Warning: Thruster 2-3A has detected abnormally high temperatures. Reported temp. is +37° C above permitted operating temperature.

Gadget grimaced as the warnings blared overhead. Even with the anesthesia medication she'd taken to hopefully reduce any discomfort from crossing into Equestria, it was loud.

Still, given that this was a rocket being shot into a portal by what amounted to a railgun, there had to be plenty of failsafe measures built into the vehicle.

...Right?

Disabling Thruster 2-3A.

Right. Still, it was worrying. She shifted her gaze momentarily to the man who'd raised her all these years, albeit as a weird cross between daughter, lab assistant, and pet. Kinda weird to think about in hindsight, but what could she do as a tiny blue unicorn?

Whatever the case was, even after the thruster was disabled, the SUV-sized vehicle really didn't seem to be behaving all that well.

Laboratory contact lost.

That wasn't good.

Something burst behind the pod, rocking the cockpit and its two occupants. Gadget's teeth clenched even harder as the once-planned trajectory of the rocket destabilized. Through the side window, it looked like pieces of the lab were being sucked into whatever this space was.

...Actually, come to think of it, shouldn't she have already exited on the other side by now?

Another jolt rocked the vehicle. Gadget blinked as another vehicle shrunk into a dot in the distance.

That was the rocket.

Her rocket.

"Delmar--" she prodded the unconscious professor with a hoof. "Delmar, please, wake up. I think something's happening--"

Her attempts steadily weakened by the second. Especially with the medication she and Delmar took, it was really hard to stay awake right now. Surrounded by darkness, illuminated only from behind by whatever remained of the entrance portal, she was beginning to...

Slip...

Awa--no! Gadget smacked her helmet against the dashboard to keep herself awake. If Delmar was out cold, then she'd have to take care of things in the meantime. She could fix this! Even though this thing was built as a guided vehicle, she knew a thing or two about how it was built! She watched it being built!

She wrenched open the smooth plastic cover protecting the manual guidance system, placing both hooves on the steering harness. With how hard the vehicle was shuddering, it was impossible to read any of the gauges or screens. She'd have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Her attention finally returned to the front viewport. Only a vast expanse of darkness, dotted with what looked like stars, filled her view.

Yeah, this was definitely not Equestria.

Gadget pulled hard on the harness even as her vision began to darken. The motion of the countless 'stars' surrounding her told her that she was veering the pod to the left. Soon enough, through the side viewport she spotted the portal from which she came.

Thruster 2-3B damage reported. Disabling thruster.

Fuel reserves at 20%. Cutting fuel connection to damaged thrusters.

That turn was definitely too hard.

A field of debris littered its flickering opening, and from the looks of it, even some pieces of heat shielding. Still, if she... her vision momentarily blacked out. She shook herself awake again. She had to make... it... back...

The light pouring in from the portal continued to flicker. Especially as she approached, it was clear that it was closing. The containment system was never meant to maintain the portal for this long. She could only hope that Ranell and the folks back home were doing everything they could to hold it open until she got back.

Just a little...

Her grip on the harness weakened. She felt her hooves begin to slip.

C'mon, c'mon.

The rattling of the craft alone was what likely kept her awake at this point.

She pressed forward on the harness as hard as she could. It looked like the portal was still just big enough to at least fit the cockpit through with herself and Delmar.

A third jolt rocked the pod. She scrambled to maintain control as the craft began to fishtail out of control.

Thrusters 1-A and 2-A reported critical failure. Temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Centigrade detected outside of thruster compartments.

She grit her teeth, momentarily stabilizing the vehicle again.

Just a little more--

Her tired eyes widened as a ball of light drifted into their path. It was too late to steer around it.

She braced herself as they hit the obstruction. Even with the thick glass of the windshield, the orb punched clean through, grazing her on the cheek as the ship's momentum caused the object to shoot through the craft like a bullet.

She felt the back of her seat punch into her, followed immediately by a wave of heat hotter than anything she'd ever felt.

Gadget gasped awake.

She stared up at the speckled void.

How... she coughed, flipping over onto her...

Hands. She had hands! She was human! Did that mean that she and Delmar made it into...

She blinked.

No, this wasn't right. Equestria had grass, and trees, and a big blue sky! This... she stood up on shaky legs. How long had she been out for?

She felt her cheek. Surprisingly, she seemed perfectly fine.

Wait.

Wait wait wait wait.

She frantically looked around. If she was outside of the capsule now, then that means that the whole thing broke up at some point. She whipped around, eyes flitting over the piece of wreckage that she'd been ejected with. Scraps of still-flaming partly melted metal and plastic slag were all that remained of that piece.

If the rest of the pod was reduced to that, then how the heck did she survive?

She scanned the nigh-infinite plane surrounding her.

More importantly, where was Mister Delmar?

She paced amidst the field of debris. Smoldering pieces of the vehicle lay all around, intermixed with what she could only assume to be the remains of the structure that used to hold the portal open. Here and there, clumps of... grass? Sure, that stuff was grass now. Clumps of strange, wispy grass occasionally sprouted from the otherwise featureless ground, glowing softly against the darkness.

"Delmar?" she called into the void, "You there?"

A distant, flickering light up ahead caught her eye.

"Professor!" Gadget burst into a sprint. A little awkward of one given her transformation, but--another flicker, this time across the entirety of her vision, passed over her. She grunted as she fell from the shock, pushing herself up on her... hooves? Again?

Whatever.

She galloped toward the burning wreckage.

It was only the thruster block.

She watched the flames lick at the empty void surrounding her, fueled by an unextinguishable combination of rocket fuel and what she could only presume was a heavily-damaged liquid oxygen tank.

Delmar wasn't there.

Gadget circled back. Maybe he also woke up and ran off like she did, trying to find her amongst the wreckage! If she turned out fine, then he should've too, right? He was sitting right next to her that whole time!

She passed by the part of the pod she'd woken up beside again. This time around, she noticed her helmet among the debris. She picked it up in her hands. Hooves. Whatever she happened to have at the moment.

The visor was completely obliterated, and much of what remained looked very, very thoroughly burnt through.

Something else caught her eye as she tossed the helmet aside.

She held her breath, slowly turning her head to the remains of the second helmet.

Unlike her own, the visor was still intact.

Also unlike her own, there... she narrowly held herself back from lurching. She backed away from the black-stained helmet, eyes quivering as her thoughts ran wild. Already, some kind of pale, snail-like creature seemed to be picking through the carnage surrounding it.

Delmar was gone. Like, gone gone. Incinerated by the blast. Reduced to a fine dust that clung... she felt tears welling up in her eyes. Why was she the one that made it out unharmed? She... No...?

Gadget sniffed, wiping the tears from her eyes. She had to know now. She returned to her own helmet and the rest of the destroyed pod she'd been ejected with. She hadn't looked inside her helmet yet, but...

She picked up her helmet, peering inside at the non-melted bits.

Her heart sank. The same film of carbon painted the inside of her own helmet, too. She just hadn't noticed it the first time around. She lifted her gaze from her helmet to the shredded structure of the cockpit around her.

She bristled at the 'shadows' fused into what was left of the front viewport; ghastly silhouettes against spiderwebbed cracks.

Was she dead?

She glanced back down at the helmet in her hooves.

No, she couldn't be! Otherwise, how could she possibly be interacting with these things? The soot must've been from the smoke of the flames getting in after she and Delmar were ejected in the crash... Yeah, that must've be it. They were both perfectly fine by sheer luck. That blast that hit them from behind must've knocked their helmets clean off, that's all!

She let the helmet drop to the 'ground', gazing back up at the countless lights dotting the milky-black 'sky'.

With that matter hopefully settled, there were just two things left to do. First, obviously, was to find Delmar. He was probably also wandering around looking for her. Secondly, getting back. If she'd just managed to evade one of those freakin' things... she paused. One of the closer orbs looked like it had... something in it. She couldn't quite tell, but...

She trot closer, tilting her head as she stared into the light. It was hard to really make out any specific details, kind of like looking out the window on a summer afternoon after being in a dark room all morning. Still, through her squinted eyes, it kinda looked like the lab.

...Wait. The lab! She lit her horn, reaching for the orb.

"...G...adget...?" a voice rasped from behind her.

"Delmar!" Gadget gasped, spinning around to find the Professor standing among the wreckage. "You survived!"

He coughed. "Y-yes, I did, Gadget. Where... are we?"

"I have no idea," Gadget grinned, strength rapidly returning to her voice. "By the way, where were you? I was looking all over for you, and I swear it looked like we were both burnt to a crisp back there!"

Delmar pushed up his glasses. "I..." his stomach growled. "Could ask the same of you... excuse me," he stumbled past the filly into the charred wreckage of the vehicle.

"You good?" Gadget followed after him.

"I-I think so, maybe," Delmar's voice came in spurts. He limped along through the skeletal body of the pod. "So hungry," he wheezed under his breath. He made a motion with his hands, as if opening a long-destroyed compartment under the dashboard. "Gadget... hungry too?"

She shook her head, stepping back a little. "N-no, I'm not hungry. Are you sure everything's alright?"

A loud crunch rang through her ears as Delmar tore a piece of mostly-carbonized plastic off what remained of the dashboard. "I-if it contains carbon, that means it can be edible, r-right?" he slowly turned to face her. This time, she could actually see him in full with the overhead glow of the light balls illuminating them. To say that he looked shriveled was an understatement.

Gadget snatched the plastic from his grasp. "Professor! What are you thinking? We've only been here for--"

"--More days than I can count," Delmar's voice momentarily regained its composure. "I've been wandering the place for so, so long. I just came back here after finding nothing for miles around. I thought you were--"

"--Dead," Gadget cut him off. "Are you sure? I've hardly been awake at all since we crashed. It can't possibly be that--"

Delmar's stomach grumbled again. She mentally slapped herself over saying that when her mentor and friend looked that malnourished. That can't have possibly happened just in the time between the crash and waking up.

"I..." Delmar wiped his mouth. He let out a weak chuckle. "It's been so long. I... I'm so hungry, I could--"

Gadget backed away as the words left his mouth, her eyes shrinking to pinpricks at the utterance.

"--eat a horse!" he let out a loud, boastful laugh that seemed to somehow reverberate across the empty void. "Get it? Ha! Even--heh--get this, seat leather!"

"Delmar, this isn't you," Gadget stepped even further away. "We can wait here! Wait until Ranell and the others can get the portal open again! And then we can go home, and you can have a nice, big meal!"

His face grew stern again. "Gadget, even by the most optimistic count I've taken, I've been here for over a week. I've been--" he wildly gestured at himself. "I've been drinking my own piss to survive! Do you think I haven't been waiting enough already? I--" he doubled over in pain as his stomach growled once more. "I'm so, so sorry, Gadget."

"Delmar?" Gadget flickered, tripping over herself as her pony body was once again exchanged for a human one. She backed away on all fours, shivering as Delmar turned and searched the wreckage. "Don't do this. Please."

"One of us has to make it back to let the lab know what happened, Gadget," his voice rose from within the destroyed pod. "And last I checked, there ain't any grass growing anywhere around here."

She pushed herself back to her feet. "Delmar! Please! Think about it! If it's been so long, then how come I'm not starving? I don't even feel thirsty!"

"All the better in that case," his voice rasped as he stepped out from the shattered vehicle. He looked her up and down, holding a length of pipe in his hands. "Huh."

"Just calm down, Professor--" Gadget gestured vaguely. "Drop the pipe, we can talk about this."

She watched his knuckles whiten around the pipe. Then loosen.

"Then kill me. Please."

"W-huh?!" Gadget sputtered.

Delmar sat down, letting the pipe clatter to the featureless floor. "You're the one who still has her head on her shoulders here. It's only a matter of time before I drop dead anyway." He reached for the pipe, grabbing and rolling it toward Gadget. "I've been fantasizing about food for a long time now. I don't want to do something that I'll really regret. I'm sure you know what was going through my mind just a moment ago."

"What, and make me do something that I'll regret?" Gadget kicked the pipe away as hard as she could. She sat down in front of the downtrodden man. "Neither of us are killing each other, got it? Not for food, not to avoid killing for food--" She folded her arms. "You're staying right here with me, mister."

"You've grown so much since I found you that day as a filly," Delmar reached out and placed a hand on her head. "Look at you. You're practically my daughter," he retracted his hand. "I-I'm sorry for what I did earlier. I--" he keeled over in pain again, gasping as he fell onto his back. "It hurts..."

"Shh, just lay down," Gadget crawled closer to him. "Stay here. I want to check on something."

She stood up, glancing about for that ball of light from earlier. There was a little something she wanted to try with it.

There it was.

She jogged over to the orb, pulling it closer. She flickered again mid-pull, hooves slipping from the smooth surface of the ethereal ball. Gadget grumbled under her breath, resorting instead to lighting her horn and forcing it down to eye level.

Just as she'd left it.

Home.

It was hovering right where the portal had previously been based on the debris field too, now that she thought about it.

This had to be it.

"Professor!" she ran back, orb floating along behind her. "Here it is! The portal back home!"

Delmar lay still, only turning his head in her direction.

"We can go home, see?" Gadget set the orb beside him. "The lab is right there. We'll prepare ourselves better next time. I-I can bring snacks, even!"

"Too... small," Delmar wheezed. He reached out a hand, grasping for the ball of light.

Instead, his hand passed through the surface, and grabbed onto some kind of inner edge.

"It's... open? Still?" Delmar's words drifted out between labored breaths.

Gadget cringed at his deteriorating condition. She shook her head, lighting her horn again. This was going to be a long shot, but if Delmar could grab the inner edge of the orb like that, then maybe...

Light poured through the expanding ball as Gadget poured all her effort into physically pulling each edge away from the center. She stepped back once it was big enough for her and Delmar to fit through on all fours.

"You go first," she circled around to the Professor, nudging him over. "You're the weakest right now, so you take priority."

Delmar flipped over to his stomach with her assistance, and pulled himself through, inch by careful inch. At some point, his pace quickened, as if he'd regained some of the energy he once had.

"Gadget," his voice drifted through. His feet momentarily vanished into the light before his face emerged again, noticeably more full than before. "Come through!"

She ducked through the portal. Immediately, the void that once surrounded them was replaced by the cluttered view of one very messed-up lab.

"We sure did a number on this place, didn't we?" Delmar laughed, bending down to pick up a piece of equipment.

His hand passed straight through it.

"Hm?" he swiped for the handle again. On the third time, he managed to just nudge it a little.

A lab assistant opened the door, catching both of their attention.

"Oh! Er--sorry about the mess, but we made it back!" Delmar stood up again. "Our pod malfunctioned and nearly had us trapped, but--"

The lab assistant walked right through him.

"--We're... back..." the Professor's voice dimmed. He spun around, reaching for the assistant again. "Can you hear us?"

"Hello?" Gadget circled around the assistant, trying to catch their attention. "Hello hello? Can you hear me?"

Just as with Delmar, she attempted to touch the assistant. A light punch on the leg, really. Her hoof passed clean through them.

"I..." she glanced between the oblivious lab assistant and the portal they'd traveled through. Then to the floor, which suddenly didn't feel quite as solid as she'd remembered. She pressed her hoof down a little harder, frowning as the pressure let off and allowed her hoof to slip into the floor. "Delmar, we're--"

"Intangible," Delmar turned around. "Like ghosts."

Fragmented memories began to filter back into her mind. The violently rattling rocket. The orb that drifted into the way. The impact that narrowly missed them as it shot through the viewport. The feeling of heat, and the period of darkness that followed.

...Waking up completely unfazed, and conveniently separated from their helmets.

"So we're... dead?"

Delmar slipped his hands into his pockets. "Sure seems like it. Can't touch things, people walk right through you," He made another swipe at the piece of equipment, this time managing to knock it onto its side. "And I'm sure that for folks that aren't us, it would've looked like that just tipped over by itself."

Gadget furrowed her brows. "And you're okay with that?"

"Oh, no, absolutely not. But just having that constant starvation I'd felt go away... I think I'd prefer this. Here. Gadget, how about this?" he knelt down in front of her. "Both of us will try to figure out a way to get back, and alive. We're already mostly there, after all! We know how those strange orbs can be used for travel. All we need to do is find a way to become tangible again. I'll stay here, since back in whatever that place is, I was crippled by hunger the likes of which I'd never felt before. You search in there for another way back in the meantime. Maybe another orb or something. 'Kay?"

Gadget gave a slight nod. "O-okay."

"Atta girl," Delmar stood back up. He let out a boastful laugh. "And bring me back a burger if you can! Might not be hungry anymore as ghost here, but by God am I craving one these now!"

He waved as Gadget returned to the glowing passageway. She glanced back one last time before stepping back through, shutting the portal behind her.

Now, there was only her.

Gadget, amidst a field of debris.

The wreckage of a dream and a life.

She closed her eyes, taking in a breath.

This was her life now. Searching. Wandering. Journeying, perhaps.

She opened them again.

First and foremost, she needed a base of operations. Someplace where she could organize her thoughts.

She took in the field of debris surrounding her.

She had some work to do.

Author's Note

We're only... well, seven years late! This chapter builds off of Lab Horse's alternate ending/bonus chapter, pulling in not only my current writing style, but also serving as a bit of backstory for how exactly 'Void Gadget' came to be within my What If fic's "Project Emphenom" sub-story.

Prior reading of the chapters linked in the long description is highly recommended.