The impact into Gearing’s hind quarters is significant as he gets knocked clean into the room, and smacks into the shelves next to where Handy’s working before crashing tail over mane into the pile of chains and makeshift cabling around the workbench. Handy jumps back and away from the table, with a visible wince on his face as he watches Gearing come in for an unexpected and unpleasant crash landing. The shelving teeters and slowly falls over as the damage done both from Gearing crashing into it and partially crushing part of it, and the claws on one side of him ripping slashes clean through the supports, is more than enough to make it unstable.

Swift flips in through the door to the maintenance storage room, doing an about-face, as she starts waving her powerhoof in Gearing’s direction. “What’s the big idea pulling that shit!? You have any idea how hard we’ve been busting our flanks to try and rescue your sorry ass?! Why didn’t you say something and let us know you were okay sooner?!”

Gearing tumbles around, twisting various ways as he tries to pull himself together and climb out of the chains. After some effort he manages to flip around and right side up, into a mostly seated position, as he turns and looks at her with his eyes narrowed and replies flatly, “I did… the message just didn’t get sent until I made it back up. Just like I didn’t get your messages until I got back within signal range…”

Swift pauses shaking her hoof at him as the scowl across her face slowly fades away. “You serious?”

Gearing nods slowly as he starts flicking the chains off of himself and scraping the ones that somehow ended up looping around the claws sticking out of his forelegs. “Yeah… I got all of your messages, except that last one, as soon as I made it out of the elevator shaft.”

“OOohhhhh,” Swift says softly as her voice trails off. She gives him a sheepish grin before she asks, “Well… how’d you get out then? Fly?”

Gearing shakes the chains off his back, and stares her in the eyes for a few moments before stretching out his left wing, and showing the mangled crystal covered mesh where his once glorious green stained glass segments once had been. “Since I can’t fly now… no…” As her eyes shoot to their widest, Gearing raises his right foreleg and tilts it so they can see the claws he’s glued on to them. “I glued these spikes to myself, and climbed my way up.”

Handy tosses the helmet to the side as he stares at him and asks, “Climbed? The vertical shaft? The whole way?!”

Gearing looks over at him and asks, “Well what the fuck else was I supposed to do?”

Handy waves over at the pile they’d been working on and says softly, “We’ve been trying to make a cable system long enough to drop it down for you. But it’s so far down that we’ve been having a hard time finding the materials… I’ve been having to improvise a lot here.”

Gearing looks over at him and smiles as he dips his head in his direction. “It’s appreciated. Really. Actually I wish I just stayed in the shaft. Things probably woulda turned out a lot better if I just waited on you.”

Handy smirks as he looks away but waves a hoof at him. “Awww what are you talking about… You got out on your own… You didn’t need us.”

Swift walks over slowly as her eyes trail over Gearing’s form. She eyeballs the spikes sticking out of his sides, then trails up to the rifle he has slung over his back, and she balks as she notices how bent it is. “What the hell happened to you?” She gives a faint smile as she points at her own head. “Did you get a building dropped on your head again? You’re doing your old mummy impersonation.”

“I got a whole transport of whoop ass dropped on me…” Gearing groans as he turns and looks at her, but sits down as he tries to focus on the feelings all over his body.

“You’re head alright?” She asks as she leans in and starts carefully looking at the bandage job on the left side of his head.

Handy walks around and next to her as he stares at it and says with a wince, “It… looks like it’s out of alignment…” His eyes jump down to Gearing’s and he balks for a second before he waves a hoof defensively. “I’m not trying to be weird, I can’t think of any word that’d make sense, it just looks like it’s not seated correctly!”

Gearing nods as he says softly, “Yeah, I’d had a lot of problems with everything down there. I should heal just fine…” He shakes his head and smiles as he waves his foreleg. “I ran into an enervation field like you wouldn’t believe down there. It’s like it was ripping me apart and I barely got out of there.”

Handy waves a forehoof at Gearing’s face as he asks, “You want us to take a look? Just tell us what you need us to do and we’ll do it, no questions asked.”

Swift smiles as she nods. “We’re not Sable, but between the two of us I’m sure we’d manage.”

Gearing nods and points up at his head. “Yeah. If you would. I’m not entirely sure if I got it in the right place, going by feel isn’t always the best way.” He looks down then gives them a sheepish smile as he says, “I’m sorry, but could you get the bandage off? These claws are making it hard to do pretty much anything and it’s going to take some time and turpentine to get them off.”

Swift giggles as she hops forward and starts undoing the bandage. “Sure! But, why’d you glue them on yourself instead of like… making clawed versions of powerhooves? Couldn’t you like, strap them onto those medical braces you have and have a set of climbing claws really quick?”

Gearing smirks as he says, “Yeah, I could, but I left most of that kind of stuff back at Megamart, I didn’t want to have to worry about added weight and things I didn’t really need.”

Swift smirks as she continues to unwrap the soggy bandage. As she’s nearing the end, she starts using both hooves to hold onto the side of Gearing’s face. And then adds a wing. And as the bandage mostly falls away, except where she’s currently pressing against his face, her eyes go to their absolute widest. Her mouth opens. As if she’s about to say something. But then it shivers and closes quickly again. She trips and chokes on her words as she keeps her focus on the left side of Gearing’s head.

Gearing looks at her with just his eyes and lets out a snort of amusement as he says, “You don’t have to keep it pressed so hard, it’s fine.”

Swift’s eyes go a bit wider, somehow, and she glances sideways at Handy’s whose own eyes start increasing the amount of white that’s being shown.

“It’s fine, really, it’s not hurting me,” Gearing comments as he changes his focus to Handy.

Handy keeps staring where Swift is holding, and asks softly, “You sure? You sure that doesn’t hurt, Gearing?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Handy. Why?” Gearing asks as he raises his right eyebrow.

“Because something is wrong,” Swift comments softly. She pulls her hooves back towards herself, with a cupping action as her voice changes a few octaves, “Really really wrong…”

Gearing turns his head towards her, and instantly his eyes are drawn down to her hooves. He stares at what’s in her hooves, and tries to focus as he tries to comprehend exactly what she’s holding. He tilts his head to the side a bit, rotated so that his right ear raises high in the air.

In rapid succession, a cascading of clinking and tinkling comes from Gearing’s left, and increases dramatically in volume for him at the same time. Swift and Handy’s faces morph into purse abject horror and revulsion as Gearing turns to look for whatever chain just fell over.

Instead the chains next to him are covered in a smattering of shiny brass pieces. Of various sizes. And when he looks down, the vision in his left eye simultaneously widens, as if his peripheral vision has increased, but blurs as a few more pieces fall off from around his face.

The pain in the left side of Gearing’s head increases and he lifts up his left foreleg, but it shudders and shakes, before a sprocket pops completely loose from his shoulder and falls off of him causing his leg to list unnaturally. And his hoof comes right back down quickly as he has a hard time keeping his balance.

Gearing’s left eye seems to barely be held in his head, as the eyelids themselves have entirely fallen away from him, as he looks at Swift and Handy and asks softly, “What’s…. what’s going on…”

“You’re… you’re falling apart,” Handy says in a soft gush of air.

Swift drops the pieces she’d been holding, hops forward, and grabs Gearing by his chest as she turns and pushes him over and onto his right side to make him lay down. And, surprisingly, and even more worryingly for her, she has no real trouble in accomplishing the task. She looks at his face as she asks quickly, “Gearing, Gearing can you hear me?”

Gearing’s jaw shutters as he gasps for breath to talk, “Yeah…?”

“Gearing, how can we fix you? Come on, you gotta tell us… how can we fix you?”

“I… I don’t know… this never happened before…”

Handy leans over and asks, “Potions? You think potions would work?”

“All gone… enervation ruined them,” Gearing says softly as he goes still.

The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head lays sprawled out with its limbs in every direction as it asks, ‘Why do I feel like, I’m out of energy… I feel so weak…’

“Potions! Get all the potions,” Swift yells as she carefully tilts Gearing’s head with one foreleg as she rummages through her bag with the other.

Quickly Handy takes over the task of sorting through her bag as she brings up a potion and pops the cork off with her teeth. She holds the bottle with a wing and says soothingly, “Come on, Gearing, open your mouth and drink this.” His jaw shivers and shutters, but instead of really opening it simply goes slack. And she decides that’s good enough as she pours the purple liquid in a tiny stream into Gearing’s open maw. But, it doesn’t quite go down, and the first bits actually spill out the other side despite her efforts, so she tilts his muzzle upwards and just pours it straight down his throat. “I really hope you still can’t drown…” Swift moans as the fluid splashes in his muzzle and starts going down the back of his mouth like a funnel.

As fuzzy headed as Gearing is, he notices that the liquid poured into his mouth doesn’t seem to have any effect. In fact, he can’t really taste it at all. It doesn’t really have a taste, as much as it has a wetness. And he can feel the temperature change, and where it’s going based on that. But, beyond that, nothing.

And it starts making him really worry and start fighting to focus more. But, as the fluid does pour down his throat. It’s not completely useless. The feeling starts off from the inside of him. From where the potion had come to rest in whatever voids it can fall into. Areas that aren’t nearly as damaged as the outside from all of the trials he’s been put through today. And from that area a spark grows. And grows. And he feels the tingling radiating out from his stomach and chest. And then in very noticeable lines and patterns within his jaw and other parts of his body. As the second potion is poured down his throat, Gearing starts leaning towards it, instinctively, and eventually even bites on the end of the bulb and tilts his head back as he greedily sucks that one down as well. And with this second one the warmth starts spreading out towards his limbs. And his wings. But, as the tingling travels outwards, there is a very unpleasant backlash. As the reestablished and awakened connections start letting him know one very clear fact.

He’s far worse than what he’d originally thought, and the flood of pain that he’s starting to be made aware of is because his entire body was so damaged that it wasn’t even responding correctly to what functions as his nervous system.

But he has one thing no other clockwork has ever had. An implant specifically designed to redirect healing where it was needed most, and with a will to keep him alive at all costs. So the implant is bypassing entire areas, even largely seriously wounded areas, to target more critically important zones. It crisscrosses his entire body with a lattice of healing as it tries to spread the healing energies as much as possible in a bid to keep him together.

Because Handy was right. He was starting to fall apart. Literally.

By the time the third potion is shoved down his muzzle, Gearing is having a panic session of his own. The lack of sensations in most of his body was disregarded as not problematic, but in fact was exceedingly problematic, and was actually a symptom of what was wrong with him. And when the third potion actually starts teasing his muzzle with tingling goodness, he can’t help but hold it in his mouth as well as he can.

“We’ve only got two more,” Handy says as he holds them up and looks at Swift. She glances at him with a daggered eyed stare and he adds quickly, “I’m just saying we need to use them in the best way possible for him. We’re getting out of here. He needs way more than we have. But I’m not sure what’s better, to just give him the potions now, or save them and give them to him along the way and hope he heals better that way.” He waves a hoof over towards the left side of Gearing’s head as he says, “And what the hell are we supposed to do about that? He’s missing practically half of his face and his damn ear just fell right the fuck off of his body!”

“Wh-what?” Gearing asks as he looks between them quickly. “My ear?!”

Swift pats him on the side of the muzzle as she says, “It’ll be fine, Gearing. You’ll heal up. You always do. Remember? You’ve had this happen before. It’ll be okay.”

Gearing looks around for a moment as he tries to piece together everything that’s going on and why this might be happening to him. And the memory of the pieces sticking to his hoof when he touched his face in that lunch room break area, while the ghouls died around him, flashes before his mind. Especially how he couldn’t even feel touching himself. He could feel his hoof touching his face, but not the other way around. It was a strange sensation, almost as if he was touching some-thing and not touching a part of his own body.

Tick.

Tick.

Click!

The realization drops on him like a ton of bricks as he flinches with his whole body at the thought. He chokes and gasps on his own words before he gurgles out, “Inert! They went inert while still attached to my fucking body!? How?! That’s not supposed to happen!?”

He reaches up with his left foreleg to feel his face, and Swift tries to stop him, “Don’t do that, it’ll only make it worse!” But he forces his way through anyways and starts gingerly touching at the sticky strange shapes poking out of the side of his head.

“It’s gone… it’s all gone… the ear, the whole side, all of it…” Gearing mutters as he pauses and tries to think of how and why this damage could be so consolidated. The ghoul’s bite comes to mind, but one had bit him on the back of the neck, and had been there for a considerable amount of time longer than the one that bit his face, so he doesn’t think that’s it. He’s sure it had to be something unique to that area that the back of his neck, and hindleg, didn’t have. He slowly lowers his forehoof as he asks, “Does… does this look like the same kind of damage that I had when we took off the helmet from my head?”

Swift and Handy look at each other, then slowly lean over and look at the oozing wound covered in partially transparent fluid.

“Actually…” Swift starts, but keeps looking at it carefully.

“Now that you mention it, yeah… isn’t that the side that got hurt?” Handy comments as his eyes trail over the various twisted pieces of metal jutting out of the side of Gearing’s face.

“It aggravated the wound. It was healed, but I guess that ghoul that bit me made it worse. But… somehow it made the wound go inert and fall off. Fucking enervation…” Gearing mutters as he stares straight ahead.

“I thought they don’t go inert if they’re attached?” Handy asks.

Gearing lets out a sigh as he says, “They don’t normally, but injured parts do have a tendency to get shed a bit earlier than normal. Especially bad wounds that aren’t directly healed with magic. It’s normally not that bad of a situation though. But apparently this hastened the process and made the parts prematurely get cast off… Before they were ready at that…”

Swift looks his face over as she asks, “Okay, but, how does that help us treat you?”

Gearing’s eyes drift around aimlessly for a moment before he asks softly, “Do you have any gems?”

Swift and Handy look at each other for a moment, with Swift arching an eyebrow at the strange question. Handy smirks as he asks, “Why, going to surprise us with being part dragon and wanna snack?” He gets a pop on his arm from Swift before he adds, “No sorry.”

“Magical ammo cartridges maybe?” Gearing asks with more than a bit of hope in his strained voice.

“Sorry, Gearing, we’ve only been finding and using bullets. Any of the other stuff we’ve been trading off since we don’t use it. Why, think it’d help?” Swift asks as she leans closer to Gearing’s face.

“Damn,” Gearing groans. “It might of, yeah. Possibly. But don’t worry about it if we don’t have any.”

“Soooo…?” Handy asks as he looks back and forth and is obviously trying to find some sort of guidance here from one of them.

Gearing lets out a groan as he says, “We’ve only got two potions, and one serious injury…” He looks up at her and limply waves at the side of his head. “This is going to sound screwed up, but just pour one of the potions directly into the seeping wound. There should be enough healing ability in it to at least keep it from getting any worse. At best it’ll help the parts underneath mature faster so they can take over the job.”

“And then you drink the last one?” Handy asks.

“And then I drink the last one,” Gearing adds. “After we get my wings un-mangled so it doesn’t try to waste any more magical energy on working out the bends when we can do that ourself.”

Swift opens the second to last potion and carefully holds it over the gaping hole on the left side of Gearing’s face as she scrunches her nose. “This is so gross…” And then she starts pouring a slow steady thin stream of the thick purple liquid into the crevices of his gears. She trails it up and, not getting any other feedback, pours a good portion of the potion straight into the hole where Gearing’s ear had been and now isn’t much more than a near rose petal configuration of mangled thin plates. It seems to be the right course of action as the purple coated brass starts twisting and moving and, in a few cases, growing in size right before their eyes. And she doesn’t stop pouring until the entire potion has been used to flood the area with its healing goodness. As they watch carefully, with Gearing not moving, the potion starts seeping in even deeper into Gearing as the liquid level starts lowering. Though part of that can easily be blamed by the slow steady stream of bubbles coming from the void of Gearing’s left ear as the fluid decides to fill up the clockwork equivalent of sinuses.

None of them move, with Handy and Swift watching carefully as Gearing just does his best to try and not make matters worse. And they simply let the liquid work.

After a while, Gearing finally declares, “Alright, I think it’s done about as much as it’s going to… now for the sucky part…”

Gearing rolls over and Swift and Handy begin the process of trying to help straighten out Gearing’s wings for him. It’s a horrendous process for all concerned, especially for Swift as she can’t help but imagining her own wings being so violently treated. Some pieces of the metal framework are so brittle, that they snap and sheer right off instead of bending. And to make matters worse, they actually end up having to fight against Gearing’s healing implant. The implant is doing it’s best to try and heal him, but the rate that it straightens out the metal is slower than the crystal regrowth. Which means they have to regularly break and shatter pieces of crystalline wing in order to move some of the framework. And in other cases the crystals shatter anyway from the torque being applied to pieces they are adjusting. To say the process is unsettling, for all involved, would be an understatement. Because though it may be necessary to do, there’s nothing they can do for him for the pain. Not the pain he’s already in, nor the pain they are constantly inflicting on him. And it’s noticeable, despite how hard Gearing tries his best not to grunt, whimper, or even react to what’s happening to him.

And, in this moment, both Swift and Handy realize why Gearing wanted to be alone with Sable while he was worked on. The misery is palpable in the air itself as they feel like they are torturing and mistreating him.

They aren’t entirely sure how to go about it. But, in this case, Handy’s mechanically minded habits give credence to his own name. He doesn’t know exactly how Gearing’s wings function. But the articulation on them is so precise that he’s able to figure it out and keep making adjustments until his wings are mostly in the shape they should be and actually move around with relative ease under his manual manipulations.

And when that unpleasant business is over, they finally give Gearing the last potion. But, instead of chugging it quickly as they’d expect from him. He lays there with it. Gingerly sipping on it as he takes quite a while to nurse the one bottle like he was some sort of depressed barfly in a tavern.

As they sit off to the side, watching spurts of healing and repair take place all over Gearing’s body, Swift asks, “So, you going to run around giving idiots Da Business with those claws, or you going to take them off?”

Gearing pauses halfway through his bottle as he comments flatly, “They’re Wonderglued on. But I got some turpentine in my bag to get them off.”

“Mind if I…?” Handy asks as he starts moving towards Gearing, but stops as he awaits permission.

The pair shares eye contact for a few seconds before Gearing gives just the faintest hint of a nod before he uses his PipBuck and gets the container to the top of his saddle bag. “It should be right on top.”

Handy opens Gearing’s bag and, sure enough, the brand new container is right on top. As he’s pulling it out he asks, “How’d you find a sealed one? I bet this cost a pretty cap.”

Gearing shakes his head as he’s taking another sip. After swishing it around in his mouth a few times, and slowly swallowing, he comments, “Found it down below. There’s a fully stocked maintenance bay down there.”

Swift smirks as she leans down and asks, “How much did you bring back? Pilfer it all?”

Gearing smirks as he says, “In normal circumstances, I’d barely be walking…” He brings the bottle up to his lips and says with a scoff, “That place is a fucking death trap…” before taking another swig of the healing potion.

As Handy gets to work using the turpentine to remove the claws from Gearing he asks, “Speaking of death traps… What the hell was with that wall of water? The bots I get, automatic security… but that was…”

“A death trap?” Gearing asks as he raises an eyebrow and in a tone that sounds more like he’s making fun of Handy for being slow on the uptake.

“Yeah… what’s that about?”

Gearing finishes off the potion bottle, then starts tilting it so the dregs will accumulate where he can get them as he says, “I just said it, Handy, the whole place was a fucking death trap.”

“You mean, intentional trap?” Handy asks with his eyes wide open.

“Yeah… an intentional trap…” Gearing says flatly.

“Did that fucking Lodestar set us up?!” Swift asks as she jumps up to her hooves.

“I’ll be honest, I’ve been wondering about that,” Gearing admits.

Handy waves a forehoof to calm Swift down before he says, “Okay, hold on, before we go bat shit, what happened?”

Gearing lets out a sigh as he looks around and tries to think of exactly what to say. While it is true that the systems and alarms and all of the problems didn’t occur until after he was digging into the system to try and get into The Core, there is just one bit of information that causes serious doubt for him that that was actually the cause: The fact of how quickly they found him. He’s good. He’s fast. But not even he’s that fast. It was like they were already monitoring the closet remotely, and watching him to see what he did. And after the sirens went off about the detonation in MiraMare they decided play time was over and wanted him out. Then there’s the fact that the section itself was flooded in order to kill anyone in the area. But only that section. Loop after loop he runs through it in his mind and eventually comes to the solution with the highest probability: that he’s pretty sure he’s not the one that woke the system up. After all, the commands were coming in remotely from inside The Core.

‘The alternative is that we’re the ones, or at least helped, the security system come online because of our intrusion…’ the little blue pegasus in his head comments as he puts his dice away into a small pull string pouch. ‘And it’d suck to have done this to ourselves.’

“Handy, I’m not positive about anything… but what I do know is that it wasn’t set up by Lodestar. However, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware of it. And since he’s already been to that room before, it causes other problems, because that means he got out of there… Considering he got out, that means they let him leave at best, or, at worst, he made a deal with them and they let him leave. I don’t see any other options. He’d had to of known.”

“Who let him go? The security?” Swift asks as she looks back and forth.

Gearing tilts the bottle, and quickly laps out the rest of the healing potion’s last couple drops near the inside lip of the bottle as he shakes his head. “No… Someone was monitoring that closet. And it wasn’t a standard security automatic response. Not with the way they were talking.”

“You talked with them?!” Handy asks as his eyes go wide. Gearing gives a slight nod and he asks, “What’d they say?”

“Basically told me to go fuck myself, said I couldn’t have the data, ranted about owning Equestria, and then cut the hard line when they couldn’t purge me from the system.”

“And that’s when the murder bots and tsunami showed up?” Swift asks with a raised eyebrow.

Gearing twirls around the bottle with his forhooves as he groans, “Yeeaaah… That’s when things went from bad, to worse, to Nightmare Moon’s wet dream…”

“Convenient,” Swift says with a snort as she looks at Handy, who’s scowl is growing by the second, even by Handy standards. She looks over at Gearing and asks, “So, what you gonna do?”

Gearing curls his hooves around the bottle as he sighs. “Look, I don’t know for sure. But I want some fucking answers. But if he set us up I wanna kill the sonovabitch.” He reaches his forehooves up and starts mimicking grabbing the air. “And I don’t mean simply a bullet to the head. Oooohhhh no. I mean I want to grab him by his lying stinking throat, and strangle him with my own hooves. And just keep on squeezing until his head fucking pops off like a cheap ass Flim Flam brothers made toy!”

“I just knew that buck was a slime ball! He didn’t want to pay us what he owes and wants to keep all of the things to himself! I shoulda kicked his ass in Megamart when I had the chance!” Handy scowls as he hits the ground repeatedly with alternating forehooves. “He tried to get us killed instead of coughing up the info. After we saved his life. That’s low. That’s real low!”

Swift smirks as she waves a hoof nonchalantly, “Nah, we woulda been fine. I’d have just kicked the ass of anyone that tried!”

“No, you wouldn’t, Swift,” Gearing says flatly.

“What?” She looks over at him and rolls her eyes before she snorts and looks over at the wall. “You really underestimate what I’m capable of, Gearing…”

“You have no idea what was down there… There was security turrets set up specifically to shoot down fliers… There’s military grade front line hardened assault drones down there… And it doesn’t matter how many you destroy because there’s factories churning them out just as fast, or faster, than they are taken out… Not to mention the vast stockpile they have locked away in the very walls…”

Swift smirks as she looks at him. “You’re joking…”

Gearing shakes his head. “No, and that’s not even the worst of it… Swift, there’s enervation fields down there so strong that living things are ripped apart in short order… Any organics that blunder into the wrong area end up liquefied. And if you already have an injury that just makes it go that much quicker. A single scratch gets magnified to ridiculous portions…” He raises a hoof and points at the left side of his head as he says. “I’m pretty sure that’s what did all of this to me… Swift, it sucked the very life out of me and turned the other creatures into puddles of goo… Do you really think you’d fair well in that? Come on, don’t be stupid…”

“Well… I mean… I have my own tricks…” Swift says lamely as she looks away.

“Swift,” Gearing says sternly as he lifts his head and looks right at her. “It doesn’t matter what creature it was… what kind of organic… flesh liquefied right off the bones. Hell, the couple potions I had turned so rancid that even I could taste how bad they were.” He lays his head down and closes his eye as he says, “ You would have died… you both would have died… All three of us would have most likely died… Anyone that goes down there is just going to die…”

Swift gives him a weak smile as she waves towards him. “Well… you got out so-”

Gearing cuts her off as he snaps, “I shouldn’t have!” Both Handy and Swift’s eyes go wide at the forcefulness of his assertion as he whips his head back up to look at her. “I really shouldn’t be alive right now! The only reason I am is pure dumb ass luck and because of something I simply forgot to take out of my bag back at Megamart. That’s it!” He lays his head down as he groans, “That and a security bot that I hacked and tricked into carrying me all the way out.”

Handy and Swift stare at him for a moment before Handy asks, with more confusion than anything, “Why didn’t any of the other bots try and stop you? If you got control of the entire net it wouldn’t have been a problem anymore, right?”

Gearing lets out a sigh then looks over at Swift. “You remember that ghoul caravanner mare we ran into? The one with the song and dance routine?”

“Song and dance routine?” Handy asks with a shake of his head and utter confusion in his voice.

Swift smirks as she asks, “The one you were flirting with hardcore?”

The comment draws a startled look from Handy, which slowly morphs into disbelieving disgust as one side of his lip curls and scrunches up.

Gearing snorts and says softly, “Yeah… her…” He clears his throat unnecessarily before saying louder, “Remember that extra tip she gave me afterwards?”

Handy waves both of his forehooves and looks away from him as he hangs his tongue out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I don’t want to hear anymore about any kind of ‘tip’ you got from a ghoul nor why she felt inclined to give you one!”

Swift gives Handy an amused side eyed smirk as she says, “Get your mind out of the gutter, ya perv.” She looks back at Gearing as she asks, “What about it?”

Gearing lets out a sigh before he says, “Well, she gave me the broadcaster I’ve been using to keep in touch. It was compatible with my PipBuck and gave me the option for long term broadcasting to send messages one way. So I was really excited about that.”

Swift raises an eyebrow as she asks, “And why’s that important?”

“And why didn’t you just use that to tell us you’re okay?” Handy asks.

Gearing looks at Handy and frowns as he says, “Because for you to have had any chance of receiving the message without making modifications to your PipBuck, you’d have to have your radio on. Which you don’t walk around with it turned on usually. And since it’s a broadcaster it would let them know I was still in there and it’d help them find where I was by tracing me. So, no fucking thanks.” Handy frowns and rolls his eyes as he nods and concedes the point.

“Well,” Gearing starts, “that wasn’t the only thing in the bundle she gave me…” He reaches over and holds up his foreleg where the module is still sticking out of his PipBuck. “She gave me a Stealthbuck too…” he pulls his foreleg in tightly to his chest and rests it under his chin in a semi caressing nuzzle. “If it wasn’t for this I’d likely be dead… I just hitched a ride on the back of the sentry bot and got through the security checkpoints that way.” He shrugs with a groan before he says with a gush of air, “Dumb fucking luck that that mare gave it to me, and that I didn’t leave it behind, that’s the only reason I’m alive right now. And it wouldn’t have worked on two let alone three of us… As it is it wore off before I got out of there anyway…”

Swift smirks as she looks down at Gearing. “Sounds like you owe that mare an extra special thank you the next time you see her.”

“And an apology, in whatever form she wants,” Gearing replies deadpan as he doesn’t even move. “I owe a lot of mares an apology…” Gearing says with a sigh. He lifts his head and looks at Swift as he says, “Swift, I’m sorry.”

Swift rolls her eyes and waves it away with a hoof. “Where’d the hell that come from? You don’t owe me an apology… Not your fault you got stuck… just… try not to let it happen again…”

Gearing lays his head down and closes his eye as he says with a groan. “It just kind of dawned on me how shit I’ve treated mares in the past… Caring mothers especially… my own included… So… sorry…”

Handy looks back and forth before he leans in closer and asks softly, “What the fuck happened down there?”

“I got a glimpse of hell and didn’t like the taste…”

The little blue pegasus in Gearing head lets its tongue hang out until it rolls along the floor as it just keeps on growing to absurd lengths. ‘Like that damn rotten potion!’

Handy frowns as he changes his focus to look at his wife. After a few moments of eye contact he asks, “So what are we going to do about Lodestar screwing us over like this?”

Swift lets out a sigh as she says, “Well, without the data we’re not going to have any leverage, so that’s gonna be tricky.”

“Got it,” Gearing says flatly.

Swift and Handy’s focus both jump to him as they ask in unison, “What?!”

Gearing weakly lifts his foreleg, with the PipBuck on it, before letting it fall back to the ground. “I got it… I managed to download it before getting too far out of range, since I was stuck in the same area for so long… I mean… not all of it… but a good amount of it at least…” He lets out a groan as he says, “Enough to be worthwhile to someone, I’m sure.”

Swift wraps a foreleg around his shoulders as she starts energetically rocking him side to side. “You did that while trotting through hell?! That’s amazing, great job!”

Handy looks at Gearing, sharing eye contact for a few seconds before giving him a rare smile. “Thanks crazy… good job.”

“So, Lodestar?” Swift asks as she looks between them.

“Kill the backstabbing pile of shit, and sell the data to whoever has the parts we need?” Handy asks with his eyes narrowed and a matter of fact tone to his voice.

“Gearing?” Swift asks as she looks down at him.

“As much justice might get served by killing him before he gets anyone else killed, I have some serious concerns,” Gearing grumbles as he sits and just tries to let his body heal and not do anything to hamper his implants’ functions.

“Such as?” Handy asks with a nearly accusational tone that makes it clear he’s already not happy with where this is going.

“First, I don’t know for a fact that he set us up-”

“You said yourself that there’s no way he couldn’t have known!” Handy blurts out and interrupts him.

“There is the possibility that whoever is watching decided not to act because he couldn’t get into the system. Because doing that would show their cards and let the outside world know that they’re there… And that’s assuming that they didn’t start monitoring it until at that point or after he’d left. It would be the smart thing to do,” Gearing replies reasonably.

‘There’s also the small, teeny, tiny possibility that we’re the ones that triggered it ourselves, that we woke up the system with what we were doing…’ the little blue pegasus in his head comments as it plays with the little bag holding his dice.

And I’m not killing someone who might be innocent… but we can’t tell them that, Gearing mentally replies.

“That’s a big ‘if’ there, ain’t it Gearing?” Swift asks.

“Yeah, a ‘not bloody likely’ ‘if’,” Handy quips with a disgusted snort as he looks off to the side.

“It still exists, and I want to know for sure before I do something permanent that can’t be undone,” Gearing says softly.

“That’s ridiculously forgiving!” Handy says as he flails his forelegs around. “I mean look at you! And I ended up with a gash on my shoulder that got all fucked up and took a potion to get rid of!” His face twists up in rage, scrunches one way, then the other, and Gearing opens the one eye that has the ability to open and close at the moment and looks at him as Handy seems to have a localized facial seizure while trying to figure out what obscenity to scream out next.

Then Handy whips his head over to the side, while leaning his head back, and comes back forward with a whiplash inducing, room echoing, sneeze. A sneeze so powerful his tail whips up in an arch from the recoil. A huge blob of thick mucus trails out of his nose and he uses a shop rag to wipe his nose before blowing a soppy sounding exhale into the red cloth that quickly starts filling up like a diaper. He leans over and groans as he moans, “My fucking head…”

“You alright?” Gearing asks as he looks between them.

Swift gives Gearing a sheepish shoulder shrug as she says, “Well… apparently he wasn’t joking when he said he thought he’d caught a cold.”

“Told you!” Handy says as he looks over at her with one eye as he finishes wiping the snot off his nose before tossing the laden shop rag into the far corner of the room. The others stare at it as it splats against the wall. And hangs there. For far longer than it should have before it finally slips off and plops onto the ground.

“So, what then?” Handy asks as he resumes the conversation and tries to ignore what he’d just unleashed onto the world.

“Uhm… right…” Gearing blinks a few times before he says, “Well. There’s also the problem that Lodestar’s part of Happy Trails which means they’re Finders… and that brings up a whole mess of issues because I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to build up a relationship with them. And if I do anything it could really ruin any chances of getting anything further from them… not just supplies, but leads and information…”

“So, what? You just want to log a complaint with that manager, what’s her name, Bottlecap?” Handy asks with a smirk. “Tell her her employee’s been a bad colt and needs to be sent to his room without dinner or given a slap on the hoof? You can’t be serious?”

“I’d feel better if we talked to someone that knows more about what might happen and how big of a deal it could be. Someone that won’t feel obliged to go and report the situation on their own and give them a heads up we’d made it out alive and aren’t happy about how things turned out,” Gearing says with a groan.

Swift taps on her muzzle for a bit, before a sly smile crosses her face. “Oh… I think I know just who we can talk to and get the lay of the land… and… I’m pretty sure they’ll be more than willing to tell us all we need to know, while not tipping Lodestar off to what we know… hell… they might even help us with whatever we decide after we tell them what’s all going on.”

Handy and Gearing both look at each other before Handy looks at her and asks, “Who?”

Swift savors the anticipation of the moment for being the one to think of it. But, also for the reaction that she’s sure she’s going to get. “Well… that’s simple…” She waves her hoof around for a few seconds, far longer than necessary as she drags out the pause for dramatic reasons alone. “Big!”

Handy’s eyes go wide as he asks, “Big Daddy?! Why him!?”

Gearing lets out a groan and lays his head back on the ground as he closes his eye, eliciting a giggle from Swift.

She reaches out and taps on his foreleg a bit as she says, “Hey, like it or not, you’re a qualified Reaper. Dems the rules. And word around is you fuck with one Reaper, you fuck with them all.” She waves her hoof around as she grins, “You don’t simply fuck over a Reaper, sending them into a death trap, and expect to get away with that. Backstabbing a Reaper? That’s bad for business. Backstabbing two? That’s bad for life expectancy!”

Gearing lowers his head and covers his muzzle with his foreleg as he gingerly tries to cover his lidless eye as well. “Crap.”

Swift reaches out and taps on his foreleg as she giggles again. “Been telling ya you can’t hide from him forever… and now’s a perfect time to go there… get some information… find out what’s all up… Maybe even get some help…” She sits down and tilts her head as she asks, “Why are you so against this?!” She waves a hoof towards him as she frowns. “Especially given your condition. This isn’t a time to be turning down a golden opportunity.”

Gearing pulls his leg away from his face and stares right at her for a few seconds before he says flatly, “Because I’m already spoken for, and he doesn’t seem like the type to take ‘no’ for an answer. So that’s going to cause a problem… Because…” He taps on the ground with a forehoof forcefully as he says, “There’s only one mare that’s ever been able to order me around and I’d actually listen to. The rest of equinity, hell the world, has to take a number and better ask… Any other ‘orders’ I get, I’ll take under advisement but I’m not doing shit just because someone thinks they’re above me and orders me to do anything… I’ve never responded well to that shit…”

Handy rolls his eyes and smirks as he says, “Speaking of Sable, you know we gotta wrap this up and get back there soon or she’s gonna start tracking us down.”

Gearing raises an eyebrow as he looks at Handy. “What are you talking about?”

Swift grins and then puts a hoof to her chest as she looks pointedly off to the side and slightly up towards the ceiling as she chimes in, “And if you think I’m going to cover for your ass when she comes asking why you’re not back yet, you better think again…”

Gearing rolls his eyes and lays down for a second as he grumbles and mutters to himself. Then he starts kicking and flailing around his legs as he says, “Alright already! Fine! We can go to the Arena and talk to Big Daddy about what we should do.”

“Great!” Swift says with an oversized grin as she closes her eyes and looks at him. “So, when do you wanna head out?”

“Sthooner the better,” Handy adds in, earning him a raised eyebrow from Gearing. It’s at this point, with enough healing having taken place, that Gearing’s hearing has gotten just better enough to hear the distortion in Handy’s voice. A tell tale one that tattles on the fact that Handy’s sinuses are probably as full of as much crap as a public port-a-potty outside of a hoofball stadium on game day.

“Let’s just get this shit over with,” Gearing says as he rocks a couple times side to side with the effort before he gets his hooves back under himself and starts picking himself up.

As Gearing is picking up the pieces of himself off the floor, Swift’s grin falls off her face as she asks softly, “Are you sure you should be moving now?”

“I need some pretty substantial healing, and that’s not going to happen with me sitting here. Not in any reasonable amount of time that is. Not with what supplies we have. My implant had a hell of a time trying to make up for what the damn enervation field was doing to me. The potions helped, but I need more, a lot more, or a lot more energy and potency… And we’re not getting that in here…”

Swift lets out a sigh as she looks him over again. “Well, how are your wings at least?”

“I’m grounded for a while. Easily. They’re mostly back together, it seems, but considering what the enervation field did to my face I don’t want to risk straining them too soon. They might fall apart or buckle under me mid flight. And, no thank you,” Gearing says with a quick dismissive wave of his forehoof.

“Well, come on, let’s go den,” Handy says as he waves with a forehoof towards the ladder outside of the maintenance room. “Dah sthooner we get out of here dah sthooner we get dere.”

As Gearing is slowly walking out through the door first he says with a smirk, “Make sure to grab some of those shop towels, sounds like you’re gonna need them.”

“Yah yah,” Handy says with a groan as he starts sorting through a shelf nearby.

“I’ll head up first and make sure nothing tries to surprise us,” Swift says quickly before jumping over Gearing, flying over to the ladder, and skittering up and out the remaining distance.

As Gearing gets to the hole and starts climbing the ladder, he hears Handy blowing his nose. He pauses climbing and looks over at the door as the sound changes tones and force, but then sounds like something pops as if a huge release of air escapes. “You alright in there, Handy?”

“Peachy!” Handy replies sarcastically with his voice muffled by the efforts and the fabric before he resumes blowing his nose. A moment later there’s another, louder, release of air before Handy yells with a mostly clear voice, “How is there so much coming out of such a small space?! This shouldn’t be possible!”

Gearing starts chuckling as he keeps his position. When Handy trots out to the ladder and looks up at him Gearing asks, “Feel better?”

“Breathing better at least, for now, so... yeah. Much!” Handy replies with a forced grin before they both start up the ladder again.

Once on the surface, Swift flutters around Gearing as she asks, “What took so long? I was about to come back down there.”

Gearing chuckles and waves off to the side as Handy is scampering out of the ponyhole. “Handy blew his brains out all over the wall. Such a mess.”

“Ahhh bite me you brass bastard… I’m sick, lemme alone…” Handy grumbles as he climbs out and starts walking past Swift with his head hanging low.

“Oh, you big baby, you’re gonna be fine,” Swift says with a smirk as she watches him walk away.

After Handy’s a distance away Gearing leans towards Swift and asks, “How bad is he? Really? Do we need to start looking for some antibiotics?”

Swift waves it off and smirks before she leans closer and whispers, “Oh, don’t worry about him. I’ve seen him like this before. I know exactly what this is and he’ll be fine…”

“And… what’s that?” Gearing asks as he looks back and forth.

Swift grins widely as she says, “He’s got the dreaded Buck Flu!” She giggles as she nods towards Handy. “Positively convinced he’s dying and he’s going to get absurdly grumpy and just want to lay about while whining about how bad he feels.” She waves it away with a giggle as she says, “It’s not the first time I’ve seen him do battle with such a ‘deadly disease’.”

They share a snicker then start following as Handy yells without looking back at them, “Ya’ll coming or what?!”

---

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

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