Gearing continues walking along the underground train tracks away from the small station as he keeps a careful eye on his unfamiliar surroundings. And not far beyond a jutting outcrop of roughly hewn stone that the tracks noticeably turn to avoid there is a decided dip in elevation. Just after that, and while still tilting down noticeably, the train tracks crisscross with another set of tracks that come from an opening to his left and Gearing can see the wreckage of where a couple trains had collided with each other and derailed. At least the beginnings of the extended field of destruction as every direction except the one he had just come from is home to different pieces of the disaster. Some of the cars had passengers in them. Others were mostly cargo judging by the shape of the overturned cars. As he gets closer and starts walking through the accident scene he can see bodies everywhere. Or, what’s left of them at least. In some cases they had been smashed by the heavy containers falling out of the other cargo train. In some they seem to have just died where they landed, from where they were ejected from the cars during the accident. All of them have been reduced to skeletons. Some still have their clothes, though most don’t. But then the more he looks at it, the more that itchy feeling over his body just keeps growing.

‘I don’t like this,’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head says as his mane bristles.

Gearing walks around the wreck, keeping a good distance from it, as he skirts around the outcropping and starts trying to walk along the right side wall’s edge. As he’s walking over one of the skeletal bodies that looks sprawled out on the ground, he stops dead in his tracks as he suddenly looks down. The buck, judging by the skeleton, has bones scattered around him. Also, the limbs aren’t really in any position they should be considering the way the body is laying. The longer he looks at them the more the strange markings on the bones become evident. And, after staring at them for a few seconds, they become crystal clear to Gearing as his eyes start growing wider by the second.

Teeth marks. Equine teeth marks. All over the corpse’s bones. From the legs to the head and everything in between seem to have gouges in them.

Suddenly the odd placement of the legs makes sense. Once he stops trying to mentally force any idea of the pony just falling down dead and decaying where he fell, it becomes obvious that their legs had apparently been practically, if not actually, ripped away from the body as they were held down and feasted upon by other equines.

‘Ghouls,’ the little blue pegasus says with a groan as Gearing’s head whips up and he starts looking around in sudden alarm and with increased alertness.

The damage is old. The corpse is old. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still lingering around, especially if what he’s heard about their life spans is correct. The one thing he can’t entirely figure out is why the bones are so intact and close together. As morbid of a thought he realizes that is, he’s seen what happens when scavengers get a hold of a body before they can be reclaimed. Or when something big attacks a pony, like an adolescent dragon. Or even a manticore like those that he’d been warned about that called the Everfree Forest their home. Bones aren’t normally this kept together when the body is being devoured. They get scattered around more if not actually consumed as well.

He kneels down and uses a wing to gently roll the head of the buck over so he can see the other side of his muzzle. And the difference is quite stark.

‘No bites,’ the little blue pegasus comments as they both pay careful attention to it and start mentally placing direction of bites to cause the damage pattern.

Gearing sets the skull back the way it had been as he straightens up and then starts walking around it as he thinks to himself. Something interrupted their meal. They ran off without finishing it entirely.

‘Could something have scared them off?’ the little blue pegasus muses.

Doubtful, more likely they saw something else and went after it instead.

Gearing walks along the overturned train cars, avoiding all of the debris he possibly can, as he goes back to trying to be as quiet as he can be. The ghouls might be a problem for him. Or they might not. But he’s absolutely certain that whether they are dangerous on their own or not, they’ll cause enough of a commotion to draw more attention to himself that he really doesn’t want. When he approaches an area where there’s a lot of wreckage and debris, but enough head space to do so, he jumps and flutters over the mess instead of having to try and pick his way through it. And, from the air, he can see that the tangled mess is about as bad as it could be. In a couple instances he sees where things had caught fire, but nothing had put it out. No one had come. No rescue. No bots. Nothing. And it was left to burn until it finally burned itself out.

Which is tragically evident and portrayed by the passenger train car that is still full of skeletons, at least a large pile of them, as the entire box car had burned down to the metal. The heat had been so intense that the metal had warped and caved in as the car burned, and several of the bones are actually sticking out of the metal itself. The bones seem to be baring themselves to the world so that any viewing the scene would realize that the victims of the crash didn’t simply rot away. They were burned, trapped in the metal, and, unfortunately, were just as likely to have died in the flames as they were from dying in the accident.

The further down the tracks Gearing gets, heading towards The Core, the stronger the itch all over his body gets. And as he’s landing on the ground, he jerks his head around as the sound of him stepping on a can seems to echo out. But what caused him to have a momentary spasm of his head wasn’t entirely to do with the fact that he’d accidentally made more noise than he had intended. It was because he’d heard it in an off-putting lopsided way. He tilts his head left and right, and starts rotating his ears around as he tries to figure out what’s going on.

‘It’s like someone turned down the world’s volume,’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head says with a concerned frown.

“This is bad… If I’m having a hard time hearing, they’ll be able to sneak up on me easier,” Gearing mutters aloud to himself.

‘Well, at least the right seems okay…’ the little blue pegasus adds with a horribly ineffective smile of reassurance that neither of them really feel.

Gearing slowly starts walking, while moving and adjusting his shoulders again, as he groans, “God this itch is annoying me… I gotta figure out whatever this gas is or whatever it is so I can come up with an anti-itch counter measure.”

‘It’s annoying... it really is,’ the little blue pegasus in his head grumps as it starts rolling around and scratching at the left side of his shoulder and face with both of his left hooves. ‘What is this?!’

Gearing steps around a car that had been so thoroughly cast away from the train wreck that it’s not only not even attached to the rest of the destruction, but it’s laying a distance away and against the tunnel wall to boot. As soon as he’s on the other side of the teetering car, he notices a door made for hoof traffic, and not likely to be used by normal customers but only actual work crew members. Gearing walks over, and pauses as he looks at a smear of black ichor on the door frame next to the computer terminal. He stares at the black damp ooze and can’t quite figure out what it is. He runs it through his mind a few times, thinking it almost looks like burned or coagulated blood. But, then again, nothing around here looks like that so it’d be strange for it to be here. All of the fires had burned out so long ago that any of the blood should have dried to dust decades if not centuries ago.

He shakes his head, and mindlessly starts scratching at the left side of his face with a hoof as he directs his attention to the computer terminal. It’s locked, although, judging by the card reader next to it, it looks like it had override cards that could let someone get inside without having to go through the hassle of unlocking the terminal itself. He debates on trying the ID card that he’d acquired earlier, and already successfully used once, but quickly dismisses the idea. If it works, it’ll create a log of the access. And if anyone’s paying attention to the access control system, they’ll know it’s been used. True, logging in with the password will also create a log, but that’s not nearly as suspicious as a unique card that hasn’t been used in over 200 years suddenly being used everywhere. That just screams ‘breech’ and Gearing knows it. Gearing starts tapping at the keys with one hoof and in short order the door is unlocked and ready to enter. He keeps scratching at the left side of his face as he hits the button to open the door and starts walking forward with his head down as the door splits in half vertically and slides into the flanking walls in front of him revealing the dark passageway beyond.

As he’s stepping into the entryway, he hears a hissing gush of wind like a ruptured pipe venting air, but it turns into a low rumbling sound that makes his head jump up and forward. The lights in the short hallway kick on in front of him in a wave, one after another away from him, as he’s walking, and, as he’s looking forward, and the lights are coming up, the door behind him closes.

Before the lights are even all on, the source of the noise becomes clear as dark skinned creatures start bounding down the hallway towards him. As they charge at Gearing, they let out a blood curdling unequine scream while black ichor flows out of their mouth and their jagged broken teeth gnash the air in anticipation of the meal they are about to enjoy.

‘Welp, that explains where the black crap came from,’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head says flatly as its ears fall down and its frown turns comically colossal.

Gearing’s head turns to the right, letting him quickly take in the scene behind himself, and confirming that there are none behind him. But, also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to open the door again from this side. No computer. No levers. No switches. Nothing. Gearing starts turning his head back towards the oncoming attackers as he grumbles, “Of course I picked the wrong way!” The first ghoul jumps at him, and Gearing rears up, bringing his own forehooves up over the ghoul’s head, and then bringing them down again simultaneously as he growls, “Just my fucking luck!”

As the ghoul tries to give Gearing a very forceful and undesired hug, a line of code crosses Gearing’s line of vision as he toggles his little helper.

>> Mass Augmentation Matrix: Deactivated

The ghoul’s forelegs wrap around Gearing’s neck, successfully, but when Gearing’s forelegs come back down, he tilts his forehooves to impact into the ghoul’s shoulders with the edge of his hooves as he resumes a nearly standing position. However, the practically rotten flesh yields nearly instantly to the brass wedges being driven into it, and separates the bones at the joint with loud cracks and pops as the ghoul suddenly ends up flank over mane in front of Gearing as their body gets twisted from the maneuver so unnaturally.

The ghoul screeches and seems more angry than hurt as it snaps and bites at Gearing’s hindleg, yet otherwise doesn’t seem as phased as Gearing would expect an individual to be when two of their limbs are practically ripped off. The second ghoul in the short hallway doesn’t even blink as their friend is delimbed and instead jumps over them in an attempt to hit Gearing with all four hooves simultaneously as it lets out the same horrible scream.

The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head starts tossing a few geometrically shaped stones in the air with a wing as he asks, ‘Time to roll the dice again?’ He tosses a couple of the cubes in the air and sits down as he watches them tumble through his mind space, itching, scratching at himself, and twitching regularly the whole way.

Gearing greets the incoming ghoul with a hoof of his own. But, instead of trying anything fancy, he simply plants his other three hooves, then stretches out as much as he can to stick his right foreleg out as straight as he can. Towards the ghoul. With his hoof tilted just so and effectively making a large brass spear.

The hoof sized spear tip doesn’t deter or deflect the ghoul in the least, as it impales itself on Gearing’s hoof with its own momentum. Gearing’s eyes go wide as, despite his forehoof being buried deep in the ghoul’s chest, the ghoul continues to lash out with all of its limbs and grabs a hold of Gearing before trying to pull him in closer so it can bite him. Its maw comes in and snaps down on Gearing’s head, trying hard to get purchase, but doing nothing more than breaking teeth. However, after repeated gnawing attempts and many shattered teeth, the pointed teeth from recently being broken find purchase in an abnormally wide gap on the left side of Gearing’s face and it chomps down harder.

Gearing lets out a howl of his own instinctually as, despite everything he would have thought. That. Hurt.

When the ghoul adjusts its bite to gnaw on Gearing’s left ear, Gearing swings his right foreleg attempting to take the ghoul away from the left side of his body and get it to stop biting and causing whatever damage it’s managed to do. But that’s not what happened at all. Instead, Gearing’s foreleg simply rips right through the side of the ghoul’s practically rotten chest, sending ichor all over the wall to the side, as a variety of disgustingly coated bits splat along the floor.

The partially eviscerated ghoul doesn’t seem to care, and with the right forehoof no longer in the way it moves in to bite more on Gearing.

But Gearing is no longer interested in staying quiet.

The first ghoul had managed to scoot forward while Gearing was dealing with the second one and started chomping down on Gearing’s left hindleg. And while it hadn’t done any real damage as far as he can tell, certainly not as much as whatever the thing on his head had done to him, it’s a hindrance he doesn’t have time for right now. So while he grabs the ghoul on his head with his forehooves, rearing up in the process, he shifts his weight so that he’s temporarily only standing on one leg, the one getting bit, and then stomps down with his other hindleg onto the ghoul as soon as he can. As the ghoul under him’s skull is suddenly turned into a disgusting horseshoe for Gearing, Gearing uses his forelegs and flings the ghoul biting on his head away from himself with both forelegs by hurling them away in opposite directions. And the ghoul does finally get flung away from him.

In two pieces.

‘Boxcars,’ the little blue pegasus in his head says as he looks at the dice coming to rest at the same time the ghoul splats against the metal plating and comes to rest.

The upper torso of the ghoul hits the left side wall of the hallway, while the back half hits the right. With the two sides being connected by black ichor covered ropey material. The creature’s head whips over and lets out another scream at Gearing, one that even causes Gearing to shiver from the horror of it as he can actually see the lungs of the ghoul hanging out of the chest cavity and moving with the noise. With any chance of stealth now lost, Gearing hops forward and smashes down with his right forehoof again. This time making sure to go for the head.

And the sound is mercifully cut off with a punctuating splat as the ghoul’s head is caved in and smeared across several feet of the metallic wall.

Gearing looks around quickly as he takes in his surroundings and tries to listen for anyone or anything else. There are no more attackers, not that he can see. But he knows he’s not out of the woods yet. Something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong. Even more so than he’d have known or thought of before this experience. There’s no way equine teeth should have done that much damage to his head. Gearing tenderly reaches up with his left forehoof, feels around on the left side of his face, and winces and groans as he works his way over the damage.

“Yeah… they got me good…” Gearing groans as he holds his head and feels the uneven warped area of his face.

‘Snake eyes,’ the little blue pegasus in his head says with a frown as he grabs the dice and starts rattling them again.

Gearing starts looking around the short hallway as he holds onto the left side of his head and groans, “This is ridiculous…” He checks the door he had come through, verifies that there’s no immediate way that he can tell how he can get the door to open normally through this way, then starts going back the way he was originally heading before getting attacked. As he’s approaching the other end of the hallway he can see where the other door is partially ajar from being damaged. And then he finally gets a clear look at a pile of debris scattered around the front of the door. He slowly moves his left hoof out of the way of his eye as he takes in the scene in front of the apparent exit door.

‘I think we found what interrupted their meal…’ Gearing’s little blue pegasus comments with a frown.

Gearing nods as he whispers aloud, “They chased others into here, and some of them got through to the next area, but some couldn’t… This poor sod… or sods… got eaten alive right here.” Gearing comments as he pushes around the blood stained and torn apart fabric with bone fragments all over the place. Even the skull had been gnawed as much as possible by their assailants it seems.

‘Onward and upward?’ the little blue pegasus asks as he points towards the door in front of him.

“Not much choice otherwise,” Gearing mutters as he steps over to the door and looks it over. The controls had been smashed, and the door had gotten jammed by something as it closed. He’s not sure what happened in which order, but it is definitely a problem. Probably fatally so for the owners of the bones he’s politely trying not to step on. He cracks open the panel of the controls and starts fiddling around with the wires for a little bit. As he’s working, he keeps reaching up to scratch at the left side of his face, but keeps hitting an exceptionally sore spot and hisses as he jerks his hoof away from it. “Damn this shouldn’t be hurting this bad, and why isn’t it healing quicker?”

‘Well quit picking at it, Dummy! It’s not going to heal if you keep picking at it!’

“Yeah, yeah, I heard ya, Cross… I know, I know,” Gearing mutters as he keeps working on the door. After a bit of work he says, “I can’t get the controls to open the door, but I can at least trick the system into trying… Which will make pushing it apart easy… er…”

A few short sparks later and Gearing pulls away from the destroyed panel and looks at the door as it whines and grinds, but doesn’t really accomplish anything. Gearing hops over, braces himself against the adjacent pieces, and pushes off. The twisted metal bends even more, but it yields and the motors do actually help retract the door even further as Gearing helps push while it pulls. And, once the door is open, Gearing can see that the carnage in the hallway he’s exiting isn’t the only place some abomination and crime against equinity had occurred. On this side of the door there are a couple more spots where other ponies seem to have been preyed upon by the cannibalistic monsters. Judging by the ancient blood stained stone and metal sporadically covered with clusters of ‘leftovers’. But, there are also a couple of ghoul bodies laying out and, apparently, seemingly untouched by rot itself. He’s not sure if that’s an attribute of ghouls themselves, if they died recently, or if something else is going on. But he makes sure to toggle on SATS and tries to target several of them. In the majority of cases, nothing at all shows up. As this particular enchantment focuses on living threats to help limit targeting options for optimization purposes. Don’t ask Gearing why it can target some things without a pulse, like grenades and robots, but not others, like ammo boxes, that’s something he’s puzzled over repeatedly. All he knows is it’s something with the spell’s matrix programming, and that’s not his particular expertise. Though, in an act of paranoia reinforcement, his PipBuck proves useful in one particular case here, with a ghoul curled up behind a piece of furniture in what Gearing assumes is a small lounge for workers: that ghoul was targetable. Gearing carefully walked over, as stealthily as he could, and held up a forehoof over its head. Then he grabbed an empty bottle off of the floor near it and dropped it onto its side with his wing. The ghoul instantly startled awake upon impact and looked up at him.

But before Gearing could ask them anything, it started kicking as it was working its way onto its hooves. And the snarl he’d seen before in the short hallway returned as well but to this one’s mouth as it started the first few notes of that horrible scream of theirs. But, as soon as that bit of confirmation was made clear, Gearing quickly stomped down with the hoof he’d had at the ready and put them out of their misery.

The door he’d entered through had four possible ways he could go as the hallways came in at angles to meet up at the access point to the train tracks. Directly to the right, going back towards away from The Core by his judgement, is a check-in desk where personnel would check in and out and check their assignments before heading on to their individual duties. And across from that small booth is the small lounge where Gearing had found the only living ghoul nearby. The hall directly to the left of the track access heads straight for The Core it seems, but weaves and it’s impossible to see for much further because the hallway angles such that the view gets cut off not far away. The one directly to the right of the one headed towards The Core splits off in a strange forty-five degree angle. It goes towards The Core, assumedly, but not as direct. Yet, it draws Gearing’s attention for that fact. And for the fact that the other two passages, that don’t make a beeline for The Core, terminate at security doors before the hallways have a chance to fade or bend out of sight.

So he picks option two, and starts walking down that way. He knows he’s getting closer to The Core, but he hopes this odd angle means it’s going to go somewhere else, like out, before doing so. Sometimes direct routes like this are put in to make getting to emergency exits or elevators that much easier.

Though the lack of ‘Exit’ signs is really putting a damper on that hope.

Gearing continues trotting along down the hallway, itching and scratching at himself as he gets increasingly agitated about his circumstances. In a short while the hallway makes a gentle turn, and afterwards he can see the hall terminating at what seems to be another large storage area. This instantly fills him with a bit of hope as there’s possibly a way out. Since these areas are all hoof traffic, they have to have some kind of way for the large amounts of cargo to come and go. And hopefully it’s more than just back to the same train tracks that he’d run into before. He’s sure it should be, considering there’s already the one depot behind him and not far away from this set of doors.

He starts picking up speed as he’s approaching the doorway. But, as he’s getting closer, he notices that this doorway is just a frame. The doors aren’t simply being held open. The doors, such as they were, were simply swinging doors with no real security holding them in place. They were the doors at least. Because they had been broken in and are now lying mangled on the ground several paces within the storage area. Both of them are covered in the same kind of black ichor that he’s already become accustomed to that means bad news is in the area.

‘Great, more of them,’ the little blue pegasus says with a groan. He starts rattling around the pair of dice again as he asks, ‘Shall we try again?’

Gearing’s focus stays on the door, and he swears at the universe for the problems his left ear is giving him as he continues to look into the storage area. A bit of movement catches his eye as he’s walking past a doorway on his left, and he slowly starts turning his head to look that way.

As he’s crossing in front of the doorway for a typical office meeting room, a snarling burned pony face greets him, covered in ichor, before any sound at all is heard by Gearing. They stare at each other, and as the first notes of the scream escape the creature's lips, it is joined by more and more. And then, in the back and behind the giant mass of writhing warped flesh, the room lights up with an unhealthy green color as yet another equine stands up. But this ghoul isn’t like the others. Its skin has cracked and opened up and it looks like it is composed of pure magma. But instead of the white hot or red liquid hot hue, it’s a sickly luminescent green color that flashes out of the cracks in its blackened hide. All of the eyes of the ghouls give off a faint nearly amber glow. But the eyes on that green one are glowing with a balefire green fierceness like they are trying to challenge the sun itself for supremacy.

There seems to be a slight pause for Gearing as the green ghoul rears up and takes a deep breath. But it’s not any form of SATS’ magically assisted shenanigans. It’s pure hyper focus caused by a gnawing valid fright. And as the forehooves of the green abomination hit the ground, it lets out a guttural battle cry that could shatter eardrums. In the same instant a visible wave of semi-transparent greenish energy gets expelled from it in an ever expanding globe. The ghouls that were sluggish in getting up, seem to get amped up by this burst of energy as their movements start quickening.

And as for Gearing, his PipBuck screeches almost as loud as the green glowing monster as he’s bombarded with a massive dose of magical radiation. But that’s the least of his worries at the moment as the ghouls start charging the door to the hallway, practically stampeding over each other, as they all try to be the first one to try this new golden colored treat.

The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head starts waving a pair of checkered flags as he screams, ‘Green means ‘Go!’! Light’s green motherfucker! Go, go, go, go, go!’

>> Mass Augmentation Matrix: Activated

Gearing quickly breaks off into a full gallop as he heads straight into the storage area in front of him while the ghouls start pouring out of the meeting room in ridiculous numbers.

Gearing isn’t a fan of making a break for it and running in a direction he hasn’t been to before to get away from a threat. Not in enclosed spaces anyway. That’s a horrible idea. Because he knows you can easily end up trapped that way. But in this particular case he already knows three of his other options are a dead end, which leaves him only one other unknown. Given that this room is much bigger and wider than the hallway, and gives him more room to maneuver, he begrudgingly thinks better of simply turning around. Because at least in here he has a decent chance of fighting off his assailants if not actually getting away from them. As soon as he’s through the door, and has enough head space, he takes to the air and starts flying upwards. He might not be the most agile nor fastest flier Equestria has ever seen. But one thing he’s got over all of those ghouls is wings, and he’s going to use them to his advantage as much as he can. He circles around and looks down as the ground bound ghouls pour into the room, and he doesn’t travel up as far as he would otherwise. He wants to find a way out. This delivery staging and storage section seems to be about three stories high, if not more, and practically hollow except for the concrete and steel supports that is. And while there might be a way out further up in the space, he doesn’t want to miss out on any possible exits on the ground or lose sight of his pursuers. They’ve already surprised him once with their trying to gnaw his ear off, and almost succeeding, he doesn’t want them to get the jump on him again.

‘This is like those damn 68 roaches all over again!’ the little blue pegasus in his head grumps.

Gearing spins around, grabs a large box off of a high stack, and dive bombs back towards the line of ghouls as the thicker part of the murder herd starts making their way through the door frame. With a last second quick flick he uses his added momentum to hurl the crate at them before pulling up and away again. The box isn’t nearly as effective as he’d hoped for, but it still crashes into a good cluster of them and seems to seriously injure, if not actually kill, several of them.

But, as he’s pulling out of the dive, he notices the hallway growing in brightness with a green color. And on his way back up the green ghoul steps into the room and over the others. It doesn't even seem to pay attention to the others at its hooves. But it lets out a long howling scream, rears up, then slams their forehooves into the ground again. And, again, a burst of green energy explodes out of it in a large dome. But, this time at least, Gearing’s far enough away from the blast that he doesn’t get dosed with more magical radiation. However, he’s close enough to see the effects on the other ghouls as their speed seems to increase again. And, what’s worse, before his very eyes he can see that some of them that he’d just injured, are actually rapidly healing as the green glow seeps into their flesh. One leg that he had quite proudly broken, rapidly covers the exposed bone back up with black flesh and the ghoul starts running around like nothing at all had happened.

“Oh come on, that’s cheating!” Gearing bellows as he rolls over on his back and shakes a hoof at the green ghoul. The pair lock eyes for a few seconds, and Gearing’s eerie sense in between his shoulders makes itself known, even above all of his full body itchiness, as the two maintain eye contact.

The green creature’s muzzle starts growing into a sneering smile as it tracks Gearing’s flight path while taking in a massive breath.

‘Uh oh…’ the little blue pegasus says as his eyes go to their absolute widest.

A split second later the green ghoul’s head whips back, and a massive green blob appears on top of its head, then it flips its head forward and shoots out the gnarly misshapen blob of energy in his direction. Momentarily the green ghoul dims, and with its corona not blocking his view anymore, Gearing gets a clear view at the extent of his troubles.

This isn’t simply a ghoul. Or a green ghoul. Or a green ghoul that can heal its comrades at will, whenever it wants. No, that would be too easy.

This glowing green ghoul... is a unicorn.

Gearing twists midair and dodges the ball of magical plasma as he screams, “Fucking cheating horn headed bastards!” He’s far enough away that he swings around, intentionally, and keeps his eye on it as he tries to figure out what that thing could possibly do to him while still keeping the green ghoul in his peripheral vision. It could just be a ball of magical radiation, in which case he won’t really have to worry about it in the future. But given he’s never seen anything like it before, he’s erring on the side of caution just in case.

‘Trust nothing!’ the little pegasus in Gearing’s head yells. ‘Because when you expect everything’s going to kill you, or try, you’re pleasantly surprised when you’re wrong.’

He gets his answer when it hits the right side of a suspended platform that has multiple crates on it. The support cables, made from steel wire rope, instantly snap on the one side, both of them. The platform starts falling down, as the metal is heated up to such a point that it’s turned instantly into slag. The couple of wooden crates that were caught in the small blast instantly combust, with a few of their contents likewise bursting into flames and in other cases outright liquefying. In the case of a few random objects, they don’t burn. They don’t melt. They don’t get blown away.

They turn into liquefied green magical goop that just falls down to the concrete and splats on the ground as the other burning debris smashes around it and bounces off in every practical direction.

Gearing’s eyes jump wide open as he whips his head back over to look at the green ghoul again. Just in time to catch its sneer as it seems to be charging up another one. “Oh to hell with this!” Gearing yells as he changes direction and decides to leave well enough alone.

‘If they want the damn hallway bad enough they can have it! I’ll find another way!’ the little blue pegasus comments as he keeps zipping around in the mental mind space of Gearing’s head in understandable panic. ‘This is beyond stupid!’

Gearing watches as the ghouls in the lower levels start scrambling up on top of various boxes and crates as they continue to chase after him. He circles around quickly, dodging another large green glowing orb of death that warps the metal support above and behind him, as he takes in a quick look of where they are. “Screw this. It’s time I started heading up anyway.” He grins at the ghouls down below and makes a rather rude gesture with his forelegs before he turns and starts shooting straight upwards. Towards the ceiling high above.

As he’s climbing, he notices a scaffold style staircase built into the one wall, and that it circles around and around until it gets to the top floor. Figuring that hoof traffic should have a way out, he starts vectoring that way as he starts cresting the top line of storage crates, boxes, and barrels. But, as he’s coming up, he can’t help but notice something odd.

The ghouls aren’t using the stairs to come up after him, regardless that it's easy for them to see where he’s heading.

He sees a few gather up and start scrambling over some crates at the base of the stairwell, at least a distance away from it, but they advance no further. He starts wondering if they know that it’s trapped or something, and quickly darts his eyes over it as he tries to spot any dead ghouls up its length so he knows where to avoid the same mistakes. The more he rises and the more he looks in vain for a corpse, the more his shoulder blades scream at him that something is wrong. And that’s when it hits him.

Literally.

As he’s still in a haze, focusing on the stairwell, while trying to ignore the pain in the left side of his face, and the general itchiness all over his body, several rounds start impacting into his body before he even hears the weapons that fired them. Gearing yelps and tries to dodge, but the effect isn’t nearly as significant as he would like. Because, unlike the walls outside and around The Core, the source of this fire isn’t coming from a line of turrets along a wall that he can just back away and get away from.

He’s flown up right into a kill zone.

All around him turrets pop out of the walls and ceiling as a variety of laser and projectile based defense turrets starts opening up on him. The lasers he directs away from himself with his wings, for most cases anyway. These are far underpowered compared to the turrets on the walls around The Core that tried to slag him outside of Chapel. But, where they had power, these turrest have numbers. And they also have something the other turrets didn’t have.

Friends that don’t care about his wings’ light bending capabilities.

His wings rapidly take damage as laser fire and bullets zip after him from nearly every direction. And it doesn’t take long before his wings have been damaged to the point that he’s having trouble staying aloft, and his angling becomes practically impossible to continue.

So he starts another nosedive to try and get away. But, unlike last time, he doesn’t actually have a choice in the matter this time. He’s already lost so much thrust that he’s coming down whether he wants to or not. At least this way he can control it and try to decide where he’s going to crash land, instead of just coming straight down onto the concrete.

And as he’s falling back down below the crest line of the storage supplies, the ghouls start springing towards him. A movement that is signaled by the glowing green unicorn. Gnashing their teeth as they move to intercept him, the ghouls get energized by another wave of magical radiation as they swarm in to meet him.

But this time Gearing doesn’t try to avoid them. This time he’s sick of being everyones bucking bag and he decides he’s going to share the pain. Because, in fact, he is in a lot of pain at the moment. So much so that he’s having trouble seeing straight as he increasingly feels more fuzzy the further he gets across the hall.

Several ghouls run ahead of him, and circle around where they are pretty sure he’s going to crash like excited dogs expecting a treat, which is near a couple sets of doors on the far side of the storage area. One set is directly opposite of the doorway he came in, but apparently still closed. And they start swarming and getting close as they prepare to welcome him with broken teeth, an endless hunger, and blind hateful rage.

As soon as Gearing dropped below a certain level, the turrets in the upper levels ceased firing. Even the ones that have a clear shot and Gearing is tremendously grateful for what he assumes is a safety measure to keep supplies from getting destroyed. As it’s left him with just enough of himself to do what the rage in his chest is really urging him to do.

Which is embracing the sweet caress of one of his greatest adversaries: Gravity.

Gearing angles and flaps his wings as he changes direction and turns himself into a guided brass missile. He’d been trying to avoid crashing before. Because hitting the ground at speed hurts. But after recent events, he’s not as worried about it anymore. In fact, he’s looking forward to it.

Because misery loves company, and right now he’s rather lonely.

>> Mass Augmentation Matrix: Deactivated

Gearing comes crashing down towards the ground, in a near nose dive that looks like he’s going to fall just short of the gathering group of ghouls. And, as they watch him, they prove that they aren’t entirely mindless as they start moving and shuffling as they start trying to intercept him again. However, as they are moving closer towards him, he banks, and changes direction.

Right into them.

Gearing comes crashing down on them at an angle that sends him down and through them, into the ground, yet lined up with the set of double doors behind the group. With all of his mass being hurled at them at a speed that would be dangerous in the best of times. Gearing himself proves to be the biggest safety violation in the entire complex, as he delivers his metric ton of flank right onto the gathered horde. Hooves first.

At the last second he flings his wings back, providing an even smaller silhouette as he plows into the gathered mass of burned monstrous ponies. His hooves, all angled to introduce themselves edge first, bite deeply into the flesh of those unfortunate enough to be directly in front of him, as he doesn’t even slow down as he travels right through the tightly packed group. But, because of his mass and inertia, even those that he doesn’t skewer, but are in the collision path anyway, end up crushed under the sheer bulk of his brass body. The shrill horrid inequine screams that escape their muzzles as he passes through the crowd changes in pitch as the ruckus increases.

Gearing hits the ground, but doesn’t even slow as much as he was thinking he would from the impact as a wave of black ichor, bone, and flesh fragments start sailing in a wake away from him. Reducing several of the cannibals to a little more than black smears on the ground as he grinds them into the concrete floor using his own body. But all of the disgusting black ichor doesn’t simply act as these creatures' life blood, there’s so much of it in one area that Gearing practically hydroplanes across the impact zone, and into the pair of doors behind all of them. But where Gearing had hoped to simply hit the doors, and either knock them open from the impact, and then enter, or even use the doors to bound off of and go in a different direction, neither of that happens. Instead Gearing is sent crashing through the doors with nearly his full speed intact, thanks to the black ooze that’s covering him helping him slide across the ground.

The doors were never designed to take that kind of impact, let alone the added force of the couple of ghouls that got caught between Gearing and them yet did little more than explode like balloons when the group crashed into the door, and Gearing simply continued through them all and only barely slowed down. The security doors cave in and warp unnaturally as Gearing hits dead center on the seam where the doors meet each other, but his body continues straight through them and twists the metal away from himself as the doors are nearly ripped off of their hinges. The maglocks at the top and bottom try their best to keep the door in its frame. But they aren’t designed for this kind of maneuver either, causing the top right one to break away from the doorframe entirely, along with the door, and that section of the door to bend into the beyond hallway with Gearing.

Gearing tumbles and crashes further down the hall, smacking into a wall that suddenly juts out, and screams as even more of his wings shatter from the impact on his back.

Instantly the alarms start sounding and lights begin flashing as the security door proves it wasn’t merely for looks. And as Gearing is trying to pick himself up off the floor and get away from the now opened doors, he can see the crowd of ghouls starting to enter through the hole and coming after him. They hiss and squeal and scream as they clamour over each other. Several of them are missing limbs. One is little more than a head as half of its chest is missing, and the entire hind portion of it is nowhere to be seen, yet it’s one remaining foreleg keeps flopping around as its jaw continuously snaps at him.

A chorus of robotic voices starts yelling out various declarations from the storage room Gearing just accidently escaped from.

“Looks like somepony needs their flanks kicked!”

“This area is under the protection of the Equestria Army, remove yourself or be prepared to kiss your flank goodbye!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you, I’m just going to kill you!”

“Come out, identify yourself, and be incinerated!”

“Lawful use of lethal force has been authorized, and encouraged!”

“Not on my watch you zebra bastards!”

Almost half of the ghouls look behind them as they hear the weapons fire behind them, and the unique call of the green ghoul greets them. They swing around and start running after their new targets as bullets fly and laser fire starts picking up out in the staging area.

But, not all of the ghouls follow suit. Gearing rolls over onto his hooves, and starts pushing himself back up by leaning against the wall that is jutting out. As he starts trying to slide around it, and get away from the approaching ghouls, his body is screaming at him. His head especially so, and he’s having a massive problem hearing anything in general. His left ear feels like it’s muffled beyond belief. Like he’s stuck his head under a whole mattress or something similar.

And, aggravatingly, on top of all of that the itching feeling just keeps getting worse.

As the bullets and laser fire fly outside, so too does the giant green balls of death. And Gearing can see the light illuminating the whole area from the hallway he’s in as, apparently, the green ghoul has no qualms with engaging in close combat with an unknown amount of robotic security.

Gearing knows he is in no condition for trying to fight any of them, and turns and starts running again. His legs hurt. That impact was worse than he was expecting. Not in the sense of hitting the ground. He was expecting that to suck. In fact he actually managed to cushion his own blow from the fall by using his legs as a sort of shock absorber. And the ghouls helped in that regard as well as their bodies functioned nicely as a buffer between him and the concrete floor. But, still, his legs and shoulders are hurting tremendously from the fall. Especially the left foreleg’s shoulder.

But, knowing that the ghouls are right behind him, at least a few of them, he takes off at a run as fast as he can. And to make things easier on himself he reactivates his implant.

>> Mass Augmentation Matrix: Activated

And it ends up helping him far more than he was expecting as his limping hops turn into proper gallops now that he’s not having to use so much strength to simply haul his own weight around. And it’s a good thing as the ghouls that have stayed the course to come after him, don't seem to have any such limitations. Even with the ones that are injured. The most bizarre of them being the one in the middle of the pack that’s not only missing one of their forelegs, but actually part of their shoulder where it used to attach to as well.

‘And now we know why people refer to them as the trotting dead,’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head quips with a frown. ‘What are our odds of getting out of this one? Wanna roll for it again?’

Gearing starts running down the long hallway as he grumbles out loud, “The only dice I’m going to be playing with for my life are loaded!”

The little blue pegasus grins as he rattles a couple cubes and asks softly, ‘And how's that different from any other time?’

The itching feeling across his body starts becoming practically unbearable as the ghouls, unfortunately, start catching up to him. The hallway makes a sharp turn to the right, and instead of trying his luck with taking that turn, especially covered in so much ichor that seems to change its mind randomly if it wants to be sticky or slick at any given moment, Gearing jumps at the walls, and leaps off of them, conserving as much momentum as he can, as he changes directions ninety degrees to the right.

The ghouls seem to take his display of acrobatics as a challenge as they run down the hall and, in a couple cases, actually run along the inside of that outer wall as they don’t even break stride. But as he’s going, he notices that there are only maybe six of the monsters after him. The rest of them have either fallen behind or had intentionally turned around to help with the battle out in the sorting area.

‘Robots versus zombies.’ The little blue pegasus in his head scoffs. ‘That sounds like a comic book instead of reality.’

Gearing can’t help but laughing as the thought crosses his mind. “I’m living in a fucking comic book! The worst one ever! Zero out of ten stars, do not recommend!”

His morbid humor causes a grin to show up on his muzzle as his eyes start having a hard time focusing. He’s not sure if it’s the pain, or the damage he’s sustained, but he knows he’s not doing well at the moment. And, in a weird twist of events, he’s surprisingly okay with that. He’s not going to go down without a fight, he’s not allowed. But he’s going to make sure it’s going to be one for the record books.

Gearing sees a set of double doors coming up on his right, so he angles to run into the wall across from it. As he’s getting close, he jumps into that wall, legs first, and then springs off of it at the set of doors with his shoulder. And in doing so trying the same maneuver that he had done to get through the security door previously. And it works this time too. But not in a way that he wanted nor expected.

Because the doors aren’t nearly as heavy, and aren’t even locked, so he just threw way too much flank at them at once. The resulting practical explosion sends the metal doors sailing inside as he tumbles and rolls from his own overzealous attack. It takes him a few moments to get to his hooves again, and in that time the ghouls catch up enough to nearly grab him. He starts running again as he sees a collection of offices and other rooms ahead. And the itchy screaming feeling across his whole body gets worse and worse with every single step. Noticeably so. The hallway has a few offices on both sides, but then after a short distance of doors on either side of him the room opens up suddenly with a variety of simple tables and chairs around everywhere. But Gearing is running so fast, while paying attention to those behind him and keeping his tail out of the mouth of the lead ghoul’s snapping jaws, that he doesn’t realize, and doesn’t even have time to notice, the unknown puddle of goo covering the floor in front of him.

As soon as Gearing’s hooves step into the thick pulpy maroonish slime, his hooves slip out from under him on the stride and he starts tumbling and sliding all the way across the hall.

The ghouls that were right behind him likewise suffer the same frictionless fate, but they don’t seem nearly as concerned with it as he is.

At first.

As Gearing crashes through the collection of tables set up in this area where ponies would sit down for lunch during their breaks, the itchy feelings that have been steadily growing spontaneously explode across Gearing’s entire body. With an order of magnitude he can’t even comprehend. His vision flashes white as he slams into the cabinets on the other side of the entryway and starts bellowing in pain and rage. But, there’s something else going on besides the cabinets and tables he’d just broken. His whole body starts tingling as the nipping feeling runs laps all over his form and the hearing in his left ear entirely cuts out. He leans over, and starts trying to scramble to pick himself up, but he feels like he’s practically flying instead of being on solid ground. He has a sense of complete weightlessness as his mind reels in an indescribable fog. His vision itself starts fracturing and fuzing as his eyes are having a hard time to work at all. And things seem to be much much further away than he knows for a fact that they are. The chair he kicks away from himself with a forelg seems to be dozens of yards away from his perspective. His forelegs seem impossibly long to him. And his whole body feels like he has fallen on a cloud of some kind. Or, more accurately, like he’s fallen off of a cloud and is simply continuously falling, but without the added benefit of air resistance to tell him which direction he’s being taken.

And he does feel like he’s being taken somewhere. As surely as he was carted off by the pair of protectaponies not long ago, his very center feels like it’s moving. Though he doesn’t know where nor why or even how.

The only saving grace for Gearing is that he doesn’t seem to be the only one suddenly having trouble dealing with reality at the moment. The ghouls are too. His vision zips in and out like someone is playing with the focal length of a telescope while he’s looking through it. And, as he’s looking at the ghouls around and near him, none of them seem concerned with him any more. Several of them are writhing on the ground and seem to be screaming. As their mouths are open to absurd uncomfortable levels as they thrash around. Several of them kick and hit each other randomly as they are lost to the throws of whatever this is. As Gearing is watching, the one that had the missing foreleg sinks to the ground as a few of their bones literally fall out of their body near the wound. Another one kicks and thrashes around at things that only it can see but even so the movements are slowed as it seems to struggle against some unseen force.

Gearing starts trying to walk away from them, one weird wobbly and uncertain step at a time as the sense of feeling starts draining away from him entirely. The itchiness is still ever present and insane. But the pain he was feeling is disappearing. Quickly.

And that’s scaring the living shit out of him.

He reaches up to the left side of his head, to feel his face, as the pain is practically gone except for the eerie itchy feeling. He touches the area that has hurt so bad for so long, gingerly with his forehoof, just to make sure it’s still there. But even though he can’t feel him touching himself, his hoof still confirms it’s there. And as he pulls his forehoof away, in preparation to take another step, a shining bit of gold catches his eye. And as he’s slowly walking with his other three legs, and wobbling unsteadily, he looks down at his left forehoof. It takes him a few moments of focusing, as everything is fading and fuzzing like he’s looking through a thick fog embankment. But the shining brilliant color stays on his forehoof. In a sea of black ichor and maroon slime. But after a few moments, his eyes snap into focus enough to get a clear picture of what he’s seeing.

And it’s then that the real fear takes hold of his heart.

The black ichor on his left forehoof has decided to act like a glue in this particular occasion, and at the moment he has a shining bit of gold stuck to his forehoof embedded in that improvised glue. Although, he has enough wits about him to realize it’s not gold. It’s brass. It’s his brass. And, more importantly, it’s a lot of his brass. His eyes dart over it as quickly as they can, even as his eyes focus change on their own, as he tries to figure out what is going on. But, there’s no mistake. An entire section of his outer shell has come off on its own. Spontaneously and with no real warning. He slowly looks around at the ground under him, then over in the corner where he sees a filthy collection of clothes and blankets. He’d noticed it when he’d come crashing in, but thought it was nothing more than cast offs from ponies who didn’t want the added weight to carry as they made good on their escape. But, that’s not it. It’s not the contents from a luggage bag that they decided they didn’t want to worry about anymore. And that’s evident by the bones that are tangled within the damp gooey fabric. He looks down as he slowly picks up the pace to leave as he realizes the ponies that owned those clothes didn’t abandon them. Because in truth they’d never left. And they’d somehow been practically liquefied. Gearing looks over at the ghouls, and watches as wounds that the ghouls didn’t seem to care about open wider by the second, right before his eyes, as the ghouls thrash around and fight their own mental demons. Several have already stopped moving. The one that had the shoulder wound already has flesh missing from it’s skull. More flesh that is, as it’s melting off of their body and seems like even their body isn’t immune to whatever is eating at him.

None of them care about the harms of radiation, not even Gearing. In fact they’ve actually actively healed from it. But whatever this is is an equal opportunity maleficent and is actively trying to kill them all at the same time.

The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head stares off into space as he slowly sits down. ‘Bad. Run. I’m stuck. Don’t get stuck… we can’t get stuck…’

In Gearing’s mind’s eye he remembers a conversation he’d had in Chapel, and the words echo in his mind space as the world around him has gone quiet.

I need to get moving. Staying still is bad. I’ll get stuck. I don’t want to be stuck. So I have to get moving again… I have a promise to keep. I can’t if I get stuck.

Out of the deathly silence a long howling scream pierces Gearing’s mind space. It comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s simultaneously a single voice, and many. A chorus of pain and torment and terror. It’s a high pitched single monotonous tone that could quickly drive most insane. But for Gearing, it’s a spur to the side that he needed.

“Run,” Gearing says flatly as he slaps the piece of gold back to the side of his face and holds it there as he starts scampering away on his other three legs. He looks back at the ghouls, and watches as they slowly succumb to the invisible onslaught. But, in the peripheral of his vision, and being worrying enough it actually draws his full focus, he sees his own wings. They aren’t replacing their crystals. They aren’t healing. Infact, some of the twisted pieces of metal that make up his wings have actually dulled in color And, as he’s watching, a piece that’d grown particularly dull simply falls away from him and clatters across the ground.

The little blue pegasus in his mind space gapes at it for a moment before it starts screaming in a voice that’s even louder than the monotone of terror filing his ears, ‘Run! You can’t stop now if you do you’ll never be able to keep the promise you made! This doesn’t count! So run!’

Tick.

Tick.

CLICK.

“Fucking enervation!” Gearing bellows in a moment of clarity as he starts going as fast as he can move. He starts huffing and throwing his body forward with every kick he can manage as he scrambles back the way he’d come and back out of the break room turned slaughterhouse. Gearing holds the pieces of himself to himself the best he can with one hoof as he’s running. He can’t risk using his wings, they’ve been too damaged to be able to reliably do it. On some level he wants to just cast the pieces aside, in order to try and run faster, but he’s not sure how bad the damage is to his face and if he casts them aside there’ll be no reattaching them this time. As he’s running away, he can feel the itchiness get to be more manageable. And the noise in his ears slowly starts subsiding. But, unfortunately, his hearing itself still hasn’t returned. The further away he gets, the more his body seems to be able to pull itself back together. And for his will itself to reassert itself to let him see normally.

Although he’s running away in a panic for his very life, he doesn’t simply backtrack entirely to the sorting room. As even on an instinctual level he could feel that’d be a most likely fatal mistake. So he took a different path, chosen mainly for its lower itch factor. And after some scrambling around trying to flee his invisible assailant, he stumbled across a stairwell that mercifully was also devoid of any apparent immediate dangers and he quickly ducked through the door and into it.

Gearing slowly climbs the stairs, looking around as quickly as he can, before he stops on a landing between levels and checks his PipBuck. He looks around at the map function, until he traces over to where that hellscape he’d just escaped from was. And he lets out a long low sigh of annoyance as the truth seems to stare him back in the face.

“That area was really close to The Core… We really did do it to ourself… fuck…” Gearing groans as he looks over the map. He slowly sits down on the stairs, trying to will himself to feel anything and everything he possibly can. He’s practically numb from that encounter, and that’s not a good sign. He’s said time and time again that pain lets you know you’re still alive, mostly as a morbid joke, but in this instance he’s really seeing the deeper truth of the statement. He digs through his bags and pulls out the couple potions he’d managed to squirrel away in case of emergencies. Normally he tries to save them, and just let his implants take care of most of the leg work. If he doesn’t take too much damage at once, it’s usually a good idea to save the potions for later. For when he does take a lot of damage in one fell swoop. Like getting shot down, blown up, and a couple tons of concrete dropped on his head. That was certainly worthy of a healing potion or two. As is the damage that’s been unleashed on him now.

He holds up the bulb as he prepares to remove the stopper from the top, but stops as he actually sees the contents in the dim light. Potions getting dull from enervation he'd heard of. It slowly saps their magical abilities. But what’s in front of him now, is beyond that. The liquid inside looks down right putrid. Like it’s fermenting and stewing in it’s own juices. He’d heard about potions going bad, but never thought it would look quite like this. It looks like someone decided to bottle up Discord’s diarrhea as some kind of disgusting souvenir. From what he’d learned, others simply throw out potions that look bad. Although, bad is a really subjective term. In this particular case, it’s objectively bad. Other’s haven’t wanted to risk it, because of concerns of it possibly making them sick. Gearing cracks a weak smile as he shrugs and stares at it. “Well, I can’t get sick… so that’s not a concern for me…” He pops the stopper out of the glass vial and holds it aloft in a blind toast to the universe, “For science!” and then quickly takes a swig from it.

And instantly regrets it, along with many of his life decisions that led him to this fateful moment.

His body shakes. His mane bristles. His tail shoots out backwards, and his mangled wings flop around impotently. The thick liquid has nearly turned the consistency of coagulated rotting blood, and it shoots out of his muzzle even faster than it went in. Gearing shakes his head and starts spitting off in various directions. He hangs his tongue out of his mouth, about as far out as it will go, and whips his head back and forth as he tries to shake the remnants off of it. He looks around, sees a grimy magazine sitting on the pile of trash overflowing from the trashcan in the corner, and he quickly grabs it. Gearing starts scraping the thick fluid off of his tongue with the sheets of paper he pulls out of the magazine, and casts each single piece off to the side before grabbing another one. After a bit he shoves several into his mouth at once, and starts swirling it around inside, wiping his mouth out with his own tongue using the paper, before spitting the filthy wads out. After several rounds of this Gearing groans out loud, “Bad tingle. Bad tingle. Bad tingle!”

He coughs and gags before he eyeballs the rest of the liquid inside of the potion bulb. “I have never found anything that actually tasted bad before… I’m almost tempted to keep this just to analyze it later and figure out what the hell is going on with it.” He puts the stopper back on it and looks over at the trashcan as he says, “Almost… but not bad enough to want to risk that again… Blech!” He chucks the potion over by the trash can, not even caring when it bounces off the top of the trash and slides between the trash can and the wall it’s sitting next to. Quickly two more potions join the first one, with the last one actually breaking on impact against the wall and smearing the surface down to the ground in a disgusting display of disregard for decency.

He quickly goes through his bag and pulls out the one magical healing bandage that he has, and starts unwrapping it, but then frowns as he bites into the end of it. He pops the end into his mouth, then lets out a sigh before pulling it out again and looking at it with utter disappointment carved into his features. “Magic’s been sucked out of or corrupted in this too… shit…” He tilts his head to the side, replaces the patch of brass he’d been holding to himself as close as he possibly can to where he’s sure it’s supposed to go on his face, and starts wrapping himself up again. He’s not doing nearly as good of a job as they had done previously, but that can’t be helped. He doesn’t have anyone else helping him, he only has the one bandage, and his wings are absolutely wrecked. But, even so, he does a pretty decent job of almost mummifying the left side of his face again. The act stings, and he cringes as he forces and wedges the loose pieces back in place. But in spite of the pain, he sees it as a good thing.

Pain is better than numbness. Pain means he’s not dead yet.

As he’s finishing going through and confirming that, yes, he’s completely out of any kind of healing supplies, he grumbles, “The hell am I gonna do now.” He sits and stares at his wings and the frown just grows as he mutters, “I’m still in one of those fields… aren’t I?” He gingerly reaches over and rubs on one of his wings, and can’t help but grunt as they are exceedingly sensitive, but none of them are regrowing even a stitch of crystal.

He checks his ammunition, making sure of what he still has left and brings out the rifle he’d gotten from Dolor. He’d not used it because he wanted to avoid fighting if at all possible. Because stealth was more on his side and would have a higher chance of success. Fighting just draws attention to yourself and brings the possibility that he’ll end up in just one long running engagement after another. Which is bad. Because his resources are limited. He’s already injured. He’s not healing at all. And his opponents’ resources are, for all practical purposes, unlimited given where they are and what he knows is in the vicinity.

It’s why he wanted in after all.

But now he’s out of options. And his hearing is especially dampened so he’s going to have to be extra careful as he makes his way out in whatever way he can finally accomplish. He heads up the stairs one slow hoofstep at a time, keeping an eye, and an ear out, the entire time. Though, instead of trying the next level up, he goes even higher. However, the top two levels that this stairwell have access to, have a keycard access that he doesn’t have with him. In a moment of desperation he even tried the identification card that had gotten him out of one sticky mess already. But, no dice. The doors beeped at him for his insolence and sent him on his way without opening. But the next floor under those was unlocked and easily opened. And, thankful to make any progress, Gearing takes it without question.

This floor is another series of offices. But, they seem to be used for clerks and other administration tasks, judging by the large collection of horizontal file cabinets lining the walls of the walkway. Maybe some sort of record keeping section Gearing ponders. And then can’t help but smiling as he sees a sign on the wall pointing in both directions along the hall he’s walking near declaring ‘Records: Receiving || Records: Shipping’ with arrows pointing in opposite directions as he continues on down the way towards the receiving area. At the end of the hall, he sees an open area surrounded by glass with light coming in from the other section that isn’t quite the same level nor color as what's in the office space. He adjusts his path, and peeks into the strangely colored room, and can’t help but walk in further.

The manager, judging by the plaque on the desk, had their office set up with a glass wall so they could look over and down at the receiving area where storage containers are set up and awaiting someone to do something with them. As Gearing walks over towards the window and looks down, he realizes that he knows that area very well. It's the location of the battle that he’d just ran away from. And, judging by what he’s looking at now, it’s a good thing he did.

The entire area is completely demolished. The nice neatly stacked crates, barrels, and boxes have been knocked over, scattered around and, in a lot of cases, burned, scorched, torn apart, or out right exploded. The support structures in several locations have been warped by fire, weapons fire, and, if his estimates are correct, more of that glowing green unicorn's death ball attacks. All over the floor down below there are pieces of dead robots. Some of which had been slagged to molten metal. The protectaponies were easily out matched. But to see some of the military grade hover bots laying in heaps gives Gearing a moment of pause. And there’s more than a couple. But, despite everything going on down there. There’s no more fighting currently. A few robots have taken to try and reorganize the place. But the fighting has ended. But the entire thing bothers him as the bots doing the reorganizing are not any of the combat capable ones. Only the basic protectaponies that are normally used for manual labor. Like the ones that carried Gearing through the security checkpoints. And it nags at him.

‘Where’s the green bastard?’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head asks as he smashes his face against the glass in Gearing’s mind space and tries to look around frantically. ‘That fucker wouldn’t go down easy, and I’m not going to believe it’s dead until I see the corpse myself…’

And that’s the ruffle in his feathers.

“It’s still in this place somewhere… it probably moved on elsewhere. I don’t know if it’s smart enough to try and hide from the machines, or simply chased after them. They’re not exactly stupid but they’re hard to predict too…” Gearing groans as he says, “I doubt we’ve seen the last of that green fucker.”

He starts rummaging around in the office, looking for anything that he can find and use that might help him. There are several medical boxes set into the walls, as per Ministry of Peace code and guidelines, and Gearing quickly raids each and every one of them. Their locks barely prove to be an annoyance to Gearing let alone actually stopping him. However, all of the potions in them have turned so far rancid that in a few instances the caps blew open and spilt its putrid contents all over the inside of the box. There’s plenty of other medical supplies in them though. Most of them seem fully stocked otherwise. Including some tiny scissors and bandages. The drugs that are in them, the Buck, Mint-als, Med-X and others, are going to be pretty much no use to Gearing. But they might be useful to someone else. And there’s no point in leaving them here. This is a death trap. And if he makes it out, he can make sure they end up in the right hooves. Thankfully the bandages had been sealed in bits of plastic, so that even though the potions had exploded all over them like some kid’s volcano experiment, they are still salvageable. Although he can’t help from sighing as he sees the icon on the side of them informing him of their magical enchantments, and knowing that they’re currently lying to him.

Garing smirks as he whispers to himself, “I wonder who I could sue for false advertising…” He closes the last box and heads over to the door marked ‘Supply Closet’ as he hopes maybe something in there is useful.

But, again, the room ends up being full of broken hopes and desires. Plenty of supplies, but nothing he really needs. Gearing uses his tools and breaks into the tool cabinet that’s in there by picking the absurdly easy lock. He goes drawer by drawer trying to find something, anything, that might help him. In other circumstances, he might have a use for some of these things. At least as spares. But for now there’s basically nothing he needs. The closest things he finds that he might find a use for is a half empty can of turpentine, which is only useful because he decides to grab the couple packets of Wonderglue. If he makes a mistake, he can use the turpentine to clean himself off. But, he’s not even sure how the Wonderglue will be useful. All he knows is that he doesn’t have any, it’s really useful for a lot of things, and he’s sick of coming up empty with all of his searching.

So he takes them anyways because he needs a win, for morale reasons if nothing else. Even as petty of a ‘win’ as this may be.

After stowing away his meager findings he continues down the twisting hallways. He wants out. He wants to go up. And, most importantly, he wants to get as far from The Core as possible. No one’s said anything about The Core being responsible for Enervation. Except him that is. But he doesn’t think many, if any, have made it down this far. And Dandy herself was extremely skeptical of it. But now that he’s this close, and this deep, to run into an enervation field so strong it ripped ghouls apart simply by being within it? And it was doing a rather terrifyingly impressive job of doing the same to him to boot. So it doesn’t simply react to only organic materials. That would simply be too easy for him. But, given the number of robots running around, he’s sure the field has no effect on them. And the thought, as weird as it is, and the morbid place it comes from, puts a smile on his muzzle. As, if nothing else, this is yet more proof that he’s more pony than he is machine. The field seems to affect life itself. In all of its forms. Him included.

‘But I’m not going to just keep jumping into Enervation fields to show that it can fuck me up, just to prove a point! Shooting myself is a bad enough idea!’ the little blue pegasus says as it starts kicking up tuffs of mind cloud. ‘People suck… and that shit hurts… and people suck for not believing me unless I do… and they suck even worse if they still don’t believe me afterwards.’

“Well… if Handy can learn, anyone can, right?” Gearing says aloud as he trots down the remarkably clean hallways and chuckles to himself. As he’s traveling through he keeps looking around and taking in the sights. It’s rather mundane and non impressive looking. A typical office. But what is remarkable is the condition of it. Yes, there are scattered papers here and there. And there's still trash in the trash cans. But the place isn’t destroyed. It’s like it’s frozen in time. Work left abandoned in the middle of it. And the minimal amount of dust makes Gearing ponder about its air filtration system. The place looks more like they all left for lunch, or suddenly staged a walkout, instead of what one would think about being caused by the end of the world plus two centuries. The place hasn't been cleaned up, so obviously this area doesn’t have any maintenance bots. Whether that’s because they have been destroyed, put in stand-by mode, or there’s some kind of protocol keeping them out of the office he’s not sure.

‘Maybe they kept them out because of all the records? A bot would just throw away any paper it finds, and that’d be murder for a buracracy with this much red tape,’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head offers as it flutters around and snoops about as much as he can.

“Maybe,” Gearing verbally acknowledges as he reaches another door. But, this one isn’t like the others in this office. This one’s got a maglock at the top, and a button to push to open it up outwards into wherever it’s going to. He hits the button, and the light above turns green and allows him to open the door with little to no resistance. After poking his head out, he realizes that it’s another long hallway, one way heading back towards The Core, the other heading in the exact opposite direction. But, because of a turn he can’t see how far it goes or if it dead ends. He quickly grabs a trash can, tips it over, and puts it in the doorway to prop the door open as he’s stepping out. From the hallway’s side, the door requires a key card to open. And he doesn’t want to get trapped in this section of the death maze with no way out if he runs into anything up ahead. Because going back towards The Core is not an option now. Not until he can figure out a way of dealing with that enervation field. Or at least mitigating its effects against him.

Once he’s sure the door won’t just slam closed behind him, he hurries down the hallway. Down the entire length are doors set into the sides exactly like the one he’d left from. This could get maddening to anyone that didn’t have a frame of reference and just got dumped in here. Like a never ending nightmare. Outside of each door is a plaque explaining what the door protects and conceals. But it’s in some kind of code that he doesn’t understand. A pair of alphanumeric digits a dash, and another pair. Some four digit code that Gearing can only guess at to mean departments or sections. To Gearing this one seems like it’s pretty specific to this building in particular and is probably part of some beurocrat’s wet dream. But, like the other door, these doors all have security pass card slots as well. And, again, he doesn’t have one. As he continues on, peeking in through the small window panes here and there that have metal security mesh, he starts picking up his pace. Looking in is giving him nothing except more views at similar offices. And they’re all abandoned. He starts going faster and faster as he whips his head back and forth to look in. He doesn’t need another office. He needs an escape out. Preferably a set of stairs going up. But, despite any hopes, he doesn’t see any exit signs. And he only glances in the windows just enough to be able to see if it’s a stairwell or not, beyond that, he keeps going, and he doesn’t even break stride.

And the fact that the screaming in his head has disappeared, and the itching feeling covering his body has subsided tremendously, provides even more motivation to keep going. He might still be in an enervation field, at least a smaller, weaker one, but either way, the less of that nonsense he has to deal with, the, relatively, happier he is.

After turning back and forth to the left or the right as the hallway snakes away from where he’d come from, he finally makes another couple of turns, and, despite the dire situation, a genuine smile crosses his muzzle. And the green glowing sign over the door is his personal harbinger of happiness.

As Gearing runs up to it he notices another sign on the wall next to the door that declares: ‘Emergency Exit Fire Escape. Be careful and follow the path to the fastest escape route.’

Gearing stops dead in his tracks and starts examining the sign very closely. Underneath the sign is a map of the maze he’s in. The huge grid of various shapes becomes a blur that he can’t really make out nor distinguish from each other without paying careful attention. He knows this isn’t the entire area. It’s probably not even the entire sector. But despite the jumble he can make out the receiving docks area, it’s the only large wide open area on the map. But what he sees very clearly, is the red line on the map with a mare trotting across the top of it. The word box next to her declares: ‘In case of emergency, follow me to safety!’ Gearing lifts up a hoof, and slowly starts tracing the lines, counting out which turns, in which directions, and about how many doors or intersections he has to go through along the way. He follows the red line from the right side of the paper, down and to the left, and then stops. A scowl crosses his face as he slowly hangs his head and slides his hoof off the sign.

‘Fucking figures,’ the little blue pegasus groans as it flops down on a mind cloud. ‘Wanna wake me up when shit stops sucking?’

Gearing looks up at the map again and traces along the edge where someone had ripped off a portion of the sign. It was done quickly, with haste. And he can’t help but feeling a little bitter about it. Because now he doesn’t know where it leads to, or how many more turns he’ll have to make. And it’s because someone decided to vandalize the sign.

‘Well… maybe someone ripped it off and took it with them, because they wanted to get out but their memory sucks? Not everyones’ is as good as ours,’ the little blue pegasus offers with a shrug.

And, oddly enough, that actually does make Gearing feel better. Because that would mean someone used the sign to get out of here. And even if it means he’s going to have a harder time. If they got out, he’ll accept that. Especially since he didn’t stop the need for the emergency in the first place.

The little blue pegasus in his head uses his forehooves and gathers up a bunch of mind cloud and then buries his face in it as he groans, ‘Karma sucks…’

“I’ll live though…” Gearing mutters as he turns to the side and checks the door.

And, like he’d expected, the door had already been opened. If it had an alarm on it, it had been triggered long ago and was no longer a problem. He can’t help but smile as he looks down and sees where someone had dropped a dictionary in between the door and the frame to keep it open. And after getting to the other side of the exit door, he can see why. There’s no way back in. This was meant as an emergency exit, and not an entrance, so there’s not even a key card access slot. Gearing thanks the kind soul who’d left the book, and carefully replaces it.

As a bibliophile, it irks him that the book is being used in ways that it was never intended in being used. But, being used as a lifesaving device seems fitting. And, who knows, maybe one day it’ll help someone else again. Gearing looks around, as he’s in the next section, and frowns as he has to go down the stairs as this particular section doesn’t have any more going up. And after a couple sets of stairs going down, with no other doors, he finally comes to the fire exit door at the bottom. And this one is being propped open with a large trash can full of debris. Whoever came through here, wanted to make sure that that door didn't close on anyone else.

And when he steps through he finds himself walking through another office. But this one has several differences compared to the ones previously. It still has that remarkably well preserved feel to it. But this one has been actively cleaned as well. There’s not a spec of trash anywhere inside. And the trash cans have all been emptied. Except the one trash can sitting in the emergency escape staircase. Gearing double checks and can’t help but smirk as he visualizes the line and confirms that, yes, the bots seem to be set on a protocol with a bounding box that excludes the stairwell. Which is probably why the previous individuals did what they did, otherwise the bots would have taken the item and let the door close.

But this presents another problem, and he can hear it even with his muffled hearing. Mechanical hooves step in time one after another and patrol around the office. He quickly zips among the maze of cubicles, arching towards the door on the far side of the room where the map had told him to go but has to keep changing directions to avoid the patrols. He’s not sure how many of the protectaponies are in here, but he knows its at least four. And they aren’t exactly going to be happy with him being here if his hunch is correct. He follows along and listens carefully as he hears the automatons make their rounds of looking over the office. At least as much as he can with his left ear practically dead and his right ear toned down. He’s not sure if he just came in at a bad time, or if they are simply stuck in cleaning mode until someone tells them to go away. But, either way, he’s stuck in the room with them until he can make it to the door he needs. Quick peeks up, by rearing up just enough to look over the cubicles, confirms that he's on target to get there. But it also confirms that three of the bots had decided to congregate over by the door. The exact door that he’s trying to get out through.

He ducks into one of the cubicles as a fourth protectapony walks by and gets close to him by walking down the perpendicular path in front of him. He curls up under the desk and pulls the chair in close to himself as he starts straining his ears to listen, but otherwise he goes deathly still. After a few seconds, and the steps of the bot pass him by and actually start getting just a bit quieter as it’s walking away, Gearing starts getting impatient, annoyed, and, unfortunately, desperate. He pushes the chair away from himself and quickly starts rummaging through the desk as quietly as he can. He glances at the pictures on the desk, of some unicorn mare and her young colt, as he starts slowing down. The mare and the colt are in most of the pictures, with the colt alone taking up the remainder of them. Digging around in the large drawer to the right, and finding a large purse, confirms that the mare in the picture is likely to be the one holding and playing with her son. And he can’t help but feeling a pang in his chest. He slowly looks up and draws his eyes over the peach colored mare as she’s cradling the little blue colt with one of her forelegs in one picture as she’s practically treating him like a foal. In another they are dressed up for Nightmare Night in paired costumes as she’s dyed her coat white and black and looks like a milk cow with a pair of toy horns on her head. Which looks even more ridiculous considering her own horn is far bigger than the other two and now she has three and a big brass bell on a necklace around her neck, as the young colt is dressed up as a cowpony complete with a Stetson and rope lasso. In another there’s her looking over the sleeping colt while he’s sprawled out on the bed in a ridiculous manner, but the look on her face is pure contentment and adoration. Which, Gearing realizes, is probably why she wanted to save the moment in time with the picture.

Gearing lowers his eyes as he sighs. He knows that look. He’s been the target of it himself, and always acted like the constant attention was so embarrassing. His mind starts wandering but quickly he shakes his head as he goes back to snooping through the drawers again as he mutters quietly, “There’ll be time to kick myself for being an ungrateful bastard later…”

While he was hoping to find something to use to cause a distraction, he can’t find a bottle. Empty or otherwise, and on some level he regrets not keeping those putrid healing potions for just such an occasion. Inside the purse he finds a mug, and a smile breaks out across his muzzle as he breathes, “Ah hah!” But, as he pulls it out, the smile falls off his face as he sees the side of it.

Gearing stares at it for a few moments, then looks up at the picture of the pair. He carefully sets it back into the purse as he whispers, “I’ve fucked over one mom bad enough… I don’t think so… there’s gotta be something else…” After coming up empty in the side drawers, he uses his tools and quickly opens the top center thin drawer. Inside is a lot of writing implements, paperclips, and other assorted office supplies. The paperclips he laps up with his tongue and quickly spits them into his bag. They aren’t exactly bobby pins, but they’ll work in a pinch. Then, in the same tray, he finds a couple bobby pins, which actually does bring a smile back to his face.

Which only grows wider as he sees the little red hunk of metal behind the drawer’s organization tray as he’s grabbing the bobby pins.

He opens it up a bit more, then fetches out the still shiny polished red stapler. He gives it a bit of a feel as he measures and approximates its weight by its heft. It’s definitely one of the good ones. A decently put together older model that’s been the staple in many offices. For good reason. It’s reliable and he’s never heard of one breaking, even from falling or getting knocked off the desk repeatedly. Its design is rather superb. And apparently the mare who sat in this cubicle thought so as well, given she not only put it inside of a locked drawer, but pushed it to the back of the drawer to hide it from prying eyes.

“Some individuals cling to the strangest things,” Gearing mutters with a chuckle. He leans out into the walkway of the cubicles and looks at the far end of the collection of offices. And then he starts rocking side to side as he winds up for the throw. He leans back, and then leans far forward and whips the stapler like a bullet straight down the walkway towards the area where the higher ranked administration staff apparently had their personal offices.

And Gearing’s eyes go wide as his jaw drops at what he’s unintentionally unleashed.

True he meant to throw it. True he meant to cause some noise so that the bots would go to investigate. True he was expecting to break or damage something.

What he wasn’t expecting was the stapler to fly straight through the window to the manager office, causing the entire thing to cascade down in a ruckus that even the dead could hear. And he certainly wasn’t expecting the stapler to keep going until it smashes into the display cabinet in said manager’s office. Sending that glass raining in and down as the stapler passed right through it. And he certainly didn’t expect the stapler to hit the objects inside of the display cabinet, and cause a avalanche of awards and models as they all fall, break the glass shelf they are sitting on, and cause a shower of glass and breaking knickknacks as the entire shelf display implodes in on itself in an explosion of glass and mirror-like material.

“A disturbance has been detected. Commencing search.”

“Scanning for malicious messes.”

“Do not be alarmed. Order will be resumed soon. Please stand by.”

Gearing huddles under the desk again, after recovering from his shock, and pulls the chair close to him. And, in this case, it proves to be a good idea as one of the mechanical equine doppelgangers walks right down the walkway by him as it heads towards the back office, while the others take their own routes. As soon as it’s past him enough, Gearing slips out behind it, whips around the corner, and performs a silent stampede straight for the door.

As he’s getting to the door, the protectaponies are throwing a fit about the mess he created and start cleaning it up together. And he can’t help but smile and dip his head in thanks towards the cubicle of the mare whose stapler he’d borrowed. Though he can’t help but snicker at the thought that shit like that is why she didn’t want to loan her stapler out to anypony and why she was so protective of it. Once in the next hallway, he rocks his forehoof side to side as he mentally goes over the map again, and then points to the left. He looks that direction and mutters, “thataway,” before he turns and starts creeping down the hallway.

Gearing follows his mental map as he tries to make sure he stays out of sight of any of the automatons that are still functioning in this area of the complex. And his ego gets boosted here and there as he comes across various doors that have the same ‘Emergency Exit’ written on it that leads to the next section. Right along the path his mental map has laid out. He would really like it better if more of the path had him going up, but right now he’ll take what he can get. But things start getting more nerve wracking for him the longer he walks. Yes, there are automatons everywhere. And, yes, their frequency is increasing. And, unfortunately, it’s not always basic protectaponies as hovering maintenance bots start making an appearance and showing up frequently as well.

The problem is that he’s getting near the end of his map. And, despite how much he’d like to the contrary, he hasn’t found another one.

And the reason becomes obvious as at one of the security doors he sees where the wall was damaged. In the exact shape of the map that led out. As much as he’d like one for himself, he really doubts he's going to find another. As whoever had left before him had been grabbing their own on the way out. It’s more than a little selfish, he realizes this. But at the same time he can’t entirely blame them. For the most part the path is pretty well laid out in an intuitive manner that having a map isn’t really necessary. The fact that he’s gotten this far just from a glance is proof of that much. But, still, he’d like to know what’s coming up. In this particular situation, not knowing can literally be the difference between life or death because, unlike those that used to work here, he doesn’t actually belong. So he can’t simply walk past security checkpoints.

Although, he does have a weird nagging inclination to just walk up to one of the robots and ask them which way out or if they could escort him out. But, that gets squashed. In the old days, maybe. But not now. Whoever is in control of The Core’s systems has eyes and ears everywhere in the shape of security nets. All it is going to take is for Gearing to have the misfortune to come across one that they are actively looking at, before all hell breaks loose for him, and he knows it. Especially this close to the core.

Gearing lets out a sigh as he walks through the section of hallway that empties out into the great void of the ripped map. From here on out he’s not going to have a clue what’s coming up. But, thankfully, he’s not having that much of a problem finding his way. He just has to get to the emergency exit that’ll take him to the surface and he should be fine.

‘Let's hope the emergency surface exit doesn’t take us to The Core… That would be bad,’ the little blue pegasus in his head says with a frown.

“Oh shut the hell up with that!” Gearing growls at himself aloud.

The little blue pegasus starts rattling some dice as he says, ‘Don’t blame me, you know how bad our luck is.’ He tosses a couple of the cubes against a wall and watches as they roll back, ‘Blame the dice…’

---

Footnote: !!!WARNING!!! Breech detected!

Unknown Index Reference. . .

Please Stand By. . .

Please Stand By. . .

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