H-hey! Forgetting something? The door’s locked!”

Gearing looks over at him and says, “I’ll be back to let you out in a minute, I gotta show them the way out first!”

“B-but you’re coming back, right?! You’re not going to just leave me here to be their lunch are you?!”

“We have a deal, and I’m gonna honor it, “Gearing replies flatly.

“Well… shit… fuck!” the burned buck curses as he snarls. Then, apparently realizing his situation, puts on the shit eatingest grin on his muzzle he can muster before he calls sweetly, “Pleeeeeasse? And thank yoooouuu!”

Gearing doesn’t even respond and leads the way to the back side of the motor pool where there’s a small office set next to a giant metal retractable shutter. He walks in and turns to look at them as he grins and hits a single key on the glowing terminal set on the desk.

Instantly the overhead motors whine and whirl as the door is lifted up and off the floor. Once it’s high enough to walk under while just barely ducking, Gearing hits the button again and stops it. “Told you there was a terminal to open it.”

“Such a smart ass,” Swift giggles as she leads the way out the back door and into the far more pleasant air of the Hoofington Wastes.

Dandy and Handy head out right after her as they cautiously look around. But, once on the other side, Dandy turns to look at Gearing and asks, “What are you standing there for, come on.”

Gearing hits the button again, and the shutter starts lowering again. “Can’t. This isn’t finished.”

“Oh that’s bullshit! I’m not letting you-“ She jumps towards the closing door, and catches a brass combat boot wearing hoof to the chest midair as the shutter is coming down.

Gearing lowers his head with the lowering shutter and replies, “Lodestar needs emergency medical aid. And you all need treatment. We’re out of supplies. Your priority is to get Lodestar back to Megamart. I’ll meet you there.”

Swift yells back, “You sure you got this Gearing?”

His modulated voice grumbles back with a near chuckle, “Never know what hit’em.”

“You better, you bastard! You owe me, remember!” Dandy screeches with her muzzle down near the ground just before the shutter finishes closing. She spins around and bucks the metal shutter a few times with her hindhooves. “You insufferable prick! You better not die on me, you hear?!”

Handy stares at the door for a moment before he asks, “What about Melon?”

Swift lets out a sigh as she says, “Handy… she had plenty of time to get out if she wanted… Gearing didn’t stop her. She didn’t… so … she didn’t…” She looks over at him and frowns as she says, “She chose to stay behind, for whatever reason.” She nods her head to the side as she says, “Come on, let’s all get to Megamart, we got a long trek ahead of us.”

Inside, after the shutter has sealed, Gearing turns his head to look at Melon, and asks gruffly, “Not leaving?”

Melon shakes her head.

Gearing starts walking back to the cages as he says, “It’s your choice. You’re free to go; I can’t make you do what you don’t want to.”

“Nopony can save me,” Melon says with a choke as she follows behind.

Gearing looks back at her and says softly, “We’ve all done bad things. But your friends will be glad you survived. Don’t let the guilt make you get yourself killed.”

Melon shakes her head and replies, “That’s not it…”

Gearing tilts his head as he asks, “What then?”

“I’m one of them…”

Gearing shakes his head. “No, you’re not. You helped us. You rescued Lodestar.”

She sniffles and smiles weakly as she hides her eyes behind her bloody bangs. “I… I did manage that.”

“See, so you’re fine.”

“No. I die.”

Gearing stops and turns to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

She starts crying as she looks up at him, but with a slight, sad smile. “They made me one of them… They not only made me kill my own friends. They made me… eat…”

Gearing slowly turns to look at her as he asks, “… eat.. .your friends?”

The burnt buck leans up against the bars and waves a foreleg through the gap at Gearing as he says, “This is touching and all, but can you please get me out of here already!”

Melon nods and says, “Yes… but also of ones that had died in trial.” She points at her eyes and sobs. “I’m infected! I’m one of them.” She shakes her head throwing tears around as she says, “I’m glad I could at least help Lodestar… that that’s the last thing I’ve managed to do… but…” She sits down on her haunches and hangs her head as she says, “But I don’t want to become a monster. I don’t want to lose my mind and be… be… Evil! I’m going to die, I know this, but I want to die a pony! A good pony! At least as good as I can be with the rotten stuff I’ve had to do… Not… not as…” She looks up and her eyes go wide as she stares down the barrel of Gearing’s revolver.

“You’re call,” Gearing’s modulated voice comments coldly.

She looks from the end of the rifled barrel, up to his glowing red eyes, and the smile on her face just grows up her muzzle. With tears streaming down her cheeks she closes her eyes and says softly, “Please.”

Gearing punctuates her request with a pull of the trigger, and makes the chamber echo out with the revolver’s blast again. Pausing only a fraction of a second to make sure he wasn’t cutting her off before blowing out her brains before the disease has a chance to rot and warp it into something sinister.

“What the fuck!?” the burnt buck screams as he recoils away from the cage. “Weren’t you two friends or something?! Why’d you come in to rescue them just to blow her brains all over the place?!” Gearing turns his head to look at him, and the buck’s flanks smack into the back wall as he stares at the gun now pointed at him. “We had a deal! What kind of busted ass machine are you?!”

Gearing snarls as he says, “If I was a machine, and you were talking to me like that, I’d say ‘I’m about ta overload my aggression inhibitors!’”

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck…”

Gearing turns his head and stows his revolver now that it’s spent it’s last round on a worthy cause as he says, “But I’m not a fucking machine.”

“Uhm… so... doesn’t that make it even worse?” the burnt buck asks before recoiling even more with the snap of Gearing’s focus to him. “I mean… shit… Come on, cut me some fucking slack here! I’m trying okay?!”

Gearing walks up to the cage and replies, “Our deal. I intend on honoring it.” Then he grabs the key from where Melon had left it on the ground, and walks over to the cage the burnt buck is in. As he’s opening the door the burnt buck bounds over, but stops at the gate as Gearing grabs him by the throat with one hoof, and puts his other forehoof in the buck’s face. “And I intend on making you honor it too!”

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! Alright! Whatever! Let’s go get’em!”

Gearing shakes his head. “That wasn’t the deal.” The burnt buck looks absolutely confused and Gearing replies, “I let you out, and get you your equipment…and you help me burn them.”

“Yeah…. So?”

“Where’s your equipment? Let’s go get it so we can make these bastards burrrnnnn!” Gearing replies with a gravely tone to his modulated voice.

The buck’s eyes go wide with excitement as he says, “Yes! Burn, burn, burn!”

---

Footnote: Fragmentation errors in ‘credential matrix’ detected . . .

Error . . .

Parity check failure . . .

!!!WARNING!!! Breech detected!

!!!WARNING!!! Breech detected!

!!!Compartmentalization Protocol Initiated!

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