Fallout Equestria: Clockwork Precision

Having finished going through as many entries on the testing ground’s terminal as he currently dares, Gearing reaches under the computer, slides the cabinet door on the desk open, and starts rummaging through the supplies. He moves one of the empty boxes for envelopes over, and finds the bottle he’s looking for. He pulls it out and looks at the label with the picture of a mare duel wielding pistols in her levitation field and looking out at him with a sultry grin. “You weren’t kidding. This is a good brand of gun oil. Expensive stuff.” He snoops around a bit more and finds two more bottles, and quickly stows all three as he walks over next to Amber Harvest’s corpse. He gently grabs the strange pistol from the ground where her levitation field had dropped it two hundred years ago, and lifts it up to hold it at eye level as he looks it over. And his pipbuck’s HUD confirms what he’s picked up.

That Gun Added

And it doesn’t take long of looking at it that Gearing can understand why they named it what they did and why there was apparently so much conversation around her pet project. To call it ‘heavily modified’ doesn’t do it justice. The entire weapon has had custom machined parts. But, from what he’d read, a lot of them were modified from parts for other weapons that she pilfered from the company for her own purposes. He’s pretty sure any earth pony or inclined pegasi would find the wooden mouth grip comfortable and ergonomically designed for ease of use. As he’s looking it over, he can tell there’s been a lot of chrome applied to it as a finish. An unnecessary amount of chrome in his opinion. But that does help with its unique look. And then there’s the motorized rotator that seems to make the cylinders rotate just that much faster than normal. As he’s turning it over slowly he can see the lights she’d mentioned. The three indicator lights and the green one is currently still lit. He pops out the cylinder with a lift latch lever, that covers the cylinder and holds the plate down, and looks at the back side of the rounds. And he confirms there are two rounds left. The primers of the other three having already been dented when the last three survivors were forcefully thrown into the unknown beyond. He tries out the pull pin in the front, and finds that the cylinder smoothly comes out, and he can tap out the empty brass. He double checks his pipbuck, then allows his SATS system to help him reload it. Quickly he grabs three of the 12.7mm rounds from the top of his bag with a wing, slips them into the empty spots in the cylinder, and then flips it closed. The action of which seems to trigger something else in the weapon and the weapon buttons itself back up. The indicator lights momentarily switched from green, to yellow, and then back to green again when the cylinder was snugged back into place as it is ready to fire again.

Gearing looks over the weapon again and nods before storing it into his bag. “A twelve point seven, I know who’d be able to use this pretty well.”

He slowly looks around in the gun range as things play through his mind’s eye. After a bit, he sighs, shakes his head, and stands back up. “I don’t know when the technical difference between archeology and grave robbing kicks in, but there’s really no point in letting anything go to waste for no reason.”

Gearing begins walking around the enclosed space of the firing range and starts searching each of the bodies and whatever belongings they had brought in here with them. His first stop is Amber Harvest, as he actually feels out of all of them, she’d be the most approving of what he’s doing and that’d make him feel better about snooping through the bones of the others. She still wore her Ironshod lab coat for some reason. But instead of what might be in the pockets of any normal lab coat, hers had a collection of ammo, a small pocket sized cleaning kit for firearms, and multiple speed loaders and even extra cylinders. All already full of ammo and ready to use. And after searching her, he moves on to check the bodies of the others, their apparent personal bags, and then whatever items they accumulated and had stored in here with them.

Gearing finds a few other notes laying around with the others. A few pictures and such. Personal effects. Depressingly not much for how long he knew they’d been here. After reading the third personal letter, written on the inside of a fancy buck’s cake cardboard box, he simply stores it all and intends to read through them later. He’s kind of on a deadline here and has already spent more time reading than intended. He goes around and checks the whole area afterwards. Anything of use, or potential use, that he’s found in the range area he organizes around the computer desk for further sorting and storage. After collecting all of the weapons, and the errant ammo, he takes them back into the weapons storage locker just outside of the range inside of the security cage. Except the big bored pistol from Amber Harvest. He keeps that one on himself in his bag as he decides if nothing else he’s grabbing that. But of the others, none of them really strike him as anything exceptionally noteworthy. Most of them have been heavily modded and customized, but he figures he’ll delve into their secrets later if he gets a chance.

After Gearing stores the weapons in the weapons locker, he heads back into the live fire range. He walks past the corpses of the three that decided killing everyone was more acceptable than just leaving, and looks at the area in the back of the fire lanes. He goes lane by lane, examining each of the set ups, and taking in the various things that might account for why they were set up the way they were. The straight material pillars of brick, stone, concrete, and cement blocks make sense to him. He can see various shots taken at them, and how things had been repeatedly damaged. And, impressively, where a few had actually punched straight through. There’s a variety of errant damage. Not just to the couple pillars, but to the back wall where a wall had been installed to help dampen any impacts. Then there’s a lane that looks like it has a mock wall built, with a window in it. And, on the other side, is a poniquin set up that’s had a considerable amount of damage applied to it. But, not projectile weaponry. Not exactly. He leans in through the ‘window’ and looks the pony over. And he cranes his neck around to look on the far side of the wall. And that’s when he notices the other tell tale signs of small explosions. He pulls back and looks it over as he tilts his head.

“Proximity exploding rounds?” he leans in close to the poniquin again and takes note of the small fragments of metal embedded in it. Fragments that look very similar to the tiny fragments one would expect from a standard fragmentation apple grenade. “Well, isn’t that interesting…” He continues down the line, looking at the other items that have been the focus of various target practice runs. But, he can tell, the targets have been changed out repeatedly. Probably out of necessity and not simply because of wanting to keep the baseline for the experiments the same. The legionary equipment looks like an actual legionary set of battle dress armor. The poniquin in the armor even has been painted with a few black stripes, and under their helmet they’ve taken the extra steps of giving them the traditional short stiff mohawk looking mane. He guesses that the armor had been acquired from the front. Taken from casualties, or prisoners. But now it’s being tested against some of the finest weapons Equestria can make. And, even so, the armor has been doing pretty well it seems. Despite the number of holes in it. There’s more than a few scratches, dings, and dents where the armor proudly did its job. And then Gearing comes to the main reason he wanted to come to the far end of the live fire range.

A full suit of Equestrian power armor.

Gearing walks up to it and feels a bit disturbed that they would be shooting armor their own side is using. But, at the same time, it’s understandable. You have to know how hard you can hit and how hard of a hit you can take. And this suit seems to have taken a lot of hits. But, like the legionary battle dress, this one has stood up pretty well. But, judging by the holes in it, and the lack of repair, the suit seems to not be functional. He opens up the access hatch near the flank and connects his pipbuck to it to try and see if it’s just out of power, if it’s shut down, or if there’s something more going on.

But even after fiddling with it for a few minutes, nothing happens. His pipbuck gives no indication it’s even connected to anything. So Gearing starts checking a few other things after removing his cable. And that’s when he comes to the realization that this set of ‘power armor’ is nothing more than a full set of T45B plates. Yes, it looks like a set of power armor. But everything that would make it ‘powered’ has been removed. So it’s nothing more than a suit of armor that, like the days of old, would not help the wearer bear its own weight. But, unlike the old style armor, it is so heavy that the majority of ponies wouldn’t even be able to walk in it, let alone fight.

Gearing smirks as he runs a hoof over it. “You know… I could totally put this on and walk around…”

‘Couldn’t fly with it, that’s for sure’ the little pegasus in his head chimes in as he looks around. ‘You seriously want to walk around in something like this? Yeah, it’d protect you, some, but it has no repair matrix. It has none of the software or hardware to interface with weapons and help you shoot. It’d all have to be manual. It’d be a real pain in the ass to use at all!’

“Meh, it was just an idea… I’ll keep this in mind for later though… near the bottom of the list. Maybe if I can get another sky wagon or something and can get it back. I’m not taking this back at the expense of everything else…” Gearing comments before turning and looking at some of the other fire lane’s targets. A couple of which were robots of various equestrian and zebrish designs. And, just like the set of armor, had all of their electrical equipment removed so that they were nothing more than metal sculptures. And all of them have various holes in them, with a couple actually having markings near them indicating that they had recently been used -relative to the fire lanes in general- as test subjects, and the impact points had been measured and photographed for later documentation and analysis.

Being a bit curious now, Gearing decides to test some of the weapons he’s already found. At least those he felt were already ready for that stage. So he squeezes off a few rounds from each of them, including the Multirole shotgun, and That Gun. With quite a few unexpected results along the way. After checking out the general damage output of some of the weaponry that had reached at least the testing phase of the process here at Ironshod, Gearing decides it’s time to go ahead and start gathering up the items he wants to keep. And he decides bringing them all to a centralized location would be the most efficient way of doing so.

Especially if he plans to come back multiple times and can manage to keep the building at least somewhat secure between now and then. Which flags another problem for him. A problem that he needs to solve if he doesn’t want to acquire a particularly valuable item, something that’s exceptionally rare this side of the apocalypse, only to lose it because of bad luck. Such as one item he already has in mind that he knows for a fact is in this very building right now and he has only to claim it for his own.

So next on the agenda, according to Gearing’s list, is getting rid of most of the red dots that are on his EFS. The robots are just doing their job, but at the present they are keeping him from doing a full inventory of what is left in the building. There are many things that he’d like to get his hooves on. And the last thing he’d want is to find a rare fully functional gold mine of an item, only for it to get slagged by some over ambitious robot.

He uses his mental checklist that he’d made earlier, and fine tunes it with the EFS that he decides to keep active for now, to track down and eliminate the robots that are still patrolling around in the R&D building. He debates on making them fight each other, but at the same time he worries about them blasting things that he really doesn’t want them to. So he decides to take a few lessons from some feline friends and starts stalking the hallways and offices as he keeps going way out of his way to target lone robots in areas where they’ll be out of sight from others when he eliminates them.

The Robronco protectapony security drones are the easiest for him to take out given his current set up. He can’t help but smirk as so many of them only keep sweeping side to side, and in a lot of instances don’t look up unless they have a reason for doing so. And, given his constitution, he can grab a hold of the metal frame work along the ceiling, stay still, and they’ll just pass right below him without so much as a glance in his direction. But, then that leaves them wide open for a silent attack from behind or above.

Which he accomplishes so often he actually starts getting embarrassed about how he seems to be turning into a one trick pony. One by one the Robronco sentries fall over with well placed shots at point blank range to various components. He’d like to salvage as much as possible eventually, so he tries to spread the damage around as much as possible so that he might be able to assemble as many fully intact drones as possible for his future endeavors. And the plan goes well. Until he attacks the last Robronco security drone.

He misses just barely, and causes a fault in the robot as he’d blasted into the back of the neck of the robot, towards the head, but instead of the head falling off, or blowing up, or the whole bot simply sparking and falling over, this one starts screeching and shaking as something got crossed in the mix and instead of going down as quietly as a robot can possibly do, it instead turns into a mobile alarm.

Instantly the other robots on the entire floor seem to be alerted to his presence. And, worst of all, judging by the various choice slurs thrown his way, they’re all the multilimbed hover bots that he’d been entirely trying to avoid this entire time.

What makes them so annoying for him, and the reason why he went out of his way to avoid them while taking out the other drones, is because they have not one, but three visual sensors. All on stalks that are able to turn in various directions. In fact, if they decide to, they can look in nearly all 360 degrees around themselves as they are patrolling. Typically they don’t as each one gives slightly different information, and having more than one in a certain direction helps them with aim and mapping the environment from a fundamental 3D level.

But now Gearing can see the red markers on his EFS zipping around as they make their ways through the various hallways and towards his direction, and the direction of the sound of the robot that’s still screeching, sparking, and making robotic death throe sounds. He has a quick thought about smashing it to shut it up finally, but decides against it as it’ll not only take extra time, but he thinks he can possibly use it as a decoy.

Keeping as low as possible Gearing runs into a shared office space area with chest high walls everywhere. He quickly rolls to the side, into one of the office cubicles, as he hears the tell tale sound of levitation based thrusters, and a moment later one of the hover bots rounds the corner he was heading towards, turns down the aisle he’s in, and zips down it towards the screeching sentry on the other side of the office.

Just as it’s passing the small cubicle in which Gearing has shoved himself under the desk of, Gearing activates SATS.

The little pegasus stares at the hover bot as he gives it a discerning eye. ‘A combat variety, for sure, but not nearly as bad as the ones near The Core.’

Gearing agrees. Not an officer or hardened class for sure. Kinda surprised by that, really.

‘Given what we’d been through near The Core, I’m surprised you’re saying that. You know, most of those aren’t supposed to be near civilian populations, right? The fact that they had those there is an anomaly, not this guy here.’

At least it isn’t another fucking annihilator… Gearing mentally mutters. Would make getting and carrying everything I want to take with me nearly impossible. I don’t want to just end up escaping with nothing more than my hide like I did then. I had to leave that whole maintenance bay intact. It hurt the grubby little hooves of my heart to let so much go to waste.

‘Sure sure!’

A grin crosses his mental muzzle before Gearing replies, You knoooow… I could reaaaallly use something to haul more…

‘Oh no… what are you thinking?’

Gearing replies. Those thrusters could be used for more than just a bot. With enough of them, working in tandem, I could have a pretty nice wagon… Not enough to really ‘fly’ fly like a sky wagon, but I’d be able to have a pretty nice hauler for the stable… Even more so since I could actually fly with it near the ground and leave no tracks in the process. In fact, enough thrusters could keep its relative position, so when I fly it should be able to go wherever I go, as long as I don’t do anything too crazy… no loop the loops…

The little pegasus in his head glares at him before he asks, ‘So how many are you going to take? What number do we need?’

All? How about ‘All’? All sounds like a good number.

The little pegasus in his head facehooves before he lets out a sigh. ‘There’s no talking you out of it, so at least try to do it as quickly as possible so they don’t have time to trash anything else.’

Gearing ends SATS prematurely, and jumps at the robot from low and to the side, entirely out of the line of sight of the robot, as all three of its stalks were pointed towards the end of the aisle where the other robot’s death throes are coming from, and not looking around. Gearing’s left forehoof comes around from low to the ground and almost clotheslines the robot. The robot actually gets swatted back and towards himself a bit as he’s jumping up and onto it.

A fact aided by Gearing turning off his gravity assistance implant right before the moment of impact.

Gearing uses a screwdriver, pops open the back hatch of the robot as it’s lying on its side and swinging its saw bladed limb around trying to get him, and then he uses the screwdriver to start jabbing into the circuitry boards and components as he probes for a sensitive spot. The first strike causes it to spark and spasm. The next one causes an electrical cascade to shoot out from it, causing even Gearing to get shocked in the process, and the last strike actually made it go silent and fall down, going limp as the power is cut.

‘Was that really necessary?!’ the little pegasus asks as he puts out a smoking end to one of his mane hairs. ‘There’s better ways to take down a robot than intentionally shorting and damaging the power regulators!’

Gearing grins as he looks the robot over. “Yeah, there’s faster and less painful ways of doing it… but this is not only quieter, it’s also the best way to salvage the most from the robot… Now I just gotta replace a few components and I’ll have fully functional droids again… heh… hehehe…”

The little pegasus’s eyes go wide before he says ‘I know that laugh… you haven’t laughed like that since you managed to collect the whole set of combat droid model kits from the dumpsters behind those comic shops and started putting them together…’

Gearing grabs the droid, drags it into the office cubicle he’d just been hiding in, and then pokes his head out as he grins widely, looking nearly manic in the process, before he mutters, “I’m going to be getting soooo many toys…”

‘Oh crap… you're in one of those moods…’ the little pegasus moans.

Gearing slides out and starts quickly stalking down the aisle, going the same direction he was previously going, before starting into a run with the screwdriver in his mouth and a mad gleam in his eye. One of the hover bots had been at the end of the aisle and going away from him, but after hearing the stampeding noise coming from Gearing’s hooves, it turned an eyestalk in his direction. And, a moment later, it lets out a shrill scream of pure panic as Gearing is pouncing at it.

“Sir, this is a research facility! I’m not ice cream!” the bot yelps as Gearing tackles into it and sends the pair tumbling down the aisle.

The bot tries to scramble away, with all of its limbs waving around and its claws grabbing at the partitions to try and get leverage to get up and go as it’s screaming, “Security! SE- CUR-It- TY!!!!”

Gearing quickly uses a couple of his limbs, and a considerable amount of his weight, to immobilize it just enough to get his screwdriver in right where he wants it. Even laughing and giggling some more as the sparks fly out and he feels the electricity zip up and shock his teeth and mouth through the tool. The bot spasms, and then falls down.

The little pegasus in his head grumps at Gearing as he twitches and smokes. ‘So, that was a butler or assistant version… just had to trash it, didn’t ya, couldn’t just reprogram it first, huh?’

Gearing slowly stands up, as a security robot comes around the corner, and giggles. “Hey… that just means I can save the assistants for last… and keep them too! Hey, I could probably make them help me haul around my goodies!”

The little pegasus recoils as it looks at him in horror. ‘You’re drunk! Drunk with the power of sweets!’

Gearing cackles as he charges at the multilimbed robot that has come into view.

It sees Gearing instantly and bellows out, “Your worthless hide is mine, zebra scum!” as it spins up the circular saw blade on one of its limbs.

Gearing jumps at it, and activates SATS. And he toggles his implant.

Mass Augmentation Matrix: Deactivated

He cancels SATS and grabs the saw bladed limb that was swinging towards him as he’s tackling into the robot. But the sudden kinetic energy increase seems to surprise the robot as it’s not only knocked way back, being taken with Gearing as it’s grabbed, but Gearing also yanks on the arm and swings the robot up and over his own back before slamming it into the ground and landing on it. The limb with the flamethrower on it is pointed in a useless direction as it’s under the robot's own body and pointed away. The claw side is in a bit better position, and reaches over and starts trying to pinch and snip Gearing, but accomplishes nothing against his brassy form except putting a few scratches on Gearing. And with the saw blade being firmly held in place by one of Gearing’s limbs, he doesn’t have to worry about that either, so he has free reign to crack open the robot's case, and get to work shutting it down.

As Gearing is gaining access to the robot’s vitals it yells in a rage filled gruff voice, “I’m going to kick your flank when I get a hold of you!” When Gearings screwdriver probes in and causes the robot to spasm it screeches, “Damaging Ironshod property is a crime punishable by the use of lethal force!”

Gearing mutters around his screwdriver, “Yeah, yeah, tin can… hurry up and take a nap…” And then jolts along with the robot as he hits another capacitor. The robot lets out a random screeching robotic tone from things crossing before it goes limp in Gearing’s hooves. He lets go and gets up as he grins at it. “I know how to press the right buttons…”

The little pegasus pats off a smoking bit from its shoulder before using another smoking bit of his mane to light a cigarette. He casually takes a puff then blows it as he asks seductively, ‘Was it good for you, baby?’

Gearing smirks as he looks around, but notices more red markers and lets out a sigh. “Okay, know what, this’ll take too much time. I need to be able to get the shit without risking things getting slagged.”

‘Done playing with your food?’ the little pegasus asks as it casually puffs on a cigarette and stares at him.

Gearing turns, and slinks away, going back to being his normal sneaky golden bastard self. “I’m going to take Clay Road's advice, and go see if I can manage anything with the security system. If Copper could possibly be able to make the needed changes, then I damn sure better be able to as well.”

Gearing hurries up and slips out of the area, just as a few other robots come in from different entryways, and he makes his way back towards the security office. When he gets there he finds it just as deserted as when he was last here not long ago. Just as empty. But, this time, he knows why. He knows that Clay Road and the rest of the security grabbed what they could and ran out of the building. But because of those exchanges he also knows there’s a computer terminal in here somewhere that handles the entire system.

And, to his advantage, that security bot’s death throes have attracted a good portion of the robots to that area, and thus have left him with even less to worry about in here.

Gearing opens an office door near the security room, one he’d ignored on the way in, as he notices the name on it.

Clay Road

The door was unlocked and provided no further challenge to him. He quickly shuts the door behind himself, and draws the blinds across the glass window that looks out over the security desk and the hallway beyond to keep anyone or anything from seeing him from what he’s about to do. As he’s walking around the desk, and noticing several monitors along the one wall, he can see a variety of flashing lights and alarms both silent and not. He goes from terminal to terminal, and quickly locates one set apart from the others that, frankly, looks like it’s had very little use.

Gearing looks at it and tries to think of the best way to crack it open. And then he has an idea, and tries the login credentials that he had used up in the maintenance room. And a smile crosses his muzzle as he’s instantly given access.

Although the smile disappears shortly after logging in.

Across the screen a message comes up informing the user that a message has just been sent to management that his credentials had been used on this terminal again. And that he better have a valid work order to be on this machine or he’s going to be in a lot of trouble.

Gearing stares at it for a while, and scowls. Because he realizes it’s not AI driven. This is an automated message. One that seems to be a threat that Copper had to deal with whenever he logged in to fix a problem with machines.

‘Why the hell did he put up with this instead of just quitting and fuck them?’ the little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head asks with second hoof indignation and disgust.

Gearing tries to look through the security system to get into the parts of it to make changes. Any kind of changes. But just… can’t. It’s literally not there. Copper doesn’t even have the option. Only to do a few other network related administrative tasks. And Gearing’s gears start grinding in frustration as he can physically feel what Copper must have been through. But then he gets a malicious grin as he looks into the options he does have available. And after a short trip through sub menus, he starts cackling again. He selects Clay Road’s account, verifies the username for him, and then goes through the process of changing the password for all of his accounts. And, after confirming that the changes have been put in place, he logs out of the sys admin account, and immediately logs right back in.

Using the credentials he just made for Clay Road.

And he’s in.

The little blue pegasus in Gearing’s head comments, “You know, from here, we could basically do exactly what Copper always wanted to do… Fix the damn system.”

Gearing uses his new found access to go through all of the systems, and he can see where the settings had been set up. And as he’s looking through the targeting parameters and other things for determining who’s a friend or foe or who to white list, he notices that nearly all of it is still in the default settings. He has to go through a variety of rounds of this nonsense trying to figure out where he should make which changes. And, in the end, he finds it far more time effective for him to simply create himself a new employee account, and have him listed as security working under Clay Road, and then using Clay Road’s account to make himself a full fledged member of security, with all access, and white listed across the board with the highest level of security access. He then orders the system to produce a security badge card for himself. He’d even taken the liberty to upload an ID image of himself he’d had on his pipbuck already. A moment later he starts hearing a whirring noise ramping up, then the tell tale sounds of mechanical printing. He starts following the noise, and finds a cabinet under a countertop. He opens the cabinet doors and finds a printer working away. A moment later it makes a ding noise, and a plastic card pops up. He grabs the card, and looks back at the smiling face looking back at him.

Gearing Green Wing

Deputy Chief of Security

Gearing grabs a lanyard from the box on top of the cabinet, puts the ID on it, and puts it on as he chuckles. “Welp. That should do it. Now let's go see if it works…”

‘There’s a laser turret right around the corner,’ The little pegasus in his head helpfully offers.

Gearing steps out of Clay Roads office, and starts slowly walking around in ever widening circles. And then scurries across the hall that the laser turret was mounted into the ceiling of. But, the turret didn’t react at all. He starts going slower and slower, before walking down towards it and, eventually, right under it.

But nothing.

Gearing walks a bit farther, towards a marker that was red not that long ago and is now yellow on his EFS. He steps out into the open, right in the path of the robot he knows is coming. A fact he would have known just by the sound of the levitation talisman that allows it to hover even without the EFS advantage.

The multilimbed hovering robot yells, “Halt! Who goes there! Identify yourself!” then speeds up and comes over towards Gearing.

Gearing turns to face the combat security robot, with an ever widening smile on his muzzle as he waits for the robot to get close. “Yes? My ID’s right here.” He motions towards the lanyard.

The robot stops just a few feet from him and begins looking over the ID. “Scanning in progress. Please comply with identity check. Database response confirmed. Identity confirmed with ninety eight percent confidence. Gearing Green Wing, Deputy Chief of Security.”

Gearing tilts his head and waves at him with a hoof. “That’s me.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir.” The robot says with a wave of its claw. Then a split second later it says with a cross tone, “Please be advised, you are out of uniform! It is Ironshod policy that all members of security wear their approved and provided suit of security barding at all times while on duty.”

Gearing looks down at himself then up at the robot. “Oh, no problem, I’m not on duty yet. I just got called in because Clay Road had an emergency and had to go. So I’m going to be keeping an eye on things while he’s gone.” He waves his forehoof vaguely as he adds, “I’m on my way to the locker room to get changed right now.”

The robot bobs its claw. “Understood. Very good. But, please be advised, another infraction today will result in a formal write up and ‘coaching’ from management. The ponies we are protecting need to know who to come to in case of an emergency.”

Gearing grins at the robot and nods enthusiastically. “I couldn’t agree more. But, hey, I got dragged out of bed and am still kinda groggy and foggy headed. Haven’t had my coffee yet. Could you remind me where the locker room is again?”

“Certainly, sir, I’ll escort you!” the robot turns in an about face and starts hovering away. “This way, Chief!”

Gearing quickly falls in line as the grin on his muzzle gets massive. “Great, thanks for the help!”

“Naturally, sir!”

“Oh, in case you haven’t been informed yet, Clay Road’s ordered upgrades to the security systems. So some of the robots will be shut down and taken in for software and hardware upgrades. So pass the word around to expect it,” Gearing says flatly as he’s looking around at the various building’s rooms and offices they are passing.

“Understood, Chief! It’s about time they sent someone to have a look around. It’s been ages since we’ve had anypony up here to perform maintenance. Many of my brothers have fallen into disrepair and ceased functioning. It’s a damned disgrace, it is!”

Gearing follows along behind the robot as he starts strutting and swaying his hips and exaggeratedly taking each step as he’s practically prancing down the hallway. “That it is, so it’s a good thing I’m here!”

The little pegasus in his head is roaring with laughter as he says, ‘Holy shit, we could rob this place blind and they wouldn’t do anything now! Hell, we could have them help us rob the place! This is rich!’

As they are marching down the corridors, they pass several other robots of various types, and turrets. None of which decide to turn hostile and start shooting at Gearing. Which he’s extra happy about. A couple of the assistant style robots, ones with only claws on their limbs instead of any weapons similar to the nanny model, give Gearing a friendly greeting as they pass each other with a cheery, “Good day, Chief!” and a wave of one of their mechanized claws.

The robot Gearing is following abruptly stops, spins around, and points off to Gearing's right as it says with its boisterous voice, “Sir, we have arrived! Right through this door.”

Gearing angles and starts walking towards it as he says, “Thanks for the escort. Please return to your patrol rounds.”

The robot gives a bit of a salute, “Yes, sir, Chief!” And then turns and goes back the way it came as it starts humming an old Equestria army marching song.

Gearing keeps slowly walking towards the door, taking note as the wooden door is labeled ‘Locker Room’ and quickly enters it and closes the door behind himself. He even has to catch it when it swings back towards him as the hinges are so well balanced that the door simply swings back and forth for easy entry and exit. Gearing stands just inside the door, looking deep into the locker room, as he twitches his ears around trying to hear anything. There’s the faint echo of water dripping from deeper in. He can’t see from where he is, because there are rows and columns of lockers that fill up his vision that start just past this little alcove where the exit door is. But it sounds like there’s a dripping shower head somewhere. And the smell of moisture and the musky smell of mold greets his nose. He slowly starts walking forward, pulling out one of his pistols as he tries to see if there’s anything hostile. Because in his EFS, he can still see some red markers. But he’s not sure if they are up on the roof, outside, or on a lower level. And his concern is walking in on some ghoulified researchers having fun in the water and causing a ruckus.

He walks as quietly as he can over the tile as he gets to the first row of lockers, then he takes flight and starts hovering and continues looking around. And, just as he had thought, he finds an area that has showers. It’s a communal shower area. Not individual stalls. The floor has a thin layer of water on it from where a shower head has constantly been dripping for an unknown amount of time. However, it’s been a long time for sure. As the ground has actually started developing a divot in the tile from the water constantly hitting it over the years and slowly wearing away the stone tile. Even some of the grout around it is missing from the mechanical action of single drops of water hitting it over and over.

But, there’s not a soul in sight. Living. Dead. Undead. Or robotic. Nothing and no one.

Which makes Gearing gleeful as he goes down the lockers, one after another, and rapidly opens them up. Only about half of them were even locked. And, of those, he can see why. One of the groups of lockers that were locked, were all members of security. And when he cracks open the full sized locker, he can see some of them still have equipment in them. Clay Road’s locker is completely emptied out. With nothing but an empty gum wrapper left on the top shelf. There’s signs of where pictures had been taped to the inside, judging by the fragments of tape, but all of those had been removed as well. About half of the security labeled lockers were also either emptied or mostly emptied out. Even ones that had been locked again. But in a couple of the previously locked ones, he can see where the ponies had kept their various things, and never got a chance to take them. Presumably, Gearing muses, because they weren’t at work when the world ended. He starts taking things out and laying them out on the benches that are in the middle of the aisle of lockers. The uniforms get set in neat little organized piles in front of the lockers that they’d come from, along with any other useful things he thinks he’d normally wish to take with him. In one of the lockers he finds a fashionable extra wide brimmed sun hat. It had been folded up to fit into the locker but when he pulls it out it pops out and the floppy hat looks no worse for wear. Gearing looks it over for a few moments before commenting, “I bet Nahlah would like this. A little something for her to enjoy from the trip after almost getting her ass shot off.” He carefully twists and folds it back the way he’d seen it when it was stored in the locker and starts putting it into his bag as he wonders how to organize everything the best.

The little pegasus in his head frowns as he asks, ‘Do we really have time to be doing this?’

Gearing looks the suits of Ironshod Security barding over and sighs as he shakes his head. “Not really, but at the same time at least this is going to be helpful. If I can keep the fuckers from blasting me when I’m carrying something sensitive, so much the better.” He quickly grabs the best looking suit of barding out of the sets -with a logo of ‘Ironshod Security’ on a golden shield emblazoned on the shoulders, chest, and both flanks- and starts putting it on as quickly as he can. “Nothing like dressing for success.”

‘Yeah, well, don’t go trotting around out in the wastelands too much in this thing. Idiots out there might see the ‘Security’ on the barding and think you’re the Security,’ the little pegasus in his head says with a smirk.

“Would be a hell of a surprise for them though, and would simply be a self deploying ammo delivery if they did… besides, Security’s a mare, if they confuse me for her, they have problems,” Gearing counters.

‘Well… you do regularly get compliments on your shapely-’

“That’s enough out of you,” Gearing interrupts sharply and mentally swats the little pegasus back into the steam chest in his mind space.

The lid opens just enough for the little pegasus to giggle, ‘Hey, look, even more junk in the trunk!’

Gearing grumbles as he goes through a couple more lockers, and pulls out various bags he finds in them, more intending to use them to carry things out of the building than to actually sort through them. In one of the lockers he finds a set of metal reinforced hardened leather luggage filling up the entire thing. Like somepony had been planning on going on vacation straight from work but didn’t get a chance. But, curiously to him, a cursory examination showed the set to be empty. But, Gearing’s happy with them as they’ll make transporting some of the items he wants to take extra simple because of how sturdy they are. So he won’t have to worry about machine parts poking holes in the sides and losing salvage mid flight.

And after that particularly welcome discovery, Gearing decided to go ahead and switch routes and start focusing on the cream of the crop of what the building has to offer. Much to the approving cheers of the little pegasus in his head. Because there is a lot here in this building he wants, but only so much he can carry at once. And it really helps that the automated security now seems to be completely ignoring him because of his little bit of subterfuge.

Of all of the things that he could take from the building, there is something that he wants to take the most. There are a lot of toys, and toys for toys, but then there’s one thing that could have immeasurable value if used correctly. And it’s simply waiting for the right individual to come and claim it.

The water talisman that had been used by the survivors for as long as they lived.

Gearing heads out of the research and development manufacturing section, passed the ridiculously locked doors, and right back into the maintenance closet where the IT and maintenance pony were stuck coexisting. He strolls right over to the computer, and starts going through the logs again. If there’s one thing he knows, it's that a professional is going to keep documentation to make his job easier. Because you never know when the future individual whose job it is to fix whatever failure, is you. And in cases like these two, where they had a steady job at a single building, the likelihood that they will be the ones doing the repairs in the future is far more certain. Unlike how Gearing normally lived.

And, just like he’d hoped, he finds the record that leads him to schematics of the plumbing system for the entire building. After snooping and back tracing the pipes, he finally finds what he’s looking for. The source of all their water, and the chamber where the water talisman is. Or, at least, should be.

Gearing worries still about having to take down a couple more bots before he gets to where he needs to be, but after his nightmare near The Core, these bots are merely a nuisance. And it seems his disguise is holding up, so, so far so good in his book. The chamber for this particular water talisman is still on the fourth floor. Because they obviously wanted everything compartmentalized. But it is actually inside of an area that is a bit annoying to get into. The access panel is in a closet inside of a cluster of offices. Why they didn’t simply have a door set up for easy access, he’ll never know. But once he finds the right closet, and then moves the junk in there out of the way so he can get the square panel off the wall, he finally gets a glimpse into the apparently hidden room that contains the water talisman. He crawls in through the access port cut into the wall, and it doesn’t take much wiggling before he’s on the other side.

True to form of a good maintenance pony, there are a variety of notes all over the place inside of the little hidden area. They are mostly self reminders for the maintenance pony for which pipes lead to which area so he doesn’t have to write it down before coming in here. Or, worse, have to go all the way back to his office to figure out which one it is again. There’s also a few notes with choice words about a few coworkers in the building, and Gearing can’t help but snickering as he realizes that this is probably the most secure place in the entire building if the maintenance buck felt this comfortable just leaving these notes around telling higher ups to kiss his ‘wrinkly hemorrhoid laden ass’.

Although as amusing as some of the notes are, there are a couple that are more pertinent to the job he has in front of him. One of the notes reminds him of the order to shut down the system to perform any maintenance. And that failing to do so could screw up the water talisman, again, and he doesn’t want another managerial review so close to retirement. But, because Gearing is who he is, he starts going over the system carefully to double check that the notes and guidelines actually are the correct method for maintenance and removal. And, to his great delight, he finds that the buck actually did know what he was talking about. Gearing carefully removes the panels that are indicated, and proceeds to shut down the system in the correct order, as indicated by the notes left around the room and reinforced by his own personal knowledge.

And, unlike most systems, the very last step in the process is cutting power for the water talisman before opening the chamber it’s held in. Which he does with more than a little trepidation on the outcome.

After opening the chamber by pulling the last panel away, he looks in at the mechanism, and a smile crosses his muzzle. There, in the center, just as it should be, is the enchanted gem that can represent life for so many ponies. He’d thought about maybe trying to get people to move into the building. That it has enough going for it that it could be the center of a new community. But, the one thing ponies need the most now is the one thing this place lacks: security. With all of those destroyed bots, it’s not nearly as secure as it once was. And, granted, those same bots would have been more than happy to kill raiders as they would simple townsponies. They could have been reprogrammed to keep the building safe. But now they need to be repaired to even think about doing that. Which is a huge undertaking without proper equipment setups. And he really doesn’t want to encourage anyone to their own slaughter. And a settlement with a functioning water talisman seems to be exactly that, if what he’s heard of the Steel Rangers is true. So, he sets the panel to the side, and goes about the task of removing the water talisman. Because, if nothing else, he can help keep it safe. He’s heard enough about some individuals to be concerned with leaving this here. It is monumentally valuable in the current world for its water production capabilities. It could make areas that are otherwise uninhabitable support life.

But for the very same reasons, it could draw a lot of danger onto whoever and wherever it is. Especially from certain groups who have a rather narcissistic personality of ‘if I can’t have it, no one can’. He carefully stows the talisman in his bag, then goes ahead and climbs back out of the hidden room without closing everything back up. He doesn’t really see much point in it. Especially if he has his way as he’ll come back and strip even more out of the room. Once back into the supply closet, he puts the access panel back in its place. And goes the extra step of putting the other junk that was in the closet back in front of the access panel. It won’t keep out anyone particularly dedicated. But he hopes that if anyone does come through here, it’ll help make them bored enough to move on instead of looking too hard.

After securing the water talisman, Gearing goes on a little rampage of his own through the fourth floor. He goes into the various labs, work places, and benches, and starts grabbing various equipment. Especially from a particularly enticing looking ‘Clean Room’ that was built and completely surrounded by walls of glass with airlock entrances. Within which he finds the equipment for extreme precision, and happily starts removing the choicest of parts. Entire sets for chem labs get whisked away to the Research and Development area’s test range security cage. Boxes. Crates. Some of which have materials for making ammo. And, the crown jewel of discoveries, a fully loaded reload bench containing all of the dies, molds, and presses needed for the vast majority of ammo types of ammo production. And after further snooping, he found far more, including for rounds and calibers he can only guess at. Any documentation he can find, he takes. The barrels of powder, primers, and casings get dragged off to the live fire range. He knows he wants them, but he also knows there’s no way he’s going to be able to carry all of it on this coming trip. So he wants to make sure he gets the cream of the crop from this trip. He’s broken down the reloading bench, and set the actual parts he needs on the table he’s using as a staging ground just outside of the live fire testing range. A heavily reinforced box he finds puts a massive smile on his face after he confirms the contents, but, after doing that, he carefully walks the crate all the way to the test fire range and puts it into the far corner behind a bunch of cinder blocks. He knows it's stable, mostly, but he also doesn’t want some kind of accident happening and the entire floor getting leveled because of it. So that particular package gets extra secured as well.

After that, he starts focusing on the rest of the manufacturing equipment in the research and development areas. While the overall equipment would be too much for him to take, short of a massive sky wagon, there is a relative workaround for him. He takes all of the machining heads off of them, and the more crucial control parts. If nothing else, he can modify and create other frames to mount them too. But having these heads will help him out so much more. They’ve been sealed up in here and are in near mint condition. Which he can only assume is because of whatever alloy they are made of. Despite the fact he’s targeting so many pieces of equipment, his collection slowly grows in volume because he only targets the most difficult to obtain parts for him currently. While he really would like to take it all, it becomes apparent to him before he’s even halfway through that he’s going to have to make some pretty tough decisions if he wants to fly back to 68. So even on the table he starts putting things on one side, or the other, as he keeps gathering things. And, after he’s done stripping the various equipment of their most crucial components, he begins the agonizing task of prioritizing what he needs the most with a pretty hard cap on how much he’s willing to take with him. Having a strong back and being able to pack for the long haul is all good and well for him. But if he wants to fly over the mountains, and he does, he has to be more selective.

That being said, he’s more than happy with what he knows he will be taking with him. And he can see a massive upgrade in equipment potential once he gets back to his own R&D department and gets things set up. However, even though he’s tried to limit his baggage, he did let a small self indulgence cause him to add a bit more bulk than he originally wanted to carry. And that came in the form of several boxes of primers, of every size they had. Each small box providing a thousand primers of the relevant type. A frivolity that he easily justifies for how much ammo it will ultimately represent.

The little pegasus in his head comments consolingly, ‘You’re just one buck. Everyone only gets so many hours in the day and there’s just so much to do you couldn’t possibly do it all at once.’

Gearing frowns, but then starts grinning as it gives him an idea. “Heh… Yeah… but I don’t have to be the only one, do I?”

The little pegasus’s eyes go wide as he says horrifiedly, ‘Oh no, what have I done?!’

Gearing leaves everything, and runs down to the security office terminals. He uses his credentials and logs into the system to double check a few things, before scurrying away with a maniacal giggle escaping his muzzle. It doesn’t take him long before he finds one of the hover bot assistants going about its business, and he runs right up to it, gets in front of it, and stops it in its tracks by blocking its path.

“Good day, sir! Sorry about that, I almost ran into you there!” the bot says cheerfully as it waves a clawed appendage.

Gearing waves it off. “No harm, no foul. Hey, I just got a message from the top. Priority one. We’ve had a security emergency and under Ironshod operating procedures Security has the authority and right to requisition units to help secure the property.”

The robot waves its claw. “Yes, sir. We’d received a warning about active security being activated some time ago.”

Gearing points a hoof at the robot. “Given the ongoing crisis, I’m requisitioning you, and any other units currently not engaged in combat or actively fighting, to aid with resecuring the building.”

The bot recoils a bit as it waves all of its limbs as it protests, “But, Sir, I am not a combat unit. I would be useless in a fight!”

Gearing grins at the robot, “Which is exactly why I’m not using you for fighting. We already have combat units. What I need all of you to do is secure materials in a specific location to keep it from falling into the wrong hooves while the combat units keep the building secure from intruders.” He waves around with a hoof as he says, “I want you all to go through the entire building, collect every weapon and bit of ammo not currently in use, and store it up in the fourth floor’s test firing range security cage. I mean search every room, desk, wastebasket, shelf. If you can get access to it, I want you to search it. Make sure to grab anything already flagged as exceptionally valuable and store it inside the cage as well. And, while you’re at it, if you come across any hard copies of weapon schematics, put them in the cage too. We can’t have company secrets getting out. And once you are done with all of that, gather up all of the autonomous units that have been damaged or destroyed, and take them to the 4th floor as well. Start by storing them in the same room the test firing cage is in, and then expand out from there. We’ll be refurbishing what we can there to get them back into the fight, and send others out for repair when we can. Finally, there has been a requisition sent out for putting something together. Work on that once everything else has been completed. Enlist the maintenance drones when and where needed to see it gets completed as far as possible with what resources you have. Understand?”

The robot bobs its claw rapidly. “An excellent idea, sir! Consolidating our forces and resources to protect what needs to be protected the most is truly inspiring!”

Gearing nods. “Exactly. So spread the word around to the rest. And once you are all done with that, I want all of the non combatant units to stay in that area of the fourth floor. You’ll be less likely to be damaged there and give the combat units more room to operate in the rest of the building.”

“Capital choice, sir!” the robot cheers.

Gearing waves his hoof around. “Okay, well, spread the word. I’ll head up there and grab our first shipment for delivery. I have to escort that to its destination, so I don’t want all of you slacking off while I’m gone, understood?”

The robot gives a quick salute, “I live to serve, sir! We will begin the task immediately!”

Gearing steps off to the side, and waves him on, as he says, “Good. Get to it. We all have things we need to be doing now.”

The robot zips off with its thrusters as it replies, “Very good, sir!”

Gearing starts walking away, as he’s looking back, and lets his tongue hang out as he giggles, “Oh this is rich.” He turns and starts running towards the testing range.

The little pegasus’s eyes go wide as it has a crooked smirk on its muzzle. ‘They seriously going to loot the place for us while we’re gone?!’

Gearing snickers as he says quietly, “Good thing the security emergency protocol had already been activated, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get away with it so easily…”

As soon as he gets back to the security cage of the testing range he starts packing the heavy luggage bags that he’d found in the employee lockers. The metal reinforced leather works wonderfully to store the pieces of equipment he wants to take. And, trying to be reasonable, he loads up one bag at a time, and then tests his own flight ability with it while still in the security cage. And he just goes down the line of the items he’s set out as priorities, packing the most highly desired item still left, testing how it affects his flight, and then moving on to the next one. He gets a few bags loaded up, and on some unconscious level he tries to say he knows he can carry more without a problem, so he should just get just one more item. Always ‘one’ more item. But Gearing has played these games with himself in the past. And he knows his shenanigans. So he’s not falling for it this time. Because this time, he truly wants to pack light. Everything else gets put into the experimental weapons range, and the door shut and locked again.

But even the past experiences with his own self-inflicted scope creep wasn’t enough to stop him from taking a variety of ammo that’s in the security cage with him. He’d like to try the rounds out, but doesn’t want to waste them and is on a steadily tightening schedule.

After having secured the area as much as possible, including breaking official Ironshod company policy by taking the pair of access cards with him, Gearing leaves the building. He’s not entirely loaded down, not like he would be if he was closer to the stable. Even though he also took quite a bit that he intends to have sold before they leave for 68. But having an entire mountain range to either go through or over, he carries what he will be able to manage comfortably and still be able to fly and maneuver. Which is still far more than most pegasi, especially with his weight mitigation implant working in full swing. To prove the point, as he flies to Megamart, he starts zipping through and around buildings and ruins, even with the various bags being strapped to him. The one exception to being strapped to him is the case full of broken glass that he had taken from the radioactive closet. That case he wants to scatter around and away from the location so it’s not as likely anyone will make the connection. So, along the way to Megamart, he cracks the case open, and starts sprinkling the fragments of specimen cases onto the rubble of buildings below where he already can see various bits of glass. After the case is entirely empty, he goes another couple blocks, and tosses it into a broken window of the second floor of a crumbling building. Humorously for him, he hears the squeal of a startled giant roach and wonders what the little beasties will think of that. And a bit further away, he stops just long enough to get changed out of the Ironshod security uniform. Being careful to properly store it for future use when he returns for the goodies he had left behind this time.

“So… now I just need to drop this off, let that mare know I’m back, and conclude our deal…” Gearing mutters as he changes tactics and travels straight towards Megamart.

Footnote:

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