Gearing’s smaller-than-average pegasus form sits camped out in the kitchen of his family’s cloud home while sporting the latest iteration of his friends’ experimental illusionary magic. Being an early iteration, it’s not perfect by any means. There are a few tells with it that make it seem like there’s just ‘something off’ with the small dark blue pegasus. But, it’s passing enough that, unless someone was to pay extra careful attention, and/or didn’t really know him, they wouldn’t necessarily notice that something was off with the young buck. Unless he did something to give himself away like stepping on a scale or something else not designed to handle his weight. His head is adorned by his custom modified helmet, with a variety of tools magnetically sticking to the sides, or held on spidery looking mechanical limbs, and quickly at hoof as he manipulates the various frameworks holding different magnification magnifying glasses. He glances over at a book he has laid out on the kitchen table every so often as he moves around the contact probes of an ohms tester from one line of circuitry to another.

His mother sits off to the side, carefully making small stitches in some cloth as she glances over at him working every so often. After a few moments longer of silence, when he sets the ohms meter to the side again, she asks, “Gearing… I… I know you haven’t exactly been happy about what we are but…” She looks over at him, taking in the various obvious and artificial changes from what she’s used to, and asks with sadness across her face and coating her words, “Did they make you do that? As a stipulation for working there?”

Gearing glances up at her, and the whites of his eyes seem abnormally massive as he looks at her. Even without the bug eyed effect of the magnifying glasses. He shakes his head and smirks as he goes back to focusing on the partially disassembled toaster in front of himself. “No, it wasn’t required. But, they did say it was an option… And I jumped at the first chance.” He points at his face with a wing as he takes off the helmet momentarily and reveals his soft looking dark blue pelt. He blinks his blue eyes at her and points at them as he smiles with pearly white teeth. “I’ve gotten some help from some really talented unicorns. They’re working on trying to make sure the illusion works well enough…” He shrugs. “Now it’s just some light manipulating mumbo jumbo but in the future? Who knows… maybe even a cure!” He puts the helmet back on as he excitedly rocks side to side and mentally prances through the possibilities.

His mother pauses sewing long enough to reach over with a wingtip and gently caress his cheek. But, despite the way it looks, she can feel his metallic hide that’s being covered up by the illusion. She lets out a sigh as she says, “Sorry, Gearing.”

Gearing shrugs and goes back to looking at the toaster. “Not your fault. Not like you did this to us intentionally.”

His mom looks at the toaster as she asks, “So, you think you can fix it for her?”

It’s a blatant attempt at changing the subject. To avoid thinking, let alone actually talking, about all of the implications that topic could dredge up. They both know it. But likewise they are both more than willing to play along with it.

Gearing nods as he grins. “Yeah, actually! Don’t worry, I’ll help ya prove you aren’t a braggart.” He pulls out a small bag from his saddle bag and begins working with the super heated needle and long spool of metal wire he withdraws from the storage pouch. As a fine smoke drifts up from the top he blows on it gently and looks at his mother through the magnification lenses attached to his helmet. “Just have to fix this weak solder joint… No big deal. Hardest point was tracking down which one was bad.” He quickly sets the rest of his equipment down to the side as he starts putting her friend’s toaster back together. He holds it up, and depresses the button as he looks inside through the bread slots.

After a few moments it starts warming up, with a gentle glow emanating from the inside along with a considerable amount of heat, and Gearing grins as he directs his eyes over to his mom. “See! Told ya I could do it!”

She snickers as she reaches over and rustles his mane with her wing. “My clever little buck, you’re always going to make me proud!”

He grins even wider and he shamelessly enjoys the attention as she praises him.

Then the toaster pops, having apparently reached the point where it decided it was done with its cycle. Gearing closes his eyes as a collection of burnt bits of bread and unknown other filth comes flying out of the machine peppering and coating his face with the debris.

He coughs and spits off to the side as he scowls at the toaster while covered in the black sooty material. “It’s a good thing I don’t actually breathe!”

His mother sets the garment she was working on down as she laughs for a few seconds at how ridiculous he looks with his face splattered with the grime. Even more so considering the illusion covering his body isn’t hiding the dirt at all, making him look like a typical wrench monkey. In fact, the dirt actually makes him look more like a normal flesh and blood pegasus buck, and that realization just makes her laugh harder.

He rolls his eyes as he takes off his helmet and mutters, “Gee, thanks, ma… Rub it in why don’t you?”

She reaches over and wraps a wing around his neck as she leans close to him and asks softly with a sweet smile, “My little buck having a hard day?”

He shrugs as he says, “There’s so much to learn. I just don’t want to let anypony down…”

“Well, Gearing… just remember one thing.”

He looks up at her as he raises an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“What’s my greatest treasure?” she asks with a widening smile.

His eyes jump open wide and then he looks off to the side as he says softly, “Awww… I’m too old for that stuff…”

“What… is my greatest treasure… Gearing?” she repeats as she leans in even closer.

Gearing looks around at the table, floor, and the collection of tools. Trying to look at anything and everything except her. But, eventually, he does. He looks up at her slowly as he lets the faintest smile creep across his muzzle. “Me… I am.”

And, just like that, she leans in the rest of the way and plants a soft kiss right between the eyes on his forehead. Lingering there for a few moments before she pulls back and says as she nuzzles him, “That’s right, Gearing. You’re my greatest treasure… and nothing and no one can or will ever change that… Not bad days, not bad ponies… And certainly not this curse. You’ll always be my baby buck.”

Gearing leans into her affections and wraps his wings and forelegs around her neck as he says softly, “I love you, mom.”

She gives him an extra squeeze as she replies with a sigh, “I love you too… Now you should hurry along. I know you didn’t mean to stay here this long, and I don’t want you to get in trouble on my account.”

“I’m not worried about that. I’ve been working closer to here the last week or so. I can get back in plenty of time before it causes an issue,” he replies. Though, as he says it, he starts throwing his tools in his satchel as quickly as he can despite his reassurances that he has plenty of time. After the last item is stowed in the bag, and he’s on the way to the door clasping the bag to himself with a foreleg, his mother calls after him.

He turns to look at her and she smiles as she scrunches her shoulders towards her head. “Don’t forget to take some time for yourself, Gearing. Life is more than just about work…” She leans sideways towards the door as she smirks. “Like maybe a little marefriend? Maybe that little filly that’s been helping you with your arcane studies?”

Gearing lets out a few long retching sounds before he opens the door to leave. “Uhhhg! Mom, you’re so embarrassing!” Then he hops out the door, kicking it closed behind himself before he nose dives down through the clouds. He lazily lets gravity do most of the work as he quickly disappears from sight of the house.

Gearing, covered in an advanced illusion that’s creating his blue pelt under the general maintenance uniform he’s wearing, walks around through the cloud house where he’s spent most of his life up until recently. He ambles around a bit, looking from room to room as he’s lost in thought. It doesn’t help that he’s in such a rush and trying to outrun a deadline. As the front door opens, he hurries into his room, quickly starts grabbing a few books and other items, and tosses them into a large duffle bag he’d brought with him this time.

The bed in his room is minimalistic in design. Cloud in construction. One of the few things that’d actually hold up his weight short of some pretty serious structural reinforcement or enchantments. Though, he doesn’t normally sleep in it. And, in truth, hasn’t done so in quite some time at this point.

“Gearing?” his mother calls from the door to the kitchen.

“Yeah, in here, mom!” he replies as he sifts through a few things, then decides against taking any of them and stows them back in the shelves where they had been.

She walks into the kitchen, and notices his satchel bag laying on the kitchen table where he’d dropped it off and taken out the duffle to go gather everything else. She leans sideways as she yells through the hallway towards his room, “Are you staying long? It’s been a while!”

He trots through the hallway and sets down the duffle bag as he shakes his head. “Nope. Can’t. I’ve been directed to get down over near the coast. We’ve got a lot of trouble to deal with, and I can’t stay and chat.” He leans over and gives her a kiss on the cheek. Though he doesn’t have to stretch up nearly as much as he used to in order to do it. “Sorry, mom, maybe next time.”

He turns and heads into his old study room, sorting through the various magazines and tools and equipment as quickly as he can as she stands there bewildered at his rather direct statements and unquestionable confidence. She’s not used to the abrupt directness of it. She doesn’t know how to take this strange change in her little buck.

She looks at the duffle bag, and her eyes go even wider as she sees him put a few science magazines into it. “Wha- what are you doing?” She watches him turn around and go back into the workroom as she yells after him, “Are you moving out?!”

Gearing hangs his head as he’s coming back into the kitchen. “See, this is why I wanted to have this done before you got back…”

She looks him over for a few moments and her rear hits the cloud floor with a loud crack as her legs practically give out from under her. “So you are just moving out?! Were you even going to tell me? Ever?!” She looks at the bag on the counter and asks, “Where are you even going to be staying? Just in the office somewhere?” She narrows her eyes at him as she says, “You better be sleeping sometime, young buck!”

Gearing sits down and puts his forehooves together at his muzzle as he tries to figure out how to say what he needs to say. He looks up at her and sighs. “I have my own apartment in the company block. It isn’t much, but I need to be able to pop in and pop out without there being any delays.” He shrugs as he smiles weakly. “It’s time I have my own place, don’t you think?”

She shakes her head and then throws a hoof out at him as she yells, “You’re not even old enough to have your own place! Who even signed the lease?” She looks around and then shakes her head. “I know I certainly didn’t.”

Gearing shakes his head. “It’s a part of the company block. I’m not leasing it. It’s one of the perks of the job.”

She frowns as she says softly, “And you didn’t trust me enough to tell me this?”

Gearing shrugs as he looks around and tries to avoid looking her in the eye. “I’m on call now… There’s no telling when they are going to need me or where I’m going to have to go… They need me close in case of emergencies...”

She walks over slowly to him and says with a crack in her voice, “Gearing… I need you close…” She shakes her head. “This is way too soon. I-” *Tick* “I don’t like this…” She reaches out and gently grabs a bit of fabric from his jumpsuit as she asks, “Please… promise me-” *click* “you’ll come by?” She steps up closer to him as she tries to get some eye contact with him. “Of-” *Tick* *Click*“often enough that I can a-” *click* “actually recognize my own baby buck when he’s walking through the house… I mean… look at you now… you’re so much taller. You’re growing up way too fast for my liking.”

Gearing looks off through the door into the workshop and says softly, “I’ll try… I’ll get back as often as I can. Okay?” He shrugs weakly then pulls away and heads back into the workshop as he says, “That’s all I can promise…”

She sits there hanging her head for a few moments as she hears him rattling through one storage box after another in his workshop. This is hard to process for her as she shivers lightly and tries to control herself. A glint of metal reflecting off the refracted light from her own crystalline wings draws her eye towards his satchel. She leans in closer to it, and then glances at the door to the workshop quickly, before she moves the bit of fabric out of the way to get a better look at whatever it is.

And uncovers a modified mouth grip.

“Gearing!” She yells at the top of her lungs. “Gearing!”

Gearing quickly walks back into the kitchen from the workroom and his eyes go from looking at her, to jumping over to the pistol she’s holding aloft with a wing like it's a dirty diaper.

She shakes it in the air as she asks with a rather shrill voice. “Gearing! What is this!”

Gearing slowly walks forward as he sighs and unceremoniously tosses the pile he was just sorting through into the duffle bag. He starts closing it up as he says, “That is a… ten millimeter semiautomatic pistol… it’s a modified variant called a ShowStopper.”

She waves it around with her wing as she stares at him and practically screeches, “This is a gun!”

Gearing narrows his eyes at her and says flatly, “I’m aware of that, mom… Watch where you’re pointing that thing, would you?”

She stretches out her wing and holds the pistol sideways with it as she asks, “What are you doing with a gun?!”

Gearing finishes closing the duffle bag as he looks at her and shrugs. “We’re at war, mom…”

She rolls her eyes with such gusto that the motion carries all the way down to her shoulders, fully demonstrating that his sass is entirely genetic, before she comes back at him and shakes the firearm a few more times for good measure. “I know that, Gearing! But that doesn’t explain why do why-oh-YOU have a gee-you-en?!”

Gearing steps over and deftly snatches the gun from his mother. Hopping away from her the moment he has control of it as he ejects the bullet that was in the chamber in the process. He grabs his satchel that was on the kitchen table, and slips the pistol back into its hidden compartment as he says flatly, “They’re standard issue.”

She sags her shoulders as she looks around and suddenly seems lost in her own house. This doesn’t make sense to her. Her baby, a genius, is supposed to be in school learning to become the next top executive and inventor… Somepony that’s destined for greatness that would go on to help all creatures everywhere through his pure ingenuity and dedication… But the world has apparently gotten so bad that even he, a mere technician, and a young colt at that, is having to carry around a weapon. Presumably for his own protection from infiltrators or saboteurs while working.

This isn’t what she wanted for her only son. Her only child. And the growing horror on her face is plain to see. She’s so flabbergasted she can’t figure out what, if anything, to say to this sudden realization. Her clockwork brain is too busy misfiring and tripping all over itself to be able to put the puzzle pieces together for her.

Gearing quickly grabs his satchel, throws it around his neck and shoulder, and then runs out of the house with the duffle bag across his back, not even secured properly to himself first, as he says quickly, “I have to go.” As he’s jumping out through the front door he says softly, unsure if she even can hear him given her current state, “I’m sorry, mom…”

The late afternoon light of Hoofington is just as dreary as it was that morning, with the moisture hanging heavily in the air. It’s always raining somewhere in Hoofington and Swift and Handy are simply glad they aren’t the ones on the receiving end of it currently as they continue on their way on their task for Lodestar.

Though while the couple have stayed relatively close to each other, keeping an eye on their surroundings while they proceed, Gearing has been noticeably ‘not like Gearing’ the whole way. He’s kept a steady pace, but it’s been barely at a trot speed. Then there’s the fact that he’s constantly heading in straight lines, only changing direction to keep from crashing into something at the last second. There’s no darting around. There’s no slinking off to the side. There’s no running ahead to clear the way. And there’s no communication. At all.

There’s only Gearing simply walking at a near casual pace in a relatively straight line towards their goal.

It’s enough to draw concern from both Handy and Swift, causing Swift to take over the majority of the task of navigating and providing lookout for the group. He’s moving, which is an improvement. But neither of them know how to help him any more than they already have. Neither of them are psychologists and Handy is self aware enough to do his best not to make matters worse, by simply not saying anything to him at all.

Although Gearing seems to be on autopilot as he’s trotting through the devastated landscape of what was once a Hoofington shopping district, he hasn’t completely checked out. Unlike their worry that he may be trying to hide away from current reality by crawling into his own psyche, he is actually processing things. But what they don’t know, what they couldn’t know, is that what he’s processing isn’t so much what he’d been through, but what has been brought up as a result of Swift’s treatment regimen. All of the questions he’d been subjected to had brought many things to the surface of his mind. It’s hard to not think about something, when you’re explicitly asked about it.

And the questions about his mother had especially been a key to unlock a rather large door. One he’d still rather have remained closed. But, what’s done is done. So now he has to confront the facts. And one of them is the fact that even in his near delirious state he’d admitted something that he’d yet to even let himself think about.

His mother. His only family. The only one to support him his entire life.

Is gone.

And, as is the case with many such situations where someone has to reevaluate their life based on new information or realizations, he can’t help but feeling a deep regret. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate her. He did. He did all he could to try and make things better for her. To repay her for all of the kindness that she gave willingly that the rest of the world couldn’t be bribed into giving him.

He’d always thought they’d have time. Later. That, one day, he could come clean with her. About everything. And he would then, finally, be able to tell her the truth and make her understand why he had to be away as much as he was. That the war would finally be brought to a close, and they could go on with enjoying their life without it looming over them every minute of every day. And that he could, and would, make up his prolonged absences to her.

But then the war did come to an end. Yet there was no victory. Only death. And all of his plans and sacrifices turned out to be a complete waste in the end. And now he has a nagging feeling over his entire body for the wasted time. If they’d won, if he brought the war to the close that he’d wanted, it would have all been worth it.

And now he’s not so sure, and he’s left with mounting regrets as he can’t help thinking through various visits he’d had with his mother. And through those moments getting to enjoy their time together in the only way he has available to him now: In memory.

Swift looks at her PipBuck as she stops walking and comments, “Okay, so it’s not terribly far away, but if the information is right, we can access the maintenance tunnels to get there by heading into Hoofington’s Green Line.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s hurry up and get to the Green Line tunnels so we can-”

“No,” Gearing abruptly cuts Handy off as he’s passing the pair at his steady trot. “We’re not going that way.”

Handy scowls as he stares at Gearing, even more so than usual as he hates being interrupted. “Why the hell not? Got a better idea?”

Gearing stares at Handy as a message he’d read plays across his mind’s eye once more.

‘…We have a while, so no rush. But we’re going to need help to get out of here and join you from your side. The side tunnels have either collapsed or been too irradiated to even joke about going through, and only a couple of the other ways even seem functional…’

“It’s a bad idea…” Gearing replies flatly as he looks down at the rubble around their hooves.

Swift looks over at him and rolls her eyes before she asks, “Could you give us a bit more information with your info?”

Gearing looks up at her, staring in silence for a few moments, before commenting quietly, “I found records of what had been happening in the various maintenance tunnels shortly after everything went belly up… It’s dangerous down in those tunnels now.”

Handy stares at him and raises an eyebrow as he asks, “What, from like, two hundred years ago? What makes you think it’s still dangerous down there?”

Gearing slowly raises a hoof and points at a building across the street. Both Swift and Handy look over and watch as the metal frame of the awning of the now abandoned bakery loosely hangs from the building’s front stonework. The metal framework gives out a low mournful tone as it moves ever so much in the wind, and threatens to fall down at any second.

“What makes you think anyone’s been doing maintenance on that area, when nothing else has been worked on?” Gearing finally says after they’ve been staring at the rusty metal skeleton of the awning. “If anything, it’s probably gotten worse…”

Swift looks back and forth between the two before she asks softly, “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough that I’m bringing it up as something to avoid…” Gearing replies in the same quiet monotone voice he’d been using all morning.

“So, you got a better idea or just going to keep playing the vague doomsayer?” Handy asks with a raised eyebrow and just the slightest hint of a smirk. Earning him a sideways elbow from Swift as she rolls her eyes.

Gearing looks at his PipBuck and starts examining the local topography. “Yes. We can use a ponyhole that takes us directly to the maintenance tunnels running under the city. They are scattered out at regular intervals, so we just have to find one near where we want to go.” After staring at and zooming around on the map he mutters, “Lets just hope the drainage flood control pumps are still active, otherwise large portions of these areas are going to be under water…”

Swift cringes as she thinks it through, and starts becoming worried as Gearing neither says anything, nor moves a single metallic hair, for several minutes. “Gearing?” she asks softly.

“I think I found a likely spot… it’s on the next block over,” Gearing suddenly says before turning and walking at an angle to walk around the abandoned bakery and start leading the way.

Handy and Swift exchange sideways looks with frowns across their muzzles before they follow. Shortly after they get past the bakery, there is a loud whining screech as the metal of the support structure finally gives up the fight and falls to the ground. The pair runs away, fleeing the growing dust cloud as they look behind themselves and make sure nothing else is going to fall down. Or, if it does, that it’s not going to come slinging in their direction.

“This whole city’s falling apart!” Handy grumps as he gallops along.

“I think that was Gearing’s point,” Swift says with a laugh before jumping up and kicking her hoof out to bat away a small piece of brick that had managed to catch up to them and was dead set on hitting Handy in the back of the head.

When they catch up to where Gearing has apparently stopped, they look around as they try to figure out what the metallic buck is trying to do now. Gearing starts criss crossing the street, looking down at the ground as he brushes away dirt and debris to double check where the curbs are located. Or, whatever is left of a curb and where it was originally located in the case of a few of the more ambitious sinkholes.

As they stand there and watch, Gearing keeps finding a spot, among the landscape, then turning and making a straight line for a pile of rubble. Time after time he does this and walks to almost the same spot before going and walking off in a different direction to find another point of interest.

“Lost?” Handy asks as he looks around. It wasn’t meant as a snarky comment, but as a genuine question. Because, even with his PipBuck’s navigation, he feels thoroughly lost in this new unknown area.

Gearing clamors up the piles again, walking over a mound where half of a four story building had fallen down on itself and spilled out into the roadway. “Judging by the layout and utility lines, it should be around this area.” He stops and looks down at the crumbled pile of mortar and bricks under his hooves as he says, “I bet it's under this rubble.”

Swift looks at it and sits down as she lets out a groan. “That’ll take forever to dig up… Can’t we go find another spot?”

Gearing shakes his head as he calmly replies, “There’s nothing to say that another one won’t have the same problem. Also, this is a good sign.” He clops a metallic hoof against a bigger chunk of the rubble before he looks over at them.

Swift frowns as she stares at him and is seconds away from calling him on it before she asks, “How could this possibly be a good sign?”

Gearing looks between them before he says, “If it’s buried like this. It’s unlikely anyone else has gotten in here. So, there shouldn’t be any surprises. No traps. No tripwires. And this should insert us in really close to the data terminal so we won’t have as far to go.”

Handy raises a hoof as he grins. “If it means less things trying to blow me up, it’s got my vote.”

Swift looks at him sideways as she asks, “Even if it means we’ll be spending all night digging through bricks?”

Handy nods and grins even wider. “Yup… but… I don’t think we’ll need to…” Swift raises an eyebrow at him and he smiles at her as he asks, “Hey, Gearing, you got this?”

“Eyup.”

“Need a shovel?”

“MmmNope.”

To the startled look on Swift’s eyes, Handy motions with his chin a distance away, “You obviously haven’t seen him dig… just get out of his way…” He turns and trots away a distance, even going so far as to jumping on the far side of the metal husk of a burnt out wagon before peeking through gaps at Gearing.

Swift walks over next to Handy with her eyes narrowed so far they’re almost closed. “Okay, Handy, this is ridiculous, what are you-”

Handy reaches over, puts a hoof on the top of her head, and pushes her down as he says, “You’re gonna wanna duck more.”

Swift bats his hoof away, after being pushed more into a squatting position, but before she can make a snarky comment she looks up and asks, “What the hell is that noise? Is it hailing? I don’t feel anything?”

Handy simply grins wider and points through the rusted wagon wreck.

Swift scoots over, peeks through a hole in the wagon, and instantly her jaw drops. “What the hell?! He’s digging like a… a… dog, or a rabbit or something… I mean wow! Look at him go!”

Kra-baaanngggg.

The noise sharply increases as a chunk gets hefted away as Gearing practically bucks away the large collection of bricks that are still being held together by mortar, only for said collection to shatter into smaller pieces once it hits a delivery wagon across the street.

“Did you see the size of that one?!” Swift asks as she pulls away from the wagon enough to look around it as the pieces are still settling to the ground. She looks over at Handy as she asks with excitement covering her features. “You see him do this before?!”

“Yeah, hun. That’s why I said we needed to get out of his way,” Handy replies with a smug grin.

“So, should I add ‘Excavator’ to his list of talents?” Swift asks with a smirk.

“More like ‘Badger Impersonator’,” Handy replies with a chuckle.

“Nah, I think he looks more like a bunny the way he’s scooping with his forelegs and throwing it back between his hind legs like that,” Swift replies with a grin. “How long do you think it’s going to take-”

A loud scraping of metal on metal rings out and makes their teeth vibrate, stopping her sentence short.

“Found it!” Gearing yells out as he scrapes and scoops a few more pieces out of the hole he’s made and sends it flying through the air.

Swift and Handy come out of hiding and walk over cautiously as they stare at the wide and deep bowl that Gearing has dug into the pile of rubble. But, there, at the very base of the bowl Gearing’s carved out, sits a metal disk set into the concrete. Rusted by centuries of neglect and Hoofington’s bitchy weather. But, despite that, still doing its job of keeping the maintenance access sealed.

“Do we need anything fancy to get it open? Special tool? Passcode? Glyph marked enchanted ID card? Something else stupid that we’ll have to go and track down?” Swift asks with a frown.

“Not really, but a crowbar would help,” Gearing replies flatly as he uses a hoof and scrapes out the dirt in the grooves around the lid.

Handy is already in the process of pulling a thick crowbar from his tools before Gearing had even said anything, and flips it in the air before catching it in his right fetlock and offering its long side to Gearing with a grin. “Like this?”

“Yeah, that’ll do,” Gearing replies as he takes it and looks closely at the lid.

Handy straightens up more as he smirks and looks at Swift.

Swift looks back and forth between the two, before waving a forehoof between them in the same motion. “Did you two set this up in advance or something? This seems almost planned.”

Handy smirks and shakes his head. “Naaaaahhh.” Swift looks back and forth before sticking her tongue out at Handy and getting a chuckle for her frustration. “So, Gearing, need some help with-” Handy starts

Klang.

“-that. No, of course you don’t. You already got it off…” Handy comments with a frown as he stares at the heavy metal hunk that was just so casually set to the side, but the impact still broke several brick fragments anyway.

They all three gather around and look down into the deep dark pit that light can’t seem to penetrate.

“So, we just hop down there, hunt around the maintenance access tunnels until we get to the right data center. Get the files we need, then get out, right?” Handy asks as he stares into the black oval between them.

“Yup,” Gearing replies flatly.

“Well, how are we going to do this?” Handy asks as he looks over at Gearing.

“Step one, Hop Down There,” Swift says with a giggle as she jumps into the air and comes back down forehooves and snoot first. “Threetwoone dibs!”

Handy reaches out to bite her tail, to try and keep her from going down further, as he yells, “We don’t know what’s down there, wait!” But he snaps his jaw just short as she disappears down the hole.

“That’s what I’m finding out!” Swift’s voice echoes back with a giggle from the darkness below.

“I didn’t hear her touch down,” Handy comments with a groan.

“She can fly, you know, so she’s probably hovering or flying around,” Gearing observes quietly.

Handy leans down towards the hole and yells down, echoing out around his own ears painfully in the process, “You okay down there?!”

“Yeah, and you don’t gotta yell, it’s not that far down!” Swift’s voice replies with annoyance covering her words. A moment later a light kicks on, out of sight from the hole but still illuminating the water at the bottom which isn’t far below ground level, maybe ten feet by Handy’s estimations, as Swift turns on her PipBuck light. “Ouuu there’s a couple ways to go down here! I wonder what’s behind this door!”

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Handy yells as he gets closer and closer to the edge and almost falls inside in the process. But Gearing sticks out a foreleg and leverages it against Handy’s chest to keep him from tumbling in head first. Handy lets out a groan as he asks, “Why’s she always gotta be like this…”

Gearing pulls Handy back and looks him in the eye blankly for a moment before he says, “Most pegasi are borderline claustrophobic, and wouldn’t just nose dive into a tight hole like that…”

Handy’s eyes shoot wide open. But before he can say anything in response, Gearing spins around and starts backing into the hole himself.

Gearing looks up at Handy from the hole and adds, “You might wanna talk to her about that,” before he continues down and disappears into the tunnel system himself.

Handy stands there at the top, blinking a few times, as he tries to put together what just happened. Gearing’s PipBuck light snapping on helps snap him out of it, before he shakes his head and looks down into the tunnel system.

“Come on down, it’s clear,” Gearing calls up before walking around in the access tunnel room.

Handy looks around then rolls his eyes as he asks, “How am I the last one down? I’ll never hear the end of this…” He whips around, hops in and quickly starts shimmying down the ladder. But, before getting close to the bottom, he slips as one of the ladder rungs tilts under his weight as it practically laughs at him.

After Handy splashes down in a chest deep hole that might as well be a cistern of nasty water considering its size and contents, Handy springs back up in the air and shrieks at the very cold water suddenly soaking him.

“Watch that last step, it’s a doozy,” Swift’s voice comes from a room off to the side. With a voice bathed in a tone of self amusement.

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