Startling the brown stallion as he painstakingly reassembled a laptop, his phone rang. He picked it up, cleared his throat, and answered with his usual line- "Tinker's computer repair, this is Tinker speaking, how can I help ya?"

"Hah, nice, well, this is Polaris, you got a minute?" came the voice through his headset. Tinker blushed a little, it was always so embarassing to answer a call from a friend like they were a customer!

He hadn't expected to be getting a call from Polaris of all ponies, but he shrugged, saying, "Well, sure!" He laid back in his chair, smiling a bit. It wasn't often that Polaris called, so it must've been important.

Polaris kept going, saying, "Okay, so, I wanna ask you something... do you happen to know much about old SoundWorks equipment?"

And unlike Polaris, Tinker actually did. The blue stallion was treated to somewhat of an exhaustive summary of all of the old SoundWorks equipment Tinker happened to own, all of which came from an abandoned storefront that he (with permission) looted before it was demolished. When Tinker finally stopped, Polaris finally explained why... "Yeah, so, the reason I ask, well... turns out that company did the intercom in the Canterlot castle, and well, it's on the fritz and not even I could figure it out..."

Tinker was already starting to think of possible solutions, but his thoughts stumbled to a halt, backed up, and... did he really say the castle? "Wait, wait, like, where the sisters are?" Tinker asked with wide eyes, even though Polaris had no way of seeing.

Polaris laughed, saying, "Yep, some of those speakers are in the throne room itself! And they said if you know what to do, come on up..."

Tinker sounded somewhat nervous, yet excited as he said, "Well, heck, uh, sure! I'll pack my stuff now and get going, then..." he said, rushing to fill in the last few screws on the laptop in front of him.

Polaris wished him well, gave him some directions, and from there, it was on Tinker. The brown dragonpony gathered his best laptop, plenty of spare sound system parts, a toolkit with every possible type of 1980s screw bit, and lastly, a few bottles of water, so he wasn't pestering the castle staff for it. Tinker's van had a dent in it at the moment, and he wanted to look professional, so he climbed into his 1985 stationwagon instead. Either one would fit the theme of 80s repair pony though, since the van was from 1988. It was a long morning of driving, but with music blaring and a brief stop for food, Tinker was pulling up to the Canterlot Castle just after lunchtime.

The guards had been given his description, and it was incredibly easy to pick out the big brown dragonpony in a big brown wagon- so Tinker was led into the garage, and after parking his car, he was brought to the throne room, of all places. Tinker started to look nervous as he walked in, but he wore a smile as he walked into the room. "Ah, Tinker!" Celestia said, smiling a little bit down at him once the doors were shut.

"H-Hey!" He said, looking up at her nervously, but with a smile. Ahh, like so many other ponies were... it was cute, and since the cuteness scaled with size, she found it adorable in this case.

"Please, you don't need to worry about... formalities, you're not a dignitary or anything" the mare said, watching him as he nodded sheepishly. "Anyway... hopefully, you can fix this thing... are you ready for it now?" She asked, standing up off of her throne.

Tinker turned to one side to show off his saddlebags, and he smiled a more genuine smile as he said, "Yeah! I got everything I think I would need, thankfully..." Celestia smiled back, and she trotted down off of the throne with a happy "Good! It's just this way, then..."

As Tinker followed the mare out of the throne room, she realized that he was just as tall as her sister, Luna. She preferred it, since it wore on her neck always looking down at other ponies! She led him to the room that held most of the castle's sound equipment, and she couldn't help but snort as Tinker softly said "oh boy..." upon the door being opened.

"Quite a mess, isn't it?" She said. "It's partially due to other ponies trying to fix this... I'm so sorry that you're coming here to, well, see this..." she said, waving a hoof towards the mess with a weak smile on her face.

Tinker shrugged a little, saying, "Well... it's okay! Heh, I haven't gotten to really sort out a mess of cables in quite a long time, so it'll probably be kind of fun" He said.

Celestia smiled, and her wing gently hugged him, just for a moment. "Well, thank you, Tinker... even if you can't fix the old thing, I'll make sure we actually pay you for your time..." She said, before closing her wings again and backing up to the door.

The now-slightly-blushing stallion sheepishly smiled, saying, "O-Oh, thanks! I uh, I guess I can come back out and tell you when I've figured something out?" he asked.

She nodded, saying, "Sure, or you could tell me by testing it out..." she said, giggling a little bit at the idea of having his voice suddenly sprout from the walls just to tell everypony that the system worked now.

Tinker chuckled in return, saying, "Well, that sounds fun..." As he plugged his laptop in. "Either way, you'll know what I find out!" he chirped.

With that, Celestia left the stallion to his work. She had a lot of boring, boring meetings to sit through, so he would have plenty of time to work on it. And he did. using his laptop to keep track of what was what, Tinker disassembled the entire system, and he set to work on labeling what wire was what, taking apart components to check old belts and gears, (one of the parts still used cassettes!), and lastly, but most important, figuring out what was wrong.

✩｡:*•.──────────.•*:｡✩

Hours later, Celestia sighed. She was on her way back to the throne room, and sadly, she hadn't heard anything from the intercom. She supposed Tinker either hadn't gotten it yet, or it was simply broken. Oh well... her meetings had dragged on for a long time, but at least those were taken care of, though it took a while. Annoyingly, during the meetings, Celestia had felt her body beginning to warm up... she suspected that she was going into heat, and she really, really didn't want to deal wi-

"All right, you little sack of ass, you wanna turn on now?" Tinker hissed, as he gently pushed the power button on the main intercom box. To Tinker's delight, all of the sound equipment was in perfect shape. The wiring, however... was a nightmare. It had taken a lot of time to sort all of it out, and by now, he was tired, sweaty, and kinda hungry. But in front of him, the power light for the intercom finally lit up. It didn't flicker, it stayed steady, and that meant it worked.

Celestia jumped on her way into the room as all of the intercom speakers clicked. It was something she had heard tons of times in the past, but she wasn't expecting it during a time where they were broken. "Yo, you wanna work now? I hooked together aaaaaaall of the wires, and I'm the one with a computer on my ass, which means that you should be worki... wait, is... ohwaitIhear-" Tinker said. Thing is, he said it to the intercom. And the Intercom was indeed working now! His complaints echoed out of the intercom, sending the princess into giggles as she realized that he had realized that it was indeed working. She could imagine the panic on his face, for sure... she decided to head to the intercom room, and see how he had done.

Tinker's blush was still a hot red when the door opened, and he spun to look with a nervous smile. He felt a bit less nervous when Celestia began to giggle, and she smiled at him as she said, "So it works now?"

"I-I uh... well, yeah!" Tinker said, stepping to one side so that she could see the entire thing. Celestia's eyes went wide as she realized that Tinker hadn't just fixed the system, he had rearranged the entire thing, making it look... well... better than it had in years! For a long while, the system had just been cobbled together on its tables, functional but awful looking since the castle didn't really have somepony to maintain it.

She felt a little bad when she realized how much work he had put into it... she didn't want to overwork the poor stallion, and he certainly looked worn out, and the room kind of reeked of sweaty... stallion... musk... To her annoyance, Celestia's brain blanked for a few moments as the smell hit her, but she took back control quickly. She cleared her throat a little, and she smiled as she said, "My, Tinker, you've done better than I was expecting..." as the gears in her head turned in the background. "This room hasn't looked so well-put-together in years!" She said, unable to keep from smiling as he began to grin proudly at his efforts.

The smile was a little forced, though... to her heat-addled body, (okay, yep, this was certainly heat), the scent of a stallion who had been working hard for hours was... maddening, to say the least. Still, she was a princess, and she stayed composed, even if it did require a hidden spell whose purpose was to prevent even a drop of arousal from escaping her nethers. Being able to cast magic without showing it was incredibly useful, so she was glad she had mastered the technique, even if all it did was hide the yellow glow from her horn.

Speaking up, she said, "if this wouldn't trouble you... I know it's not what we asked you here for, and I can pay you for this as well, but would you be willing to come have a look at the sound system in my bedroom?" she asked, giving him somewhat of a weary look with her ears slightly down. From the look of curiosity that enveloped him, she knew she had him hooked already. She nodded, saying, "For some odd reason, the sound only comes from one side, and I... I haven't wanted to bother anypony with it, I guess..." She said, going quiet, giving him an opening.

And he took it. Of course he did, and the princess wore a wide smirk on the inside at how easy it was to wear a mask that was entirely at odds with what she was actually thinking. "Well, I-I'd love to try and help!" Tinker said, smiling up at her.

He began to put on his saddlebags, and she put on a weak smile as she said, "Are you sure...? You seem tired..." She expected him to hold on tight to the bait she was laying, and thankfully, he did.

He grinned at her, the same determined grin, and he said "Naahhh, I've got tons more stamina than I used to!" He had no idea that to Celestia, in that moment, that phrase held two very different meanings.

She smiled again, saying, "Well, that should help... it's this way, then, I'll take you since it's about time for Luna to take over anyway".

Celestia began to walk, and Tinker came up beside her, listening curiously as the mare told him little stories and tidbits about the castle as they walked. She was surprised to learn that he hadn't ever been to the castle before!

She'd have to remember to give him a full tour later, but she had much more important goals at the moment.

Author's Note

little did tonk know that celestia is experiencing thirst

Sep 7th 2020 update: I redid all of the paragraphs to seperate dialogue, and some proofreading as well :3