Author's Notes:

This worked out longer than I intended, so is now split into several uneven pieces.

Here's the second piece.

Also, it's always baking with me. Why is that?

Later, Arthur was back in the crawler, outside the city proper. The crawler was large.

It was large mostly because it had had to carry all of the requisite tools and equipment and such for the task for which they’d been dispatched. A lot of that had been emptied out, now, but the vehicle remained large - large enough to have its own living space, in which Arthur and Corin had been staying for the past however many weeks.

Not spacious, but comfortable.

Corin was the other human half of the operation, the other technical specialist.

While Arthur was handling the infrastructure side, Corin was handling the actual point-of-use stuff, which is to say how exactly the ponies were meant to access what they were getting and what they could use to access it.

This involved a lot of talking, a lot of being friendly and this was why it was Corin doing it and not Arthur, because their bosses were not stupid. Corin was much better at communicating than Arthur was, and enjoyed it to boot, so while Arthur was pretending to look busy or making minor technical adjustments Corin was off elsewhere in Canterlot, running seminars with names like ‘Power overwhelming! Electricity and you!’.

She hadn’t picked the name.

And after these were concluded for the day she then typically hung out a little with those friends she’d made among the locals, which was why she was typically back to the crawler later than Arthur was, as it was this time, her coming in to him already sitting down in the thing’s mess, where he was at the table staring into space.

“Ah! What a day Arthur, what a day. What a day!” She said, flopping into the seat opposite his. Arthur stopped staring into space and started instead staring vaguely in her direction.

“Go well?” He asked.

Corin briefly fiddled about to get herself a drink of tea from the machine that existed specifically for this purpose before answering.

“Of course! They’re excited! They’re really excited. You should see their little faces light up whenever I demonstrate how some of it’s going to work! Never gets old,” she said.

At this point in the conversation it might normally have been considered polite for the person in Corin’s position to ask how the person in Arthur’s position day went, but Corin knew Arthur and knew that this would be a waste of time, so skipped that part and just carried on:

“Mean, it’s all human stuff right now I’m showing them - obviously! - and some of those switches are a little fiddly for them. They manage, but it could be better. Me and one of the regular local crew are working on some, uh, pony-friendly designs but it’s a side gig and it’ll probably take a long while to convert all the stuff over anyway. It’s actually a lot more complex than I would have thought - really got to get up inside. Interesting stuff!”

“Hmm,” said Arthur.

Corin frowned at him, eyebrow arching.

“Alright, you know you could at least pretend that you’re listening to me,” she said.

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. I was!” Arthur said, blinking, trying to look casual.

“And now you’re lying to me.”

“Sorry. Just thinking.”

This was unusual, or at least unusual enough to be worthy of note to Corin.

“Oh? About?” She asked, taking a curious sip of tea. Arthur thought about what he was thinking about.

A few things. Comparing and contrasting the various other levels that the Borer had gone through on the way to here and after, the other things that they’d seen. What might be happening back home. What might happen after this particular project was done. Things like that were the things that Arthur was thinking about.

What he said instead was this:

“These guys have magic, what do they want electricity for anyway?”

“So they can have magic and electricity?” Corin asked right back with a shrug. Arthur thought about this.

“Huh,” he said. “Guess I can see that.”

Put like that he could get behind it. Still seemed a little redundant but hell, why not? Why limit yourself when someone is offering? Why not have a seance? Why not go mad?

Having dropped that outstanding bomb of clarity on Arthur, Corin radiated evident satisfaction. Standing, she drained the last of the tea and grimaced, eyeing the now-empty cup as though expecting to find something there willing to explain itself. No dice though.

“Still convinced they just sweep up whatever’s left on the factory floor for those teabags. Whelp, just going to spend a penny, back in a second.”

Arthur rubbed his temples. This had been information he had not required.

“Thanks for that,” he said.

“Thought you’d like to know.”

Corin gave a tiny mock salute and sauntered off, leaving Arthur to his own devices.

While she was gone, Arthur idly went through his things and in so doing came across the cupcake, which he had put into his bag not long after having received it - he’d quite forgotten about the thing. Which was impressive, really, as getting it to fit into his bag had not been easy.

The trip back hadn’t been especially kind to the cupcake but it hadn’t been especially unkind either - it was still eminently edible, at least by Arthur’s standards. Just a little rough around the edges, which was about as good as you might expect for a cupcake that had been shoved into a bag. Better, actually. Back home the thing would have just been so many crumbs. Here? Still recognisable.

Weird.

Taking the thing he set it on the table in front of him and stared at it. Mostly this was just because he was tired and he had a tendency to stare when he was tired. Partly though he was thinking about it and, also, about the local who’d given it to him.

Why? Odd thing to do. But then the locals were an odd bunch.

She had had a very memorable smile, he supposed. First one he’d got to see up close and personal. It was probably just that.

“What’s that?” Corin asked, returning sooner than Arthur would have suspected and taking her seat again.

Seemed kind of an odd question given that what it was was pretty obvious, but these things happened. Arthur kept on staring at the thing regardless, his brows furrowed.

“Cupcake,” he said. Corin looked at him askance but, given his rapt attention on the cupcake, he didn’t notice this.

“I figured that out myself. I meant where’d you get that? Didn’t think you bought the pony stuff,” Corin said.

Not once had Arthur availed himself of any of the local goods and-or services, at least not that she’d seen. At first she’d found this reluctance amusing. Then kind of sad. Then she’d stopped caring and moved on with her life. Still, it was odd and surprising seeing him sat there like that, with that thing.

“Don’t. Some local gave it to me,” Arthur said, finally breaking eye-contact with the cupcake and sitting back in his chair, running both hands through his hair, deep in thought or at least thought-adjacent.

That perked up Corin’s interest.

“Oh?” She asked, slipping into a seat opposite him.

“Yeah. She popped up and started talking to me when I was on my shift. Said she saw me eating the same lunch every day and thought I could do with some variety. I don’t know. Look at the size of this thing. You want some?”

“Me? Oh no. It’s yours.”

This seemed a common sentiment and Arthur did not understand it. He gritted his teeth.

“I can’t eat all this though, it’s huge. Come on, have a bit,” he said, leaning forward to inch it across the table towards her. Corin, having more energy, pushed it right back so it rested on the edge in front of him. A powermove if ever there was one.

“No no, it’s yours. She gave it to you, it’s yours,” she said.

“Don’t think she’d mind if I shared it.”

Why give something so monstrously large unless you intended it to be shared, after all? That was how Arthur was looking at it. Corin though, being a little more up on social interaction generally and definitely more up on how the locals actually ticked, had a perhaps more accurate position.

“Hmm. Wouldn’t be so sure about that…”

That she said this while smirking suggested to Arthur that Corin was slipping what she actually meant between the lines of what she was saying. He hated that.

“I feel like you’re trying to imply something here,” he said.

“Me? Oh no, never. Not me.”

Deciding to ignore Corin and her weird, smug insinuations Arthur instead frowned at the cupcake again. A thought occurred to him quite out of nowhere, though it was obvious enough that he was a little annoyed it had taken him this long to connect the dots.

“You know, her name was Baker’s Dozen. Kinda makes me think she actually made this thing. Going by what the naming convention round here generally shakes out like. Hmm.”

Just a suspicion on Arthur’s part, though Corin’s eyes did widen a little bit.

“She made it for you?” She asked.

Arthur shrugged.

“Might have done. Just a guess. Name like that, you know? Why? Would that matter?”

Corin stared at him hard a second before snorting in disgust and getting up and walking off again.

“You’re an idiot,” she said on the way out.

Arthur, stunned by this very sudden turn of events, could only blink stupidly to himself once or twice before lurching to his feet and going after her.

“What? Hey, you can’t just drop that in my lap and walk off, what are you talking about?”

Sadly, he got nothing, as Corin had already closed the door to her own compartment, leaving him alone in the corridor, confused.

“I still can’t have any, can I?” ATC asked via the crawler.

“No,” said Arthur.