After Gearing and Handy finally find Swift, and rendezvous with her, the group manages to make good time towards their target. It had taken a while to get a hold of her. Mainly because Swift was ignoring their messages that were getting sent to her as she was too busy screaming about endless trade deals and being covered in nasty rust and having to carry mountains of nasty bloody equipment from where they had killed an ever growing horde of slavers and raiders and then just thrown the equipment to her. Which, wouldn’t be so bad, in her opinion, if she had gotten more of the action than what she’d been getting recently.

Getting shot in the wing by a large caliber bullet and knocked out of the air certainly didn’t contribute to making the situation better. In fact, it made it worse. Because she really wants payback now.

So the three start coming at the industrial complex from a different angle than where they’d actually come from. They had decided to do similar to how they did it when they had left, and made their path from the service station as hard to follow as possible. So, again, Handy ended up being carried by the two for a while. First Swift. But then, again, Gearing. However this time they weren’t strapped together. But, this time, Gearing didn’t fly that far off the ground either. Just the bare minimum so that Handy’s hooves weren’t getting dragged along on the ground nor were they hitting various debris or spindly plants. And, despite being flown around, Handy was far more okay with this. Because while Gearing was far more likely to drop him than he was the day before, if he drops, he’s only going to fall a couple feet. At the worst of it, because of the pathing they pick, the highest they are above the ground below them is ten feet. So it would be enough to hurt if he dropped. But not enough to hurt him bad enough to instantly kill him. And, really, that’s what Handy has been worried about the most. His mental picture of hitting the ground, and his body popping like a balloon full of strawberry glazing jam, is the main thing that’s gotten his heart rate up whenever he’s higher than fifteen feet. But ten, ten is fine. He can handle ten. Even higher if he’s standing on something solid like a platform or a mountain.

Once they had gotten relatively close, the trio had landed and started continuing on hoof. The topography is an absolute mess, with rocks jutting out of the ground, having been exposed by wind and other weather elements after the soil was eroded thanks to the lack of vegetation. But, other parts are bad because of pony made disasters. Both the buildings that had once been there, and the rubble that is now there because of the choices equines made that led to the end of the world.

The best angle that they can figure, takes them through the old subdivision suburbs not far from the industrial complex. There are lots of rubble and frames still standing that they can use as cover as they move in. Plus, it’s not from the same angle that they had approached before. Nor is it in the same line that they had left in. And, they hope, this bit of directional gamesmanship will give them a leg up on the ones that had ambushed them before.

Their plan is simple, switch it around on them where the ambushers become the ambushees.

As Swift is crawling between one pile of rubble that used to be a multi-leveled home, to a wreck of a wagon, she keeps looking around. After getting into position, and looking off into the distance, she frowns as she says, “There’s so many red markers around here it’s hard as hell to tell which way is up sometimes.”

Gearing nods as he’s still hidden behind the low brick wall that still is upright and used to be part of the home’s foundation. “I know. That’s one reason I keep mine off. It’s hard to see what’s going on. And it’s too easy to distract you… Besides that, see anything?”

“See anypony?” Handy asks as he’d run across the street and made himself scarce behind a couple sets of metal I-beams that had fallen off of some billboard long ago.

Swift shakes her head. “Nothing… And those windows up there are making me nervous.”

Gearing pulls out his scope that he had on his rifle, and starts looking through it at the various windows on the tallest building around. “Your biggest concern, usually, is the windows that are missing. Ponies are less likely to smash a window to try and make long range shots. They like setting up positions where there’s already damage so that it’s easier to blend in and take the shots they need to without getting spotted.”

Swift looks over at him and smirks. “Okay… so then… With your expert opinion… and that nice fancy scope of yours… do you see anypony?”

Gearing keeps looking, using both eyes, but only one through the scope as he goes from shattered window to shattered window along the upper floors, and starts working his way down starting from the top of the building. But, thankfully, and for whatever reason, there are far fewer windows than there could have been otherwise. And, because of that, he wonders if the building actually had the benefit of reinforced glass. Because even storms can break windows accidentally, so how that building has any windows at all two hundred years after a bale fire apocalypse is a mystery that Gearing actually does want to solve. If nothing else, he might want to confiscate that glass for his own purposes. “Nope. Not at all.” He lowers the scope and starts putting it away as he says, “No one visible at least… So take what I said with a grain of salt.”

Swift looks around them again and then at him before she huffs. “This crawling shit is really getting annoying. It’s slowing us down. It’s already late morning. I was hoping to be back before noon!”

Gearing looks over at her and waves a hoof towards the buildings. “You still might get your chance. Especially if we go in there, don’t find anyone, and end up leaving empty hoofed because they are a traveling ambush gang… That would suck, actually…”

Swift stares at him and scowls as she says, “Fuck that. They shot at us. If they took off in the middle of the night, then we’re going after them. I don’t want to have to worry about them shooting at us again.”

Gearing shrugs as he asks, “Why? You think they actually are after us intentionally? Like we have a hit on us or something?”

Swift shakes her head. “I really doubt that, especially with Big Daddy’s backing. But, I wouldn't put it past some pissed off fuckers to try and take advantage of us being down here and away from everyone else. Though, how they would have gotten the word down here in time for an ambush to be set up is another question in and of itself.”

“Red Beard’s been a real pain in my ass,” Gearing comments evenly. “Remember, he’s the one that got me blasted in the face by some random mare with a shotgun because she was convinced I was just running around trying to murder everyone.”

Swift looks over at him and scowls. “I swear. I don’t care what anyone says. If that is what this is about, I’m going straight back to Hoofington and beating that fucking buck from one side of Equestria to the other. And if that bitch Usury tries to say anything, I’ll whip her ass too, then toss her to some ex-slaves and see how she likes it!”

Gearing snickers as he asks, “Oh, you know about her too?”

Swift smiles as she says, “It’s kinda hard not to hear about it… When it’s getting around that a certain pegasus with a big ass is being a big ass pain in her side.”

Gearing shrugs as he says, “What can I say. They’re familiar with my work.”

Swift shakes her head then laughs as she looks at the partially collapsed warehouse building. “So, how are we going to get closer? No guards along the roofs. Nopony in the taller tower’s windows… But, I just got this gut pain that if we keep this up somepony’s going to spot us eventually… And then shit’s going to get bad if they start shooting at us with those big guns again before we can get close enough to them… I hate guns.”

Gearing looks around and then lets out a sigh. “Swift… how about we just fly straight in.” He points off to the side, where a wall that is still standing is made of cement blocks and not only seems solid, but there are no windows directly around it. “If we head straight there, we can get to the wall, and then work our way around that. With our EFS we’ll have the advantage in close quarters, to a point.” He looks over at Swift and says, “This time, you grab Handy, and I’ll fly as quickly as I can. That way you can dodge and move around. And, if they start shooting at me, we don’t have to worry about Handy getting hit and fucked up.”

Handy looks over at him and grimaces. “The thoughts appreciated, but try not to get shot up any more either. I really don’t want to have that kind of conversation with Sable. She seemed happy. Especially when she told us to piss off so you could get treatment, and I don’t want to have to explain why we’re having to drag you back to the medical bay on the same day you just got out of it.”

Gearing laughs as he rolls over onto his back and just keeps snickering. After a bit he looks over at Handy and grins. “Yeeaah… sorry about that… She wanted to have as much time together as possible before we left, so I didn’t get down to the medical bay until this morning.”

““We know,”” the two reply in such a flat tone that it just makes Gearing laugh even more.

But then Gearing rolls over again and starts getting up. “So, we ready to do this? Fast as we can, to that wall. And, if I get shot down, well, throw some shit their way to try and give me a break from it as I get the hell out of the way. I doubt they have anything that’d seriously do too much damage to me too soon… Even the fifties would need to chew on me for a bit to actually cause anything permanent.”

Swift nods as she keeps looking ahead. “Yeah. Let's do this… Handy, you ready to fly?”

Handy laughs as he rolls over, gets his sledge hammer in his hooves, and smiles at her. “Not really, but let’s do this anyway.”

As Gearing is watching, Swift gets away from the wreck, hops up in the air, and flips over backward, before kicking off the wreck and zipping over to Handy. She barely pauses, only just enough to be perceptible, before grabbing Handy and taking off with him. And as soon as they turn to start heading towards the side of the warehouse, Gearing gets up and starts barreling towards the rally point as quickly as he can as well. He’d probably be able to fly a good distance there. But, in fact, the fast mode of transportation for him now is to run, jump, and fly a bit, as he goes in a straight line. His wings are arguably the best thing for these situations, as they can lift him up and over a variety of ruble that's scattered over the way as he makes his straight line for the building. But, the armor he’s wearing was not designed for a pegasi. So there are a few problems with it restricting movement. Even with armor generally being semi adaptive to different bearers, for him it’s not really enough. And then, also, there is the problem with him not being all that fast anyway. So, he runs across the ground, jumping up and off the ground to propel him faster, as he flaps his wings to not only push him forward, but to lift him up and over all of the broken cement, rebar, and, in one case, a wagon that had somehow managed to be embedded into a house somewhere along the line in the last two hundred years.

And as Gearing is making his way towards the building, he keeps looking at the windows along the entire length of the warehouse. Along with quick jets up to the building in the distance that’s taller and acts as an improvised guard tower. What he’s looking for is movement. What he’s hoping not to see is muzzle flashes. And in a lot of places in his mind he plays a whole montage of different scenes for things that could go wrong with him getting shot. Or Swift and Handy, or, in the best of the best, all three of them getting shot up by entire swarms of high caliber ammunition. Even one of the annihilators from the core shows up to lend its role to his nightmare and shows how it can take all three of them out at once without even slowing down.

But, despite his near panic inducing thoughts about what might happen, they manage to get across the entire open area and up to the wall.

Handy, to his credit, starts carefully looking around and swaying side to side as he tries to get a bead on the location of the red bars he’s looking at. With his sledgehammer ready. And, as Gearing is looking at him, he can tell that Handy is doing the math on figuring out if he can simply just bash through the wall and get at whoever is on the other side. Which, now that Gearing is up close, he can’t help but think he might have a very good plan in the works.

But before he can say anything, Swift looks over at him and asks, “So, we made it, yay.” She pants a couple times before striking at the air a few times in front of herself. “Now what? Whose flanks do we kick first?”

Handy comments, “There’s definitely quite a few red bars inside the warehouse. And, judging by the movements, I’m not sure if they are simply more damn bugs, or if it's some of those psychos with autocannons.”

“LMGs,” Gearing corrects flatly.

Handy looks over at him and raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“LMG… they shot at us with LMGs, not autocannons.”

Handy looks between the two before asking. “The hell is the difference?”

Gearing laughs and points over towards Swift, “Mostly? Caliber… if Swift had been hit by a 20mm caliber autocannon, it probably would have taken her wing off entirely. That's not the kind of weapon one gets shot with and there’s enough of the pony left to have an open casket.”

Swift looks over at Gearing, and visibly cringes. “Are you serious, Gearing?”

Gearing nods. “Yeah, that much hot metal coming at you at that speed has a tendency to make holes that don’t close. They just keep getting bigger until they’re not so much a pony, but a couple pieces of a bloody jigsaw puzzle.”

Swift scrunches her muzzle up as she says, “Eww Gearing, that’s gross.”

Gearing points at Handy before he says, “An LMG also sucks… Light machine gun… but, in that case, it’s only a fifty caliber round coming at you, and while it might take your limb off, it still could be survivable… unless they get a torso hit in your chest cavity…. Or a head shot… I mean, really, anywhere except your limbs you're not going to have a bad day, you’re just going to have your last day on the job.”

Handy looks at him for a moment, then slowly rotates his head to look at Swift. “Great. So. New plan. Don’t get shot. At all. I happen to like my limbs right where they are. Can we do that? That sounds like a really good idea to me.”

Swift starts laughing as she shrugs. “How about we go inside and ask them that?”

Gearing points off to the side as he says, “Well, over there where the building had collapsed a bit, there’s an okay sized hole in the wall. I think we can squeeze in through there.”

Handy points up at a window. “Why not just go in through there?”

Swift frowns as she says, “Because we don’t really know the layout, and if we fly up there to check, or even go in, we might look in to see a whole army sitting down for lunch and end up with a hail of bullets getting thrown at us… again.” She stomps her hooves. “I just really hate guns!”

Gearing nods as he looks around. “Yeah, relatedly,” he looks over to Swift and narrows his eyes, as he continues, “could ya keep it down a bit, maybe? Right now we have the element of surprise, but, once that’s gone, we’re going to be more likely to get wrecked and get ambushed ourselves… Again.”

Swift scowls at him but then mutters, “Fine, but after the fighting starts there’s going to be a lot of screaming. At them. Because they’re assholes. And deserve it.”

Handy chuckles as he looks down towards where Gearing had pointed to. “Fair enough… So, shall we?”

Gearing looks at Swift, who simply waves it off, and then Gearing quietly trots over to the hole in the wall. He peeks around the crumbling edge of the walls to see inside, and sees a rather small room. But, considering it’s only got the one door, that could also be an advantage for them. He looks up in the hole, and sees that this section of the warehouse actually has supports for the second floor. And that this room, whatever it is, is only composed of the first floor section, so they’ll be inside and surrounded on all sides by walls.

Good, in his opinion, because it means they won’t have anything sprung on them as soon as they enter, unless it’s from the door, and if that’s the case the bandits can only come in at them from the one angle, while the trio still have the capability of exiting back out through the hole here if the need arises.

Gearing looks over at Swift and Handy, and nods before he steps toward the hole. But, instead of just clamoring in and down the rubble, he takes flight just enough to land on the tiles without disturbing the rubble from the partially collapsed wall. A moment later Swift comes in with Handy, and sets him down just past the rubble pile before fluttering around the room and seeing what’s to be seen.

Handy pulls out his pneumatic sledge and gets ready to smash anything that might present itself as he asks quietly, “What is this place? Kinda looks like a bathroom, but not really?”

Gearing points off towards the side, to their far right and away from the door past a very thin divider. “It’s a communal shower. Probably used by the folks that worked here before they went home. Several types of industrial manufacturing had this kind of set up. They didn’t want their ponies leaving looking filthy, it was bad PR… So I’m sure it had more to do with that than it did with quality of life and working conditions.”

Handy frowns as he walks over, looks around the divider, and sees the lines of shower heads sticking out of the wall all the way around, to the back wall, and back towards the other side towards him. “Geeze… you’d almost expect them to have an automatic wash like for wagons that ponies would have to stand on a conveyor belt before leaving.”

Swift instantly starts laughing, but holds her muzzle as Handy looks at her.

Gearing looks at her, raises an eyebrow, but then starts talking before looking back at Handy, “A couple places tried that actually. Too many accidents too quickly…” He taps on his head as he says, “The rollers used to clean a wagon are all fine and dandy… but don’t work so well with pony manes and tails… Were more than a few lawsuits by some quite pissed off mares that’d lost their manes to the cheap tactics.”

Handy cringes as he shakes his head. “Damn… the more I hear about some of these assholes, the more how the world ended up the way it is makes sense.”

Gearing shrugs as he says, “Make no mistake… The problems were caused mainly by a choice few… ones in power… Everything else was just the logical conclusion of their incompetence and actively fucking everyone else over.”

Gearing reaches for the door, and gives it a gentle pull. And, to his amazement, the door swings open rather easily. It barely makes a sound as he pulls it further and further open. After getting it nearly half way open, he leans to the side, and starts looking out as far as he can see, and the more walls and other non threatening things he sees the more he opens the door and dares to expose more of himself. After a bit, he goes ahead and sticks his head out quickly, propping the door open with a hind hoof, as he quickly sweeps side to side.

Gearing pulls out Butter Churn’s 10mm pistol and carefully puts a silencer on it. Instead of it being one of the off the shelf mass produced during the war items, it’s a recently made makeshift one. It isn’t pretty, and bigger than a normal one would be, but it’ll do the job of suppressing the noise well enough for now. The pistol wouldn't fit into its holster with the noise suppressor attached, but he still wants to try and do this as quietly as he can, for as long as he can. After all, once things get loud, he’s got a fully loaded auto shotgun that is just begging to ring in the new year early.

Gearing holds the door open and lets Swift and Handy come out with him before he hurries down one side of the hallway, to a quick dead end, then comes back towards them. As he’s passing he nods and motions for them to go to their right as the end of the hallway had a trio of rooms but were devoid of anything, or anyone, of interest. They continue down the hall, going as slow and steady and quiet as they can. This warehouse, unlike the one they had dealt with when they got shot down, is far more intact. And because of that, it becomes painfully obvious that noise travels further. And, an added problem, without as many holes in it, there’s not a lot of outside noise coming in to help muffle anything they create. So they have to be careful with what they are doing lest they let the entire area know that they are there.

And, Gearing can’t help but find it annoying, the ones in question are not as noisy as he had run into at the police station, or even in that entire office complex that Cooky had taken up residence in. Or, at least, they aren’t at this time of day. He’s not sure if it’s because they are asleep, are not even here, or if they just have that kinda noise discipline among them at all times.

Of all of the options, that last one possibility worries him the most. Because that means their organizational skills are above par and that always makes Gearing have to second guess what he’s going to be doing.

Gearing has already got a pretty good mental map of the warehouse based on their entry point, and what he had seen from the air. At least, in the terms of relative positioning. But, one thing that he can’t help enjoying about his PipBuck, is the way it is actively mapping the area as they are passing through the hallway towards a more open area. And, once they get to the end of this hallway, where offices start popping up on the right side as the left side just seems to fade away, Gearing slowly takes in the open office floor plan. All of the desks and chairs and computer equipment, and all of the other amenities that a normal office space would take up. However, on the left side, where the wall had abruptly opened up, Gearing can see a segment on the floor with a variety of markings. And it doesn't take long for him to realize that these are crowd control markings so that ponies coming in from the working floor can head straight to the showers and leave afterwards. With similar markings being in front of the offices that are on the right. Gearing stretches up just a bit, looking around, and listening closely, as he looks over at the offices on the right side. And, a sneer crosses his muzzle as he sees that they are all for members of management. So, like in a lot of situations, they are separating themselves from everyone else. But, at the same time, they are making the vast majority of their workforce march back and forth in front of them all day.

The little blue pegasus in his head grumps as he says, ‘This is really fucked… I get having an office in the manufacturing area, above everything, so you can actually keep an eye on things, but this is nothing more than trying to flaunt your own influence and status…’

‘Hell they could even save time and resources by having the showers in another location, and letting the ponies clock in and clock out on the way to work, showering when needed,’ the golden pegasus adds.

Gearing mentally replies. Yeah, but this way, they can make sure no one manages to escape the building looking as dirty as they’d be from working here… Look at the floor. I can still see the marks on half of the walking path where ponies were walking in here filthy beyond belief… and you know they cleaned this regularly, but that tile’s still stained…

Gearing turns and starts heading down the path where the ponies had come from so filthy back during the war. He motions for Swift and Handy to follow as he looks back at them and explains his reasoning, “These offices probably aren’t really useful to them for living quarters when they have that whole multi floor building to house up in. So let’s check the work floor, and take care of anyone here. If we’re lucky we’ll find the fuckers that shot at us last night.”

Handy nods and quickly follows behind him with his pneumatic sledge at the ready as he comments, “I’m very much interested in finding those assholes.”

Swift flutters over, getting above them, as she asks, “Can we go over to that collapsed bit we saw before? Where the shots had come from? They might be dumb enough to stay in the same area.”

Gearing bobs his head around but then nods. “It’s in the same building, we can make a point of heading that way. We’ll just have to make sure to keep whatever we do quiet. I’m not sure how much equipment is still left in here that’ll mask our approach.”

And the answer to that question is delivered with a ribbon tied to it the very second he pushes open one of the double doors that the ponies working here had marched back and forth through all day during the war.

Past the door, and as far as the eye can see, and beyond, was a variety of industrial equipment that Gearing could only guess at. Metal working, mostly, it seemed. And judging by how everything had been set up, they did everything inside of this warehouse. In the distance he can see what looks like the top portion of a model of blast furnace that he’s aware of. But the equipment closer to them looks like it was for more finer work. And, as they start walking in, Gearing can’t help but frown as he sees that the centuries of neglect and non use did nothing to get rid of the soot that is in here. There’s coal soot all over the place. It coats the floor so thick he’d thought it was some kind of crumbling tile or rubber mats. And among it all there are bits of metal fragments where things had been milled and cut down. There are rows and rows of equipment, but not necessarily put into nice neat grids. Instead they seem to be packed in as tightly as they can possibly imagine. And, in a couple instances, Gearing can see where some pieces of equipment were installed in between other pieces of equipment. Like they just kept expanding and adding to the work output of the building but didn’t want to actually expand out of the building.

The little blue pegasus in his head looks around casually as he ponders, ‘I wonder how much the bribes to the inspectors were to keep this place open… The violations just within line of sight from here should have closed the place for a year…’

The little golden pegasus comments, ‘Not as much as you’d expect. A lot of shit got overlooked ‘for the good of the war effort’.’

Gearing sighs as he stops long enough to look at a few red dots on his EFS for a moment before turning it back off. He looks back at Swift and Handy before motioning to the far side, in the direction where the ceiling had collapsed and he can actually see daylight pouring in from that way. “Let’s stick to the edge, and head that way. Keep an eye out, and warn me if you see anything. This crap is so tightly packed I don’t want to try crossing it without making sure the perimeter is at least somewhat safe too… Something tells me the machines kind of turn into a maze pretty quickly in there.” He nods towards the center of the warehouse area where the ceiling is still intact but has many supports and cables and chains dropping down from above that give evidence for all of the machines that are out of their line of sight.

Swift and Handy nod, then turn down the way Gearing does and follows him. Although, after only a few minutes, he suddenly stops, and looks to the side, then backs up. Swift flies up in the air quickly, looks in the direction he is pointing, then lands next to Handy and Gearing again. She looks between them as she asks, “Sooo you two up for a bit of ‘look over there!’ hmmm?”

Handy looks at her and frowns as he asks, “What makes you think they won’t just shoot you on sight this time?”

Swift grins. “I didn’t see any guns, only melee weapons, and, even if they do have them, if you’re quick enough, I won’t have to worry about it.”

Gearing looks at them and asks, “Huh? ‘Look over there’? What’s that?”

Handy looks at him and smirks as he says, “Follow me, and when she gives the signal, just pounce… It’s pretty straightforward and…” He smacks a hoof over his face. “It works… far more than it has any right to… honestly…”

The little blue and little gold pegasi in Gearing’s head look at each other, shrug in unison, and then motion towards Handy as they’re curious how this will play out.

* * *

It took Swift a bit of finagling to get where she wanted to be, and make sure the other two were where they wanted, and needed, to be. She can’t help smiling as, she knows, this is more for fun, and a bit of revenge, than it is for any form of actually efficient way of taking out these problem ponies.

And, she’s extra happy because even Handy was able to confirm that, yes indeed, they were all as red as blood and they both will happily make them redder. But, Swift’s extra happy because she won’t have to listen to Handy fret about it later and being a good or bad decision.

She’d seen them, and they look about like any other raider that she’d seen previously. But, the thieving murdering kind, not necessarily the cannibalistic kind. So that’s a plus in her opinion.

Once she confirms Handy and Gearing are where she wants them, She flies around the equipment, up and over it, and over towards the ponies that seem to be sorting through a few crates and pulling things out of the equipment. She comes down quickly, starts screaming like she’s being chased by an ursa major, and ‘accidentally’ hits one of the pieces of equipment before she flops in the air and haphazardly lands not far from the ponies that have their hooves full of tools.

All of them jump up, grab their various tools, a few of which actually grab different ones that are obviously dual purpose weapons, and stare at her as they try to figure out what’s going on.

The mare closest to her lifts up a crowbar, that has had a blade welded onto the back side of it to also function as an ax, and demands. “The hell are you?!”

Swift gets to her hooves and starts waving behind them, opposite the direction she’d come from. “They’re coming! They’re over there!”

Swift points behind them and towards the area where she had been earlier with Handy and Gearing.

One of them tilts their head just enough to look behind themselves, obviously more than a little suspicious of this and being more than a little justified in being so. “Who’s coming? What?”

Another blatantly looks back, as the others start getting closer to Swift. “Bullshit, I don’t see nopony.”

Swift backs up as she keeps flailing her forehooves in the same direction. “You really need to look that way! They’re going to be here any second!”

The one with the ax crowbar looks at her as she asks, “How stupid do you think we are?” She waves the crowbar at her as she says, “You’re not one of us. We don’t know you. You’re not even dressed like any of us. And, you’re way too clean to have spent more than a few minutes in here.”

One of the bucks coming up from the right side grins. “So, who the hell are you and why are you in our turf?”

One of the other mares pushes her mane, adorned with various teeth that look equine in nature, out of her face before she asks, “What’s a pegasus doing in here? Didn’t we shoot down a couple yesterday? Haven't they learned their lessons yet?”

The mare with the crowbar sways it side to side as she says, “Lets lop off her wings, and set them up on a flagpole outside, maybe then they’ll get the message…”

The others line up, hemming Swift in more as they grin at her.

Swift points behind them again as she gives them a sheepish grin. “You guys really should listen to somepony when somepony tries to warn you… They’ll get you…”

The buck on the far left rolls his eyes before reaching on his foreleg and pulling out a large knife from its sheath after he says, “That’s it, I’m cutting her tongue…”

They get a couple more steps before the buck on the right and the mare with the crowbar suddenly fall to the ground.

The remaining four look over, trying to figure out what they tripped on, only for another on the left to drop, and the one on the right join the first as a sledge hammer comes down on their head as well. The remaining two spin around, getting side to side as they ready their weapons, with the one actually pulling out a pistol from a holster that was on their side.

The one with the melee weapon eeps out, “There really was someone there!”

She gets dropped with a round from Gearing’s pistol as he’s walking towards them.

The one with the pistol, however, gets stopped before she manages to get her pistol out of its holster. By Swift getting her into a hold from behind and twisting her legs unnaturally out from under her as she bends the mare’s neck to look up at her. Swift grins at her as she says, “I tried to warn ya, you know… They're heeeereeeee.” Then she hits her in the face with her hoof. Then again. Then a few more times. And, just for good measure, and after the mare is already on the ground and unconscious, she gives her a final smack with her power hoof. Which thoroughly cracks her skull and makes sure the red marker on her EFS disappears before she looks up at Gearing and Handy who have joined her.

Gearing looks over at Handy and frowns. “That’s your ‘hey, look over there!’ bit? Really?”

Handy holds a hoof over his face as he moans. “Yeaaaah… it is…”

Gearing slowly starts reloading his pistol as he looks around. “How… How did that work so well? It shouldn’t have worked so well… This makes no sense!”

Handy removes his hoof from his face and waves it at Gearing. “That’s what I keep saying! Out of all the times we’ve done it, I think only one time it didn’t really work. And that’s because somepony spotted me before I could hit them in the back of the head!”

Swift wipes her hoof off onto the clothes of the dead mare at her feet as she smiles at them. “Hey… if it’s not broken, why fix it?”

Gearing waves at her with a hoof of his own. “It is broken. Reality is broken. That shouldn't have worked!”

Swift giggles as she starts hovering a bit. “Oh, cry about it some more, why don’t you?”

Gearing lets out a sigh before he starts looking over the ponies around them. He stoops down and checks on them as he tries to figure out where they fit into this whole situation. “I think these guys were just in here grabbing some scrap to trade. Their clothes and equipment isn’t ‘being ready for a fight’ level. And the tools they are using… well..” He grabs the crowbar and looks at it, but frowns before he drops it back onto the mare’s body. “Calling them tools would be an insult to tools… looks more like crappy weapons.”

Handy nods as he looks them over, and then at the crate of things they had taken out. “Yeah, and it doesn't look like they know what the hell they are doing… They’re just ripping the guts out of these machines but doing it so fucked up a good portion of it isn’t worth much more than scrap…”

Swift looks them over before she asks quietly, “You think they’re just prospectors?”

Handy shakes his head. “Nah… they definitely meant to kill us on sight… EFS proved that… and they have that ‘I’d shank my own mother for a bottle of whiskey’ look to them that raiders and bandits always have…”

Gearing nods as he looks them over. “More like they’re just trying to get some extra cash for whatever it is they want… or… Someone has them in here working on this in between convoy attacks…” Gearing walks over, and starts checking on the one with the pistol holster. He pulls it out and looks it over before setting it right back onto the original owner. “That’s just thirty-eight…” He turns and starts heading back towards the path that Handy and him took in while Swift kept them distracted. “Let's move on to the back area and see if we can catch those assholes with the LMG before they get any bright ideas to use it.”

Handy and Swift quickly match pace with them. As much as any of them might like to turn out these dead ponies’ pockets, they have better things to do at the moment. And, there will be plenty of time to go snooping for loot after everything is done and over with.

Through the rest of the warehouse Gearing intentionally keeps zipping around the equipment while keeping an ear out for anyone else walking around. He doubts the others that he’s targeting would have any reason to try and walk quietly. But, and one thing he notes, the others were working without actually making a lot of noise themselves. And that is something that he can’t keep out of his mind as they are traveling along the length of the main work area as they are heading for the collapsed portion of the roof.

It doesn’t take them long to get there, especially with no unexpected surprises showing up to cause problems for them. Nor do they find anyone else that needs to be dealt with before pursuing their targets. And in short order they step into the relatively better lit area where the ceiling is just missing. Some of it had caved in on itself, but a good portion had fallen outwards and away from the building. Gearing takes a few mental measurements of the area before confirming that the area where the shots had come from isn’t far away. He lets the others know, although they were pretty sure of it themselves, and Gearing heads over to where some kind of separate office or walled off area is that’s still standing despite a good portion of the ceiling coming down on top of it.

Swift, not liking how long this is taking already, flies up and starts looking over the area carefully, using the various rubble as cover as she tries to get a peek further on. Then, after spotting an open area, she hovers looking quite annoyed as she motions for Gearing and Handy to come around and join her.

They both trot around at a relatively fast pace, trying to be quiet but not doing a great job of it considering all of the rubble in the area, and turn around the point where the dividing wall is standing. But, the area beyond the partition has fallen along with the ceiling. They start looking around at the ground, as they both frown as well.

The area that they are looking at has had a few areas cleaned out a bit. Not much. Just enough for a few individuals to stand around without having to worry about breaking an ankle on unsteady rubble. There’s even a radio off to the side, and a few chairs. They can even see where someone has left a pair of binoculars on an old drum that’s apparently being used as some sort of end table. But, there’s no one in sight.

Gearing picks up one of the brass casings off the ground and gives it a discerning eye. He gives it a sniff, then nods as he sets it back on the ground .”Yeah… this is the spot… and, judging by the amount of casings around here, we weren’t the only ones they were shooting at…”

Handy looks around as he scowls. “So, why, we just missed them or something? They on break?”

Swift shrugs as she says, “Well, last time through here we were coming through in the evening. Maybe they wait until night so they can ambush anyone coming by easier and not have to worry about being shot as much.”

Handy looks around, then smirks as he points at the ground. “Hey, Gearing… take a look…”

Gearing tilts his head, then walks over to see what Handy is pointing at. And then he can’t help but smile himself.

In the cleared out area, that is mostly bare concrete, there are a few widely spaced out pockmarks. One of which is a bit bloody and there’s still somepony’s fur embedded in the concrete. And, not far away, there’s a couple dribbles. All of which are relatively fresh, but only by so many hours. Less than a day for sure. Gearing looks it over and nods before he chuckles quietly, “I’ll be damned, one of the pellets must have actually hit one of them… What’re the odds of that?”

Swift looks over and smiles as she sees the evidence that someone on this side obviously didn’t have the best of days yesterday either. “Well, serves them right…” She looks up at the other two. “Think this is why they took off? Because they were scared of getting shot again?”

Gearing shakes his head and points at the large metal drum. “Not likely. They still have a few things here. Nothing serious. But they seem to like the spot.”

Handy looks up and frowns as he says, “You know, I bet they have a few spots throughout the warehouse. So they aren’t always shooting from the same spot, know what I mean?”

Gearing nods as he looks around again. “It’s what I’d do… Especially if one of my hidey-holes was blown enough that I’d taken direct fire.”

Swift dangles her legs as she sighs. “So we have to track them down now? Because they moved around?”

Gearing shrugs. “We were planning on tracking them down anyway… Nothing’s changed, just when the party gets started…”

Swift bobs her head around before she waves away from them. “Okay, well, come on, let's go. I saw another area that's a bit open. And I bet we can make some progress that way. And the sooner we check out the whole surrounding area we can move into the middle of the warehouse.”

“And then on to the tall building after finishing this one,” Handy agrees.

Gearing waves for Swift to lead the way, and she does. Gearing does the friendly thing and stays down with Handy as Swift is flying around and looking into the gloom of the warehouse above. And after they scramble out of the ambusher’s nest, they get into the main area again, and follow Swift around to the side.

After they get a bit further, the area opens up more with line after line of access doors on their left taking up most of the wall that they can see. A few of the doors are rather massive at that and are obviously far more than just loading docks. All of them are closed though, for one reason or another, and then there’s a break in the machinery as they see stacks of shipping containers taking up more and more space where manufacturing machines were thought to be.

Swift flies over to them quickly, and zips around, looking at the stacks of various colored metal boxes, before coming back to Handy and Gearing. “I don’t know what’s up with all of those boxes. Kinda weird they brought them inside instead of, you know, had them outside, right?”

Gearing looks them over then, tilts his head. After thinking about it for a few moments he shrugs. “You know, these doors are big enough to have cranes and other vehicles just drive right in. In a lot of places, they take materials out through the loading docks, and those go in the back of shipping containers on trucks or the like. But if they have them in here… The only reason I can think of them doing that is either because of security reasons, like for government contracts… oooor… because they were doing shit that they really shouldn’t be doing, and have the containers in here to avoid too many folks having eyes on the operation… And, honestly, knowing what I know about Equestria at the time… if you told me the answer was ‘both’ I wouldn't doubt it in the least… Especially with the fuckwads that must have been running this place…” He sits down and points back towards the machinery. “I mean how cheap can you get?! Not even being lazy, outright cheap… Yeah, this place probably generated a lot of dust and smoke and metal fragments, but that’s not a reason to not clean it up. Hell, their equipment probably had a high failure rate specifically because there was so much dust and dirt being generated. And with it not being cleaned up, all that did was make it where there’s more and more shit to be kicked up into the air again. It was a circular spiral of ineptitude that was just asking for troubles! Hell, if the war hadn’t brought everything to a screeching halt, I bet this place would have collapsed on its own, and then the rubble would burn, on its own, just because of the way it was being run!” Gearing bristles as he stares at it and his eyes seem to nearly pop out of his head.

Handy walks over next to him. Sets his sledge hammer down, head side down with the handle up in the air, before he gently pats Gearing on the shoulder. “There, there… I understand…”

Swift flutters over by them as she folds her forelegs in front of herself and stares at Gearing. “Been holding that in this whole time, haven’t you?”

Gearing waves a forehoof at the machines, then turns his hoof around to look at the bottom, before showing how dirty and black it is to Swift. “Look at it! Just look at it! Lookit!”

Handy pats Gearing shoulders again. “Yeah… it’s physically painful for me too, Gearing.”

Swift rolls her eyes before she looks at her own hooves, then she gives a blatant snort of disgust as her muzzle warps. “Okay… I was going to say you were overreacting… but… making ponies work in these kinds of conditions is just horrible…”

Gearing waves his dirty hoof at the machines even more. “And it would have been worse back then, because the dust would have been constantly getting kicked up by folks walking through it!” He waves his hoof frantically. “After we take care of these fucks, I wanna clean this place up. Just on principle!”

Handy and Swift snicker before they turn and start looking around.

Handy waves over towards the shipping containers as he asks, “Well, wanna walk over there? We should be able to have some good coverage using those. Plus we’ll be able to be away from the machines and it’ll be easier to look around?”

Gearing lets out a groan but then nods. “Yeah, let’s get out of here… I’ve already got a date with the decontamination shower again, and I feel like I need to sit and cry under the shower heads for a couple hours after this shit…”

Handy and Swift look at each other, then laugh before Handy grabs his sledge and follows after Swift.

The group heads towards the shipping containers, and they all have a lot of curiosity about what might be in them. Not just about what they might have held at one point in the past, but what they might have in them currently still. Most of them look sealed up and ready to be shipped. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t already been looted for all their worth.

The little golden pegasus in Gearing’s head points at the side of one of the shipping containers. ‘Hey, look. You see that logo?’

The little blue pegasus nods as he flutters around and looks it over. ‘Four Star? The transportation company?’

Gearing looks around and notices that several of the shipping containers have the same logo for the Manehattan based company. There are others too. Some don’t even have any logos on them. But the Four Star logo draws most of his attention. Yeah, I remember those folks. Whole thing seemed a bit fishy to me. There had been rumors that there were zebra sympathizers within a few organizations, including Four Star. I know of at least one active investigation into them at the time, but there had never been anything concrete to work with. They were either really good at hiding things, or there wasn’t anything to be found. Although, their typical shipping goods were so innocuous that they shouldn’t have needed to be hidden like this. So I don’t know why this company would have done so, if they didn’t care about who it was going to that is.

The little golden pegasus chimes in, ‘I still think it’s weird for a company that’s supposed to have connections to zebra lands to be named ‘Four Star’. Like the connotations about that from the zebra’s perspective would be no joke. Those particular four stars. Death. Destruction. Misery. So that’s a weird coincidence.’

Gearing actually snorts as he half laughs. Yeah. I bet ponies would find it a riot if they actually knew as much about it as I do.

The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head adds, ‘Yeah. So, either way, let's make a point of coming back through here and seeing what, if anything, are in these shipping containers. Could be useful in and of themselves if nothing else.’

Definitely, Gearing mentally replies as he continues on.

The group stays on the side of the containers facing the wall of bay doors along the length of the building. There are many paths in between the shipping containers wide enough for ponies to travel down. But they didn’t want to end up trapped in them as once you start down one of those paths, there’s nowhere to go but forward for quite a while. And since they are behind enemy lines, so to speak, they don’t want to take that kind of risk of being in a lengthy killzone.

Once they get to the end of the shipping containers, where they start seeing the manufacturing machines pick up again, some of the shipping containers don’t look so neatly stacked. In fact, a few of them look like they had gotten knocked over and are laying in a blocky heap on the far side. A few of which had managed to either burst open on some manufacturing equipment that was too sturdy to be crushed, or crushing machines that weren’t so sturdy.

They look on towards the end, and notice how much closer the far end of the warehouse is now. Only a couple more minutes away. And they begin debating on just starting to fly around since the raiders seem to be so spread out it could take forever to find all of them.

Swift hovers over one of the shipping containers that are off kilter and laying on a piece of machinery as she looks at Handy and Gearing. “You know, if I just started zipping around, I bet I could spot them and we could figure out how to deal with them after that?”

Handy and Gearing walk towards her as Gearing comments. “At that point it’d just be faster for us to split up and do the same thing. But, I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”

Handy nods as he says, “Yeah, let’s not split up, I don’t want to have to worry about somepony needing help and not being able to get it because we’re spread too thin.”

Swift lets out a sigh as she looks around. “Well, shit… it’s hard to figure out what’s where, there’s just soooo many red bars in here. And I’m sure most of them are just freaking bugs. So how are we going to deal with it?”

Gearing keeps walking up to the shipping container under her as he calls up to her, “Well, let’s just finish this circular route, there can’t be that many mo-”

Gearing’s voice is cut off as a whirring noise echoes out at the same time the screeching sounds of metal on metal greets their ears. Sparks come from the side of the shipping container as bullets rip through the sheet metal and pour back and forth in the general direction of Gearing and Handy. Multiple bullets hit both of them, with the majority of the ones that hit Gearing scraping off of his armor plates, and ripping through the cloth bags that he’d had. Handy has the misfortune of being in the direct line of the opening salvo, and then getting hit by a few more as it’s crossing back towards him. His armor sparks and gives protest as it does its best to protect him. Most of his equipment gets riddled with multiple rounds before he can even react.

It only takes a fraction of a second before the air is filled with scattered crystals, fragments of metal, and blooms of fresh blood.

Footnote:

Analyzing Data, Please Stand By . . .

Analyzing Data, Please Stand By . . .

Matrix Quadrant ‘Personal’ Status: Ready.

‘BlueMac.Cred’ Sub Partitioned Successfully

‘BlueMac.Matrix’ Verified

Author's Note

Surprise party getting kicked off for everyone. But things aren't really going the way anyone had expected or hoped, on either side of the conflicts.

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